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He Gave His Only Son

"Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."

John 21:29

• There should be less talk. A preaching point is not a meeting point.


• The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved-- they are Jesus in disguise.


• In the West there is loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways it is worse than our poor in Calcutta. (Commonweal, Dec 19, 1997)


• It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving.


• The poor give us much more than we give them. They're such strong people, living day to day with no food. and they never curse, never complain. We don't have to give them pity or sympathy. We have so much to learn from them.


• I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?


• I do not pray for success. I ask for faithfulness.


• Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.


• If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

~Mother Teresa~

Last week during mass there was a couple seated a few pews in front of me. I think they were in their seventies, and they were holding hands throughout the mass. When it was time to give peace to each other I saw the couple face each other and greet each other. It was a brief moment, almost unnoticeable, but in that extraordinary instance I saw the elderly gentleman tilt his head toward the woman and looked at her with a gaze so full of unmistakable love that it drew my breath away and made tears come to my eyes. I remember a friend who once said that all that she needed to be happy was to have a gaze so full of love always directed at her. I understood what she meant as I beheld the couple in a silent, wonderful gaze, their eyes filled with the brilliance of love.

As Christians we hear early on about the love so intensely and passionately directed toward us by our Heavenly Father. I wonder though how much we can actually comprehend this magnificent devotion our Father has for us. Within the confines of our human senses and understanding and struggling at the same time with our suffering it would seem that we have been abandoned, our prayers falling on heartless ears. In our desire to have relief from pain and suffering our natural logic gets confused whenever our Heavenly Father seems to say "no" to us more often than we can handle, and then we get hurt and think we are not loved. From our own point of view it is hard to reconcile this seeming indifference to our plight especially whenever we think of our own natural instinct to alleviate suffering in another human being. Because of our limited viewpoint it often does not make sense.

I knew a father who agonized about his son's long struggle with addiction to alcohol. Because of the addiction the son had lost everything and became poor. In the ensuing years any money he would get all went to his horrible addiction. Relatives and friends stopped giving him money. After they did the father became his only recourse. But his father could not say no, seeing his son on his knees begging him, saying the money was for food. Each time the son came to ask for forgiveness and then for help the father would hope that it was heartfelt and sincere, and he would end up giving his son money. He dared not to say no, afraid to miss that one time that his son would really need help. "It breaks my heart to say no," the father simply said when I asked him why he couldn't say no. The moment came when the father himself became penniless and had nothing to spare even for himself and he had to say no to his tearful son begging for help. After his son left the father let out a cry so deep and rending, crushing his heart into pieces. And many times the father's heart would get broken again and again as the son kept coming back, hoping to break the father's will. Although this human father showed his love the wrong way, the agony of his heart as he watched his son's slow and tortuous road to healing was real. Although he seemed to be in the distance his eyes and his heart never left his son.

This is the love and agony of a human father. What more of Our Heavenly Father who is Divine and perfectly in love with us, who pursues us with that unwavering love? Jesus wept as He watched over Jerusalem, and was obedient to Our Father to the point of death so that we may have eternal life. And here is our Almighty Father who created heaven and earth, who calls each star by its name, who knows us even while we are in our mother's womb and who offered His only begotten son so that those who believe may share in His eternal joy in heaven. Our inability to understand this amazing intent to save us from eternal death does not diminish at all this amazing love that God has for us, nor does it mean that it does not exist. The psalmist exclaims, "What is man, dear God, that You are mindful of Him?" When we cry out in pain and reach out our arms toward a seeming nothingness, take heart in the knowledge that the Heart of Jesus weeps for us and supplies us with grace that, although we might not see or comprehend, enfolds us. Our Heavenly Father has promised us that someday when we get to heaven there will be no more tears, no more sorrows, only the perfect joy in His presence. There we will finally see that loving gaze always upon us and we will finally comprehend what it means to be enfolded in the brilliance of His love.

URLVD

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