‘Remorse is the negative presence of God in the soul,
as grace is the positive presence of God. Remorse is incomplete, for it is
self-disgust divorced from God; but remorse can become sorrow, and then hope,
the moment the soul turns to God for help.’
Fulton Sheen Lift
up your Heart 1942: 17
“Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their
sin, because they did evil to you.”’
But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you,
you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that
many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will
provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly
to them.
We all of us sin, a lot, in what we think or say or do, or
indeed do not say or think or do. If we say that we have no sin then we deceive
ourselves. The simple fact is that I am a miserable sinner; I am to be pitied
for the wretched way in which I do or do not do things. I am no better or worse
than any of you, we’re all the same in this, and yet somehow God has called me
to serve him, and to say this to you, and he calls each one of us to live out
our baptism in our lives.
Possibly the hardest thing to learn is the fact that God
loves us: he heals us, and restores us. Most of us if the truth be told struggle
with this world-shattering truth – God loves us. We don’t feel worthy of the
love, that we are good enough to be loved in the first place, or that we can do
anything back.
It is, I suspect, the work of a lifetime and beyond to try
and come to terms with the fact that God loves us, that he gives himself for
us, that he loves us so much that he opens his arms on the Cross to embrace the
world with his healing love. This is what Grace is, the free gift of a generous
God, who loves not because we ARE worthy of His love, but that through His
love, we may BECOME worthy of it. His grace perfects our human nature, and
because we are loved and forgiven, healed and restored in Christ, we can love
and forgive others; we can share in Our Lord’s work of healing and reconciliation.
God takes the initiative so that we do not have to, he does what we cannot so
that our nature may be transformed by him, but first it needs to be accepted,
so that it can transform us, and we can then transform others, and eventually
transform the whole world.
This is exactly what the Church has been doing for the last
two thousand years, saving it, one soul at a time, showing the world that God
loves it, and helping it to experience that love as a reality in its life, the one
true reality. It all started with a young girl in Nazareth hearing the words ‘Hail,
full of grace the Lord is with you’ this is how much God loves us, a God who
takes a risk, and uses ordinary unsurprising people to be extraordinary, to do
extraordinary things and live extraordinary lives. It is strange and
surprising, and it’s not what we would expect to happen, but that’s just how
God works. He can take the raw material that in earthly terms is not terribly
promising and do things with it. God uses us the people of God to serve him in
the Church and the World, to make us saints who may enjoy his closer presence
for all eternity.
God loves us, so that we can love each other and love Him,
with a love that is costly and pure and generous, a love which forgives the
sins of others just as we ourselves have been forgiven. This is the love that
can change the world, by transforming our human nature, perfecting it by the Grace
of God, rather than abolishing it, so that we can have life in all its fullness,
so that we can be prepared for a life of beatitude in Heaven in the closer
presence of God.
It is this radical revolutionary love which lies at the heart
of the good news of Jesus Christ, it is from this gospel love that the Church’s
concern for the world, and politics, and social action flows, for these are not
an end in themselves, but a means of bringing about the Kingdom of God among us
in all its fullness. We are called as Christians to participate in something
radical, revolutionary, and world-changing, something which scared the Roman Empire,
and which has outlived it; it is by no means perfect, or the finished article –
that’s the point: the Church is a work in progress called to transform the
world. It will fail, it’s made up of human beings like us; the Church has been
failing ever since Peter denied Our Lord three times, and it will continue to
do so, as it cannot rely upon itself and its own strength, but rather upon the
God who loves us, who heals us and restores us. In his strength and his truth,
we may live out our faith, our hope, and our love, and through His grace
transform the world that it may sing praise of God the Father, God the Son, and
God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might,
majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
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