Daily Thought For April 27, 2017

Something That Never Fails

      

     We are invited to do as he did: to see our life, exactly as it presents itself, to bring to the surface the fears that nest in us, the sadness, the threats, the complexes, the physical or moral defects, the painful memory that humiliates us, and to expose everything to the light of the thought that God loves me. He invites me to ask myself; what in my life attempts to depress me?

 

From his personal life, the Apostle broadens his gaze to the world around him. "For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:37-39). Hence, he observes "his" world, with the powers that rendered it menacing: death with its mystery, the present life with its allurements, the astral powers or the infernal ones which struck so much terror in ancient man.

 

We can do the same thing: we can look at the world that surrounds us, which makes us afraid. What Paul calls the "height" and the "depth" are for us now infinitely great on high and infinitely small below, the universe and the atom. Everything is ready to crush us; man is weak and alone, in a universe so much greater than him and become, in addition, even more threatening, following the scientific discoveries that he has made and that he does not succeed in controlling, as is being dramatically demonstrated by the atomic reactors in Fukushima.

 

Everything can be questioned, all of our safety measures can fail, but never this: that God loves us and is stronger than everything. "Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth."

 

 Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa from The Second Lenten Sermon “God Is Love” 2011