Someone once asked me: “How can we see God’s love for us?” To which I promptly replied: “Look at Jesus on the cross. There is God’s love for us sinners.”
“But how can we see this love tangibly, today, in our lives? How do I know that God loves me, a sinner, and that He has forgiven me?”
My answer to this question is simply: “Because I have experienced it.”
How can I doubt that God has forgiven my blasphemies, when today He has entrusted me to proclaim His Good News with the same tongue that use to utter such obscenities?
How can I doubt that God has forgiven my violence and hatred towards His Church for years on end when, today the Holy Mother Church has accepted me again into its fold without any resentment for my past evil?
How can I doubt that God has forgiven my adultery, when He has shown this to me through my wife’s forgiveness?
I once heard a story of a number of people who were forming a circle. Suddenly, for some reason, one of these people turned upon and hit the man next to him. The latter, filled with anger and bitterness vented his anger upon the persons closest to him. In turn this person lashed out against the next, and so on…. until Anger had gone full circle.
Anger and violence go on and on, round and round …
However, one man stands up to break this vicious circle. He receives a blow but, instead of retaliating, absorbs the violence, taking this sin upon himself… HE breaks the circle of violence and hatred, by taking upon himself the sin that he has suffered ….
This is what Jesus came to achieve in the world…. He took upon Himself the sins of the world… and answered with LOVE… and He broke the chains that were holding mankind a slave to violence.
Jesus showed that by rising victorious from the grave He has conquered Death.
And so, we too can face up to any situation that signifies death of our inner self, assured in the conviction that we shall rise with Him who has conquered Death.
This is the Christian experience: accepting the death of our ego, day after day, whatever the circumstances, fully confident that we shall not be crushed under it but that, with Christ, we shall overcome any adversity.
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