Who doesn't know those distressing moments when we advance painfully on the steep road of life, strongly feeling the burden of our sins? Bent under the weight of our faults, our souls are seized by a black despair, and it seems that we are caught in a terrible vice which, unrelentingly, tightens upon us.
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
Who doesn't know those distressing moments when we advance painfully on the steep road of life, strongly feeling the burden of our sins? Bent under the weight of our faults, our souls are seized by a black despair, and it seems that we are caught in a terrible vice which, unrelentingly, tightens upon us.
The distress that grips us hardly gives us any respite and our discomfort only increases. Our poverty, a sad partner who follows us step by step, overpowers us at every moment. Incapable of finding peace, we undergo an internal martyrdom all the more painful as it seems impossible to confide it to anybody without increasing its intensity. Any hope of consolation disappears: alone with ourselves, we face the void. And the rough pain persists...
In such difficult hours, it is necessary for us to keep our wits, also unfailingly keeping our souls in peace, weathering the storm with a serene soul in spite of the secret, heavy swell that shakes us so violently. It would be a mortal trap to fall into this personal swamp, morbidly contemplating our own poverty. We must absolutely go out of ourselves.
Not that we should camouflage our weakness. That would be lying to ourselves. But we cannot rightly measure it if we capsize in that dark sea of despair that leads to the doors of death. Our souls are devoured by a fever and such an extreme worry eats at us that it stops us from making the right diagnosis of our state. To rightly measure our abysmal weakness, we should peacefully look at it.
This look is not possible unless we have taken the trouble of considering beforehand the eminent perfections of God. We can never finish the contemplation of the magnificence of God and we will never be able to exhaust the treasury of His benefits. He is the Almighty, His mercy is infinite. Being Charity, God loves to give Himself and to give Himself without measure, in spite of the mediocrity of he who receives this unutterable gift. In spite of this mediocrity? Better said because of it...
This mediocrity, in itself, is not our weakness. The weakness is our refusal to acknowledge our incapacity for any good. This refusal may manifest itself by a ruffled pride that denies what is obvious. We do react in this way too often, so there is no need to give too many details about the petty demonstrations of our sufficiency!
On the other hand, our refusal may take the opposite direction. Sometimes, we dwell too long on our weakness, and like a child infecting a light wound by poking at it with his dirty hands, we are blinded by our misery and become unable to jump-start our soul, incapable of pronouncing the sursum corda that will direct us towards the Lord, in truth and peace. This is a pride more subtle and dangerous than in its first, more traditional manifestation, because by it we refuse to look at our weakness in the peace of the presence of God and from the point of view of His infinite mercy. We cry upon ourselves, a long and tearful lament which is not only sterile but poisonous.
Ultimately, we refuse to be delivered from our poverty because of our pride and our incredible ignorance of God and of His kindness towards us. Nonetheless, at each Mass we sing these words so full of hope: "Propter nos et propter nostram salutem," "for us and for our salvation." Christ, indeed, was incarnated by a free gift of His mercy and, by taking flesh. God put Himself within our reach, so that we abandon may our misery to Him.
The holy night of Christmas we celebrated this mystery of the divine relationship, by which God made Himself man so that man could unite himself with God - a surprising but undeniable truth, by which God gives us His wealth in exchange for our poverty.
Let us give it to Him, without understanding perhaps, but how could we understand what St. Paul precisely calls "the folly of God"? Without restrictions, without pitifully returning upon ourselves, without excuses, let us entrust our poverty to Him. It is not ours anymore, it has become His. We cannot measure the infinite kindness of God. Let us abandon ourselves to Him by not listening to the calls of our nature that excites our impressions and walls us up in our self-love: "My misery is too great and repels His love.” This is only madness, a specious human reasoning that is yet another proof of our arrogance! How could one be more confused, a toy of satanic illusions? In the simplicity of His love, so marvelously incarnated in the destitution of the Manger, God waits until we acknowledge our misery. Who are we to make Him wait? Our prayer should be the cry of Saint Augustine: "Noverim Te, noverim me," "to know Thee, to know myself."
Our Lord Jesus Christ wanted to be born in poverty; therefore, He will not be put off by ours. On the contrary, He longs for it. Only our foolish refusal can push Him away. Born poor, voluntarily choosing an extreme destitution, Christ is still God and He does not change. He seeks the souls of the poor to deposit there the infinite grace of His love.
The grace of Christmas is a grace of holiness deposited in the souls of children who forget themselves because they know their own poverty and rest in God in the richness of Christ.
May you have a good and holy year, in Christo sacerdote et Maria,
Fr. Yves le Roux