If I may, I would like to say a word of encouragement to those who are having difficulties keeping their faith alive.
The line between the perception of Jesus as
present here and now or as an abstract entity is often blurred. There are going
to be moments when you are distracted by your everyday life, and in those
moments, if you are inclined to doubt, you’ll think that you are pursuing
something that is not real, not even in your heart. If you wish to overcome
your fear of self-deception, don’t try to force your mind to some kind of
transcendent experience, because you might still doubt its authenticity.
Instead, look at how Jesus has affected your life. If you have learned to be
compassionate, if you are resilient in the face of adversities, if you are more
joyful, then you can recognize his presence from a rational point of view. You
want to keep your dignity as a rational being, and you can do that by paying
attention to your responses to the world. If they are changing, he’s with you.
Open your mind, don’t be afraid of being deceived by your own feelings.
Jesus said: “I’ll be with you,
always,” and if you give yourself time, you’ll perceive him not as someone who lived long ago and is
separate from you by the barrier of time, but as someone who is sharing your life. St.
Augustine said that he is more interior to you than you are to yourself.
If you have an intuition of a reality beyond
the material one, don’t dismiss it. Don’t be afraid of having to give up too
much if you follow this path and it leads to Jesus, because you’ll gain
instead. He said that his yoke is light. If you open your heart to him, you’ll
see that God is not so hidden after all, nor He intends to be. You can listen
to Him through Jesus’ words.
Love has an enormous healing power, and the first
ones to be healed will be you. I wish my son could be healed too. He’s afraid
of death, terrified at the idea of dissolving into nothingness. Some time ago he
told me:
"I hope that you’re right about the
afterlife, I hope we are going to go on living. But if we meet up there, I’ll
keep telling you that your way of reasoning was wrong, because you believed in
God without evidence.”
“If we meet up there,” I answered, “I’ll
just say: ‘See? I told you!”
We had this conversation during one of our
long walks from home to the university campus. We always follow the same route
and have the same conversation: He denies, I affirm. But lately I have the feeling
that Jesus is with us, walking next to me and smiling. I’m between the two of
them, loving them both, waiting for the right moment to take one step back and
let the two of them walk side by side.
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2 comments:
That is very insightful. Look at what Jesus has done to oneself and you can see His reality.
That is funny what your son said that in heaven you were still wrong. :)
This insight comes from Communion and Liberation. It's the all point of Msgr. Giussani teaching. And, guess what...my son fell in love with a deeply catholic girl!
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