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Dear Friends,
Happy Easter! The Glorious Resurrection of Our Lord and Savior manifests the extraordinary power of mercy over sin and hope over all despair. Not only did Jesus Christ bear the brunt of our sins, but He resolutely accepted it with infinite love. The fact that blood and water flowed from His side on the Cross summarizes the victory: at His most painful moment He only offered us forgiveness. Christ knows our fragility intimately, and suffers the passion not only to demonstrate love, but to empower our healing through grace.
Many times, we think we initiate our search for God. But actually, God is always first searching for us. In Genesis chapter three, after the Fall, God exclaims: “where are you?” This indicates a beautiful truth. We look for God because first, God is always looking for us. Obviously, He knows where we are, but He “looks for us” because He knows we have wandered away, perhaps become frightened of him, perhaps even despairing, thinking there is no way God would love me anymore. But the gritty Passion and Glorious Resurrection of Our Lord reveal a sublime fact: He remains in a relentless search for us! Psalm 139 begins: “O Lord, you search me and you know me…” Mary Magdalene looks for Christ on Easter morning, but only because Christ was already calling to her in her soul! Fr. John Harvey, our beloved Courage founder, whose birthday was April 14th, was himself relentless in proclaiming Christ's never-ending search for us, the never ending thirst of Christ for every soul! God knows all our foibles and still searches for us. He still suffered for us. He doesn’t hesitate: He dies for us. From this comes the indisputable guarantee of God’s never-ending love despite our falls. Within minutes of the Original Sin, He promises a suffering but victorious Savior.
This meditation should help us guard against despair and the subtle temptation towards self-loathing. We frequently become frustrated with ourselves because we want to please God and then we fall. We see ourselves as unworthy of God, and then the evil one tells us to give up. But through the Resurrection, Christ declares: “I will die to make you worthy.” Christ never gives up on us, His love for us abounds every moment!
Interestingly, the temptation towards self-anger is actually the misuse of the passion of anger. Anger is a passion God implants, thus it must have a good purpose if properly ordered. Its primary focus is to propel us against injustice and sin, to motivate us to fight for God. If we do find ourselves tempted to self-anger, we don’t repress but re-channel that energy towards virtue. Let us instead turn that anger towards sin and towards the evil one who tempts us. Let’s turn that loathing towards anything that sidetracks us from Christ. Not hatred per se but an sober aversion towards anything that demotes God in our hearts. The Resurrection proves that Christ is always trigger happy to forgive! And like the apostles, we turn from despair and can be transformed into great evangelizers, to embrace and spread that message of infinite mercy!
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