(A reflection shared to Our Lady's Hill Community on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Our Gospel today shows the great love of God to the lost sheep, a great love coupled with joy and forgiveness when the sheep was found.
Many times we are also lost and we are gladly accepted by God when we realized that we need His divine love and care. We are lost because we look for a greener pasture outside the one provided by the Great Shepherd. Why do we look for a greener pasture? Hindi ba tayo kontento at masaya sa pastulang ipinagkaloob sa atin ng Dakilang Pastol? Often times, we are looking for a greener pasture because we want a more secured life. We are not contented with what God has provided for us. We still have doubts, fears and concerns.
My dear brothers, aminin man natin o hindi, malimit or often times we don’t trust God that He will take care of our future. We don’t trust Him that He will address our fears, worries, concerns and difficulties in life. Thus, we make our own ways to overcome those fears, worries, concerns, burdens, struggles, etc.
Almost two years ago, when I had a crisis while staying here in the Postulancy House, I didn’t let God work on my crisis. I made my own coping mechanisms to survive. But I failed. I was so stubborn – my mind, my thoughts, my imaginations, my feelings were pre-occupied with so many negative factors. I never allowed God to work in me. Yes, I brought this to prayer, but prayer that time seems to be a monologue, instead of a dialogue between me and Him. I talked, talked and talked. I never allowed God to speak to me, or if He did, I never received what He said. Until, I left the Postulancy house with so much pains and regrets in my heart. Only six months later, I realized how great His messages were. I experienced a merciful, kind and richly compassionate God. Inspite my stubbornness, He’s still searching for me, to bring me back to His pasture.
Brothers, that experience of God made me more aware that I should develop a deeper trust in Him, a trust that is deeply rooted. Only then, I can be assured that if trials come I can depend on Him with humility and confidence.
The question now is: “How can I develop a deeply rooted trust in the lord?” I want to share with you five steps to do this based on my own experience.
- TALK. Does it make sense to talk to God and tell our troubles, our disappointments, our frustrations, our failings, since He already knew them?
In prayer, we talk to God. Prayer is a personal relationship with Him. The issue in prayer is not one of the information, but of the TALKING, or of the SHARING. We share to God our experiences, our thoughts, our feelings, our imaginations, etc. We may know that one of our closest friend is in anguish because of his loved one’s sudden death, but we want him to TALK to us personally about his feelings and reactions because he’s our friend. Between friends and in any relationship information is not important but COMMUNICATION and TRANSPARENCY are. The same truth applies to our relationship to God. Just like Jesus, when we He talked to His Father in Gethsemane He began to be deeply distressed and troubled: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” He said to His disciples: “Stay here and keep watch.” Going a little farther, He fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from Him. “Abba, Father, “ He said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mk 14:33-36) In this hour of His agony, Jesus talked to His father, told His father what He feels and what He desires.
We should talk to God like the way we talk to our friends, that is, easily, effortlessly and without strain. As
- RECEIVE. Next step is to receive God’s message to us after we talked to Him, after we have shared our feelings, our thoughts, our imaginations, our experiences. But, how do we receive His message? How can we hear Him? Sometimes or most of the times, we don’t want to talk to God or we are afraid to talk to Him, maybe because we don’t want to hear what He will say to us. Or, we hear God speaking to us, but we ignore Him. We don’t want to receive what He is saying to us. And that, we don’t want to get closer to Him, because there seems to be in each of us a profound fear that such closeness will destroy us.
Why don’t we go back talking to Him when we are afraid of what He will speak to us, when we are afraid to receive His message to us? Why don’t we share this feeling of ambivalence to Him, express what we are afraid of, and what we want. And then, allow Him to do next. All we can do is give Him a chance to respond to what we are sharing by sitting quietly, reading a text in the Bible, taking a walk in a garden, or doing anything that get our minds off ourselves and our own concerns for a little while, and let our hearts receive His words.
- UNBOSOM. Psalm 139 says: “Examine me, O God, and know my mind. Test me, and discover my thoughts. Find out if there is any evil in me and guide me in the everlasting way.”
To unbosom is to confess or reveal our sinfulness, our weaknesses, our shortcomings, our failings. To unbosom is to be humble with God, to accept that we are weak and we fall sometimes.
After we have our conversation with God, we then ask Him to search us and know our heart and show us our wicked ways. We cannot utter those words of Psalm 139 if we are not humble, if we are boastful. We need God’s help in revealing our sinfulness. Only He can show us our sins, we cannot show them to ourselves.
It’s normal that we feel we will be condemned when we reveal our sinfulness but let us be inspired that many Christians, many saints have looked into the eyes of Jesus and where they had expected to see condemnation, they have seen love.
- SURRENDER. After we have revealed our sinfulness to God, we are now ready to surrender them to Him. Of course, the very act of revealing our sins to God may be experienced as forgiveness, but often enough we need to surrender them and ask to know explicitly that we are forgiven. As Psalm 51 says:
“Be merciful to me, O God, because of your constant love. Because of your great mercy, wipe away my sins! Wash away all my evil and make me clean from my sin.”
When we come before God as sinners, we can enumerate the ways we have offended Him. Often times, we feel unworthy or reluctant to let God forgive us because to accept forgiveness derives from the realization that we will then be called to give up our own grudges. Again, humility is very important here because we want a full pardon, a clean bill of health, an assurance that our sins will not stand in the way of friendship. Psalm 51 continues:
“Create a pure heart in me, O God and put a new and loyal spirit in me. Do not banish me from your presence; do not take your holy spirit away from me. Give me again the joy that comes from your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.”
- THANK. When we have talked to God, received His words, unbosomed our sinfulness and surrendered them to Him, gratitude wells up in our hearts, and we want to thank Him. We may utter the words of Psalm 107:
“Give thanks to the Lord because He is good; His love is eternal…He satisfies those who are thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.”
Like the Psalmist, we give thanks to the Lord for His constant, infinite and unfailing love for us by remembering the gracious deeds he had showed us in our daily lives. We thank God for the experience of talking to Him, receiving His response, revealing our sinfulness and surrendering them to Him. It is a great grace to thank Him even for what seems to be tragedies in our lives.
When we have T-R-U-S-T in the Lord, when we have a deeper trust in Him; when we talk, receive, unbosom, surrender and thank, we are assured that we will not be lost again, and we will be proud in proclaiming:
“I will dwell in the house of the Lord, forever.”
From My Spiritual Journal, 18 June 2004, Our Lady's Hill Postulancy House, Bago City
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