When you're close to Jesus, he knocks on the door of your heart. Many people do prayers of various kinds, and we ought to be thankful that holy Church gives us so many prayers to learn. They guide us and help us when we are spiritually young. Later, the words take on new life, as things we know by the light of faith, not simply as practices we have.
Jesus knocks, because the deepest desire of the faithful heart is Him. And at this stage, we are no less likely in my view to fall back into sin or fear as any new person, but we recognize we may do it for an entirely different reason: the danger of an intimacy growing ever more deeply.
How scary it is to be known or potentially known by another human being! And if that is true, how much more the divine Son of God! How does Jesus overcome this in us? With a love that is relentless, unyielding, undying, like the burning sun in the desert in the middle of the day. We are the inconstant ones; we are the ones who fail and change. He has never stopped loving us. We think he has, because instead of hating sin, we hate ourselves who sin.
I don't speak as one who is past all self-hatred, as one who joyfully runs to Jesus and to the Father when he fails. But I see what I see. I read somewhere that the Holy Spirit drives us back to Jesus and the Father. In this way, it is altogether appropriate to call the Holy Spirit a Shepherd. He does the work of the Good Shepherd, leading us back to the loving embrace of the Family.
We have never dreamed that we could be loved as a child as we are loved. This is why we run after other things. It is easier to hate, and be hated, than to love. It is easier to fear than to trust. The saints are the saints, because they are utterly convinced that they are loved. They have known Love Himself so certainly that they ask for more of a capacity to love. They do not really renounce themselves from self-hatred; they renounce the distance between their ability to love, and what the Love deserves.
Perhaps the most trusting prayer of all is this: "Jesus, remove whatever fear keeps me from Your love."
Jesus knocks, because the deepest desire of the faithful heart is Him. And at this stage, we are no less likely in my view to fall back into sin or fear as any new person, but we recognize we may do it for an entirely different reason: the danger of an intimacy growing ever more deeply.
How scary it is to be known or potentially known by another human being! And if that is true, how much more the divine Son of God! How does Jesus overcome this in us? With a love that is relentless, unyielding, undying, like the burning sun in the desert in the middle of the day. We are the inconstant ones; we are the ones who fail and change. He has never stopped loving us. We think he has, because instead of hating sin, we hate ourselves who sin.
I don't speak as one who is past all self-hatred, as one who joyfully runs to Jesus and to the Father when he fails. But I see what I see. I read somewhere that the Holy Spirit drives us back to Jesus and the Father. In this way, it is altogether appropriate to call the Holy Spirit a Shepherd. He does the work of the Good Shepherd, leading us back to the loving embrace of the Family.
We have never dreamed that we could be loved as a child as we are loved. This is why we run after other things. It is easier to hate, and be hated, than to love. It is easier to fear than to trust. The saints are the saints, because they are utterly convinced that they are loved. They have known Love Himself so certainly that they ask for more of a capacity to love. They do not really renounce themselves from self-hatred; they renounce the distance between their ability to love, and what the Love deserves.
Perhaps the most trusting prayer of all is this: "Jesus, remove whatever fear keeps me from Your love."
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