For those who know what such a thing is, the theme around my corner of the Catholic world over the past few weeks has been Spiritual Warfare 101. I don’t have any particular talent for that fight, so it ends up about as unlovely as any other battlefield.
You may be finding yourself on similarly unlovely territory just now.
Despairing. What is the point? How to continue in the face of this latest news, that latest turn of events?
***
Meanwhile, my monthly Gospel reflection ran earlier this week over at CatholicMom.com, and between one thing and another, I didn’t have time to get it cross-posted over here until today. Today of all days was precisely when I needed to read it.
Here’s what I wrote to myself last spring, in response to the Gospel reading of the widow’s son raised from the dead:
This is an account of the real power of God. Of what God will actually do for us. God isn’t a mindset. He isn’t a silver lining, a happy thought, a new outlook. He is the Author of Life, the Creator of Everything Out of Nothing. And He is a Person who wants us to know him intimately, live with Him intimately. Not in a metaphorical life, but in our lives now and in an eternal life that is also real.
When people make “Never Forget!” art about this or that terrible event, I do appreciate the sentiment, but I’m not much of a joiner on that genre. I think it’s because I’m not made of the same happy filling they are. I’m pretty capable of remembering evil, thank you.
It’s the good, and worst of all the Eternal good, that too easily slips from my mind.
You can read the whole thing here.
Image: Mario Minniti [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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