Dear friend,
You acknowledge your infidelity. Now acknowledge your salvation. Will power is not strong enough to get any of us through the temptations of life. We all desperately need His power. He allows us to fall so that we will acknowledge our need for Him. He can turn the most seemingly impossible situations around and make them possible–leaving us awe-struck.
I am telling you what I tell all persons who find themselves up against the limits of their humanity: Spend an hour before the Blessed Sacrament every day for the rest of your life and you will find the strength you never had. I know this sounds daunting at first. But read further. Begin each hour by reflecting on His passion. (I never tire of sharing this.)
He suffered both physically AND mentally. He was rejected: Judas betrayed Him, Peter denied Him three times and the rest of the Apostles abandoned Him. Those who tortured Him not only wanted Him dead, they wanted Him to suffer. They not only looked on Him as a zero, but as MINUS zero. Now that is rejection! Every physical torture He endured only echoed such rejection.
The horrendous scourging robbed Him of His youth. The intensity of the pain was only matched by its duration–until He died. His body was full of swollen, bleeding wounds. The loss of so much blood gave Him a splitting headache which was only intensified with the crowning with thorns. At the praetorium He was publicly derided and sentenced to death by crucifixion. As a further humiliation, he was forced to carry the intrument of His execution.
He was so weak, He could hardly walk and yet He dragged the heavy cross on His shoulder and managed to fall on the dung-strewn stone streets with the cross on top of Him. He got up each time.
After reaching the crest of Calvary, he received the nails into His hands and feet. When they raised the cross up, the nails in His hands held His body up. But His up-stretched arms began to squeeze His lungs and He couldn’t breathe. So He had to push down on His crucified feet to raise His body to fill His lungs with air. He managed to do this for three hours. Finally, He had no strength left and He suffocated, and died, giving us His life…
Thank Him. If you are like me, you will find yourself reluctant to begin this exercise each day, but by the time you get to His death, you will no longer be thinking about yourself–only Him. This brings peace at the moment. As the days pass. it brings peace to your day and week and month. We are all about Him. The more we realize this, the things we thought were important reduce to their real size and we know who we are because we know Who He is! You are in my prayers. You WILL be fine!
Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.
