Encouragement in the face of stuggles and failures

[BarbaraTherese]

The writings of St. Paul are amongst my favourites because he speaks often very compassionately and with understanding and insight - not as a teacher talking above us and down to us, but as a teacher who is one of us speaking with us and often drawing on his own experiences of his own weakness which he shares with us. He speaks too as an intense lover of The Lord destined to become one of our greatest saints, martyrs and spiritual writers.

The writings of St. Paul often bring comfort and consolation, Hope, in the face of my own consistent weaknesses, sometimes struggling just to hang on to Hope and battling against temptation to discouragement and perhaps even despair in the face of consistent failings and failures…if I turn to St. Paul I can find encouragement and strength to go on from his inspired writings graced by The Holy Spirit. St. Paul is a great apostle of God’s Unending and totally Faithful Love with His Mercy…and St. Paul was called and raised up to be so from the very dawn of Christianity, from the very beginning in the footsteps of his Lord and Master, Jesus. In our 2000 odd year history, The Lord has consistently raised up for us in every age a messenger and apostle of His Mercy…and in our own day the great and gentle St. Faustina. The Rule of St. Benedict also comes to mind as a reflection of the Merciful Jesus and a man, St. Benedict, who understood and had compassion on human weakness and was very much ahead of his times.

In this Reading, St. Paul presents to us the battle against sin on some level somewhere as a lifelong journey and struggle. What human words are these:

So hold up your limp arms and steady your trembling knees and smooth out the path you tread

This Epistle is from the First Reading from the Office of Readings for Tuesday 18th March 2008.

universalis.com/20080318/readings.htm

Reading Hebrews 12:1 - 13 ©
With so many witnesses in a great cloud on every side of us, we too, then, should throw off everything that hinders us, especially the sin that clings so easily, and keep running steadily in the race we have started. Let us not lose sight of Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection: for the sake of the joy which was still in the future, he endured the cross, disregarding the shamefulness of it, and from now on has taken his place at the right of God’s throne. Think of the way he stood such opposition from sinners and then you will not give up for want of courage.

In the fight against sin, you have not yet had to keep fighting to the point of death.

Have you forgotten that encouraging text in which you are addressed as sons?

My son, when the Lord corrects you, do not treat it lightly; but do not get discouraged when he reprimands you. For the Lord trains the ones that he loves and he punishes all those that he acknowledges as his sons.

Suffering is part of your training; God is treating you as his sons. Has there ever been any son whose father did not train him? If you were not getting this training, as all of you are, then you would not be sons but bastards. Besides, we have all had our human fathers who punished us, and we respected them for it; we ought to be even more willing to submit ourselves to our spiritual Father, to be given life. Our human fathers were thinking of this short life when they punished us, and could only do what they thought best; but he does it all for our own good, so that we may share his own holiness.

Of course, any punishment is most painful at the time, and far from pleasant; but later, in those on whom it has been used, it bears fruit in peace and goodness. So hold up your limp arms and steady your trembling knees and smooth out the path you tread; then the injured limb will not be wrenched, it will grow strong again.