Why?

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Layp3rs0n

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Why God? I don’t understand. Why, since my youth, have You determined that I be an object of rejection? Why do You insist I have almost no family? Why so few friends? Why when I try to reach out to people am I mocked? My Faith is suffering. Not that I no longer believe, but I feel rejection from You as well now. I went to Church today. I prayed to you for hours before Mass. I wept in my pew. You saw me. I saw families come and go. Two children Baptized for which I thanked You. And then before Mass, my lonliness got the best of me and I left. I will have to bring that to confession. I cry to You, but You do nothing.
None of Your people stop to address me. You allow me to be stricken with foul luck. You allow almost nothing to go my way, and have equipped me with such clumsiness that I am at once embarassed and a burden to others. I wonder if it’s actually a generational cure.my father is similr in misfortune. Your blessings avoid me. My broken heartedness causes me to sin. The lonliness crushes me till i turn to the flesh for comfort. I am a ball of misery. You created me very short in stature, my peers openly laugh at me for it. I act kindly but am treated like pariah. Few are the joys in my life. I am sad and weakened. Please give me the gift of companionship. Please, Lord, give me fellowship. How can I love others when I am never loved? Please help me God.
 
Oh wow! I am sooo sorry! I am praying. Just reach out. You have people that love you here, at your local parish. Just reach out! But remember, you have to love first! Love someone first. Volunteer somewhere and pour out your love on every person you come on contact with regardless of whether they will ever even acknowledge you or not.

I really hate that you have pain!
 
Thanks. The real problem is I struggle (or don’t really struggle enough) with unchastity. The isolation is greatly exacerbating the problem.
 
Merciful God Your created him perfect according to Your loving image of him as Your special child.Help him to know that in Your sight he is a wonder. Help him to think and act in a way that people do not sense his poor opinion of himself, but see that beauty and respond to it, and help him not to at this moment or any other, to consider our current prayer conversation is nonsense because he thinks, well Trishie doesn’t know me. If she knew…but I know better because I know something of You.

My friend, I wrote this a few years ago but if I hadn’t, I’d write it now for you:

Loving God, I honour You for others goodness. Yet, help me to share Your compassion, respect and delight in those who seem (to themselves or others)to reflect Your face poorly. Grant me the gift of conveying to each person, the beautiful, glimpsed vision of self, as You love him or her, a fallible human with entwined faults and virtues.

One sometimes glimpses another’s discouraged self-judgement, for he fears that Your plan of salvation builds upon some unlikely ‘ideal self’. He perhaps hopes that to others, only the good is evident. He fears that were others to sense the extent of his unworthiness, they may reject him—as indeed he fears You may.

Jesus, please extend Your hand to him through those who see his efforts and who have faith in the secret, unique miracle of him. Let him know that You love him as he is, and that You plan his holiness around his actual self. You fulfill Your dream of him and serve others through his flawed personality with its abilities, gifts and virtues, along with its faults and scars. Assure him that his efforts to live the Gospel are more precious because of his temptations and flaws, so that he is encouraged to faith and self-acceptance.

God let me see and share Your beautiful, unique, creative vision of each brother and sister, regardless of ‘apparent’ flaws. In my warm acceptance of him grant to each person that restoring, blossoming fruitfulness of love—which the image of him cherished and accepted as he really is—produces in the most barren and bleak heart.

My brother, “Do not be afraid, you will not be put to shame.” [Isaiah 54:4]

.
 
Yesrs ago, this back and forth with a good priest:

Crushed violets

I have regarded myself as a weed-flower but perhaps in God’s heart I may be one of the ‘bruised violets’ that Father John suggested in his e-mail in October 2001? The little flowers, hidden close to the ground amid their leaves, have a delicate fragrance.

“For Trish” (he wrote) “All the animals of the forest stood back in awe as the elephant passed by. They marvelled at his power and his glory because it seemed to them every time he passed by, the jungle held a scent that spoke of heavenly things. It was the lowly earthworm and not even a man that knew the secret of the elephant’s passing, for it was the worm alone, who understood that the heavenly perfume came not from the elephant himself, but from the little crushed violets who blessed his feet as he passed by.
Lord of the forest
Full of power and glory
Be mindful of the violets
That bless your feet as you pass by!”
(John Cooper O.F.M. Cap” (In this parable the ‘elephant’ is the great soul.)

St Faustina wrote, “Jesus…I desire to hide so that no one may know me but Your sweetest Heart. I want to be a tiny violet, hidden in the grass.” Whatever flower I am in God’s garden, let me delight Him.
 
another thing I wrote, but note verse four onwards:

Understanding

My dear, I love you,
but the reasons matter not.
One cannot argue with the fact of love
which is entirely of the stuff of God.

Yet, my dear, we sometimes seem estranged!
my thought and heart have failed to closely match your own
and we leave each other alien for a while–
even wounded for life–
though both are imaged in love of the same eternal God!

The wonder perhaps is that we meet at all
for each created being is possessed of logic,
of identity unique within itself
which only appears reflected in others’ lives and thoughts
for none can know or judge but by a private consciousness.

Each soul remains hidden within divine Love’s mysteries
manifest in wondrous individual expression.
It is a whole world, formed and blessed,
and burdened with heavy crosses, perhaps?
a world in value, goodness and giving apparently slight?
yet perhaps its’ all–the sum of what God grants it
for His own secret delight!

After death many surprises await,
of treasure buried in simple human hearts
concealed perhaps in ugly shapes, foolish deeds and ordinary lives
and in lives that others might choose to brush aside or to crush
as crippled, useless, unbalanced, peculiar, unwanted, unworthy…

He miniaturises His special created delights sometimes–
persons negligible even to themselves.
And it pleases Him that our least ones He shall exalt
before the vast and great and good.

From God alone
comes union and mutual understanding of souls, minds and hearts.
True comprehension waits upon
the fullness of eternal communion, begun in Eucharist.

Until then I only know, like you, the truths as I allow Him
to speak them in my limited, biased self.
I cannot know and love you, dear, nor you myself,
unless God grants this gift.

This does not mean that I do not love you.
Just that I love the best that I can.
Forgive me all the rest. And I, you too.
 
I wote any of this stuff because I was struggling, with self doubt, with desire to help my brothers and sisters in this world, with desire to be good, to be a treu Christian, to truly love God, all the things you also want

‘Love others…as yourself’

Jesus when You command us to love others as ourselves, You require something more challenging than simply to “love others.” The embedded touchstone in that command is “love your self.” Help us therefore not to be uncharitable to ourselves.

Many people lack proper self-esteem, making it difficult for them to genuinely value others. However, Scripture exhorts, “value yourself at your proper worth. Who can justify a man who runs himself down, or respect a man who despises himself.” [Ecclesiasticus 10:28-29]

If we do fail to love ourselves correctly, we cannot accept God’s love. Let us never imagine ourselves hidden from Your mercy: ‘“Can anyone hide in a dark corner without my seeing him?’ asks the Lord.” [Jeremiah 23-24]

The concept of rightly loving oneself in order to love others as God’s precious children may be confused with the selfishness that ruins unselfish self-love. It requires us to reject negative self-talk and responses. “If a man is mean to himself, to whom will he be good?” [Ecclesiasticus 14:3].

Growth in Christian self-love is facilitated by “filling your mind with everything that is true, everything that is noble, and everything that is pure and good” [Philippians 4:8] and serving “in works of love.” It is allowing the Spirit to direct your life and then “you will be in no danger of yielding to self-indulgence. What the Spirit brings is…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control.” [Galatians 5:13, 16, 26, 22-23]

Jesus, help us to fittingly love ourselves. You do not wish us to disparage ourselves but to see ourselves as loved, forgiven children of God. A poor self-image may compare to our perception of ‘clouds’. To observers, clouds appear to be impressive, substantial and tangible. However, within themselves the clouds seem damp, insubstantial and misty.

Jesus, let us not belittle ourselves in comparison to others because of our personal uncertainties and inadequacies. Let us live in sincere acceptance of self, that unique gift of Your creative love. help us to see ourselves as loved children of God. Jesus, help me to know that You really love me so that I can love You and love others truly.
Our value is in You alone.
 
Again, and I don’t know if any of it helps:

Confidence in God’s merciful love

Our God, we praise and thank You who loves each person into existence. I thank You for loving us, loving me.

Our God, You command that I forgive and rightly cherish myself. Like many people in human history, I often find it difficult to sincerely and consistently love the ‘self’ that I find mirrored in my consciousness. I know that You can bring me to appreciate the miracle and privilege of my existence!

How can I refuse to love what God loves! You treasure me, as You love and treasure each unique, human person that You create. Yet I need much grace to love this betrayer of my true being and purpose, myself! I betray Your loving creation of me by failing to be fully ‘the person I am created to be’ , and by failing in gratitude for the gift of myself.

You love each person so much that it led to the incarnation of Your divine Son, and to His redemption of humankind. Jesus is Your response to my betrayal of my destiny and me. Yet frequently I am unconvinced or indifferent before these astounding gifts of divine love for me and for every person!

Please give me grace to value each person, and my own life, as Your beloved and eternal gift. Inspire me with faith and gratitude for the gift of myself, for the lives of dear ones and of all people. Grant that these human gifts are shaped by Your love to become everlasting gifts to You, and through You, eternal gifts to each other person.

Through Jesus, You taught us that cheerful, loving mutual service of others leads to fulfilment of Your creative will. Therefore, give me grace to faithfully say ‘yes’ to Your loving purpose by active respect and charity to others and me.

Delight Yourself in me by forming me into the unselfish, joyful, helpful and prayerful person You dreamed me to be for You and for the sake of others’ souls for time and eternity. 1999
 
Jesus make me who I am created to be

Loving God You loved me into existence. Please help me to fully live Your dream of me. Please help me to become truly that person, so that others can experience Your love, goodness, and beauty in me, and can receive the blessings You intend for them through me.

Let me delight You, by being an open doorway into You for others. Let me be a living tabernacle of Your love, an overflowing crystal chalice of Your love, a powerhouse of prayer and an instrument of Your love and healing to others.

Please make me who I am in the dream You always had of me. 2003

Jesus, Scripture tells us, “It is not good that man should be alone.” [Genesis 2:8] Yet loneliness affects many people even in company because they feel unable to trust in their value to others. They often feel rejected and unloved, and have little self-esteem.

Jesus, we humans hope for companionship that is reciprocal and happy, with love that affirms our individuality and value. We seek in others the gift of ourselves forgiven and accepted in all our faults. We also secretly desire others’ recognition of our hidden beauty. We cannot receive such a gift unless we can also give to others the gift of themselves accepted by love that is aware, not blind.

Express Your love in our relationships as we seek to live in gospel community, not as isolated individuals. For only where individuals and communities are willing to love and to minister to others, do we find in each other the nourishing power of Christ’s presence.

Therefore, let the lonely and hurt understand their need to welcome others in charity in however small or great means open to them, rather than to remain trapped in isolation or self-pity. However if they remain isolated, we offer You their pain, united with the atoning loneliness of Your own earthly exile, in reparation for all sins against compassion, against friendship, justice and unity.

Jesus let us gently bring Your love to the lonely, to all persons who hunger for love and companionship. “God gives the lonely a permanent home.” Psalm 68:6
 
This how you feel? I’ve felt that way:

The Cross of my life

Jesus, my cross is sorrow for others in their anxieties and afflictions, and in the limited help and comfort that I can give them. The nails are my mistakes and inadequacies that distress or fail others. No sooner do I inhale the breath of Your grace for others than it fouls with my failings. I must again drag up on my nailed wrists and push up upon my transfixed feet, in order to exhale the vapour of lukewarmness and sinfulness—so once again to draw in Your grace.

The faults that characterise much of my life, scourge my soul until it is bruised and faint, sapping my hope and faith. Acts devoid of generous love lash into the wholeness of Your image in me. I am sick with hunger, for I accept too little food of loving, sharing and serving in each moment of Your offering. My hunger is the more intense because others may suffer deprivation for my omissions and sinfulness.

A crown of idle thoughts, and words, of prayer neglected, of reparation postponed, of temptation undefeated, binds up my head with wounds. My inconstancy and unlove are my nakedness. The taunts are my lack of witness of Christ. My every nerve is pain, and it pours from my body in stinging sweat of regret. My lack of love makes my soul a living wound—at times benumbed, or raw with returning consciousness.

Repeatedly I seek to escape this crucifixion, but I remain nailed to my weakness, fighting for hope and trust.
“Why do You abandon me, Lord?” Yet not You! Why do You allow me repeatedly to abandon You, in this lingering death of my faults and negligence! Yet, Jesus, because of Your mercy I affirm faith in Your love that brings marvellous blessing out of wretchedness, failure and sin. I cannot transform or resurrect myself, Jesus, but I offer You all that constitutes me, humbly asking that You will do what I cannot.

I give my self, crucified in its egoism and materialism, its pride and disobedience, its unbelief, unlove and ingratitude. Offer it to the Father with Your own crucifixion, so that in You I die to all these imperfections and rise again with You forever in the love and life of the Holy Spirit. Your mercy thereby draws many souls after me. Thank You, Jesus for this resurrection that You share with us.
 
In failureapparent failure of the Cross, for You are condemned to a criminal’s execution and it seems that Your mission has failed, You who alone could redeem humanity. Yet You are triumphant over sin and death!

Who can accept that it is God-incarnate whose sweat and blood drips into the dust, from Your drained, dishonoured body! Yet Your human cry of abandonment by the Father is belied by the triumph of love and faith in Your final confident submission. You die, but You have not betrayed the Father’s trust.

Jesus, to my sadness, I fail in many ways and sin against others by my failures. Have I betrayed Your will or mistaken Your purpose? Will You restore me to grace now, Jesus? To do what? Will You show me? Will You fuse together the broken pieces—of my life, of my service—to make a new and better creation? Am I to step around the fragments and to pass another way?

I ask to walk with certainty along the humble path of holiness that You choose uniquely for me. If not, then please allow me the certainty of buoyant faith. I ask courage to continue through the enveloping fog, trusting each small moment to the illumination of faith and grace.

Jesus out of seeming failure, You rose in glory. Out of my failure, loss, and sorrow please bring healing and goodness luminescent as priceless pearls grown around grains of suffering, for Your glory, and for mine and others’ remedy and blessing.
 
Contrition

Father God, I have sinned against others, against myself, and against You. I am unworthy to be Your child. I have offended Your goodness and Your dream of who I really am. I may have denied You the joy of blessings that You wish for me and for others through me. You alone know the entire consequences of my failure. Yet Jesus assures us that You joyfully celebrate my return from sin, and run to welcome and reclaim me as Your own.

In trust, I will not accuse myself for sins already forgiven and absolved or for temptation if I have not actually sinned. Help me to value myself as Your child, knowing that all worth and holiness comes from You.

Look on those tasks of love and service that I failed to undertake or to complete, and bring them to completion. Please bring out of my past failures, such fruits of these new opportunities enhanced beyond all previous expectation, for from our human betrayal of Your divine plan of Creation, Your mercy wrought the magnificent plan of redemption that reverberates through time and eternity!

In Your mercy, please transform into good all that in weakness or ignorance I have spoiled. Please give blessing that is abundant beyond original possibility, to anyone I ever harm or deprived. May I so belong to You, may I be so transformed by Your love, that nothing in my life impedes Your will. This, my soul in trusting confidence implores.
 
Temptations: loving solutions

Our God, You do not wish us to succumb hopelessly to sin, guilt or anxiety. In our repentance, You wish us to hope in Your mercy. When we are tempted against goodness, please unfold loving solutions in us through wisdom, trust, prayer and thanksgiving. In temptations against charity, let us invite You to love through us aptly and sensitively.
In doubt or discouragement, let us affirm faith.

Let temptations of pride remind us that we are called to serve each other in mutual charity. Let temptations against humility and obedience cause us to rejoice that God Incarnate obeyed humbly for our sakes.

In temptations against purity of intention, inspire us to focus our hearts and minds on You, in order to share in Your divine life, in harmony with everyone who seeks God.
In temptations against chastity, fill us with respect — for where others attract us, we honour You who love them. Let each temptation against chastity become the joyful victory of Your love in souls moving towards You in spiritual company of loved fellow humans!

God, in our temptations let us be trusting and peaceful, for You are God who loves us. Let the loving solutions that You offer us in our difficulties, serve to recreate and unite us in the communion of Saints and Angels. Let goodness be wrought out of all temptation so that Your kingdom triumphs before everything that seeks its destruction.

“Never, when you have been tempted, say, ‘God sent the temptation’; God cannot be tempted to do anything wrong, and He does not tempt anybody. Everyone who is tempted is attracted and seduced by his own wrong desire. Then the desire conceives and gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it too has a child, and the child is death.” [James 1:13-15]

Prodigal

Father, like the prodigal son, I squander gifts of my eternal inheritance.
Like him, I spiral into deprivation and alienation.

Yet, Father, the ‘prodigal son’ possessed something that I do not.
He bore memories of his father, of his loving home and of his former comfort.
I have no memories of You, only hearsay and promises, books and teachings.
I have no memories of my heavenly home,
only those of my life upon earth with its pleasures and its sorrows.

Would I, knowing God, have departed from You and our home?
Yet I do not know You and I often depart from You.

In my humiliation, I return to You, still incapable of truly appreciating Your love.
Hungry and desperate, I stumble towards You with little merit in my return.
I carefully formulate my entreaty upon Your mercy, saying, “Father, I am not worthy to be Your child.

Let me be as a hired servant that I may eat, drink, and have shelter,
and that my wounds may heal, and I may live.”
I cannot comprehend the depth of Your parental love for me.

Scripture assures me of Your unconditional love,
yet in my repentance as in my disobedience, I am ignoble still.

Therefore, Father, because of Your nature and in spite of mine, I call upon Your merciful love.
Let me become, and remain, worthy of such a Father 2001
 
Wisdom of true conversion

God, I know that Your love can free me from the self-imposed need to force my inclination and emotions into a pattern of love and virtue. Give me grace to strive faithfully, while trusting my efforts into Your care, allowing You to love me and to love others through me as You honour and glorify Yourself in me.

I do not seek to be ‘virtuous’ or ‘exemplary’. I seek to be to be Your living tabernacle.
Let me not be ‘candle’, but part of Your light that dispels all darkness.
Let me not be ‘wise’, but absorbed into Your wisdom and truth.
Let me not be ‘peaceful’ or ‘trusting’, but resting faithfully in Your peace and joy.
Let me not be ‘productive of good works’, rather, let me be actively responsive to every facet of Your love for me and for others, as vehicle of Your goodness for them.

I ask this true conversion of You which is Your life in me, for “At night my soul longs for You and my spirit in me seeks for You.” [Isaiah 26:9]

In my weakness You are strength

Jesus, thank You for those who see my faults or misunderstand my motives and who thus reveal my need for conversion and healing. I repent my unworthiness, and ask that You offer me as gift to God in each broken moment restored.

Gather up my lost moments, Jesus! Cleanse and shape them with my sorrow merged with Your sacrifice. Burnish and set them with Your forgiveness, and illuminate them with Your love as treasures of witness, intercession, and atonement! Thus, make my flawed life into a gem of praise, service and delight for You in the Communion of Saints.

Praise to You, Jesus, who make treasure out of ordinary and fallen human beings!

*“I live in a high and holy place, but I am also with the contrite and humbled spirit, to give the humble new life…I will heal and console him.” says the Lord God.” *[Isaiah 57:15, 18]
  • “In my ‘little way every thing is most ordinary; all that I do, little souls must be able to do likewise. *(Saint Therese of Lisieux) Her little way “is the way of Spiritual childhood…of trust and absolute self-surrender.”
Offering

Loving God, I offer You my abilities and achievements. I offer You my failures and deprivations, with my love that gutters and flares, and with my flickering insight. I offer You my faith and hope that repeatedly requires renewal. Along with my prayers and efforts to love You and others, I offer You the intercession and thanksgiving that I fail to make, and my inadequate service and worship.

I offer You everything, including what I am most reluctant to relinquish or to face—trusting that in Your loving-kindness You will deal with all these things to their best disposition. I ask that You will free me from anxiety regarding success or failure in my life or apprehension for my loved ones. I commit these to Your care.

I trust that Your Spirit will assume freedom to love and trust, to live and move in me. Then, as beautiful, vibrant witness and channel of You to each person that I encounter, or for whom I intercede, my life will worship You.

Grant me faith, constancy, hope and love, even where I feel none. Make me an overflowing chalice of Your love, a living tabernacle of Your presence, a powerhouse of prayer, and an open doorway into God for others.

I may not hope in myself, Jesus, but I adore You and hope in You for my loved ones and for anyone You desire to draw into Your love through our lives.
 
Self-denial

Jesus, my life is not always centred on You. Wincingly, I drag across the broken glass of trial and duty, inspired by Your willingness to accept responsibilities, regardless of joy or calamity. For in the self-denial of serving others we are freed from selfishness and sin.

You died agonisingly for each person, obeying God’s will despite Your human vulnerability and dread. I stand humbly at the foot of Your salvation, its totality of giving shaming my reluctance to sacrifice self wholly to You. I offer my own will, constrained though it is by cowardice and compromise.

Jesus, how can I carry the cross that Your true followers must bear? How shall I emerge to embrace true commitment in ministry of others? You who are Son of God, sweated blood in contemplation of such abandonment of self. You asked the Father that you might forgo such a burden.

Were not Your divine origin, Your innocence, and Your sacred prayer, enough to save and sanctify us? Yet in anguished awareness deeper than mine or any other’s, You complied humbly with the Father’s will to sever our bonds of unlove, with the shattering of every fibre of Your humanity. In Your example, therefore, I place my trust and my cause for others’ and my salvation and blessing. I give myself to You, trying to bargain, raising reluctant, pleading eyes to Your thorn-encircled face: “Not this, Lord! I cannot face this loss, that difficulty…”

Dear Jesus, I appeal to You for grace to relinquish my fearful grip, releasing to You the full extent of my bondage. Will You lift this burden with its splinters of lack of charity and trust? I offer the grief of a soul betrayed by itself, in plea for Your forgiveness, healing and for my freedom to love You above all and others as myself, in harmony with Your will.

You know me in my human vulnerability and perfidy, my striving and hope—for You love each person with such depth that I flickeringly suspect its intensity and intimacy. If only I believed, understood and reciprocated! Please accept the teared jewel of this fragile communion of my desire with Yours. Please so draw me into Your love that it is revealed through me in glory and wonder!

You emptied Yourself to become subject to human limitation and suffering. You struggled against ignorance and selfishness, against dullness of spirit and mind in others, battling unto death the powers of evil for our sakes. Battle thus within me also, Jesus, defeating in each moment of my life the power of sin.

With Your flooding love, please drown my protests, pacify my fears and raise me from anxiety regarding pain, grief, disgrace, loss and abandonment. Live in me the cheerful, creative dedication owed to the duties of my vocation and relationships. As gift to the Trinity, allow me to share fully in the great love You consummate for us. Thank You for the privilege to follow Your path all my life, then to share in Your eternal life with all my family, and friends.

“He who rejects discipline despises his own self; he who listens to correction wins discernment.” [Proverbs 15:33]
 
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