It is all so simple. And so true. Our faith, the foundation, the principals, His Word. It really is simple, but we make it complex.
We screw it up. Any one of us could be the prisoner. Any one of us could
commit the crime. Any one of us could face the addiction.
Jesus gave us a beautiful means to become one with Him, to save ourselves through His Eucharist. The Holy Spirit has given us the Liturgy and the traditions and the Sacraments to heal us, to guide us through the storm. This is the pure beauty and perfectness of our faith.
The world though, is full of sin. It pulls us away from God if we let it. It pulls us away from this perfection. There are countless examples of sin, selfishness, and defilement every day in this country and around the world, all for us to see on TV or online. None of us are immune, and none of us are exempt.
We are all capable – which is why we don’t condone the sin, but we don’t mock and condemn and judge. We want justice and truth, yes, but we don’t hate and discriminate – we pray for them, and hurt for them and this world. This could happen to any one of us. Sin is written into our hearts, and as Jesus goes on to say in today’s Gospel,
“From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.”
And so, as we look at these world events, these bad things happen because it is written into our DNA. Every person has their breaking point, there weaknesses, their imperfections. And each one of us breaks and falls in different ways.
When presented with the stress and temptations and trials in society today – the temptation to hate, the temptation to steal and cheat one another or gossip against and condemn someone else – we often give in to those tendencies and seek vices to fill those voids in our soul thinking that will make us feel better. Once we’ve got the foot in the door, it’s hard to get out.
Or when we endure stresses and oppression and failures so much, sometimes due to things that are out of our control and we are filled with anger and rage and we just can’t take it anymore. Maybe it’s the stress in losing a job in the midst of a bad economy, or trying to do anything we can to provide for our families in the midst of failure after failure, bad break after bad break. Sometimes it’s hard to handle. We are capable of anything. Anything. We’re wired that way. And some give in.
Through the fall of Adam and Eve, a glitch entered our system. It’s like clicking on a bad link in an email and getting a computer virus. It’s part of our operating system now. We now have tendencies to look to worldly pleasures for our fulfillment, to think that we can be our own god, and that we can do whatever we want as long as it makes us happy. And many times, we let the sin get the best of us and we not only hurt ourselves, but hurt countless others, destroying lives. Why does this happen to some people, and not others?
Only God knows. Maybe we will never understand. We may be hurt by others, we may feel betrayed. It’s at these times where we refocus and remember in Who our faith lies. Is it in our fellow man, or is it in God? My faith is not in men or the workings of this world, but in the flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and His Truth. It’s as simple as that.
Through Jesus and His sacrifice and resurrection, salvation has been planted into our very souls through His love and Word. The biggest and most amazing example of God taking something bad and making something good is with Him sacrificing His son to save us, to right the ship. But we need to take this a step further if we intend to overcome the bad within us and around us – we must “Be doers of the word and not hearers only.”
We must not only hear God’s word, we must act it out in our daily lives! We must not only hear and believe the doctrines of the Church, we must be also live them out and stand up for our faith. We must not only believe that the Sacraments are God’s grace, but we must take part in them to receive God’s grace.
As Catholics, we must look to the Sacraments – especially the Eucharist, confession, and our marriages for the grace that can heal our hearts and get us closer to God.
And yes, we must be Christ-like to everyone, not just those that share our opinions.
But there is hope. There is God’s Grace. Were it not for His Grace, this world would be even worse. It may be hard to see that. But for every evil that is done in this world, God performs infinitely more good. There is so much good in this world! God works through people according to His will, according to His plan. It may not make the evening news or be in the headlines, but His grace is everywhere – we just need to look for it. I see it every day. For by the grace of God, we can overcome, and perhaps one day, we can understand.
The truth, our faith, is in Him and Him alone – the storms in our life will pass.
And it’s this very fact that is so simple. For such a complex world, and a complex faith, with complex problems, the answer is so simple. People are inherently good. But yet, we also have a sinfulness built within us. No one is perfect. No one.
But what is perfect is our Lord and His graces He pours out through our faith and through the Eucharist. Look to His grace, and the Sacraments, the foundation of our faith to get you through.
