Finding the Son of God within a Confusing World of Doubt
The Blessedness of being called during Lent to reach one person with the grace of Christ!
Christ came to us with that first image of God to Man; through his Incarnate gift to the love that only the divine could hand to any one of us by emulating his mercy. We can never refute this position that the Creator of humanity has sent forth into the Confirmed acceptance each of us has been endowed with. And, what better opportune moment could we experience than when a least expected soul stands before us and unknowingly reaches into the very countenance that Christ adorns on you or me with his grace from which the Passion of Christ has sent him.
From this silhouetted holiness, that we may not be aware of, comes one more sinner that the blood of Christ on the Cross forgives; all because the person of Christ indwelling in any of us has stepped forward and through heavenly grace has convinced that one person that Christ wants his sin; and confirmed by him feels the blood of Christ touching his heart.
We may just be the only one to whom the Holy Spirit will send this person reminding them of the very Baptism they received and pronounced their acceptance to Christ through their God-parents.
“When we made our first profession of faith while receiving the holy Baptism that cleansed us, the forgiveness we received then was so full and complete that there remained in us absolutely nothing left to efface, neither original sin nor offenses committed by our own will, nor was there left any penalty to suffer in order to expiate them….Yet the grace of Baptism delivers no one from all the weakness of nature. On the contrary, we must still combat the movements of concupiscence that never cease leading us into evil.” (CCC 978).
As St. Paul affirms, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” But to do its work grace must uncover sin so as to convert our hearts and bestow on us “righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Like a physician who probes the wound before treating it, God by his Word and by his Spirit, casts a living light on sin: (CCC 1848).
Conversion requires convincing of sin; it includes the interior judgment of conscience, and this, being a proof of the action of the Spirit of truth in man’s inmost being, becomes at the same time the start of a new grant of grace and love: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Thus in this “convincing concerning sin” we discover a double gift: the gift of the truth of conscience and the gift of the certainty of redemption. The Spirit of truth is the Consoler. (St.John Paul II).
The grace herein mentioned may be through one of us that the Spirit sends us to reach that person during Lent and he is seeking that entity that the Holy Spirit arranged this day.
Ralph B. Hathaway