There's tiny scars that you can't see
It was a struggle to survive
I'm probably lucky I'm alive
- "It Only Hurts Me When I Cry" by Dwight Yoakam
I was reading in Miracle Hour, A Method of Prayer that Will Change Your Life, that the primary effect of the release of the Holy Spirit, "is a tangible experience of the love of Jesus."
How real, how perfectly human, but how magnificently divine is the love of Jesus!
You can experience true Christian joy, rooted in the unchanging love of Jesus for you personally!
What prevents me, what prevents you from internalizing the reality that God loved us right into existence?
What prevents me, what prevents you from accepting the awesome reality that there is nothing you or I could do or not do to increase or decrease the love Jesus has for us?
His love is constant! His mercy surpassing all of our weakness! Even if we block his forgiveness and mercy by hardening our hearts and not forgiving or showing mercy to others, still his love for us is constant!
I have read about those who have been so wounded, so often, or so deeply, often by those that they trusted their heart to, or by one to whom they had been entrusted . . . a father, step-father, a mother, an older brother, an uncle, a husband or a wife, that they are left broken and have such a hard time accepting the immensity and beauty of Jesus loving us, and longing for us to ask to feel his embrace.
For me there has been a false piety or reverence that has interfered with the acceptance that it is Jesus's joy, his pleasure, his delight to condescend to be my friend. I can desire his friendship, his love, desire to please him above all others, because it delights him for me to do so. I don't have to put him on a pedestal above the tabernacle. I can admire and adore Jesus's beauty . . . in adoring him in the Blessed Sacrament, in adoring and imagining the beauty and glory he possesses and emanates in heaven. I can also talk with him and love him, offering everything he has given me, all that he has created, and ask his grace to know and love him as a friend.
Your greatness, Lord, humbles us. Your surrender to the will of the Father in the incarnation, in your ministry, in your Passion and death, and in the eternal longing in your heart for us to seek you and love you and others because of our love for you, because you are in them. This humbles us and compels us.
Come after us Lord. Convince us of your love.
Mother Mary, Mother of God, Mediatrix of all Grace,
Please pray for those reading this today and those that they are thinking about, that they hold in their hearts.
Please dispense the graces that they would need to be convinced of Jesus's healing and exquisite love for them.
Please dispense the graces that they would surrender their brokenness, their woundedness, their doubts, their sense that they cannot trust, even if they believe and love, that they can't trust in his love.
Please give them the grace to be convinced.
Ask the Holy Spirit to be given to them that they would have a tangible experience of the love of Jesus.
Please ask Mary and release for them the graces to grow in the knowledge and appreciation of the constant love of Jesus for them.
Convince them, through the Holy Spirit, that there is nothing they can do ever to decrease or increase the love that Jesus has for each of us
The love the Father had for us when he created us to know, love, and serve him
The love the Holy Spirit has when he comes and is poured out upon us, transforming our hearts to be more like the heart of our Lord Jesus.
Be Near us O Lord!
Be near the broken, the wounded, the ones whose pain, or sins, or habitual indulgence in distractions or addictions have blinded them to the reality of your love, your power, and your peace.
Please Lord, make all things new. Begin again with us, and please also with those you have orchestrated into our lives.
In Jesus Name, Amen
