Battle

“…the just man falls seven times”.  (Proverbs 24:16).

Michael Defeats Satan (Guido Reni)

I have spent so much of my life wasting time and treading water.

So many times, I have placed my trust in an institution or another person or even in my own ability or power.  And this is a terrible thing.  After all, institutions – even the very best of them – can become corrupted and behave unjustly, people can be fickle and cruel, and I fail more times than I would care to remember.  My experience with all of these things is that they simple cause me to feel an extraordinary amount of pressure and an inability to satisfy the longing in my heart.  Saint Josemaria wrote in “Friends of God” at 208, “Perhaps there is no greater tragedy for man than the sense of disillusionment he suffers when he has corrupted or falsified his hope, by placing it in something other than the one Love which satisfies without ever satiating.”

And it is that feeling of satiation that I am seeking. It is the feeling that God will satisfy the longing in my heart and the hopes in my mind.  And only God can do such a thing, because God does not lose battles…

If I fail, it is a lesson in humility so that I can get up and try again.  God puts me in that position so that my soul will be filled with Him…  He does that so that I will cling to Him and know that I am unable to take even one step without Him.  And like a child I will hold tightly to Him so that He can guide my steps…

In Proverbs 24:16 we are told, “the just man falls seven times”.  And I consider this today as I consider the purpose of such humiliations…  For God does not humble me because He does not love me.  Rather, those humiliations are for my benefit.  I am humbled so that God can show His tenderness and mercy to me.  It is through such humiliations as those that I am given the opportunity to become a Saint…

For there are no proud souls in Heaven and no humble souls in Hell.  And when I consider all the battles that I have fought in my life and all the times that I was confronted with those feelings of failure and that overwhelming sense of having fallen short of what I need to be, I must remind myself that there is such a purpose in that feeling and such a plan in that experience that I really have nothing to fear.  For Saints are made of stuff such as this and there is such a lot of pride to hack through if God wants to reveal a humble soul in me, that the only fear I really should have is not of failure, but of defeat.  And with a God who wins battles, what fear could I have of that?

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.