The Stained Glass Buffalo: punched a hole

03 April 2011

punched a hole

As scripture say, all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory (Rom 3:23) so that all of us are at some time in our lives potentially (and unfortunately all too actually) capable of real evil. Yet no matter how depraved people may become, they remain always images of Christ the true Image of God. That image-quality may be soiled, tarnished, obscured and disfigured, but is never wholly lost, never totally destroyed.

The more we commit sin the more we weave a web around ourselves, voluntarily blocking out his light. That is why in the incarnation God punched a hole in our self-woven cocoon and thrust in a hand to drag us out: that is why Christ descended into our hell of God-forsakeness - so that we could not go on pretending to ourselves - and in that way justifying our own ghastliness to ourselves and others.

Meeting Christ in His Mysteries
Gregory Collins, OSB

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It is Jesus

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”
--Pope John Paul II

Carlo Carretto:

How much I must criticize you, my church, and yet how much I love you! You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe more to you than to anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence. You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in this world have I seen anything more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful. Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face - and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms! No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you. Then too - where would I go? To build another church? But I could not build one without the same defects, for they are my defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ's church. No, I am old enough, I know better.