Word to the Wise
Thursday, October 27, 2011 - Thursday in the 30th Week in Ordinary Time
[Rom 8:31b-39 and Luke 13:31-35,]What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?......No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Every once in awhile, one still hears the confident expression, "God is on our side!" This means that whatever cause one is espousing, that cause meets with God's approval and therefore this particular cause will prevail in whatever conflict it has with any other cause! The history of the Catholic church, just to give one example, is filled with this kind of claim. At one time there were three people all claiming to be Pope and excommunicating one another right and left! St. Paul's words, quoted above, speaks not to a "cause" but to a person who has been baptized and believes in Christ and lives according to the standards of the gospel! We all know people who qualify for this but whose "causes" may be destructive and who believe that their "cause" will prevail because they are faithful to their Christian commitment. It doesn't work that way!
The important thing to remember is that we humans do make mistakes in our "causes," but if we are faithful, we can be confident that God will not abandon us personally. Our "cause," whether it be political, athletic, etc., may not prevail in whatever conflict may occur, but that is not a sign of God's abandonment. Something more powerful is at work, here. The only thing that can destroy our relationship with Christ is our failure to be faithful. Our "causes" may be mistaken and misguided, but our faith is not. God will love us always. AMEN