Jesus works in us and through us
Listen to this talk:
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Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
If you told the average person on the street that apart from God we could do nothing, they would tell you that you are being childish or too dependent. But Jesus doesn’t tell us that apart from Him we can do nothing to control us or to limit our freedom. He does so to set us free and bring us to our optimal performance and highest standard of living as men and women created in God’s image and likeness.
He tells us that we can do nothing apart from Him because this is His relationship with His Father. Jesus emptied Himself of His own Will, His own desires, His plans, His fears, His worries, His very self, so that He could be full of the fullness of the Father. In the Canticle of the Phiippians (2:6-11) that the Church prays every Saturday Evening to prepare for the Lord’s Day:
Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name,that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,in heaven and on earth and under the earth,and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Jesus did nothing apart from His Father. He lived in an intimate bond of filial trust and love of HIs Father. This spiritual childhood of Jesus, a grown man, in fact, the most grown, or matured, man that ever lived, was the basis of the redemption of the entire human race. His childlike trust in the Father’s Plan, even amidst terrible suffering, misunderstandings, abandonment, hatred, cursing, spitting, all sorts of abuse, was the basis for the goodness of the Father to be revealed. So Jesus demands of us something that was demanded of him by the Father - to be completely dependent upon him, trusting that His Truth and Love will be revealed.
There are so many different pro-life apostolates and movements, many of which are brilliant and admirable in their own right. There are many different methods or approaches we could take, however, the reason 40 Days for Life has been among the most successful ways of addressing THE single most important issue of our times, is that it is based on the Plan and Action of God and not our own. It is not so much a movement but a call to holiness, a way of gifting ourselves to God and responding to the incredible mystery of his infinitely powerful and tender Love. Therefore, the only way to truly have a successful 40 Days for life campaign is to begin by emptying ourselves of our own ideas, plans, motives, and goals, and begging God humbly and confidently to reveal His very own ideas, plans, motives, and goals. I dare say, you have come to this retreat to do just this, to find the Will of God for the next 40 Days for Life campaigns and vigils.
Now, this is not just a kind of coming up with an agenda and asking God to sign off on it, but an open ended question to God, “How O Lord in this situation do we pray ‘Thy Will be Done’?” Let’s take a look at just how dependent human activity is upon the grace of God.
Scripture teaches us that every molecule in the universe is upheld by God:
"In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind." (Job 12:10)God’s wisdom “reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well.” (Wisdom 8:1)"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:17)"The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word." (Hebrews 1:3)
The first Christians, we are told by Tertullian, when making the sign of the Cross used to kiss their hands after exhaling slightly to be reminded that every breath in our lungs is a gift from God, who wills to sustain each heartbeat, each breath.
Jesus points out that God is anxious about sustaining us so that we don’t have to be:
"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
The Council of Florence commenting on this says that God,
The sustenance of the created world is a continual act of creation
St Augustine said that every good work, even good will, is the work of God:
"For not only has God given us our ability and helps it, but He even works [brings about] willing and acting in us; not that we do not will or that we do not act, but that without His help we neither will anything good nor do it" -De gratia Christi 25, 26
This means that it is God himself who works in and through us to do anything good. He goes on to say that there is no good thing that is ever done that could possibly be done without God. He sums up by saying any good thing we do must be attributed to God, that He Himself is working through us to accomplish, while anything evil we do must only be attributed to us.
Jesus Christ is the one who wants to end abortion. It is He who is acting in us and through us to bring this about. Since he is Incarnate Wisdom, the Perfection of all knowledge, He alone would know the most fruitful, the quickest, the surest, the easiest way to bring about the end to abortion. So our chief work is to allow Jesus to be Jesus. As Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta says, “Give God permission to be God!” How do we do this? How do we empty ourselves and allow Christ to act?
St Thomas Aquainas says in his Summa Theologiae (II.I.109) that without God’s grace we:
- Cannot know anything
- Cannot do or wish any good.
- Cannot love God above all things
- Cannot keep the commandments of the law
- Cannot merit eternal life.
- Cannot prepare himself for grace.
- Cannot rise from sin.
- Cannot avoid sin.
- Having received grace, cannot do good and avoid sin.
- Cannot be preserved in doing good.
It is clear then that we cannot even begin to know how to give God permission without the help of God. We cannot empty ourselves of ourselves without his help. Since without God’s help we cannot prepare ourselves for grace, it would be presumption to think we could know how to ready ourselves for a 40 Days for Life campaign.
So How then? Ask. Seek. Knock.
If you try to empty a cup that has been dirtied, you will find it difficult to scrape out the dirt with your fingers and you will end up getting dirty yourself. You will need to stick that cup beneath a waterfall that cleanses, purifies, and creates the cup to be pure and empty, ready to be filled with good things. If we ask God how to be cleansed with this waterfall of divine grace he would surely tell us the following:
Prayer - sincere, humble, intense, constant, committed minutes
Reconciliation - frequent, intense, brutally honest, thorough
Eucharist - intense, frequent, filled with faith, humility, love, & gratitude
Petition the Mother of God - asking her to prepare you for Jesus
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