We Must Recognize that We Ourselves are Objects of Faith
COMMENT: How do you let Jesus work through you?
You do your job and you forget about yourself! As long as you’re thinking about yourself, you are prompted by that wrong spirit of trying to make yourself acceptable. In that case, work is a relief, because work is really rest from that activity!
What we are teaching here is how to live by faith. I don't use only my mind; I use God's mind. And this is what it is to be a Christian: to live the life of faith. The fact that you don't do it very perfectly yet doesn’t matter. A child learns to speak by speaking imperfectly. If you want to start out by being perfect, you’ll never be perfect, Jesus said, "My just man falls seven times." (Pr 24: 16) When you don't live by faith, you have to use your judgment; but at the same time, you’ll be smothered when you have to use your judgment: you think if you don’t control things, it's disastrous.
The only way you can learn to live in the right way is by knowing that you're loved just as you are. When you think you have to have that integrity in yourself, it is hard for you to be corrected.
This is why the spiritual father is so important to our growth in God's divine life. The whole life in the embryo is in the communication with the placenta in the mother's womb; if anything interferes with that, it either dies or it is a monster. Spiritually, your communication is your father's womb; when you're cut off from that prematurely, you’re a monster. But the natural reaction when you have no true spiritual father is to look for one. It would be an instinct, because you would know you couldn't give this to yourself.
Then you could face the disorder and confusion in yourself. The good thief didn't change his acquired habits, yet he became eminently holy after he turned to Jesus. So there would still be a tension between our vices and the holiness infused by the Holy Spirit. Your confusion itself would be a vestige of the bad habits which still operate, though they no longer dominate you. Being a child with those habits would be a part of wisdom, and your father would support you in that struggle.
But in the wrong spirit, you would think there was something radically wrong because you would still see all that corruption in yourself. But remember, you’re an object of faith as well as the Holy Eucharist. You have to believe in the reality of Christ in you just as when you look at that piece of bread which is Jesus. You know yourself by faith as another Christ. Almost no one today teaches the most important practical truth: that you're an object of faith. In the wrong spirit, you would never think that, because you would think that you would have to do something to make yourself right, and you would be preoccupied with that. Jesus said, "As often as you did this for My little ones, you did it for Me." (Mt 19:40) Did you ever look at yourself as holy in Jesus? What happens is that you only look at yourself as you are in yourself, and then it is hard to believe in yourself. But you should believe in your own integrity in Christ, because mystically, each one of us is Christ. The reality of the Mystical Body is that we are one with Christ. The end and purpose of the Holy Eucharist is the Mystical Body, our assimilation to Christ. And if you don't believe you're holy in Christ, then you have no strength, you can't do anything.
I don't say these things so you should depend on my words. I'm showing you what you are. A doctor doesn't heal a body; he helps the body heal itself. Medicine is the art of doing for the body what the body should do for itself. You have to do the healing. You should say, if this is the way I am, this is what Jesus came to save. And this is your activity; it is the activity of your mind and will. You cooperate with Jesus, realizing that Jesus loves you because He is good. If I were teaching you how to play tennis, I would say, this is how you use your arm. You have to use your arm. Here I tell you how to think and love, but youhave to think and love and I can't do it for you. The good thief saw the goodness of God and forgot his own evil. So if you realize the power of God in you, your evil would be like a finite quantity in relation to an infinite quantity; which is nothing!
But as soon as you forget this, or as soon as you're not recollected, you get back into yourself and all your habitual fears. When you think the right way, the only sweetness you have is Jesus. There is always a battle going on between the sweetness of Jesus and the sweetness in yourself. The truth takes away your own sweetness or the sweetness of what conforms to you so you will be drawn to the sweetness of God. The more you face the truth in the right way, the more you experience His sweetness. As for your own bitterness, Jesus will let you see your evil as much as He wants you to. Just stay with Him. The right thing to do is "what a prudent man would do in any given time, place, or circumstance," (Aristotle, “Ethics”) and since Jesus is that prudent man for us, you can't put it down in a formula; otherwise, you’ll either be too depressed by your evil or else you'll forget it. What God wants is the only measure; and you know what God wants as you are united to Him.
But you have to develop the habit of being peaceful in actual turmoil. When God wants a thing and you don't want it, it is like the storm on the face of the water. The more you're preoccupied with it the more you're caught. St. Paul was left with emotional attachment to something evil; he wanted to get rid of it, but God left him with it. So you have to learn to live with your own attraction to evil. That is why it is so important to believe in yourself as a object of faith.
God gave us an instinct of self-preservation. If you look at the Holy Eucharist, it would be natural to say, what’s in it for me: if it doesn't make me holy, why do I want it? In fact, it could make you feel worse, because you realize the difference between yourself and the holiness of the Eucharist. So you have to believe in your own holiness. And psychologically, unless you have a spiritual father who believes in your holiness, you can't believe in it. The divine life in us builds on nature, and the most primitive thing in nature is the relation of a child to a father.
If I believe that I am holy because I am in Jesus, why wouldn't I want you to have that same faith? That's the way Jesus acted toward His own. The repentant sinner who bathed Jesus' feet with her tears loved Him so much that she might even have been drawn to Him physically. Then she might have been horrified by it. But Jesus would have purified her attraction so that she could believe in the rightness of her love for Him. All this is tied up with seeing yourself as holy, because the devil tries to make you feel that what you really want is dirty. In Jesus we are an object of faith, and you know your holiness in the darkness of faith although in your sins you would want what you don't want. Seeing your holiness is an act of faith.
Also, if we believe this about ourselves, we believe it about others. When we believe in our own goodness in Jesus, we believe in the goodness of others. "Charity sees no evil."(1Cor 13:5) So this faith in our own holiness is the foundation for charity and so for the apostolate.
You do your job and you forget about yourself! As long as you’re thinking about yourself, you are prompted by that wrong spirit of trying to make yourself acceptable. In that case, work is a relief, because work is really rest from that activity!
What we are teaching here is how to live by faith. I don't use only my mind; I use God's mind. And this is what it is to be a Christian: to live the life of faith. The fact that you don't do it very perfectly yet doesn’t matter. A child learns to speak by speaking imperfectly. If you want to start out by being perfect, you’ll never be perfect, Jesus said, "My just man falls seven times." (Pr 24: 16) When you don't live by faith, you have to use your judgment; but at the same time, you’ll be smothered when you have to use your judgment: you think if you don’t control things, it's disastrous.
The only way you can learn to live in the right way is by knowing that you're loved just as you are. When you think you have to have that integrity in yourself, it is hard for you to be corrected.
This is why the spiritual father is so important to our growth in God's divine life. The whole life in the embryo is in the communication with the placenta in the mother's womb; if anything interferes with that, it either dies or it is a monster. Spiritually, your communication is your father's womb; when you're cut off from that prematurely, you’re a monster. But the natural reaction when you have no true spiritual father is to look for one. It would be an instinct, because you would know you couldn't give this to yourself.
Then you could face the disorder and confusion in yourself. The good thief didn't change his acquired habits, yet he became eminently holy after he turned to Jesus. So there would still be a tension between our vices and the holiness infused by the Holy Spirit. Your confusion itself would be a vestige of the bad habits which still operate, though they no longer dominate you. Being a child with those habits would be a part of wisdom, and your father would support you in that struggle.
But in the wrong spirit, you would think there was something radically wrong because you would still see all that corruption in yourself. But remember, you’re an object of faith as well as the Holy Eucharist. You have to believe in the reality of Christ in you just as when you look at that piece of bread which is Jesus. You know yourself by faith as another Christ. Almost no one today teaches the most important practical truth: that you're an object of faith. In the wrong spirit, you would never think that, because you would think that you would have to do something to make yourself right, and you would be preoccupied with that. Jesus said, "As often as you did this for My little ones, you did it for Me." (Mt 19:40) Did you ever look at yourself as holy in Jesus? What happens is that you only look at yourself as you are in yourself, and then it is hard to believe in yourself. But you should believe in your own integrity in Christ, because mystically, each one of us is Christ. The reality of the Mystical Body is that we are one with Christ. The end and purpose of the Holy Eucharist is the Mystical Body, our assimilation to Christ. And if you don't believe you're holy in Christ, then you have no strength, you can't do anything.
I don't say these things so you should depend on my words. I'm showing you what you are. A doctor doesn't heal a body; he helps the body heal itself. Medicine is the art of doing for the body what the body should do for itself. You have to do the healing. You should say, if this is the way I am, this is what Jesus came to save. And this is your activity; it is the activity of your mind and will. You cooperate with Jesus, realizing that Jesus loves you because He is good. If I were teaching you how to play tennis, I would say, this is how you use your arm. You have to use your arm. Here I tell you how to think and love, but youhave to think and love and I can't do it for you. The good thief saw the goodness of God and forgot his own evil. So if you realize the power of God in you, your evil would be like a finite quantity in relation to an infinite quantity; which is nothing!
But as soon as you forget this, or as soon as you're not recollected, you get back into yourself and all your habitual fears. When you think the right way, the only sweetness you have is Jesus. There is always a battle going on between the sweetness of Jesus and the sweetness in yourself. The truth takes away your own sweetness or the sweetness of what conforms to you so you will be drawn to the sweetness of God. The more you face the truth in the right way, the more you experience His sweetness. As for your own bitterness, Jesus will let you see your evil as much as He wants you to. Just stay with Him. The right thing to do is "what a prudent man would do in any given time, place, or circumstance," (Aristotle, “Ethics”) and since Jesus is that prudent man for us, you can't put it down in a formula; otherwise, you’ll either be too depressed by your evil or else you'll forget it. What God wants is the only measure; and you know what God wants as you are united to Him.
But you have to develop the habit of being peaceful in actual turmoil. When God wants a thing and you don't want it, it is like the storm on the face of the water. The more you're preoccupied with it the more you're caught. St. Paul was left with emotional attachment to something evil; he wanted to get rid of it, but God left him with it. So you have to learn to live with your own attraction to evil. That is why it is so important to believe in yourself as a object of faith.
God gave us an instinct of self-preservation. If you look at the Holy Eucharist, it would be natural to say, what’s in it for me: if it doesn't make me holy, why do I want it? In fact, it could make you feel worse, because you realize the difference between yourself and the holiness of the Eucharist. So you have to believe in your own holiness. And psychologically, unless you have a spiritual father who believes in your holiness, you can't believe in it. The divine life in us builds on nature, and the most primitive thing in nature is the relation of a child to a father.
If I believe that I am holy because I am in Jesus, why wouldn't I want you to have that same faith? That's the way Jesus acted toward His own. The repentant sinner who bathed Jesus' feet with her tears loved Him so much that she might even have been drawn to Him physically. Then she might have been horrified by it. But Jesus would have purified her attraction so that she could believe in the rightness of her love for Him. All this is tied up with seeing yourself as holy, because the devil tries to make you feel that what you really want is dirty. In Jesus we are an object of faith, and you know your holiness in the darkness of faith although in your sins you would want what you don't want. Seeing your holiness is an act of faith.
Also, if we believe this about ourselves, we believe it about others. When we believe in our own goodness in Jesus, we believe in the goodness of others. "Charity sees no evil."(1Cor 13:5) So this faith in our own holiness is the foundation for charity and so for the apostolate.