More Than You Can Imagine
“Your children never get tired of blessing you,
Mother. “Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” We celebrated your birthday on the 8th,
and your Most holy Name today because, as good children do, we enjoy
celebrating you and praising You before the whole of creation today: ‘Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.’(cf.
iPray with the Gospel)
You know last Saturday,
day after Our Lady’s birthday, I met with a friend of thirty nine years. She just arrived from a visit with her
siblings in New York. Her trip was
financed by her daughters all of which are single and each one professionally
occupied. As we reminisced through the years of friendship I commented that she
is fortunate to have her daughters around them, good, thoughtful, caring and
responsible.
“Yes,
I agree with you”, she said
and “I
am thankful you suggested against my hesitation and reservations, that I send
them all to a good school like one of the schools supported by PAREF (Parents
for Education Foundation). At least you
said I can be assured of a good foundation for my daughters”.
I am happy because she is
humble enough to confirm that heeding the suggestion contributed to her
daughters’ formation aside from the fact that she and her husband, themselves come
from good and well educated families. I
told her “Only you and my other friends can say what I have
said to them years ago. Because there
are some things I do not remember having said them. For example, I came across somebody who when
I asked about the family replied ‘Ayun
marami akong anak kasi sabi mo tanggapin ang lahat ng anak na ibigay ni Our
Lord.’”
Tell me, who would not be
elated and who would not thank God when you hear those good suggestions people
say have come from you, once upon a time? It would also be funny if you deny
having said them. Indeed, God is truly
amazing and full of surprises! There are many things one says or does with good
intentions for the good of persons that are taken in good light or in bad
light. What truly matters in the end is
the good intention one has and only God knows.
Because nobody can judge the intentions of anybody, right? In the end
only the person herself and God know the intention, the motivation. In the end it is all between oneself and
God. Hence it is good practice that each
one has the good habit of asking herself, “what is my intention
for saying this, doing that? What good will it do to myself and to the
others? Will God be happy if I go ahead
and say it or do it? Is it God’s will?”
I hope you will not mind if I start sharing with you in this
post another book, I find beneficial to you out there and to myself as well.
More
than You Can Imagine (From Broken Gods, Hope, Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human
Heart, Gregory K. Popcak, Ph. D. Ch 1)
Imagine that you were to wake up tomorrow to
discover that, by some miracle, you had become a god overnight. Not the
God—omnipresent, all-knowing, all-powerful—but a god in the classic sense.
That is to say, you wake to find that you are perfect, immortal, utterly
confident in who you are, where you are going in life, and how you are going to get there. It might seem ridiculous to consider at
first, but allow yourself to imagine this truly miraculous transformation. What would it be like to live without
fear? How would it feel to be completely
at peace with yourself and the people in your life? Imagine what it would be like to be able to
resolve—once and for all—the tension that currently exists between all our
competing feelings, impulses, desires, and demands. What would change in your life as a result of
your having become that sort of divinely actualized person?
Perhaps a better question would be “What wouldn’t
change?”
What
Does God See When He Looks At You
What you’ve just imagined is exactly the destiny God
has in store for you. The truth is, God
really and truly intends to make you a god—a being who is perfect, whole,
healed, and, yes, even immortal. “So
whoever is in Christ is a new creation:
the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor
5:17). Christians often talk about
“being saved,” but more than being saved from
something (i.e., sin) the truth is, we are saved for something—to become divine!
The idea seems crazy, maybe even blasphemous, but
that’s only because we are used to seeing ourselves as the world sees
us—broken, struggling, failing, and frustrated.
But when God looks at you, an eternal and boundless love wells up inside
him and he sees past every doubt, every fear, everything you think is shameful
or broken about you. When God looks at
you, he sees something more beautiful, remarkable, and amazing than you could
ever even wrap your head around. In the
words of St. John Paul the Great, “We are
not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love
for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son” (Pope John
Paul II, 2002).
When God looks at you, he sees within you the
fulfillment of every hope, every dream, every desire, and every
potentiality. In short, when God looks
at you, he sees a god.
I am not spinning some beautiful illusion. The doctrine
that humans are destined, through Christ, to become gods is a lost treasure
that is at the very heart of Christianity.
Hidden in plain sight it is a truth that can transform every part of
your spiritual, emotional, and relational life if you know how to claim it.
Well, that’s it! What more can I add? For now, let us settle with the above. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten us in
our quiet moments of prayer about this truth.
Everything is possible with God.
Without God you and I can do nothing. But if you and I are created in
the image and likeness of God, God wants us to be like Him in the end. With our participation, definitely!
See
you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may
you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care;
‘til He brings us together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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