You Are More than Meets the Eye
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October 10, 2023 |
Hi! How is each and
every one? In the last post we talked a
bit about the celebration of the 95th Anniversary of the Foundation
(October 2, 1928) of Opus Dei, Work of God. I just thought it good to mention
in today’s post that last October 6, we celebrated the 21st Anniversary of the
Canonization (October 6, 2002) of the founder of Opus Dei, St. Josemaria
Escriva, the “saint of ordinary life”. This simply confirms the truth that the
Work of God produces saints. You and I if we allow God to work in us, that is,
we do whatever He tells us to do, he will do His work of making you and me the saint he wants us to be. So you and I are more than meets the eye.
Following is an excerpt on the topic (From Broken
Gods, Hope, Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human Heart, Gregory K.
Popcak, Ph. D. Ch 1).
Once
upon a Time…
At the dawn of creation, God intended great things
for us, but our first parents’ tragic downfall in the Garden of Eden caused a
fundamental disconnect between us and God that resulted in a profound warping
of our humanity. Though we were made in
God’s image, the Fall caused humankind to take our eyes off God’s face, preventing
us from seeing our destiny reflected in God’s eyes. By turning away from God, our first parents
shattered the internal mirror that enabled them to reflect the image of God and
achieve the fullness of their perfected nature.
This first catastrophic choice teaches us that when we deny God, we
intimately deny and then destroy ourselves.
Through Jesus’ incarnation, God began the process of
healing our essential brokenness, our fallen humanity, from the inside
out. By becoming flesh, God inserted an
ember of his divinity into the heart of creation. With this divine spark growing within us, God
began to melt and untwist our hearts of iron, refining us into the pure gold he
made us to be.
The incarnation, then, is the opening paragraph of
the invitation God sends to all of humankind announcing his intention to
transform us into gods. But though the
incarnation redeems our basic humanity, the incarnation cannot save individual
people unless they respond to it and cooperate in the process of
transformation. Invitations require an
RSVP, so God gives us a way to answer his call.
Our baptism represents the second paragraph of God’s invitation and the
next step in our transformation. Baptism
is our personal “yes” to the intimate movement of God in our lives. It imprints God’s family seal on our hearts
(Sg 8:6) and commits us to the process of allowing God’s grace to transform us
into the gods we are meant to be (Jn 3:5).
In the third paragraph of the invitation, God prepares a feast, the
Eucharist, and invites us to become
his flesh and blood by consuming his
real flesh and blood (Jn 6:55), the food that sustains us on our divine journey
and heals the radical disconnect between us, God, and the world.
St Josemaria Institute: the Baptism of Our Lord
You Are More than Meets the Eye
Through these gifts, God sets in motion powerful
forces that make us not only whole, but also something more than we could ever
hope to become through our own meager efforts.
Because of God’s great gifts, we are no longer defined by our
weakness. We are defined by the abundant
love our heavenly Father has for us and the destiny that Christ Jesus’s
passion, death, and resurrection makes possible. In the words of St. John XXIII, “Consult not
your fears but your hopes and your dreams.
Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled
potential. Concern yourself not with
what you tried and failed in, but with what is still possible” (Meconi, 2014).
Most of us can’t even begin to realize what our
potential—indeed, our destiny—truly is.
But St. John XXIII reminds us that for Christians “what is still
possible” is nothing less than fulfilling the divine plan that we,
ourselves, are to become divine.
Again and again, God calls out to us and whether we
realize it or not, a part of our deepest self has been programmed to reach back
to God. Like a homing beacon pinging out
in the darkness, this part of us relentlessly reminds us that we are not yet
where we belong and we must hurry to find our way back home again. As Augustine
said, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you, God.” So what
is this homing beacon? Nothing less than the sum of our desires fiercely fighting
to break free of the chains that frustrate their desperate longing for ultimate
fulfillment.
What are you and I
waiting for? Come on let us begin again
and this time let us make sure we make more steps forward, reaching out to the
hand of God and allowing Him to do His part by doing our part as well as we can
with His help. Stop, listen attentively to His leads and act on what He says. How can you and I miss out?
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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