{"id":21675,"date":"2022-09-28T10:11:02","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T14:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=21675"},"modified":"2022-09-28T10:16:20","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T14:16:20","slug":"21675","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=21675","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8e1Yc5fWxe0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Strength in Weakness<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>In this homily, Father Richard reflects on the paradoxical relationship between weakness and strength:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I must be up front with you. I don\u2019t really understand why God created the world in this upside-down way. I do not know why \u201cpower is at its best in weakness,\u201d as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:9. I cannot pretend to understand God, but this is what I see: People who have moved from one seeming success to another seldom understand success at all\u2014except for their own very limited version. People who fail to do something right, by even their own definition of right, are those who often break through to enlightenment and compassion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paul can talk in this paradoxical way about power and weakness because he meditated on the mystery of the cross. The one who was a failure became the redeemer. The one who looked naked and weak and like a loser became the ultimate winner. And so Paul sums it up in his beautiful philosophy, ending with the line, \u201cIt is when I am weak that I am strong\u201d (2 Corinthians 12:10).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s honestly admit almost none of us believe that. We think it\u2019s when we\u2019re strong that we\u2019re strong. But no,&nbsp;<em>it\u2019s when we\u2019re weak that we\u2019re strong<\/em>. It doesn\u2019t make a bit of sense to the rational, logical mind. Only people of the Spirit understand how true it is. The Twelve Step Program made it the first step: We have to experience our powerlessness before we can experience our power.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paul says he experienced God telling him, \u201cMy grace is sufficient for you. Power is made perfect in weakness\u201d (2 Corinthians 12:9). But the philosophy of the United States of America is that power is made perfect in more power. Just try to get powerful: more guns, more weapons, more wars, more influence, more billionaires. Everybody\u2019s trying to get higher, trying to get up, up, up. While Jesus, surprise of surprises, is going down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The experience of powerlessness is where we all must begin, and Alcoholics Anonymous is honest and humble enough to state this, just as Jesus himself always went where the pain was. Wherever there was human suffering, Jesus was concerned about it and sought to heal it in the very moment of encounter. It is both rather amazing and very sad that we pushed it all off into a future reward system for those who were \u201cworthy\u201d\u2014as if any of us are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is it this human pain that we fear? Powerlessness, the state of being shipwrecked, is an experience we all share anyway, if we are sincere, but Bill Wilson (1895\u20131971), co-founder of AA, discovered we are not very good at that either. He called it \u201cdenial.\u201d It seems we are not that free to be honest, or even aware, because most of our wounds are buried in the unconscious. So, it is absolutely essential that we find a spirituality that reaches to that hidden level. If not, nothing really changes.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Tiny Opportunities to Love<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Memoirist Heather King spent a year praying with Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux\u2019s insights, and describes how Th\u00e9r\u00e8se practiced her \u201clittle way\u201d through relationships:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of the best-known anecdotes about Th\u00e9r\u00e8se concern her saintlike, though seemingly small efforts with respect to her fellow nuns:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol><li>She overcame her instinctive dislike of a particular nun, and . . . [exhibited] such charity that the sister actually thought Th\u00e9r\u00e8se felt a special fondness for her.<\/li><li>She stifled her almost compulsive desire to turn around and glare at the nun behind her in choir who made a clicking noise (apparently by tapping her rosary against her teeth), realizing that the more charitable act would be to pretend that the sound was music to Christ\u2019s ears and endure the annoyance in silence.<\/li><li>Every evening at dinnertime Th\u00e9r\u00e8se took it upon herself to usher a particularly vexatious elderly nun from chapel to her place at table in the refectory, even going the extra mile to lovingly cut the crabapple\u2019s bread.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Saints do not live in some other world. . . . They live in the same world we do, and they show us that spirituality is intensely down-to-earth. We learn to love through frustration, disappointment, and failure. We learn through the seemingly trivial incidents of our daily lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhen I&nbsp;<em>am feeling<\/em>&nbsp;nothing . . . then is the moment for seeking opportunities,&nbsp;<em>nothings,&nbsp;<\/em>which please Jesus. . . . For example, a smile, a friendly word, when I would want to say nothing, or put on a look of annoyance,\u201d [1] Th\u00e9r\u00e8se wrote, and \u201cI have no desire to go to Lourdes to have ecstasies. I prefer (the monotony of sacrifice)!\u201d [2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>King applies the spirit of Th\u00e9r\u00e8se\u2019s small, loving acts to her own life:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I began to see the almost superhuman strength required to refrain from, say, repeating a juicy bit of gossip, or rolling my eyes, or allowing my voice to get harsh when I was upset. I began to sense as well that, just&nbsp;<em>because&nbsp;<\/em>they\u2019re so difficult, such acts perhaps do far more good than we can ever know. Standing patiently in line helped the other people in line to be patient as well. Blessing the other person in traffic, even though nobody heard or saw, somehow encouraged someone else to bless the next person. When the neighborhood noise bothered me, I sometimes took to starting with one corner of my apartment complex, visualizing the person or people who lived there, and working my way around, praying for the inhabitants of each. (Other times I took to tearing out my hair and cursing.) . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We can try, at great personal sacrifice, to be perfectly righteous, a perfect friend, perfectly responsive, perfectly available, perfectly forgiving. But at the heart of our efforts must lie the knowledge that, by ourselves, we can do, heal, or correct nothing. The point is not to be perfect, but to \u201cperfectly\u201d leave Christ to do, heal, and correct in us what he wills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"388\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/image-6-500x388.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-21677\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/image-6-500x388.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/image-6-300x233.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/image-6-768x597.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/image-6.png 1676w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Strength in Weakness In this homily, Father Richard reflects on the paradoxical relationship between weakness and strength:&nbsp; I must be up front with you. I don\u2019t really understand why God created the world in this upside-down way. I do not know why \u201cpower is at its best in weakness,\u201d as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21675"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21675"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21682,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21675\/revisions\/21682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}