Spirituality for Beginners

Fr. Bede's almost-daily reflections. When it comes to the spiritual life, we're all beginners. I also send these out by email. Contact me at bcamera@anselm.edu. God bless!





Thursday, October 29, 2015

Nothing will separate us from God

Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. (Saint Paul to the Romans, 8:31-39)

Nothing.

Again, I say it: nothing.

Not our sins, nor our weakness, nor our failings, nor our crimes, nor our lack of faith, nor our discouragement, nor anything else that is within you that you believe stands as an obstacle between you and God’s love.

God is greater than your barriers, than your doubt, than your forgetfulness, than your settling for mediocrity, than your obstinate and total resistance.

One thing is dangerous: the belief or insistence that you are going to solve the problem that is your life without God. But even then, God has ways of working things out so that you eventually come to your senses. It might take a lifetime, but for God a lifetime is as brief as a snap of the fingers. And God will let you suffer until you reach a point where you finally cry out, “O God, help me!” And then the miracle begins all over again.

And it doesn’t help to proclaim that you are an atheist. The atheist also has faith: he believes in Not-God. But even Not-God is God, and he will reach through, and he will continue to love and bless the atheist with anything and everything that keeps him close even if he refuses to believe.

Some people are so fed up with religion (for very good reasons, mind you) that they want nothing to do with church or ritual. (The miracle is that some of us still cling to church and ritual despite everything.) But for those who cannot, God draws them through another attraction or path.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Nothing within you; nothing outside of you.

Be at peace.


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