In Conversation with God – Volume 2 Part 1: Lent & Holy Week by Fernandez Francis

Author:Fernandez, Francis [Fernandez, Francis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scepter (UK) Ltd
Published: 2011-11-30T05:00:00+00:00

FOURTH WEEK OF LENT – TUESDAY

28. PATIENT STRUGGLE AGAINST DEFECTS

28.1 The paralytic at Bethsaida. Constancy in the struggle and in the desire to improve.

The Gospel of to-day’s Mass tells us about a man who has been ill for thirty-eight years, and who is hoping for a miraculous cure from the waters of the pool at Bethsaida. When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, Do you want to be healed? The sick man replied in all simplicity: Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me. Jesus said to him, Rise, take up your pallet and walk. The paralytic obeyed. And at once the man was healed, and he took up his pallet and walked.[446]

The Lord is always willing to listen to us and to give us whatever we need in any situation. His goodness is always in excess of our calculations. But it requires a corresponding response on our part, with a desire to get out of the situation we are in. There can be no pact with our defects and errors, and we must make the effort to overcome them. We cannot ever ‘get used to’ the shortcomings and weaknesses which separate us from God and from others, on the excuse that they are part of our character, or that we have already tried several times over to tackle them without positive result.

It is the heart which moves us to improve in our interior dispositions through that conversion of the heart to God and to works of penance, thus preparing our souls to receive the graces God wishes to grant us.

Jesus asks us to persevere in the struggle, and to begin again as often as necessary, realising that it is in struggle that love grows. The Lord does not ask the paralytic in order to learn – this would be superfluous – but to make his patience known to all, for that invalid for thirty-eight years had hoped, without ceasing, to be freed from his illness.[447]

Our love for Christ is shown in our decisiveness and in the effort we make to root out as soon as possible our dominant defect, or to obtain a virtue which seems to us difficult to practise. But it is also shown in the patience which we exercise in the ascetical struggle: it is possible that the Lord will ask us to struggle over a long period, perhaps for thirty-eight years, to grow in a particular virtue or to overcome that particular negative aspect of our interior life.

A well-known spiritual author has taught the importance of being patient with one’s own defects so as to develop the art of profiting from one’s faults.[448] We ought not to be surprised – or disconcerted – when, having used all the means reasonably within our reach, we have not managed to reach the goal we had set ourselves.

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