A Lesson for Today

(I must preceed this post with a note on how timely this particular message was for me as I'm posting this from Children's Hospital where we are with my three year old possibly facing surgery...God is good and I'm not alone.)

"And this is a lesson for today: how to avoid hardness, how to avoid the devil's poison, how to avoid darkness, which are all the same. For whenever we transgress, we invite hardness in. We can also do this through hatred, bitterness, or jealousy.

Such emotions rise in a special manner when we are ill or otherwise hurt. A deep wound is both an opportunity and a danger. Satan stands at the door of our wounds, and tries to pour his cement through them. It is like the gall he offered to Jesus on the Cross. When St. Teresa of Avila was given a vision of hell, she saw mud that trapped those who wallowed in it.

When we become bitter, we too are trapped and when we sin we have a blotch in our spirits that may then transmit to the physical (making us sicker still or ill if we are well). Blotches add up until they blind us -- until they calcify. Slowly but surely, we build a wall between ourselves and God.

This "hardness" may come not just through illnesses or accidents but also when we are having financial or emotional distress. During an upset in a marriage, the devil is only too quick to tell us how bad things are, how they will not improve, how it is over for us. If we succumb to a negative expectation, and bitterness, we curse ourselves. When we are angry, despairing, resentful, or jealous, we also curse others. We spread the poison.

When we are hurt, when we get a new suffering, when we are in pain, it opens up a wound in our hearts, like a hole: a void within us. If Christ is not allowed to fill that void, the devil does.

He knows that wounds are an opportunity to enter our souls and he speaks to us so that we can hear him (louder than all else). The first sign of Satan's presence: confusion, anxiety, and frustration -- especially frustration with God.

When we use the wounds as an offering to the Lord, on the other hand -- as an opportunity for growth, and maintain our faith -- they become a ticket to deliverance here and Heaven after."

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