“Off to a fresh start!”

If you are convinced of your "poor quality" - if you know yourself - you will react to events supernaturally. Joy and peace will take a firmer root in your soul, in the face of humiliations, being despised, calumnies ... If these cases, after saying fiat - Lord, whatever you want - you should think: "Is that all he said? He obviously does not know me, otherwise he wouldn't have left it at that."

Being convinced that you deserve worse treatment, you will feel grateful to that person, and rejoice at what might have made somebody else suffer. (Furrow, 268)

We are continually experiencing our personal inadequacies. Moreover, there are times when it seems as if all our failings come together, as if wanting to show themselves more clearly, to make us realize just how little we are worth. When that happens, what are we to do?

Expecta Dominum [1], hope in the Lord. Live by hope, full of faith and love, the Church says to us. Viriliter age [2], be of good heart. What does it matter that we are made of clay, if all our hope is placed in God? And if at a certain moment you should fall or suffer some setback (not that it has to happen), all you have to do is to apply the remedy, just as, in the normal course of events, you would do for the sake of your bodily health. And then: off to a fresh start!...

When we are faced with weaknesses and sins, with our mistakes even though, by God’s grace, they be of little account — let us turn to God our Father in prayer and say to him, ‘Lord, here I am in my wretchedness and frailty, a broken vessel of clay. Bind me together again, Lord, and then, helped by my sorrow and by your forgiveness, I shall be stronger and more attractive than before!’ What a consoling prayer, which we can say every time something fractures this miserable clay of which we are made. (Friends of God, 94-95)

[1] Ps 26:14 (Introit of the Mass)

[2] ibid

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