What a Waste...: My Life is in Your Hands

+AMDG+

The Big Lebowski: They did not receive the money! Her life was in your hands!

Brandt: This is our concern, Dude

Here are today's reading:

So to be honest, I read the wrong readings for today lol.

I prayed over the readings for tomorrow. BUT when I looked over the readings for today, the Psalm struck me.

"But as for me, I trust in you, Lord,

I say: "You are my God.

My life is in your hands, deliver me,

from the hands of those who hate me.

Let your face shine on your servant.

Save me in your love."

- Psalm 31:15-17

What an amazing image! My LIFE is in YOUR hands. And here comes the question you knew I was going to ask: But do we really believe that?"

Do I really think that God cares for me that intimately?

I feel like this is such a difficult problem for me. How do I know that the invisible God loves me?

For me it comes down to the fact that He became incarnate. The Incarnation is such an amazing event in history.

There was an understanding in Greek Philosophy that was running rampant due logical study. If Eternity and Time are completely separate, then how can we communicate with the Divine at all? For many Greeks they started to abandon their religious ways and embraced philosophy. When the Roman Empire took over, they adopted many different aspects of the Greek's culture especially their pagan gods which the Romans just basically renamed. They renamed them after the planets in our solar system.

I am mentioning this because during Jesus' time they were under Roman rule. The Greek philosophical system had pretty much believed in a Watchmaker Creator. A god who created the world and does not play any part in it at all. And they would be right... unless God reveals himself to humanity.

Enter stage right: Judaism claiming to the Gentiles that Yaweh, the God of gods, who cares for them like a spouse, who looks after them like a parent, who protects them like a king and who guides them like a shepherd, choose them as His very own people; His firstborn to all the nations. Then comes Jesus, the awaited Messiah of the Jewish people, the Chosen one of the chosen People. He reveals God's Triune nature and that He is the Second person in the Trinity. He who became incarnate, and is named Jesus (Hebrew for 'God saves') , has shown the world that God really does care for us intimately. Because of Jesus entering into human existence, He gave the invisible God a face.

When we unite our prayers to His prayers and thanksgiving to Father, humanity finally had a way to speak and know God. His thanksgiving is His obedience and trust in God, which is seen through his Crucifixion and Resurrection, that shows us that God does not abandon us. We can know God only when we unite ourselves to Jesus. Through prayer and communion with Jesus we can know God personally; without Him it just a bunch of ideas of what God might be like. They might sound like nice ideas, like a generic Lover, but unless it is connected to a person who reveals themselves in human history it just stays a nice idea. Since Jesus Ascended into heaven, Time has now entered into Eternity and the Eucharist is Eternity present in Time. This uniting of heaven and earth is because of the union of Christ, the Bridegroom, to His bride, the Church.

"...And the two of them become one body."

- Genesis 2:24

The Church united mystically to Jesus exists in both Eternity and Time, the link between heaven and earth.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 795, it states:

Christ and his Church thus together make up the "whole Christ" (Christus totus). The Church is one with Christ. The saints are acutely aware of this unity:

Let us rejoice then and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp, brethren, God's grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ. For if he is the head, we are the members; he and we together are the whole man. . . . The fullness of Christ then is the head and the members. But what does "head and members" mean? Christ and the Church. - St. Augustine

Our redeemer has shown himself to be one person with the holy Church whom he has taken to himself. - Pope Gregory the Great

Head and members form as it were one and the same mystical person. - St. Thomas Aquinas

A reply of St. Joan of Arc to her judges sums up the faith of the holy doctors and the good sense of the believer: "About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter." - St. Joan of Arc

So why do I mention this? Because I need to know that the Church is where its at!

Because Jesus became Incarnate, reveals to us that there is relationship in God, He allows us to share in His relationship with the Father and the Spirit.

I need to know, as Pope Benedict says that, "Christian Prayer is addressed to a God who hears and listens." - The Feast of Faith page 31

I need to know that my life IS in His hands and IF my life is NOT in His hands then there really is no point; and this is all a random waste of time.

Psalm 69:2-4

"Save me, God, for the waters have reached my neck.

I have sunk into the mire of the deep, where there is no foothold.

I have gone down to the watery depths;

the flood overwhelms me.

I am weary with crying out;

my throat is parched.

My eyes have failed,

looking for my God."

Is my life in Your hands Lord? Or will I drown?