Thursday December 21, 2023

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“Walls that serve as fortresses, built by fear, block out love.”

Good News Reflection for:

Thursday of the Third Week of Advent
Memorial of Saint Peter Canisius, priest and doctor of the Church
December 21, 2023

Today’s Prayer:

Thank you, Blessed Mother, because you take us to Jesus and you share with us the joy that comes from meeting God become man. Amen.

Subscribe to Today’s Saint Quote & Prayer:
gnm.org/SaintQuotes/

Today’s Readings:

Song of Songs 2:8-14 or Zep 3:14-18a
Ps 33:2-3, 11-12, 20-21
Luke 1:39-45
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/122123.cfm
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-december-21-2023

You are beautiful to God!

Do you know how beautiful you are to God? Do you feel his love enough?

We often miss out on this because we put up walls between us and other people to protect ourselves from getting hurt, to hide our secret sins and flaws, and to keep ourselves in our comfort zones rather than risk stepping out into the unfamiliar and unpleasant.

Walls that serve as boundaries against evil are good, built by faith, but walls that serve as fortresses, built by fear, block out love. They imprison us in an on-going series of evidence that seems to justify our fears.

Every decision we make that holds us back from being all that God created us to be is another brick added to fortresses that will eventually collapse in on us. Each brick seems to make perfect sense, but when we wall ourselves in, we wall God out.

Is God worth risking everything for?

Are we willing to open up so that we can be totally overwhelmed by his love?

In the reading from Song of Songs, we call God our “Lover” and he calls us his “dove.” Hear your Lover calling you to stop hiding. You are his beloved. He re-names you: “My beautiful one.” Regardless of how ugly you think you are, he sees you as beautiful! Even if you think your hair is the wrong color or you’re too tall or too short or too fat or too bald or too flawed or too this or too that or not enough of what you wish you were, he sees you as beautiful.

When I realized this, I stopped hiding my grey hair behind brown dye and started showing off the true color that God had chosen for it. Apparently, he likes grey hair a lot! He gave me my first one when I was only nineteen. Who am I to tell him that he doesn’t know what “beautiful” is?

What do you think is so ugly about you — your looks, your personality, your sinful past — that you have been hiding it in the “secret recesses of the cliff”? Your Lover is saying: “Let me see you, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and you are lovely.”

When Jesus died on the cross, he took with him all that was ugly about you. He became ugly for you (see Isaiah 52:14).

Even when you’re complaining to God, your voice is sweet to him, because he treasures the time you give him. Even when you feel bad about yourself, you are lovely to him, because he admires you, his wonderful creation. Sure he’s saddened by your ugly sins, because your sins wall you away from him and he yearns for your closeness. And oh how he rejoices when you return to him through repentance! But always always always, he cherishes you. You put a twinkle in his eye. With a great big huge beaming smile, he tells his angels, “Look! There’s my precious dove!”

Look! He is coming to you, springing across your mountains of problems, leaping across the hills, running to you because he loves you so very, very much!

For more help on this topic, see our video called: “Do you know how much the Father loves you?” @ https://gnm-media.org/do-you-know-how-much-the-father-loves-you/.

© 2023 by Terry A. Modica

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