Simplicity of Trust and Faith in God

Life ain't easy. There's always something competing for our attention (work, school, the computer, friends, family, emotions, etc.). We're always occupied by something. Why can't that something be God? Why can't that something be the good works of Christ?

I recently went on retreat and was fascinated, yet again, by my response to the simple rooms of the retreat house. There was a sink, some shelving by the sink, a bed, a small nightside table, a simple plastic writing desk, and a rocking chair. And I would have been completely happy living there the rest of my life! Something about the simplicity, the joyful lack of complication and other STUFF, was so utterly beautiful and holy!

I thought to myself how much I needed to declutter my room at home. I am a pack-rat, and have so much stuff squirreled away in drawers. Yet, "He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick-no food, no sack, no money in their belts." (Mark 6:8). Why do we insist on bringing so much stuff with us on our journey with Christ?

There is a certain comfort one has about having things. Little kids have blankies, adults carry books and work with them everywhere they go. Yet, Christ asks us to love Him and Him alone. It is so easy to focus on all the STUFF - whether it's stuff we have to do, things that make us anxious, worried, or afraid, anything! The simplicity of Christ is the joy and peace of our heart - pure and unadulterated LOVE!

Imagine how simple life would be if we only focused on God. Car trouble? No problem! God is good! Family issues? No worries! God is good! Everything must be done for our benefit and for our good, because God is surely love, and therefore nothing can harm us! What a powerful, powerful realization to make and internalize!!! :)

And all of it is simple faith. Pure trust and hope-filled love of God. What mountains we could move with such a faith, what barriers we could break through! Simplicity breeds love of Christ and others! Why don't we try praying to Him a bit more instead of going online as a meaningless diversion for a few hours at a time? Why don't we try giving away that clothing we never wear instead of keeping it around for doomsday? Why don't we try disattaching ourselves from things that make us anxious, situations that we can't change, people that need time to heal? For it is only with this simple focus on God that we are able to accomplish ANYTHING in this world, and it is only that we are able to accomplish ANYTHING in this world by not focusing on this world. Tricky paradox, huh?

Let us pray that today we not allow all the distractions and temptations of this world to grab our attention! May we seek Christ always and everywhere, and follow Him with only a deep faith and trust! May we seek to, rather than embroiling ourself in conflicts and emotions, offer up all our cares and worries, fears and anxieties to Christ who died for our sins, so that we would not have to worry! Let us seek to proclaim the Gospel at all times, using words only if necessary, convinced that we are convinced that Christ is Lord through the incredible faith He has given to us!!! :)

In the Love of Christ through Mary,
Christina :)

Loving and Knowing God

"Wisdom, says Bonaventure, 'seeks contemplation (as the highest form of knowledge) and its intention is 'ut boni fiamus', that we should become good. ... Thus, for St. Bonaventure the primacy of love is decisive."

Alright, this post is a heavy one - thinking about thinking! We are always thinking and contemplating about God, trying to find Him in everything we see, trying to approach Him in whatever way we can, and yet, we can never fully encapsulate God with words, with art, with anything. God just is. We always try to approach God by better understanding Him, seeking to know more about Him and what He does. God just is. We always seek to know the whys and the hows of His Love for us, the ticking of the mind of God. God just is. All along, God just is, yet somehow we skip over this quintessential point in our search for understanding, logic and reason. What of the pure faith required to simply LOVE God? There is no knowledge, no wisdom, no anything required for this - only faith. Simple, true, beautiful, and loving faith.

After all, to know God is to love Him. What more do we need to know if we love unconditionally? True love knows no boundaries or borders, it knows neither reason nor rhyme. It just IS, it exists purely in a self-sacrificing gift of oneself to another. So too is our gift of love to God - we need not UNDERSTAND Him to KNOW Him. Because to know Him is to LOVE Him.

All of our seeking of information about God, our research, our meditations, our everything is meant to help us understand a small piece of God. Yet, there are infinite small pieces of God, broken down into infinitely smaller pieces! Atoms break down into submolecules, submolecules break down even further beyond our understanding. We can never fully understand God, or KNOW Him from a research perspective. We can study God to no end, think about Him endlessly, but never fully grasp the WHY, the HOW. We can never know all the intricacies. That is, unless we throw away all of our searching for that link to Him, and simply LOVE Him. Then we discover that THAT is our link to Him!

You know those curved functions that approach zero, but never reach it? They can get infinitesimally small, but they never hit 0. Sure, .00000000001 is pretty close, but no cigar! And yet, if you throw out the function, you just start with the number 0, there you are! That's like our relationship with God. You can logically and scientifically study the function to realize that there is a VERY VERY small number out there. But in order to get to 0, you have to just make the leap. Our reason and logic only approaches God to a certain extent, but faith makes the jump from .00000001 to 0. We jump from our reasoning to loving in an instant, but it is that one tiny step (or maybe large leap!) that makes all the difference!

And the irony of this all is that we come to KNOW God only by FAITH in LOVING and TRUSTING in Him BEYOND REASON, and from that moment we know EVERYTHING there is to know about God. How ironic is it that faith leads to reason, but the equation doesn't work the other way around? Reason does not conclusively lead us to faith, yet faith inevitably brings us to reason.

C.S. Lewis was quoted as saying, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else." How is it that we accept such tacit understanding of metaphysics, Newton's Laws, Locke's social contract, all without thinking? We build on the reason of the past in the trust that those theorists were right! Our entire thought process springboards off of these ideas without thoroughly starting from scratch, yet we have faith in these theorists! Can we not extend to God the same courtesy of trusting in Him without having to dissect everything of Him, simply knowing that He IS? Content to live without the dim and spotted lights of understanding, but instead lit up by the flood of brilliance of love?

I was thinking the other day about how, all of my life, I have been searching for the perfect subject to be able to know completely. To be able to study and know something completely and in its entirety. Something that didn't break down into smaller components. I got nowhere! Even the smallest things you can think of are broken down further (elements break down into atoms into submolecules, social issues break down into factors break down into thoughts break down into neurological transmissions in your brain break down into cells into neutrinos!)! So, how are we to ever know anything? The ONE THING, I realized, that is WHOLE, that does not break down further, is GOD. He is TRUINE, but He is ONE. And He simply IS. He needs no description - He exists. And by existing, the whole universe has taken shape and has come to be. But He simply is.

And we simply ARE, too: we ARE in loving Him. To know Him is to love Him. What more do we need to know, other than the EVERYTHING we NEED to know in loving Him??? :)

Dearest Lord, may today we not shy away from the blind faith needed to love You! May we humbly offer up all our reason, suspend it for the moment it requires to love You in complete devotion to You! May we not cry out, like Thomas, to see the hands and feet which were pierced - rather, may we LOVE You and TRUST You simply because we know you exist, that you ARE. May we give to You everything we possess - including our thoughts, our knowledge, our everything - certain in the trust and the hope that you will return it to us in greater quantity than we could ever imagine!!

In the Love of Christ through Mary,
Christina :)

The Beauty of Woman and the Perceptiveness of Man

I heard a magnificent homily this morning about the Transfiguration, and figured I would share the wealth!  The priest celebrating the Mass was this incredibly, visibly joy-filled man who just radiated with Christ - SO GOOD! :)


During the homily, he spoke about how the "glory" of Jesus beheld by the apostles is something that doesn't translate well for us as human beings.  We know that God is goodness, mercy, and love, but we also know that God is BEAUTY.  The priest giving the Homily said that "glory" is better understood as "beauty" - that Peter, John, and James were agape at the BEAUTY of Christ, the splendor of that beauty, that they were able to fully see at the Transfiguration!  What a thought!  This refers back to Pope Benedict XVI's recent address at the Vatican on the importance of artists in modern society, to Theology of the Body, to EVERYTHING!  (Isn't God great?!!?!)


When you think back to Genesis, about how God created man and woman, and man was alone without a woman, it makes us think about what makes us different.  Sitcoms and modern feminist perspectives would often have us believe that women are smarter, or more snarky, or abusive to their husbands.  But this isn't how it was meant to be!


Woman was made to be BEAUTIFUL, to reflect God's presence so fully that He SHINES on her face, when she smiles and when she speaks!  That all the words out of her mouth would be soft and gentle and kind, like the shape of her soft face would indicate!  Is it any wonder that men think that women are beautiful?


You can look at the things which most plague men and women in today's society in order to understand how God really intended for us to work together.  Men tend to struggle a lot with pornography - the coveting of women rather than appreciation of their beauty; and women struggle a lot with self-image - the obsession with personal perfection.  Both issues tend to highlight that which we were created for - and that which takes that instinct too far.


Women were made to be beautiful reflections of God's Beauty.  We were created to be physically attractive, bright-eyed beings - what a blessing!  And yet, our biggest obstacle is to understand that we were created to be beautiful without being OBSESSED with our self-image! Satan loves to twist our beauty into something to be OBSESSED about - either we don't look good enough, so we become despairing, or we look SO good that we become prideful!  What a twisting of God's gift to us!  Women struggle so often with eating disorders to make themselves "more beautiful," yet what we do not realize is that men find this beauty in us WITHOUT having to obsess over how we look - God created us endowed with a natural beauty that shines from the inside out!  If only we could learn to appreciate that beauty!


This is where men come in.  Men have this uncanny ability to find beauty in women, where women often can't find beauty in themselves!  What perceptive men!  God made men able to see that beauty, to be astounded and transformed by it, just like Peter, John, and James!  What a gift!  And yet, the twisting of this gift is to want to POSSESS that beauty, like Peter, to say, "Lord, we can make a tent for you and your two companions so that you can stay!"  The power of beauty is in its transformative capacity, in its ability to make us yearn for something more.  When we covet that beauty, it becomes obsessive, and this is where pornography comes in.  Satan comes along and twists the beauty of women into an addiction for men, addicted to the perversion of that beauty into covetousness.  And all of a sudden the gift has become something different!  It has gone from the beautiful and shining transformation of our Lord, the perceptiveness of His Beauty, into the need to covet that beauty and hoard it to ourselves.


Beauty, like the lamp on the stand, is meant to shine and be shared.  It comes from our hearts and souls, and is reflected in us physically, but is truly interior.  It is meant to multiply, to be fruitful for God.  Thus, the woman who starves herself and the man who gorges himself are only concerned for themselves.  But, the man who admires and gives all of himself truly in admiring, and the woman who accepts and gives of herself truly in being unselfish in her beauty, now THAT is true beauty shared well!  It is a self-giving beauty that thinks not to possess nor to covet, but to GIVE GIVE GIVE!  And what is beauty if it is not given?  It is nothing.  Beauty given is LOVE, and LOVE is God, just as BEAUTY is God.


So, then, Christ giving of Himself in the Transfiguration is nothing short of pure LOVE.  And the apostle who receives and gives back that beauty, who reflects that same shining beauty in his heart, is a beautiful apostle indeed!


May today our hearts shine with the glory of the beauty of Christ in the Transfiguration!  May we not seek to possess, nor to covet, but rather to GIVE beauty this day, to admire it and love it, to seek it in others and offer it for others to see.  May today our hearts be open to receive the gift of beauty, and may they seek to display that same beauty in our everyday actions.  May our faces become the monstrances of Christ's shining glory, and may our lives reflect the Transfiguration of Christ on the mountain!


In the Love and Beauty of Christ through Mary,
Christina :)

Shall we dance?

Have you ever watched a couple who has been together for many, many years dancing together? My aunt and uncle took ballroom dancing classes, and at every wedding in our family, they would wow all of us with their ability to seamlessly move together so elegantly and impressively. They were able to do complicated moves on the fly because of the way that they worked together, and you could always tell that they both loved when they were dancing with the love of their life.

Or, have you ever seen couples dancing on television in ballroom competitions? Some of the moves they attempt are so beautiful, but scary! Lifts, spins, jumps, rhythms that make no sense - and yet, they always stay on beat and in sync with one another, moving together. I often think the way that they move together is more impressive than any of the complicated moves they may make individually.

For us, Christ is our dance partner. Whether we have just met Him, are coming to know Him better, or have been lifelong dance partners with Him, we are always dancing with Him, learning and moving with Him. He is an expert at what He does!! If He were to dance alone, He would not have a cumbersome partner that can often be off, one who falls often and steps on His feet. Yet, when we move together with Christ, when we act as one unit and glide across the dance floor, your heartbeat seems to freeze in the intensity of the connection inherent in the dance.

Christ doesn't stop challenging us. He'll teach us to keep rhythm, and keep dancing even if we miss a beat. And, if we dance fine on our own, He'll teach us what He knows about how to move. And sometimes those steps are COMPLICATED! I know in my own attempts to learn how to dance ballroom, there have been more than a few times where I have become EXTREMELY frustrated with my inability to do complicated body movements, like getting to move my hips counterclockwise independently of my torso, or learning the steps to a complicated salsa that involves lots of turns. We can get dizzy from all the spinning, but we have to always remember that Christ is beside us, even when we can't see Him. And He will stick by us and keep showing us a move, moving us along with Him, until we get it right. He is the ultimate patient partner.

And sometimes He has to back off to allow us the space to bust a move. It's easy to move when your partner has his hand on the small of your back, and is moving you where he wants you to be. Every good ballroom class stresses the importance of allowing yourself to be led, and having a strong leading partner. But there are times when dancing that your partner has to let go of the deathlock control over your movements, and allow you to move away from Him. He's still leading, but often by just a hand, or maybe even a look that says, "come over here." This is especially hard to pull off if we are newer dancers, still unable to tell all the cues that seasoned veteran partners would be able to notice. If we are still coming to know Jesus (which we all are!), we might not recognize the eyebrow that means, "I need you back in my arms right now in order to finish this move." And that, again, is scary! To know and be known, to understand someone so well that a simple look brings us back into the music and the dance. But, this is what Christ calls us to!!

And Christ never stops teaching us how to move. We are always being spun around, dipped, thrown and caught, held close then thrown out for some swing. It requires a great deal of trust on our end to recognize that we WON'T be dropped, that we WON'T have to worry about crashing into our partner if we just trust Him to make up for the dance skills we lack. And trust me, He's got MAD dance skills. :)

Even when we can coordinate a routine down to the last step, Christ calls us to the familiarity of old partners. They don't dance in programmatic routines that are practiced to the last detail in endless hours of rehearsal - with Christ, we are expected to dance anywhere, anytime, with an endless variation of moves, and we never know what is coming next, because He's leading. He regularly switches up the routine with new steps we have never practiced before, and rather than stopping and practicing to get it right, much like a cook adding ingredients based on sight, we have to be so confident in Christ that we know He will lead us effectively even when we don't know what we are doing. He most definitely knows. And the end result is always impressing to us, because we didn't think we were capable of doing what Christ calls us to do, and to the people around us, because they are amazed by this couple who are so in sync. And they want to take up ballroom (and when they ask, we know who to refer them to!!!)!

Our dances will only get more complicated and more ornate throughout the entirety of our lives, but like an old couple dancing, the more you get to know someone, the more comfortable you feel being held close, being cheek to cheek. The more you can dance impressively with someone, the more you appreciate the simple rock back and forth, and find new meaning in the simplicity of being held in someone's arms at all. The simplicity of the smaller dance movements becomes a refuge in which to rest and enjoy your dance partner, so that you never have to stop dancing, but can dance the whole night through without sitting down!

The end result looks a bit like this in our hearts and souls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ezy50aY6Bg&feature=PlayList&p=1D9B80E25930007E&index=2 (I love Audrey Hepburn, and the movie My Fair Lady has some AWESOME songs for all those musical theater / old time movie buffs!!)! :)

May today we answer "yes" to Christ's constant question: "shall we dance?" May we allow Him to lead us around the dance floor as we go through life, not attempting any move on our own, but certain that we are learning all that Christ has to teach us! May we trust Him through dips and twirls, knowing that even if we may be disoriented and dizzy, that Christ is there holding us by the hand, and will not allow us to fall away from Him! May we rejoice in the knowledge that we are Christ's alone, and that He has chosen us from the beginning of time to join in this dance with Him! And may we enjoy every moment of the song, even the lulls, as an opportunity to be held close to Christ and united in love of God!

In the love of Christ through Mary,
Christina :)

Beautiful quote from St. Joseph of Leonissa

I'm taking a class on the history of the book, and another class on the illuminated manuscript, so this quote just seemed all too appropriate, and I had to post it!!:

"Every Christian must be a living book wherein one can read the teaching of the gospel. This is what St. Paul says to the Corinthians, ‘Clearly you are a letter of Christ which I have delivered, a letter written not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh in the heart’ (2 Corinthians 3:3). Our heart is the parchment; through my ministry the Holy Spirit is the writer because ‘my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe’ (Psalm 45:1)."

We are the living Word, and the Word was in the beginning with God, and the Word was God!!!

In the Joy of Christ through Mary,
Christina :)

"Let Him Kiss Me With the Kisses of His Mouth..."

God is so great! Just when we think He is already awesome, He shows us even MORE of His love! We are always left in awe of His Greatness!

We are all the brides of Christ, holding the hand of a groom unknown to us as we walk down the aisle of a magnificent, empty Church. It is just us and this unknown man, in full wedding attire. We make sure to hold the hand of this man, so that it becomes not us who act anymore (our hands are tied! hah!), but this man whose right hand acts for us, and whose left hand guides us around. We cranes our necks to look around the Church with gaping mouths, in awe of the beauty that surrounds us, still unaware of the unknown groom beside us, who guides us, and even carries us at times. And we find no reason to look at him, fascinated rather by the beautiful stucco, the magnificent sculptures and paintings, the glorious altar! Meanwhile, we trust in this man beside us without even looking at him.

Cut to the wedding. The priest says, "you may kiss the bride," and BAM reality hits - and you are now the WIFE of the unknown man beside you. And you turn to him, and realize that He is JESUS! And, all of a sudden, you not only come to see His Face, but you come to know it, and enter into it through the kiss. And, in the moment of that kiss, you focus fully and completely on Your Husband, the Love of your life!!! And the paintings recede into the background, the sculpture falls away as you REALIZE the very source of that beauty in the man whose works you were admiring!! What joy, awe, and gratitude! What an apt analogy for how we all live!

We tend to live our day to day lives so focused at the WORKS of God - the beautiful buildings, beautiful forests, the beauty of nature - and these are all PRAISEWORTHY things!! And we can know these things and come to know God better through these things. But at that moment when we receive God in the Eucharist, when He becomes a PART of us, and we are reminded that we ARE Christ's hands and feet on earth... WHOAH. The only Being that we focus on is CHRIST in our soul, and we receive Him lovingly and contemplatively - He fills us in all the moments of our life with His Soul and Divinity, His Body and Blood. "Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth" takes on a WHOLE new meaning in Christ!!! We must ALLOW and PERMIT Christ Himself to kiss us, and remain vulnerable to Him, to kiss BACK with all of our being, to let our knees go weak, our head spin around and get caught up hopelessly (I see it more positively - hopeFULLY :P) in love with Our Lord and Savior, Our Beloved Husband who not only WOULD die for us, but HAS died for us!!! A kiss is a VERY different sign of love than simple happiness at the appearance of beauty - a kiss has a depth that goes far beyond sight. It does not require seeing because it KNOWS. It does not require hearing because it UNDERSTANDS. It has feeling and drive and breath and life!!!! A kiss is alive with the Holy Spirit!

It may be true that a rose by any other name may smell just as sweet, but a kiss will never simply be JUST the physical action of kissing. It is the unity of two individuals, a sign of a complete focus on another person, living and breathing with them in that moment. It is a moment of ecstasy and joy at the beauty of God, a moment of complete and utter vulnerability and trust, placing one's whole self at the feet of the beloved. How much more so the "Kiss of Christ" in the Eucharist?? For, if His Church is His Bride, and Mary Our Mother is Christ's new Eve, then we are certainly heirs to the title of "bride of Christ"!!!

And if the kiss is such a powerful metaphor for our relationship with Christ, imagine how much more so it is important to our relationships with other children of Christ! It is not something to be quickly bastardized, but rather something to be held sacred! It looks for the Christ in someone, brings out the Christ in someone, when a kiss is received and given passionately and in His Love. It turns something that may be just a fun fling of a thing into a deeply connecting act that brings us closer to God. And when we don't find God in the kiss, it troubles us deeply, because even if we don't realize it at first, we are looking for LOVE when we kiss. And God is love!!! :) (There is a reason why people - women AND men - are endlessly fascinated by sappy romantic movies in which the main characters finally kiss at the end. Women, take this as license to feel free to be sentimental, girly, and romantic, and expect to be treated like a princess by a man you will love and forgive endlessly.) ;) Our God loves us and wishes us to want Him in the same way that He wants us - fully and completely, no reservations. So our kiss is the love shared back to a God who watches us always with longing and love, with heartfelt patience for our simple "I do," waiting for a glance from our wandering eyes, waiting for the action to prove the steel resolve of our words.

May this day we realize that the entire mystery of the universe, of the Trinity, of our lives and of our God, is summarized in the simplicity of a three letter sentence: God is love, or I love you (take your pick - both represent the Father (God/I), Son (love/you), and Holy Spirit (is/love)). May today our hearts open up to the presence of God, and not only rejoice in the love of the Savior, but return that love back to Him! May we love our God so passionately that our lives become eclipsed by focus on Him! May our hearts speak through our actions, and our actions reflect our hearts full of the love of Christ!!! May our eyes never wander from the source of all Goodness, Glory, Honor, and Praise, Our Lord, Jesus Christ!!!

Love in Christ through Mary,
Christina :)

Laughter really is the best medicine!!

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice! Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."

As if there was any doubt of the joy-filled, gracious life God intends for us, this passage exemplifies His ability to provide! We are to rejoice at all times, because God has sent His Only Son to die and be raised for us to bring us to new life. What is there to be sad about?? We have already been saved, and are loved through death!

Sometimes life feels so complicated, our world's problems seem so complicated and insurmountable - and yet, God has already conquered sin and death - what else is there to fear?! We have only to offer up the rubber-band-ball of problems to God, and He will make for us out of that complicated mess a shining robe of glory!! For, "[we] can do all things through Christ who strengthens [us]" (Philippians 4:13).

I had a dream last night in which two monsters that were chasing this group of girls were turned into comical caricatures of themselves when the girls started laughing at them and taking pictures of them. All I could think about when I woke up is how true this is of Satan! We can take two approaches to the evil that surrounds us in our lives: we can either take it to heart, agonize over it, and not allow ourselves to know that God to deal with it in His time; or, we can LAUGH at it, knowing that good has already won the battle over evil, that "we have nothing to fear but fear itself," to quote FDR.

Have you ever heard the expression, "if I didn't laugh about it, I would be crying?" It contains more than a small grain of truth. When we trip over something in public or say something embarrassing, we laugh to cover up the awkwardness of the moment. And all of a sudden, the GREAT PUBLIC SHAME of tripping becomes something comical, something that we laugh about and can relate to friends afterward as a FUNNY story. We are blessed in that we do not have to worry about anything with God, because our lives have already been spoken for, and God's heart has already opened itself up in Divine Mercy to all of us!! There is no shame, no embarrassment in Him!

Satan's power in this world comes completely from his own pride. Most people most often sin not because of an intention to fight against God, but rather because it is easier than giving up one's own self-pride, or easier than doing what God wants us to do. But, laughter at oneself is the ultimate sign of humility; that we don't even take ourselves seriously enough to think that anything we do, any sin we commit could be completely harmful in creating the Kingdom of God. God's Love is SO much greater than ourselves that we are offered all the good parts of building the Kingdom of God, without any of the blame for mistakes we make. It's like our entire lives are the bonus section on a test, and all the points we amass are extra from the "100%" God has already given our tests!

If we laugh at the evil around us that tries to draw us into sin, we show confidence in our loving God who has conquered sin and death. We show that sin has no power over us anymore, and that it is laughable, like our own sinful natures. The true people we are shines through in our love of Christ and devotion to Him. Like the Bible says, "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you" (James 4:8). We are never far removed from God; we are kept close to Him through the Sacraments - especially with frequent reception of the Eucharist and Confession. We are given every opportunity to draw near to Him - through hardships, through confusion and pain, through happy and joyful times. He is always with us, and we are in Him as His Church.

This is why it is comical to think of a being who is shadow, a being who cannot even touch us, as having power over us. Satan is no more than a fleeting temptation, a vague emptiness and a dangerously evil enemy. But, God has already won the fight. And laughter is the cry of victory over an enemy who would have us become paralyzed with fear. Satan would LOVE to convince us of some bigger, better situation or concept - anything to draw our focus off of God! Do not let him fool you - there is nothing that Satan could ever do to a child of God that God could not forgive! Even Judas, who betrayed Jesus, would have been forgiven had he turned to God and asked forgiveness of Him. Instead, Judas gave into temptation and turned away from God. This is not to say that he should have taken his sin of betrayal lightly and laughed at it, but rather that he could have sought forgiveness had he been humbled enough to realize God's power and greatness.

Now, we should not all go out and think that Satan is comical. He is pure and complete evil, with not even a drop of good, so nobody should ever let their guard down against temptation. But the beauty and light of God shining into the dark corners of our world illuminates all that would otherwise be scary and unknown, and makes it known to us. God's light touches all corners of the earth, and Satan has nowhere to hide. In that vein of thought, it is laughable imagining such a sinister being forced into the light and STILL being DELUDED ENOUGH to pretend to remain in darkness. Because nothing escapes the light of God's Truth.

May today be a time for rejoicing in God and in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, confident in the Word and Truth of God's light! May we always draw nearer and nearer to God through prayer and sacrifice, being molded and shaped into the people we truly are by the constant process of shearing off our sinful nature! May we react to God's sometimes painful working in our lives not with the agony of pain, but rather with the laughter of being relieved of our sins, and of gratitude for God's Goodness and hope in His Glory! May we offer up the tangled web of the problems of the world to our God, with the confidence of knowing that He will fix them in His time! May our hearts always rejoice by focusing on the Goodness of God rather than the absence of good (evil), and may we, like the Virgin Mary, allow Christ into our hearts and souls, where He will reside with us until the end of time!

Love in Christ through Mary,
Christina :)