What a consolation to the
Heart of the Father Abraham must have been. I don’t know if
there’s any greater consolation we can give to God than to
Trust Him...because when we trust Him, we’re acknowledging
Him for who He is, when we don’t trust Him, we’re imagining
Him for something He is not, as one who has limits, as one
whose love and mercy has boundaries. Love is expressed
perfectly in Trust.
We heard in the first
reading today that Abraham was a man who hoped against hope;
a man that trusted God in the face of what seemed
impossible. Hoping against hope means
looking at a seemingly hopeless situation and still hoping.
It means opening your eyes and seeing the mountain in front
of you…and then raising your eyes still higher to the
maker of the mountains and
saying, “I can’t climb this, but I know you can bring me
over. Let it be done.”
And it seems to me
that’s precisely how the Lord
works. We look at the lives of the Saints we look at the
Scriptures we see in our own faith journey -- the Lord is
always calling us higher, we give Him all kinds of reasons
why what He’s asking or what we’re facing is too hard, and
when we finally step out in faith – He takes us there…that’s
His pedagogy and its so different than our own. We tend to
look at the mountain and cower in fear, frantically try to
search for a way to get around it, to heal ourselves, to
expand our own hearts past our weaknesses, to beat this sin
we’ve battled for so long by trying harder, until finally on
the edge of despair we collapse at His feet and admit “I
can’t beat this…I need a Savior…and it’s then that the dawn
from on high breaks upon us, and we find ourselves on the
other side of the mountain, healed, restored, more fully
alive than ever before.
The good student is the one
who assimilates the lessons being taught and grows from
them. And of all the saints we can learn this most
important lesson of trust and hope from there is none
greater than the Immaculate One. The
one who stood at the foot of the Cross – the darkest,
deepest, and seemingly most hopeless situation – and said
“Fiat,” allowing herself and her Son to be pierced.
She stood, hoping against hope.
And she could only stand in
hope at the Cross because she remembered that from her first
fiat at the Annunciation, through every daily fiat that she
made to the Lord she was never disappointed, she never hoped
in vain, she was always gloriously surprised…She always
ended up saying the same thing in the end… “My soul
proclaims the greatness of the Lord…my whole being exults in
God my Savior,” and so will we…because He never let her down
and He’ll never let us down. When we hope against hope,
we’re hoping against what seems impossible, but more
importantly we’re hoping in Him for whom Nothing Is
Impossible.
hoping
in Him for whom Nothing Is Impossible
