What Can We Claim as our Own?

"What we do for God is interesting, but what God does for us---

that's the whole story"

When I went to confession in Medjugore, that's what the priest said to me, and I have never forgotten it.  God is so good that He supports us in our great weaknesses.  Instead of saying, "Buck up, little cowboy, and be a man" (in the spiritual sense), He stoops down to our level and breathes into us His own strength and courage, of which we have none. 

When He sees how weak we are, He is moved with compassion and runs to help us, as does a mother when a toddler falls.  St. Paul says, "There is nothing we have not received, and that through no merits of our own, but through Jesus Christ."  So then how can we be "proud" of what we have achieved?  He is the beginning and the end of all our goodness, or all our strength.  There is nothing we can claim except our helplessness (Jer. 6:6-9).

Therese of Liseux said that she did not have the strength to climb the "rough stairway of sanctity," but that the good Jesus, seeing this child attempting to lift a foot toward the first step, graciously descended to carry her up.

Once, in prayer, I saw myself attempting to climb the last section of a mountain and reach the top.  Only the slope was extremely steep, and I kept slipping over and over on the loose rocks.  Suddenly, I was standing beside Jesus before the Father, who was saying to me, "Well done, good and faithful servant!"  "But I didn't..." I started to protest, when I glanced over at Jesus at my side. 

"Shhhh," He said, putting a finger to His smiling lips, with a twinkle in His eye.