Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. James 4: 8
Jesus was wholly God and wholly human. He cured the sick, raised the dead and taught us what God is really like. At the same time, he felt the pains of human flesh and experienced the sorrows of human existence.
He was God, Who had consented to be fully human, and by becoming human, he consented to feel hunger, loneliness, resentment, fear, sorrow and shame. When Jesus touched His finger to a hot coal, His finger blistered the same as yours or mine.
He needed the companionship and fellowship of other people and when He needed them the most, other people let Him down. He had followers, but His followers never understood Him. He had friends, but most of them were after what He could give them. They wanted healing from sickness, and miracles.
He sought justice and was murdered by the priests of His own faith.
In all His earthly life, the only person who really knew and completely loved Him for Himself was His mother. But to fulfill His mission, He had to walk away from the safety of her love and go out among the people who were, as He said, “a faithless generation” who sought “after a sign” or a miracle or a healing or a really big show.
Evil — Satan — swirled about Him every day of His life. His mother faced ostracism and death by stoning as a consequence of her “yes.” Herod was so intent on killing Him during His infancy that He murdered all the baby boys in the whole area in hopes that one of them would be Him.
He spent His first 30 years in obscurity, a carpenter who was a carpenter’s son in a small village on the outskirts of a tiny conquered nation.
Jesus was a manual laborer. He was not wealthy or powerful. He was born in a stable. His first bed was a stone manger used to feed livestock.
He was an immigrant. His family fled in the middle of the night to another country to save His infant life.
Jesus lived His life under the shadow of great evil. He was at the bottom of an oppressive society governed by ruthless men who had no regard for the lives of the people they governed. He labored and sweated and earned his bread by hard work and the craft of His hands.
Scriptures don’t tell us when, but at some point, Joseph died, and He became the support of His mother.
Jesus lived the daily life of ordinary people, and, from what we can tell, He cherished the peace of it.
Every moment of Jesus life is a revelation of God. When God entered into our finite existence as one of us, He didn’t come on a flaming chariot. He didn’t choose to be a king. He didn’t become a priest. He had no wealth, no palace, no earthly power over other people.
God didn’t blast His way into our existence. He came gently, obscurely, quietly … with the permission of a young girl.
Satan tried mightily to stop Jesus. First, He used the law to attack the unborn Jesus by attacking His mother. If Joseph had wanted, He could have had Mary stoned. At first, Joseph actually did reject her. Rather than having her killed, he decided to “put her away quietly.”
We don’t teach enough what that must have been like for her. I think it was her first Gethsemane, her first taste of the hideous emotional suffering of being the isolated target of hate, discrimination and undeserved shame.
Mary could have said “no.” She could have backed out. She could have aborted Jesus. People did that then. She could have gone off somewhere, given birth to Jesus and left Him exposed to die. People did that too.
Satan tried to kill Jesus before He was born with all the force of misogyny and hate that the culture into which He was born directed at young girls.
Satan tried to kill Jesus when He was an infant. Later, in the desert, Satan tempted Him with all the riches, pomp and power of the world. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, Satan constantly used the Pharisees and priests to bait and attack Him. And, ultimately, He used betrayal of one of his closest friends, those same priests and a cowardly politician to beat, torture, mock and murder Him.
Jesus knows what it’s like to live in a society whose leaders give lip service to God while mocking Him with their lives. He knows how scandalizing and alienating it is when the clergy who are supposed to be your shepherds feed you to the wolves.
He understands how it feels when people you love follow satan down the path of lies, cruelty and violence.
Jesus knows what you are going through right now in this time of dissolution, evil and hate.
God became human to teach us about Himself and give us a way out of this cycle of futility.
Satan does not want us to see that Way or to follow it.
If you are feeling overwhelmed by the evil that has overtaken our country, do not despair. If you are alienated by bishops who follow the money instead of Christ, by priests and preachers who preach ballot box salvation based on a few select issues while abrogating the authority of the plain teaching of the commandments and the Gospels, do not feel alone.
You are not the first. God Himself took on human form and walked this same way before you.
Jesus understands what you are a feeling. He does not condemn you, and He will not abandon you.
There were times when He was overwhelmed, too; times when He had to stop, back away, and spend time alone with God.
If you are feeling overwhelmed by the evil that is coming down on all of us, know that He understands.
Do what Jesus did. Take a step back and spend time in prayer. Go late at night and sit with the Host. You don’t have to pray in those moments. You don’t even have to think. Just be there with Him, and float in His Presence.
Pray from your heart. Tell Him about every doubt, fear and moment of rage you experience. He already knows. But telling Him opens you to grace and healing.
Go to mass and confession. Even if your priest is a MAGA nut job, the graces of the sacraments will still flow from God, through Him and into you. Priests are conduits for the graces of the sacraments, but they are not the source. God is the source of the grace.
If you are too alienated to go to church, then turn to Christ directly. I know this because I have lived it: He won’t turn you away.
Scripture tell us Draw near to God and He will draw near to you, and it’s true.
David wrote from the pit of his own murderous sin, You do not desire sacrifice, or I would bring it. A broken and contrite heart you will not deny.
God doesn’t ask perfection of us. He wants sincerity.
Jesus is God Who lived as one of us.
Don’t let these dark times separate you from the love of Christ. He understands everything you are feeling. And He loves you.
David’s prayer of repentance that I quoted is Psalm 51: 16a, 17b
