For a few moments during Holy Week ponder this amazing fact….
Jesus Christ, the crucified and Risen Christ loves you and accepts you as you are.
You don’t have to change; you don’t have to do anything.
You have his love here and now, in this place.
Do you believe that God loves you so much that Jesus died so that you and I could be reconciled with God?
His death was the ultimate expression of his love for you.
He gave up everything He loved so that He might gain your love.
Nothing will ever separate us from God’s love again.
The essence of this exercise is to accept the fact that Christ loves us unconditionally, that he is love incarnate. How can this incredible fact not transform us? At times we are too afraid to let God’s love pour out upon. God’s will be done yes, but God’s love may seem too scary, we may feel too unworthy. We are but it really doesn’t matter! God will never demand that we love him as much in return, we cannot. All he asks is that we accept his unconditional love, unconditionally.
Think of St Paul’s passage to the Romans 8:31-38
“God did not keep back his own Son, but he gave him for us. If God did this, won't he freely give us everything else? 33If God says his chosen ones are acceptable to him, can anyone bring charges against them? 34Or can anyone condemn them? No indeed! Christ died and was raised to life, and now he is at God's right side, [e] speaking to him for us. 35Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble, suffering, and hard times, or hunger and nakedness, or danger and death? 36It is exactly as the Scriptures say, "For you we face death
all day long.
We are like sheep
on their way
to be butchered."
37In everything we have won more than a victory because of Christ who loves us. 38I am sure that nothing can separate us from God's love--not life or death, not angels or spirits, not the present or the future, 39and not powers above or powers below. Nothing in all creation can separate us from God's love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord!”
