I Take off the MASK!

Grief and Healing - Download the eBook

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” – Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

The deepest wounds of the soul are healed only by compassion. By compassion, we do not merely love from a distance or have pity by looking down upon others. Compassion compels us to share in the very pains experienced by our brother or sister in need. We touch their wounds, and their wounds become our own. We listen with our hearts, we enter into the darkness where they are, and we walk together to find the way back home.

People do not merely need to be clothed, they need to be embraced with love. A love that enters into their own fears and frailty, a love that suffers with them and stays with them through their darkest hour.

To love is to bear the wounds of our beloved. It is to hurt where they hurt, to weep where they weep, and to make ourselves vulnerable so we can strengthen those who faint.

Christ himself carried our sins in his body to the cross… It is by his wounds that you have been healed. – 1 Peter 2, GNT

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. – John 15, WEBBE

To love is to find happiness, that kind of happiness that could never be bought. It is to live beyond the self, to be set free, to find who you really are.

When you love, you become less and less afraid, and more and more courageous. You find the courage to do the things you never thought could ever be done.

You become so full of life that you can’t help but overflow with joy! You become a vessel of the Most High and a channel of His grace.

Soon, you notice the change within you as your wounds begin to heal and as every dark and bitter part of your soul become filled with light. Love transforms you into light and you become like a candle glowing for others to see.

You know the cost, but you burn ever more fervently. You offer everything that you are. Love consumes you and you know that there could never be anything more beautiful than that!

For the little I have understood during these years, I can tell you only that Love is the center of our life. Because we are born from an act of love, we live in order to love and in order to be loved, and we die in order to know the true love of God. The goal of our life is to love and to be always ready to learn how to love others as only God is able to teach you. Love consumes you, but it is beautiful to die consumed precisely as a candle that goes out only after it reaches its goal. Whatever you do will have sense only if you see it in terms of eternal life. – Chiara Corbella Petrillo, A Witness to Joy

We are all lepers. Even if we hide our sores under the finest clothes, and lie to each other, to convince ourselves that we are healthy and happy; Forgetting the only real reason we should be happy: that God loves us, despite the sores we hide. God loves us so much that He became one of us, and was nailed naked to the cross, showing His sores to the world. -St. Francis (Clare and Francis Film)

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman taken in adultery. Having set her in the middle, they told him, “Teacher, we found this woman in adultery, in the very act. Now in our law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. What then do you say about her?” – John 8, WEBBE

To be caught guilty and worthy to be condemned is different from being falsely accused. When we are accused falsely, we at least have our conscience on our side, and we have faith that God Himself would defend us as His own.

But there are times when the accusations against us are true. We may have made some mistakes, we may have made some selfish decisions that have hurt others along the way. And when we are accused of such things, all that we can feel is utter shame and guilt for the wrong we have done.

It’s as though we are being dragged naked and without honor for all the world to see our disgrace. We may want to hide and run away, but we are bound. We want to change our awful past, but the harshness of those who accuse us want to crucify us to that very moment when we are most ugly and detestable.

During such times, let us look towards Him who understands all our misery and pain. Like the woman caught in adultery, let us humble ourselves at His feet and await His compassion. For He is not Lord only of the past but of our eternal destiny. He is not Justice only but Love and Mercy itself.

Reach out to Him who understands that we are but dust, to Him who suffered rejection from men, despised, afflicted and considered a plague.

He will cloth you with dignity and wash away your sins. He will take away your shame. He will heal the wounds of your soul and restore you to everlasting life!

He has no good looks or majesty.
When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised
and rejected by men,
a man of suffering
and acquainted with disease.
He was despised as one from whom men hide their face;
and we didn’t respect him.
Surely he has borne our sickness
and carried our suffering;
yet we considered him plagued,
struck by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
The punishment that brought our peace was on him;
and by his wounds we are healed.
-Isaiah 53, WEBBE

I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, the power, and the Kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ has come; for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night. – Revelation 12, WEB

Who is it that accuses and brings false charges against you? That troubles you and wearies you and points out every wrong and imperfect thing he could find in you? That brings before you again and again your past disgrace, your every folly, your bitter shame? Who is it that wants to humiliate you and discourage you and suck out every breath of hope that is still left in you? Who is it that wants you to be damned?

Certainly, not God.

For though God is just and holy, and has nothing to do with any wickedness or sin, He loves you and desires only your good. He came not condemn, but to save and to give hope, to give light where there is darkness, life where there is death.

He is the voice of justice, but He is ever also the voice of mercy and infinite love! Our repentance is not one therefore that should bring us to despair, but to hope, and to trust in the One who never gives up on His children.

Whenever you hear the voice that curses you to despair, cast it away! Go forth at once into the presence of Him whose mercy is boundless and whose love for you knows no end.

“The spirit of God is a spirit of peace, and also in the case of grave sin, it makes us feel tranquil sorrow, humble, confident, and this is due precisely to His mercy. The spirit of the demon, on the contrary, excites, exasperates, and makes us in our sorrow feel something like anger against ourselves, whereas our first charity must be to ourselves, and so if certain thoughts agitate you, this agitation never comes from God, who gives tranquility, being the Spirit of Peace.” – Padre Pio

In order that you may know at least some of My pain, imagine the most tender of mothers who has great love for her children, while those children spurn her love. Consider her pain. No one is in a position to console her. This is but a feeble image and likeness of My love. – Jesus (Divine Mercy in My Soul, 1447)

God’s love can also be likened to a mother’s love, a mother that cares deeply for her children and would do everything in her power to protect them.

It is a love that is willing to give all and to sacrifice all for the sake of her children. It is a love that will never give up no matter what the cost.

Who can truly understand the depths of a mother’s love who bore her child in her own womb? Who can feel her anguish when her child is lost and away from her love? To a mother, the most painful suffering is not her own but of her child’s, and the greatest disappointment is whenever any of her children refuses to receive her love.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often I would have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! – Matthew 23, WEB