Responding to Correction: How Do You Treat the Gift of Love?

My joy is gone, grief is upon me,
   my heart is sick.
Hark, the cry of my poor people
   from far and wide in the land:
‘Is the Lord not in Zion?
   Is her King not in her?’
(‘Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,
   with their foreign idols?’)
‘The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
   and we are not saved.’ (Jeremiah 8: 18-20)

After listening to the reading from the prophet Jeremiah, we can easily say, our reaction to correction has not changed. We do not like what we are doing with our lives, but just let someone try to suggest ways we might change – WATCH OUT! We refuse to listen. When Jeremiah called the people to repentance, they contrived a plot against him. He was intent upon their redemption but they were intent on his death. As their ancestors did to Jeremiah, so also did the contemporaries of Jesus. In every age, the People of God have repeatedly rejected the bearer of the message of salvation. The physician of souls offers His people a diagnosis of their ills and its proper remedy, but instead of taking the cure, they plot to murder the caregiver.

God created us in His image and likeness. He made us to share in the glory of His heavenly kingdom. He hand-crafted the earthen vessel into which He breathed the treasure of life. The devil had seduced Adam, Eve and, subsequently, all their offspring, blinding them to their unique destiny and hoping to bring about their ultimate ruin. If he could not possess eternal glory, neither would any creature of clay. By continuing to allure human beings with that which they could see and touch, the devil kept them blind to the grandeur that lay unseen at the core of their beings, in their very hearts. Snared in habitual sin and addictive behavior, human beings became more and more isolated from one another and insulated against the greatness that was theirs as the handiwork of God.

In this context, it might be good to consider the words of Deuteronomy: “The Lord, your God, is a consuming fire, a jealous God” (Deut. 4:24). God loves the works of His hands and jealously claims all He has made as His own. He would never freely allow a lesser being to subvert His rights as Master of the Universe, even if He needed to engage in mortal combat to reclaim that which He created and loves. To untie the thongs of those in slaved to sin, the Lord of Life was put in chains. To clothe His people in robes of glory, the Lord of Glory was stripped naked and brutally scourged. Having proclaimed the Good News of the Kingdom, He knew that by accepting rejection He would overcome the sin and darkness of His beloved People.

Saint Paul had an insight into the redeeming power of Love when he wrote the Corinthians. “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2Cor. 12:9). In order to break the yoke that had burdened His people, He chose to carry His cross to Calvary. In order to recreate the work of His hands, He breathed out His Spirit upon all who would gather beneath His cross. By emptying Himself, Jesus filled us with newness of life. By becoming weak, the Beloved Son strengthened all the children of God to live in the Kingdom of Light and Life. By becoming poor, God-With-Us enriched our poverty making us bearers of a heavenly treasure in earthen vessels. May we have the humility to accept Love's gift.

Father Jerome Machar, OSCO