Sweet Injuries: Holy Week Tuesday

Sweet injuries! Yet they at these themselves displease, And ‘gainst Him rise. 

Today, I am being bluntly personal, as truth does not afford us the poisonous, sweet nectar of pretentiousness. It does not grant us pardon from deadly, deceitful hypocrisy and it does not close its eyes to our gross disobedience and blatant negligence of what is honest, right and pure. Truth does not condone or conceal the devil’s wicked, foul ways in either you or me.

I pray that all who are as I am in this wise, wholly and solely with God the Holy Spirit, also crucify all of self and receive such transforming grace that we cannot but rise in spirit and in truth.  Amen!

May you find your personal in this also, and even in more than these. 

Sweet injury! Jesus has been nothing but faithful to me, when I have been so unfaithful and rude to Him, yet His love never for a moment waned, in thought, word or deed. As soon as I do not get from Him what I desire, to my own harm, that which is of the evil one, of sin, of what is totally anti-Jesus, I become so very angry and violent. I do not curse and swear like that chap I spoke about earlier in the week, but I secretly and silently shout praises to the devil and want Jesus crucified in me.

Here it is, Jesus has chosen to give me life today, to wake me up to His gift of sunshine, breathing in His air in my body, and because He does not rid me of my oppressing and debilitating pain, I turn on Him. O no! I do not curse Him and say all manner of evil against Him. No! But what I do is to become withdrawn, complain, murmur and act as one who has been abandoned by her Father, Lord and Master, who is the Great Physician. O how I disengage the Sacred Heart of Jesus!

Holy Spirit, it is all true. Forgive me please and save me. Amen!

Sweet injury! I pray for my family and me, asking Jesus to bring us closer to Him and the Father, to acknowledge Him in our lives and live pleasing lives to Him. But the opposite seems to be happening and I quietly despair, showing a God who does not really care about our life here on earth, much more our everlasting life. I begin to think of others whom He has so definitively and decisively snatched from the ways of evil, and how grace abounds in the lives of so many of whom I read and hear about. Right around me, I see how He is working on behalf of others, changing them and fitting them for the Kingdom, but not doing any of the kind for me. I become most desperate, anxious dissatisfied and highly disgruntled, believing that God does not want to save my family and me.

I don’t say these out aloud, but even as I continue to pray, my prayers are filled with hopelessness and doubts. I come to prayer, as coming to One who is not hearing me, so I have to be using every human effort, every tactic, wafting incense of tears, lighting censers of pleas, offering sacrifices of dirges, with sack-cloth and ashes dressing my emotions, to try and cajole God into hearing me and helping me. O how I desecrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus!

Holy Spirit, it is all true. Forgive me please and save me. Amen!

I have exposed myself to you, in some of the things which have been exposed to me by the Spirit of Truth. I know that He is kind and just and that He has done the same for you. Wherever our Lord’s truth has pierced our sides, hands or feet, fall before our forgiving, pardoning Jesus, for nothing that we suffer now, in spirit and in truth, compares with the sweet injures our Saviour and Master bore in His side, hands, feet, head and heart, for you and for me.

We have been brought down, to be raised up in His immaculate glory and splendour. What a wonderful caring, loving and most forgiving Father we have! It is because of Him, because He wants us, not just to persevere in this final week, but it is our Father’s pleasure to have us know victory, from day to day.

To ensure our victory, His Holy Spirit is revealing to us all, areas of sin and darkness, which will cause faith and trust to crash, as we approach the victory line, as it were. To avoid this, He is revealing these, so that we will see, be convicted and be so pierced, we will totally surrender to the Holy Spirit and unconditionally offer ourselves to Him. 

O Holy Father in heaven, we give You unsolicited thanks for Your present Holy Spirit, to show us our personal areas of concern that we may seek help and not be deceived about ourselves. Amen!