Meditation with Fulton Sheen III

The end of an old year makes one hear the injunction God gave Moses: " You will not tread that way again." Though time indeed cannot be turned back, the faults and failings of time are not fixed and unalterable. Divine Padon can make them non-existent. Magdalenes can have fires that burned inward changed into fires that burn upward; Paul's who hate can learn to burn with zeal. The essence of the Gospel is the blessing of the second chance."

Bishop Fulton Sheen

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Reflection

At times we tend to see our Saints as skating through life and fail to realise that they are just like us, struggling at times inconsistent and also doubtful. The Saints were not born 'saintly' it is a choice they made daily to live holy lives, to choose virtue over vice and to face the struggles within themselves and outside of themselves. What they did not allow to happen was to be overcome by adversity, instead they turned adversity into a challenge in that they could see and recognise the hand of God at work.

Edith Stein through her teens did not believe in God and instead relied on her intellect alone to solve the deepest issues which affects all people. Her study of philosophy and her vast intelligence was no encumbrance to God and He moved within the soul of Edith and convicted her of the Truth through the works of that great spiritual master, Teresa of Avila. God moved Edith to her very depths, for at the core of Edith was a love of the unvarnished and naked Truth. Edith not only grew to love God she was also converted to the Catholic faith thereby shaking the very foundations of her whole life as she left her Jewish roots and embraced Catholicism.

We also see through the words of Bishop Fulton Sheen the 'God of the Second Chance'. What this essentially means is that no matter what wrong or even sinful choices we make in life we are not beyond His Mercy, nor are we far from His sight. That leaves us no excuse to continue a wrongful pattern, for God through the Sacraments of the Church restores and makes all things new not for His sake but for ours.

Reflection written by Marie