Spiritual Reflection 12/27/2020

One time a child came up to me and asked me what did God do before he created the universe? I didn’t know how to answer that, so I copied what the Pope said when he was stumped by the same question. He said before creating the world, God loved because God is love. After that answer he just looked at me and said, “Oh, okay,” and walked away. I got off easy that day!

One of the hardest things to accept and understand in our lives is God’s love for us. It is really hard to comprehend that He loves us personally, much more than we would ever know. It is hard to comprehend that we were created out of love, because sometimes God’s love appears lost in this fallen sinful world. We can get caught up in all the bad news of the world and think that He forgets about us. Think about all of the tragedies that happened this past year. Did we dwell in our anger towards God for allowing these things to happen? Do we think he must not love us for allowing it to happen? Do we think he must not be as all powerful as we thought because He didn’t stop it? If we perpetually think this way, we start to see Him as a Father that falls out of love with his children. We project onto God human flaws where He becomes a flawed Father in our eyes.

We cannot allow ourselves to fall into that trap, because when we do little by little we can get discouraged and angry. We begin to think that we are unloved and then hopelessness creeps in. God shows us his love in so many ways and today we see this in a very special way on the feast day of the Holy Family. We see that God loved us so much that he decided to walk with us.

On this Feast Day, know that Families have a special place with God. His love knocks on the door of families, and find families who love each other, who bring up their children to grow in their faith, and help them move forward in their relationship with Christ. In families there are huge opportunities to create and develop a society centered around truth, goodness, and beauty. In families, there are great opportunities to know that we are loved by one another despite real faults in each other. Families are one of the best ways to witness Our Father’s love for world.

This year my prayer for you is that all of our families have hearts open to God’s love because when we do, we will see that His Love is life-changing.

God Bless,
Fr. Windle