Finding
God’s Strength in My Weakness
For quite a while now I’ve found
myself in the middle of a tense relationship between two extended family
members. Recently the situation has
escalated and because of my relationship to both of these people it is very
hard for me to be unaffected. As time
goes on it becomes clearer that one person is principally at fault, though of
course it’s never only one person’s fault.
Here is my dilemma: one of the two is
a practicing Catholic and the other is not.
I have given advice numerous times to the Catholic, but her efforts are
not being reciprocated. I am wary about
engaging the other since he has not asked my opinion and I am concerned,
because religion is already a touchy subject, that he will think I am
moralizing or picking on him, and use it as another reason to dismiss
Christianity.
It sounds like a rather juvenile
situation, and I suppose it is, but I suspect many people will find it
familiar. Everyone who is in a family,
especially one including in-laws, experiences the perils of being put in the
middle of family feuds, large or small.
And anyone interested in witnessing to Christ, especially among those
who have fallen away from the Faith and are defensive about it, knows it can be
very delicate.
This was on my mind one morning
recently as I was praying before Mass.
Providentially, the priest, in his homily, somehow spoke to exactly what
I needed to hear.
He said, “All we have to do is be kind
to people in truth. We don’t even have
to worry about how. God will take care
of that when the time comes if we keep our minds on Him. It really will all be all right if we put it
in Jesus’s Hands.”
I realized I had been walking on egg
shells for so long and strategizing about how to approach this person in an
attempt to help heal the rift without driving him away, that I began to dwell
on the situation, and my frustration with it, and pretty soon that turned to my
frustration with him, and anger, and judgment, and the rest.
Somehow I wasn’t able to just put it
in Jesus’s Hands and trust that all things work for the good of those who love
Him. This priest helped me to understand
that I didn’t need to dwell on what I should say or how I should say it (not
that some preparation would necessarily be totally unwise); what I needed to
dwell on was the Heart of Christ. If I
can do that, and fashion my own heart after His, He will give me the Grace to
be an authentic witness, and provide the words I need when I need them.
I realized also that I have to give
this situation more specifically to God in prayer. One important way that we sometimes forget we
can do that is by “offering it up.”
There is a story, true as far as I
know, of a priest who was visiting Pope John Paul II. He had a broken arm that he had injured in a
skiing accident. He knew the pope was
fond of skiing so he thought he would ask for a blessing for his healing. When he asked, Pope John Paul gave him the
blessing but also this admonition, “Do not waste your suffering.”
As Catholics we have the most complete
answer to the problem of suffering. We
know we can unite our suffering to Christ’s on the Cross and offer it as a most
powerful prayer.
So I will be offering my struggles
with a particularly annoying imperfection to God as a prayer for this
relationship in my family and in so doing, I can pray without ceasing as St.
Paul instructs, and trust also, as he says, that in my weakness is God’s
Strength. And most of all, I will try to
keep my eyes on Jesus so that when the time comes, He can speak words of
healing through me, in truth and in charity.
