Lukasotacon331
Member
God has two ways of making us realize what we do not want to realize - that we need Him in weakness. It simply makes us extremely weak and defenseless, even crippled.
Or He moves away from us, making us, like children who have lost sight of their father, run after Him in a dark corridor, the stronger and more determined the more He becomes invisible. And here I quote Jean Vanier again - it's a secret, but something like this happened to Thérèse of Lisieux when she was about 10 years old.
She was experiencing severe psychosis. I have no doubt that it was a kind of psychosis: as she lay on the bed in a room with other people, she could not open her eyes. As the room emptied, she opened her eyes. So she was afraid of bonds with people, she was afraid of establishing relationships - a terrible fear that resulted from the fact that as a child, Teresa experienced several painful breakups and spiritual mutilations.
As a four-year-old child, she was taken to a wet nurse, who died a few years later. Her mother died, and later her beloved sister Paulina left home. She was therefore filled with great fear. She couldn't make contacts because she was constantly losing someone she loved. So she was afraid of any bonds, lest the pain would reappear. That's why she escaped to the psychotic world.
It was only when she looked at the statue of the Madonna and saw its smile that she discovered that she was loved. But she needed this experience. Much later, about a year and a half before her death, she experienced another breakup - she felt abandoned by God. We all know this already. She doubted His existence, but now she could bear this abandonment.
Previously, she had to use a psychotic cover, a hiding place, but not anymore, because grace has revealed itself. We can see, then, that God's presence allows us to endure suffering and overcome it to joy, to resurrection. Previously, Teresa could not bear the suffering and was sinking into a deepening psychosis because she was extremely sensitive.
At the end of her life she said: "I believe because I want to believe, not because I want to believe." When you descend into the depths of darkness, faith ceases to be a feeling and becomes a thin thread that holds you together. There was some deepest desire in this woman. It was love that made Teresa believe.
And once again we are reminded of the patriarch Jacob - simultaneously experiencing darkness and mutilation - or Paul, who was crippled by blindness and suffered a fall and weakness. Finally, Moses, who had many doubts about his value and suitability as a leader.
Do you remember what he said when God called him to be a leader? He said, “I am a man who has difficulty speaking. My mouth is hard” – this is what he said to God in the third chapter of the Book of Exodus. The Hebrew word used there is "heavy," which also means praise given to God. “Heavy” means both glory and something hard, heavy.
He says: "I have a heavy mouth" and at that moment he had an epiphany because he uttered a word that means: give glory to God. God will reveal His glory through his mutilation. It is unknown whether he was a stutterer, had inhibitions, or simply had a lisp. There was something wrong with his mouth.
And God says: "You will be the exponent of the word of God." You, because you are the weakest at speaking. Moses was ashamed to speak, he had a complex. Aaron spoke for him, but it also happened that Moses spoke and God expressed the most important words for Israel through whom? Because of a weak, fragile stutterer.
You don't have to be afraid of anything that is weak in your life, that is your complex, your weakness. There was a lot of night and darkness in Moses' life. You remember, right after God called him as a leader, in the fourth chapter of the Book of Exodus there is a mysterious text that surprises many people to this day.
Why did it happen that after calling Moses and giving him charismas, God gave him a staff with which he did extraordinary things, gave him the power to heal, his hand was covered with leprosy and he was cleansed, God gave him the word, the ability to speak, and suddenly Moses stopped in a certain place to spend the night - that is, darkness came in his life - and then the Lord met him.
The old midrashim say that he was met by the Archangel Uriel, God's avenger, and it is written in the Bible that the Lord wanted to kill him. God wanted to take Moses' life. His wife Zipporah took a sharp stone, cut off the foreskin of Moses' son, and touched it to Moses' feet.
Legs in biblical language is a euphemism for genitals. God calls Moses earlier and then wants to take his life. Why? If we wanted to literally understand these events, we have no choice but to throw the Bible into a corner and go out and be scandalized by God - unless we discover the depth of this experience.