I want to ask you a simple question. It is in fact a simple question. Three words. It may be that you don’t find the answer so simple!!! Let’s see: Who are you?
Maybe there’s an easy first response, telling me your name… but on a deeper level, how do you answer? If you don’t know or if you don’t know how to respond, whether you realize it or not, you are going to be susceptible to confusion, fear, all sorts of manipulation by others, and a sort of grasping at a kind of false freedom that can really wind up hurting you terribly; for example, getting you trapped in a terrible relationship or an addiction...
A Christian has a profoundly simple and true answer that is the key to true freedom: “I am a child of God!” … I am a Child of God. I don’t need to pretend to be anyone else. In profound and simple humility, I just need to live my vocation to be a Child of God, loving and responding to Him Who has loved me into life to become the person He created me to be!
These days at Mass we continue hearing from the Sermon on the Mount. As Moses, God’s prophet, transmitted the Law from Mount Horeb, now, on another Mount, Jesus, God With Us Himself, gives us the New Law for the Children of God. Today He tells us not to pretend to be holy by showing off good deeds and noisy prayer! Rather, He wants the real thing, that true holiness that comes from living our lives as this relationship with Our Father that frees us for simply and truly loving others as Jesus loves them.
This is the part of the Sermon where Jesus teaches the crowd to pray the Our Father. When we understand the Hail Mary, it’s a way of letting our Mother Mary lead us into this simple yet beautiful relationship… Or we can simply repeat over and over, Jesus I trust in You!
However the Spirit calls you to do so, I really recommend taking some moments very often, in solitude or with your loved ones, to return to that prayer where, in Christ, you remain in peace as the Father’s precious child. Maybe you are hurting or confused… All the more reason to return and return to the Father… Just keep saying “Jesus, I trust in You”.
You are a child of God!
