September 26 – Doing What Cannot be Done

We must take care in this life which we have been given in Christ that we do not confuse those things we must do but do not, with things we needn’t do because we can’t.

A word of explanation is in order.

There are so many things . . . one might say ALL THINGS . . . that are required of us in Christ that He Himself tells us we cannot do. Is it double-speak? We know it is not. Is it divine frustration? That is false thinking.

The Scripture tells us we must neither think nor acquit or ourselves as “mere men.” What then! If we read the Bible like the Sunday magazine supplement we might be nonplussed and put it aside, but we know in Cor Unum that the life we live is given that we might live by the faith of the Son of God Who loved us, and gave Himself for us. We know, further, that if we have not that life, we are not Christ’s own. Even further, our hope of heaven is THAT LIFE, for flesh and blood will not inherit the Kingdom of God, not on earth and certainly not in death.

We cannot change one hair from white to black or the other way around, and if food should disappear from our pantries, from supermarkets and from the earth, we could not eat. What we CAN and MUST do is trust the Father who feeds the birds of the air, who cannot even put their daily bread in a bread box, much less an aviary pantry. That trusting is something we CAN DO which MUST BE DONE, and our Spiritual lives abound with impossibilities which we must make sure we accomplish . . . because . . . what the branch cannot possibly achieve, the vine will most assuredly bring forth.


Carmelite nun
praying in her cell,
by permission