Can you bear to hear it now?

“I still have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now.” -John 16:12

 

If, when I was 25 years of age, if it was told to me how desperately I depend on God every day, I might have acknowledged it as a pithy moralism, but not something that I would have taken too seriously. But the years have shown me that people telling me something is far different than being shown them and having to work them in my own life.

 

When I was 25, if someone had told me that I would become a Catholic priest I would have laughed them out of the room. So, it is true, if someone had told me that I would work with prisoners...no, that I would be capable of showing compassion to prisoners who committed heinous crimes, I would not have believed it.

 

We can be told things that are hard to hear. Jesus said many things to us, go back and read the Beatitudes and put them into practice, as only one example. When we hold the teachings of Jesus up against the truth of our human experience, do we not see the true nature of our need. And this need is both revealed and worked out through the Holy Spirit who will guide us in all truth.

 

What is the truth that you cannot bear to admit right now?

 

Bring it before God and ask for the truth about it to be revealed to you, and the Holy Spirit will guide you through it one day at a time.