Living with a handicapped mother, I learned that the many people who suffer from various health related burdens hate one comment that they receive from those who are well meaning: “God does not give you more than you can handle.”
If we look carefully in the second reading, this is not what St. Paul says. St. Paul tells us to bear our share of the Gospel with the strength that comes from God. What is the difference between the two sentences? Simple.
Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent by Frbob Carr on Mixcloud
One says that God gives you a burden that is tough but you have the strength to handle it, the other says that because of your devotion to the Gospel you will bear many burdens, which you can you do only by relying on the strength that comes from God. As you can see, they are two different messages. The former is actually not in a biblical teaching, the latter is.
If we are going to live our faith, we can expect difficult times. If you are going to be a Catholic parent, expect it to be difficult. If you are going to be a Catholic in the workplace, expect it at times to be difficult. If you are going to live your Catholic faith to the fullest, expect at times to be difficult. Expect whatever your difficulty that you need to rely on God for the strength to carry your cross.
One question may be, why should it be difficult? The answer is simple, if you are truly going to live your Catholic faith, then you will find yourself defending your faith or just living your life differently than others.
Teens are going to lose friends because they choose not to go along with the crowd. Hence why we need a youth group for teens to associate with like minded teens.
Workers may be ostracized for making time for mass attendance when bosses want them working.
Register for free and receive all the news from the blog http://blog.cancaonova.com/catholicismanew/ … by email http://goo.gl/2TeJHo
Parents may struggle to keep their children tied to mass, when they don’t want to go. Even parents don’t want to go and need to set an example for their children.
It may then get even worse. Maybe you have the co-worker who has a lifestyle that is not in conformity with Catholic morality and sees you as a threat and makes your life miserable. That is a terrible burden to live with, and one that you need the strength that comes from God.
There are many burdens that we suffer for the gospel and each of them requires us to rely on our God for the strength to endure them.
Whether it is a disability, financial struggles, family, or work struggles, relationship issues, we all struggle with them in one form or another and how we respond to them may be driven by our Catholic faith or our choice not to live our Catholic faith. However, if we choose the harder road, which is the road to holiness, we cannot live it without relying on God.
The fruit of us relying on God will transform us. That is because, especially in financial matters, we have to not only rely on God, but may have to learn from Him how we must change our ways in order to address financial matters. For example, you will learn that you have no place in a long line waiting for the latest smartphone on the first day of its release.
Patrons waiting to enter computer store to purchase the latest smartphone on the day of its release in a US mall. Photo/Fr. Robert J Carr
When we rely on God and draw our strength on Him, that becomes transformational. He transforms us through the difficulty. We find that He will guide us in difficulties, but will force us to change our way of doing things. An example, if you rely on God through financial difficulties, He will help you through them, but will force you to change your spending habits.
This also helps us to evangelize our faith. We live a different way relying on God, and He leads us to change so that we may show others another way of being. So we have difficult times so that others may see our difficult times, how we go through them as they do through their own. We begin to ask the question about what we need versus what we want. We need to see our need to rely more on God and to trust in his ways. This leads us to trust more, to be open to others more as we rely on our God to lead us through difficult ways.
Drawing our strength on God leads us closer to Him because it shows us how to trust in Him in our most difficult times, when we are most afraid, when we are most disappointed, when we are most frustrated, when we are most in pain. Trust, trust, trust in His strength leads us to holiness and love. However, holiness is a skill. When we rely on God, we grow in skill of living our faith. We learn to praise God for all things, to rely on God at all times and to trust even when all goes wrong.
When we do that we become powerful tools of evangelizing doing God’s will. That is our mission.
Never tell anyone God never gives you more than one can handle. He always does, so that we can rely on Him.
God bless you
Fr. Robert J Carr
Fr. Carr is an alliance member of the New Song Community (Canção Nova). He is the pastor of Holy Trinity Quincy, MA and is the editor of this blog. He is the author of several books the Latest is Lukewarm No More which is also available on Kindle. You may also find his videos in English at http://www.youtube.com/stbenedictsomerville. He also has a regular radio program on WebRadio Canção Nova. Which he podcasts on Mixcloud and here on Catholicismanew.