Thoughts on weakness

If the God who became one of us saw the necessity of accepting weakness and suffering in order to be fully human, doesn’t that tell us something about what we’re meant to do? It’s easy to accept this intellectually, but hard to live it. We’d much rather find a way to live the spiritual life while keeping the scary parts of our past locked away. For many of us, acknowledging and accepting all of our past may be one of the hardest things we ever do, especially if we have things buried so deep that they are not immediately within reach. But the insights of psychology, the experience of Jesus and the saints, and the stories of the Bible seem to suggest that this is a necessary step. Indeed, I don’t believe that it’s possible to advance in the spiritual life without it. If we truly desire to know what the God who loves us desires for our lives, we not only need to pray, but we also need to be able to look at the entire story of our lives.

—from the book Already There: Letting God Find You, by Mark Mossa, SJ