I Am Holy?

In Jesus Name.

I am Holy? You have got to be kidding.

Isaiah 53:5, 11

God calls us TO BE HOLY. God, Our Creator, wants ultimate blessedness and joy for

us. He created us to share and manifest his glory. Sin is what de-humanizes us, causes us to be less whole, less human, and less joyful. But to strive TO BE HOLY, is to strive to be a whole person.

Say, switch on.

Switch on.

A holy life is what ultimately gives us joy - ultimate wholeness.

I have asked groups of children and adults if they want to be holy. Usually, hardly

anybody raises his or her hand. Some people shy away from holiness almost as if it is evil, thinking holiness will rob their freedom and individuality. Sometimes evil is even looked at as a friend.

Some people will admit that a little evil is good, just as long as one

is doing more good than evil. Before I was married and in the "game" of dating, many men and women found that "a little bad" was something that was sexy, mysterious, and alluring about those they wanted to date. Some people think that there is no such thing as evil - there are only wrong choices and actions due to stupid and ignorant choices.

In any case, these are considered amoral situations that provide an opportunity for people to learn and grow. Tell that to someone who has lost a loved to a heinous murder or has just been raped.

We must not let Satan fool us into thinking that evil either is a friend or does

not exist. Evil does exist, and no part of it is a friend (e.g., 9/11, holocaust).

What does sin look like? Have you seen it?

Can you pick it up and touch it, or even try to destroy it? (e.g., beer can, cigarette, gun - in themselves are they sin?)

Many people have a tendency to think of sin as something positive, that is something tangible, something you can point to and say that is sin. But sin is actually the absence of

good.

In the Book of Genesis, "God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good." [Gen. 1:31].

1 So what exactly is evil? There is physical evil, blindness for example, where the eye is absent of the goodness of sight. There is moral evil, abortion or lying for example, where the decision to do the right thing is absent of the good to protect innocent life or the truth, respectively. There is what is called original sin, where the sin of Adam has left all of humanity deprived of the original graces that perfected the human person’s original created nature (infused knowledge, absence of the inclination to sin, bodily immortality).

There is what is called personal sin where a person’s thought, word, or deed is knowingly thought, said, or done and is absent of the goodness of God’s will. If sin is absent of good, sin cannot be good for us. Its damage is that of destroying,

not creating, and what does grow is an abyss of emptiness in the presence of evil.

The consequences of sin keep us from a firm trust in God’s Mercy and hinder our ability to love like God loves - TO BE HOLY so that we can extend God’s Mercy to others - to share in this mission is also to share in his passion and death for the sake of extending Divine Mercy to others who need to experience it. It is for the sake of love.

Let me know take you to the path to ultimate wholeness.

The prophet Isaiah writes, "Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured…he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins. Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, By his stripes we were healed…through his

suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear." - [Is. 53:4, 5, 11].

I ask again, do you want to be holy?

Amen?

Are you willing to surrender to God’s love and his ways so that he can make you holy for sake of loving like God loves?

Amen!

Let us not just look and adore the cross, or even just walk closer to it. Now its time to step inside the Bible with your spiritual senses and feel his stripes so it can heal you.

To love like God is to suffer with him, also bearing the sins of others so that they too can open themselves to the salvific and healing power of cross. To love is to suffer because to love is to sacrifice and as Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, "one cannot give one’s heart away and keep it too.