Healing

On Saturday April 26, 2008, Fr. John Campoli, I.V. Dei, shared with the participants of the Upper Room Prayer Group's Spring Day of Renewal the simple yet meaningful message that:

God is Love

Love is Mercy

Mercy is Forgiveness

Forgiveness Heals

He told the participants of the Upper Room Prayer Group's Spring Day of Renewal that when God created us, He created us in love to love; we are to mirror God's love. The question then is, "Why don't we?"

Fr. John noted that the answer to that question is rooted in the fact that we don't have a good understanding of ourselves. When we look at ourselves we should see an image of God, yet we don't. The perfect image of God's love is seen in Jesus (as in John 3:16). We should be images of Jesus' manner of love - unconditional.

God's love knows no boundaries. His love doesn't even require that we love him back. It exists in and of itself. We are called to be loving people. Love is the beginning of all other things of God.

Though existing solely because of God's love, even though that love is the root of all, we fail to accept God's love because we don't understand His mercy. As Ephesians notes of God's mercy:
God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love He had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ.(2:4-5). In Him we have redemption by His blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of His grace that He lavished upon us. (1:7-8)


His mercy is His Road block to hell. We are saved by grace, not by works that we accomplish here. Heaven cannot be earned. We can only go to Heaven because of His love for us; by the grace we gain by Jesus Christ.

Once we accept Jesus, we must live in His ways - we must follow the commandments and be merciful to others. This gives us the healing of everlasting life. This gives us the healing of everlasting life.

A real struggle with faith is a lack of trust. Why don't we trust Him? Our lack of trust comes from the fact that we don't fully believe He loves us. We must forgive ourselves, accept His love and be healed.