His Achy Breaky Heart

God aches for you.

Let that sink in for a minute. God aches for you.

I heard or read this somewhere, I can’t remember exactly where, but it stuck with me. It’s such a beautiful insight and thought about God’s love for us. So often we go through life, blaming God for the things that go wrong, or blame our shortcomings or lack of faith on Him or His Church. We sometimes look at the Catholic Church as some institution that just demands all these requirements that we are expected to do. We forget what those “rules” are for: they’re for us. It’s solely there for our benefit. God wants us to spend eternal life with Him. But He won’t force us to spend eternal life with Him. And we, in our ignorance, will think that all we have to do is say the word “Yes” and that should be good enough. But God requires more than that – not out of maliciousness, but out of pure, perfect love. In order to say yes to God, we need to do it fully. God didn’t just say, “You’re saved.” He became Man so He could be one with us. He died on the cross so He could take on our sins. For God, saying He loves us isn’t enough – God needed to show us.

And we are called to do the same. We are called to show God that we love Him, and that we want to spend eternity with Him. And the reason God gave us the Catholic Church was so we could have our best chance at that life. The rules is just the Church saying, “If you want to get to heaven, here’s your best chance of getting there. If you want to show God how grateful you are for Him and His sacrifice, here are the different ways to do that.” Of course, it’s up to you what you follow and don’t follow – but isn’t it a bit arrogant of us to think that we know better? The Church has had an incredible amount of holy and smart people that have been guided by the Holy Spirit. I know I’m nowhere close to as holy or as smart as those people, and if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably not that smart either (I’m totally kidding, please continue reading and subscribe if you haven’t already and share it with everyone you know, the smart and the dumb alike).

God gives us absolutely everything we need. When we try to look at the “rules” of the Church from a perspective of God’s love and desire to be with us, they become less of a burden. Celebrate Jesus’ sacrifice to show my gratefulness? Done. Be cleansed of my sins and my mistakes? Of course. Help others so that I can share God’s love? Definitely.

God aches for you. And whether we realize it or not, we ache for God. As St. Augustine said, “Our heart is restless until it finds rest in Thee.”