The Gospel of Grace 

My yoke is easy and My burden is light

No one is saved alone and no one recovers from addiction isolated. Deliverance from addiction is a work of God activated by the hope of faith. Faith comes from hearing. Those bearing things to be heard always appear in the 'journey through healing Light': authors, guides, prophets, preachers, teachers, big brothers or sisters, counselors, therapists, sponsors, confessors, spiritual directors, fathers, mothers, new friends, old friends, intercessors. Always another goes before us.

As the gifts of sobriety and recovery appear, there comes with them the flower of joy.It is like the scene on Mount Tabor, where Jesus reveals His divinity to his closest apostolic companions. For us, the literal transfiguration of addiction into health is a brilliant light of amazement, the defeat of what seemed unconquerable.Received at last is the true revelation of freedom in Christ.

Before long, the momentum of life carries us strangely forward even from this summit. We seem to descend again, despite finding a 'heaven on earth' and not wanting to leave. We want to be safe, secure, away from things that could harm us, or put us at risk for new failures. We are not permitted to remain in the tents of Tabor.

God's Grace has set us free, and for grace to continue to hold us in freedom, we give the source and knowledge and joy of it away. We must reveal the secret of our freedom to others who are waiting. The Lord will see to it that souls hungering for freedom find us, if we do not remain vigilant for them. Transfiguration is thus also from, one who searched and followed, to one who is sought and leads others, to Jesus.

As witnesses, we may be tempted to assume the vocation of 'wounded healer'. Thus, yet another kind of grace arrives to prevent us from becoming 'authorities'. No recovered addict has the power to save or set free another person. We are merely helpers bearing a message, an ear, a compassion that will be perhaps a few splinters of wood in a bridge for a fallen brother to cross upon. But his crossing, like ours, is always a gift from Jesus.

Preachers we must become, in moments called. We preach the Gospel of God's Grace, which is the gospel of continuous surrender to the Lord. In the sacrament of reconciliation, we surrender our faults and also our utter incapacity to be any kind of virtue by ourselves. Remedy is God's exclusive domain.

As recovered addicts it becomes tempting to guess "take up the wheel again?" The Lord is in control now, and our job is to be faithful that He supplies everything needed, whatever the task. Almost beyond belief, is a majestic realization that our problem which had so deformed and degraded us into things lower than beasts, is become the mere contact point for an utterly new configuration of life and living; trust in the only Provider, without Whom is anything possible at all.

Not only our defects and incapabilities, but every talent within us awaits its handing back over to the one Who gives all good gifts. The child of God is born: the one who exists in a perpetual state of dependency on Creator Father. The One Who created the universe in all of its ungraspable totality, what else can He not do for us including run everything "happily ever after"? The wisdom of the Little Flower appears, who knows so completely she is a little one, she begs God to be everything, without exception. Our part is willingness it be so.
"Let it be done to me according to Your Word."

Dear Jesus, with every new test of faith, help us to trust in God by continuously surrendering all things into His hands, that we may be His perfect evangels of joy Amen.