"We are NEVER again to forget, that every event in our lives is a coming of Christ. Let it never be said again that "He came unto His own and His own received Him not." We are to receive Him in everything and everyone! We will do so only if we remember that He is God who was born outside Juda's least of cities and put to death outside her greatest;
that He is God who at birth had to borrow a manger to be laid in, and at death was laid in a borrowed tomb;
that He is God who became a poor man, a Man of Sorrows well acquainted with ALL our infirmities;
that He is the God-Man who led such a lowly, lonely life, who knew hunger and thirst as we know them, who was stung by ingratitude greater than we will ever have to bear, who faced opposition fiercer - far more than anything we will ever know, who met frustration, failure, and defeat, and went back to God with, it would seem, only a thief as the garner of all his years and all His labors!
That is the Christ who comes to us in every event of our lives. Since He is Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever, we can expect Him to come to us in the garb of lowliness, loneliness, opposition, ingratitude, frustration, failure and defeat; for it was by such things that He redeemed the world - and it will be by such things that we will help Him save it!" -Fr. M Raymond, OCSO
