Invite Jesus Into Your Mess

Interior peace may be accomplished in us despite all the chaos and messiness of the world. Peace comes from the Holy Spirit that dwells within us, it cannot be given to us by the world, but must be discovered and cultivated within us. The Church is the mustard seed that was planted at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It has developed and grown over the centuries to envelop the whole world and all its people. We all need the grace of the Church to be brought to life, to grow deeper in union with Jesus Christ, and to keep us on the path toward holiness.

At certain points in my life I have believed that I needed to first get my life together, button up all my loose ends, clean up my mess, in order for Jesus to love me. If I did all those things, then I could be holy, then I was worthy of God’s grace. But in reality the grace of God is for the sinners and the righteous alike. Far too often I have missed out on the grace of God because I was trying to save myself first. I was trying to be righteous so that I could be saved instead of being saved so that I could be made righteous.

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.

Matthew 9:12-13

When we believe the lie that Jesus calls the righteous instead of the sinners, we forget that we need a Savior. We believe that if we let Jesus into our mess, he will not love us. This lie actually goes against the sufficiency of Calvary. Jesus died on the cross, as a holy and perfect sacrifice, so that we may be saved. The cross demonstrated to us that Jesus loves us in the midst our mess. I actually think many people do believe that Jesus loves them no matter what, but not many of them understand that he is also calling us out of our mess. Jesus always followed up his healings with the call to conversion, the call to turn away from the life of sin and to follow him. If Jesus were to leave us in our mess then he wouldn’t be all loving. Jesus desires our full healing, which includes the restoration of our hearts to be a dwelling place for him to rest. Jesus loves us first, then as a response to that love we must be willing to allow him to redeem our mess so as to live in the fullness of his grace and mercy thereafter.

I wonder how many times I have blocked myself from receiving the grace of God because I have not wanted Jesus to see my mess. How often do I continue to reject his mercy because of shame or bitterness or resentment? On account of the sacrifice of Calvary, the grace of God flows out upon the Church freely and completely. Where this grace is not welcomed in a soul, it does not remain, it is fleeting. Where souls are open to allowing that grace to transform and purify them, they receive it freely and provide a place in their own hearts where the Holy Spirit may dwell. For Jesus does not remain where he is not welcomed, where he cannot accomplish the fullness of redemption within a soul.

And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And if any one will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. 

Matthew 10:13-14

In this way, we can begin to uncover the peace of Christ, that has actually dwelt within us from the moment of our Baptism, but which has been covered over through our sinfulness. The power of Christ’s peace is revealed to us in Mary who was full of grace. No sin tainted her soul, so she was able to enjoy the fullness of the Holy Spirit in her heart. Her Immaculate Heart was a perfect dwelling place for the Lord. At the foot of the cross Mary was full of love despite the pain and sorrow she and her Son were enduring. This peace came from the fact that Mary’s heart was conform to Jesus’ Sacred Heart. She did not desire that Jesus not suffer and die, but she instead desired the will of God to be fulfilled in and through him. From the foot of the cross, Mary received the fullness of sanctifying grace from the pierced side of Jesus. This is the grace of the Church that flows from the Heart of Christ. This grace flowed freely out from Jesus and found a place to dwell within Mary and so she was at peace.

Conforming your heart to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

From the beginning of my conversion, I have been on a journey that has been leading me to conform my heart to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Lord has been teaching me how to make a home in my heart for the Holy Spirit to dwell. Over the years I have been opening up more to the Lord and allowing myself to be truly discipled by Jesus. This process has meant learning obedience to the will of God and all that he asks of me. It has meant allowing him to see and redeem all of my mess. It has meant full surrender to the Lord and giving him permission to dwell in my heart. The purpose of making a home for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is not so I can be consoled and experience peace for my own sake, but it is in order to witness to others and to be sent out to build up the Kingdom of God. Consolation must never be only for our own benefit, but it must also be used so that we may freely give of ourselves to our neighbor in perfect charity. To be conformed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus means making my heart like his, so that I can be a witness of his heart for the world.

As we set out on this journey to make a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit in our hearts, we must remember that the journey is always initiated by God through an invitation from the Holy Spirit. The Lord is always the one who moves first, we act in response to his goodness and to his promptings. At the start of this journey there must be an initial consent from us by saying “yes” to the Lord. We must welcome him into our hearts and into our mess. While this seems like a simple thing, for many of us it is really hard. We’d all like to think that if Jesus knocked on our door we would let him in, but what if he knocked on the door in the middle of our biggest mess, in the middle of our most frustrating chaos, or in the middle of our most sinful act? Would we still invite him in in that moment, or would we shut the door and ask him to come back later?

To open the door to the Lord is to allow him access to our heart at what we would imagine to be the worst time possible. This was Jesus’ timing for me; he knocked on the door of my heart right in the middle of my mess, when I was steeped in sin, when I was backed into a corner and there was no where else to turn. At that point in my life, I was beginning to realize that there was nothing of this world that was able to satisfy the hunger and thirst I was experiencing within me; this was a grace. So when Jesus knocked on the door of my heart, I let him in despite the mess, despite my sinfulness, despite my unworthiness.

Jesus actually desires to enter into the midst of our mess and he would have it no other way. If we don’t allow him this opportunity, then he cannot redeem us. If we keep hidden from the Lord our darkness, our shame, our doubt, our impurities, then he cannot purify us. When we invite the Holy Spirit into our hearts, we should do so with full abandon, allow the Spirit to search behind the couch, under the table, in the basement, under the rug, so that we can be fully cleansed and made whole. These hidden places of our hearts, those places that we have been keeping from the Lord, are the very things holding us back from full and lasting healing. Jesus cannot restore what we keep hidden away from him. With this, we must remember that the cross was messy. All of our lives our messy. But Christ entered into his passion and death with full knowledge that it was going to be messy. He did so because he loves us and he desired to show us just how much he loves us, even in our messiness.

After welcoming the Holy Spirit into our hearts and allowing the Spirit to search our souls for all of the areas we are separated from God, we must then be willing to be purified. We must be willing to walk away from our sin. After the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins, we then have a choice as to whether or not we are going to turn away from it or not. The Good News is that Jesus is a just judge and his righteousness is what will purify us. We should simply allow him the opportunity to do it. For it is only Christ who can redeem our sinfulness. We cannot save ourselves.

The process of purification is never easy and it requires additional consent by us for the Lord to reveal to us more and more of our mess, so that we can be healed. By opening ourselves up and being vulnerable before the Lord, we are placing our trust in him. We are trusting in his goodness, his mercy and his power to save. It is through this act of self-willed vulnerability that we place ourselves in right order with the Lord. After doing this, he can do the impossible and clean up the mess we’ve made of our lives, he can redeem it all. But it takes a tremendous amount of courage to let Jesus clean house. And it requires an innumerable amount of additional “yeses” with each new area of our heart that Jesus desires to purify.

We all can get stuck here at different points in our lives. It is as if we get to a certain place in our conversion and then we stop because we aren’t quite ready to go any further. The depths to which the Lord is calling us seems impossible or unattractive to us. For whatever reason we aren’t quite ready to allow the Lord access to this or that specific area of our lives. Understanding this is important so that we can battle against these temptations. Perseverance is important at this stage.

Once we have gotten accustomed to allowing Jesus to purify our hearts, which will be an ongoing process for the remainder of our lives, he then readies us to be sent out. This can be a very scary thing for us as we don’t yet know what this sending out will look like; what it will require. What all we are going to have to give up in order to serve the Kingdom of God? It’s important at this point to see ourselves as God sees us. To more deeply experience and know of the Lord’s love for us. To begin to understand what our gifts are, so that what has been given to us in particular can be used to build up the Kingdom.

In order to be ready to be sent out we must develop a firm foundation of who we are in God’s eyes. Our old self must fall away and our identity in Christ must rise up. This is what we were made for. This is who we were created to be from the moment of our conception. This is the plan of God coming to fruition in and through us. Being ready to be sent out means gaining knowledge that will be need to do the task at hand. It means developing the fortitude to carry us through. It means equipping us and putting on the armor of Christ so that we can do battle against evil and be a witness to the world. Becoming battle ready means strengthening us in our trust in the Lord in order to have the confidence to do the will of God no matter what.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing.

James 1:22-25

What this looks like in our heart is the Holy Spirit settling in and teaching us his ways. It means becoming good listeners of the Lord; but not only listeners, also doers of the Lord. For when we listen to the Holy Spirit and we are led by the Spirit in our lives, we will be walking in the way of the Lord. To listen is only one portion of being sent out, for we must also do the will of God. We must also be obedient to the promptings of the Spirit. In this we will be blessed in our doing. As the Holy Spirit settles into our hearts, he has indeed found a home, a place to rest, a person to live in and through in this world. The Lord is counting on us, on you and on me, to be who we were created to be, so that his life can be witnessed to the world in and through us.

Once we are prepared for our mission and then sent out, we can do so in confidence, knowing that we are not alone. The Holy Spirit has now found a home in our hearts. The peace of Christ dwells within us and the charity of Christ is leading us, so that wherever we go, the Lord goes with us. On our mission, as we carry the Holy Spirit with us, we can serve others in the love of Christ. We can be a witness to Christ from our own hearts. It is the Lord who has transformed our hearts into an image of his own Sacred Heart and then sends us out to share his heart with the world.

This commissioning by Jesus looks different for each one of us because we are each created and gifted with specific charisms that are unique to us. So many times I have tried to be something that God was not calling me to be, or I have tried to serve others without first having allowed the Lord access to my heart to purify it. In these times I no doubt did some good in the world, but it was always fleeting because it was not led by the Holy Spirit. The grace of God that dwells in our hearts requires our cooperating with his holy will. It means allowed the Lord to restore our own hearts first so that the Holy Spirit can not only dwell there, but can also lead and instruct us.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

St. Teresa of Ávila

As we go out into the world, we carry Jesus out into the streets. We bring him into our families, into our places of work, into all of our relationships. It is important for us to continue to drink from the fount of graces that flow from the Church, which means our drawing from the life-giving waters of the Sacraments. The Sacraments are our strength, they are our hope, they are our life. By making a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit in our hearts, by conforming our hearts to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we are participating in the mission of Christ that is ongoing until the end of time. To be Christian is to participate in the redemption of the world through our being Christ’s hands and feet in the world. Be not afraid to let the Lord into our heart. Be not afraid to let him purify your mess. Take heart and trust in the saving power of God.