Weakness: A Discovery of the Father's Tenderness

Being honest with ourselves and our weaknesses can be a difficult process for us to tackle. But it is in facing our own weaknesses each day that we discover the Father's tenderness toward us. I have recently ordered six Carthusian spirituality books and the first one I am reading is titled The Wound of Love. Fear of facing weakness is a basic tenet of what it means to be human and sinful. Naturally we repel against the reality that we cannot rely on our own strength and this can cause us to grow in great anxiety. The fear of not being in control forces us to run from and try to hide our vulnerabilities and all sorts of hidden disorders and woundedness within. But, we must remember that Jesus calms the rough waters. When we really build up the courage to face our fears, we begin to really experience communion with the divine life. Our weaknesses are surprisingly transformed into communion. That is what the heart of prayer is really about. This is why one Carthusian writes,

So why be afraid of my own weaknesses? It is a fact that they exist; but for a long time I have refused to look them in the face. Gradually, I have assumed them, and am now obliged to recognize them as part of me. These are not extraneous to me, which I could rid myself of once and for all. Moreover, if I wished to forget them, the Father would soon bring them back to my attention. He would permit some fault or other in the face of which I would be unable to deny that I am a sinner. He would allow my health to play tricks on me, so that I would admit defeat and deliver myself defenceless to the love of the Father. He would make me realize, beyond the shadow of a doubt, how limited my abilities are.

What is new is that in the future these weaknesses, instead of representing a danger, give me the opportunity to make contact with God. For this reason I must gradually allow myself to become at ease with them, no longer considering them as a disturbing side of my personality, but as something willed and accepted by the Father; not as some hopeless inevitability but as a basic presupposition for the gift to me of divine life. When I suddenly find myself faced with a previously unknown weakness, my first reflex in the future will not be to panic but to ask myself where the Father may be hidden in it.

We cannot avoid asking ourselves a question: is this transformation of a weakness which seems to be nothing but defeat into a victory of love a sort of second thought on God's part, an alchemy whereby he changes evil into good or, on the contrary, are we not in the presence of a fundamental dimension of the divine order?

One could say a great deal about this. Let us be satisfied with simply stating that, even in the natural order, all true love is a victory of weakness. Love does not consist in dominating, possessing, or imposing one's will on someone. Rather love is to welcome without defences the other as he or she comes to meet me. In return, one is sure of being welcomed unreservedly by the other without being judged or condemned, and without invidious comparisons. There are no contests of strength between two people who love each other. There is a kind of mutual understanding from within which a reciprocal trust emerges.

Such an experience, even if inevitably imperfect, is already a very compelling one. Yet it is but a reflection of a divine reality. Once we really begin to believe in the infinite tenderness of the Father, we are, as it were, obliged to descend ever more fully and joyfully into a realm in which we neither possess nor understand nor control anything.

There it is; in weakness we discover the tenderness of the Father and that is what is at the heart of our life of prayer as faithful Christians and disciples. It is at the heart of everything we do in the Mass and outside of it. It is in our weakness that we have an encounter with the divine life in Christ. The world that wears blinders will never understand it. But, when you look at the man or woman in the mirror and face up to the weaknesses within, we can come to meet the one that the Apostle Paul described after his encounter saying, 'in my weakness, I am made strong.'