Five Things meme

Heather at The Practicing Catholic and Ros at Shadowlands have both very kindly tagged me for this meme: Those tagged will share 5 things they “love” about Jesus, or why they love Jesus.

1. He offers forgiveness of sin to all those who truly seek it - and not just forgiveness of sin, but also freedom from the power of sin, freedom from the habit of sin, frredom from the damage wrought by our past sins (all in proportion to our openness to receiving these things from Him. And He continues to offer this forgiveness time after time after time, irrespective of our ingratitude or faithlessness or hardness of heart.

2. He offers healing - primarily, healing of the heart, of the understanding, of the will, of our imaginations, of our hopes and fears and desires; and, secondarily, healing that may, in accordance with His will, extend to release from physical and psychological illness.

3. He offers interior peace - the peace that comes from conformity with His will, from acceptance of whatever He sends, from laying aside worry and anger and resentment and criticism and judgmentalism and self-pity, and, above all, from quietening down the perpetual noise within our souls (whether this comes from thoughts within or from stimuli without) and learning to dwell with Him in interior stillness.

4. He offers us grace - a sharing in His own life; a sharing in His Passion and Resurrection and in their fruits; the "life in Christ" as members of His Mystical Body; His own indwelling (indeed, the indwelling of the whole Trinity) within our hearts.

5. He offers us the Holy Spirit - who prays within us "with sighs too deep for words", establishing us as adopted sons of the Father and co-heirs with Christ, transforming and "gracing" every area of our lives, sanctifying us and effecting in us what some of the Church Fathers and their mediaeval successors dared to call "divinisation".