There is only one Commandment, known throughout all of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and that is the Shema "Hear O Israel" prayed daily by Jesus and all practicing Jews of his time down to this day (Deuteronomy 6)
After returning to Naples from the internment of my children's grandmother, my thoughts had been flooded with memories of my marriage and the blessings that our sister Faustina brought into our home with her vision of The Divine Mercy in1995-96 as my husband lived his last days. This 2018 Divine Mercy weekend was the first that I had celebrated away from Naples since moving here in 2002. Because of scheduling of my family obligations, I neither went to the sacrament of reconciliation on Saturday nor did I attend a special service for the devotion on Sunday, which saddened me for sentimental reasons. I guess that I could have jumped through hoops to do both; but the point of any devotional practice is to foster and nourish our love of God, not to get brownie points for completing a checklist.
Last Saturday, some things said to me by a friend and unexpected places that I found myself when trying to get to reconciliation led me to ponder whether my understanding of Providence and trust in Jesus had crossed a line into a sin of excess. So I asked a priest (our 'little' Fr Bob) whose opinion I respect about where the line might be between trusting God and the sin against the Holy Spirit that we call 'presumption'. (Had I listened to him more carefully, I would have realized that I really didn't know what that term means:
Presumption : glory without merit, that is, hope of salvation without keeping the Commandments, or expectation of pardon for sin without repentance).
What really concerned me was that I thought that my confidence in God's loving kindness built on my own experiences may have crossed into an overconfidence, that instead of asking, begging, imploring I might be telling the Holy Spirit what to do!
Thankfully, I attended the Providence House Prayer Luncheon, where sweet, kind Father set me straight: No, you can never presume that the Mercy of Our Lord is bounded.
No.
Not ever.
You may also enjoy this wonderful talk from Cardinal DiNardo...
