He makes blessed even the nails in His hands June 5, 2008
Posted by mchudson in Jesus.Tags: Retreat prep
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This week I've been spending basically all my time preparing for the first retreat that I will lead with about 16 youth in Ocoee, TN. I've been apart of many different retreats either as a participant, speaker, or even small group leader, but I've never put one together, and I must say there is quite a bit of work that goes into it.
Any who, to the point, by prepping for this retreat I've been taking my advice from previous posts in praying more and offering up (what I feel is) a lot. The theme that I'm running with is based on Dr. Peter Kreeft's lecture on Christ's concept of happiness versus the World's idea of happiness. And while I was fine toothing this lecture, I heard Dr. Kreeft say something that struck me as brilliant and yet simple (which many brilliant things are). He is making the point that blessings come only from good things, and finally he points out that all blessings come from Christ, and "He makes blessed even the nails in His hands". It was one of the moments that I just had to stop what I was doing and put down in a post before the inspiration to jabber about it left me.
This statement sums up a great deal of the Glory of God, it is not the nail in itself that is blessed, but Christ who makes it such. Those nails brought forth the greatest good out of the greatest evil.
It reminds me of those words of the Exultet, "O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer". The fall of Adam is the one thing that humanity can look at and be entirely disgraced, but now that Christ has come, He has exulted humanity despite the sin of Adam, and it's through His Glory and Love that He makes us blessed.
Just like Archbishop Fulton Sheen and Fr. John Corapi say quite often, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they will become whiter than snow, washed in the blood of the Lamb."
God bless you and God love you
