I love analogies when they immediately shed a ray of light in my struggle for understanding. In the Our Father, Jesus teaches us to ask for His Father’s “Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” I got stumped trying to understand how His Father’s Will being done on Earth as it is in Heaven is possible while we are on this earth as we still suffer the effects of the Fall. Even with the gift of the sacraments, we are prone to sin again, and again, despite our honest resolve to turn away from sin and to sin no more.
Believing this request to be infinitely more than a simply desirable and beautiful rhetorical phrase, I asked Jesus, how can this be, when sin once committed can’t be undone, even by God. While great theological answers are beyond me, I was happily satisfied, when an image of my favorite handbag popped into mind.
Bits and pieces of old, worn, discarded remnants of seemingly useless cloth make-up my bag. The new creation is to me beautiful. Looking on it now with an internal gaze, I grasped a bit more of the wonder of Salvation and the Church’s cry, “O Happy Fault”.
Sinners, despite their irrevocable falls, being infinitely loved by God, receive His answer to their prayer in Jesus. Their need draws God to themselves. The dilemma of Sin and our frailty, which is the contradiction to the Father’s Will for the perfection of Heaven He desires for the Earth, is solved by the coming of God, Himself. God comes! He comes, draws us to Himself, and in this, Heaven reigns on Earth with the Father’s Will. The answer is in the works, and we are the work. We, the bits and pieces, find a heavenly place in the Son.
Joann Nelander Studio 