SCRIPTURE CORNER

GOD, THE ALMIGHTY

Christ said one day to His disciples, "What is impossible to man's powers is possible to God."Luke 18, 27. Because God's being is infinite, His power, like all His other attributes, is limitless. When we say God is almighty, we mean that He can do whatever He wills. By His almighty power, He created the world and all that is in it. "I look up at those heavens of thine, the work of thy hands, at the moon and the stars, which thou hast set in their places."Ps 8,4, Lauds on Sunday.
Almighty God, give us grace to know Thee better, that we may love Thee more.
Whoever believes in God, believes that He is almighty, and founds his belief on the creation of the world. The Book of Genesis tells us that God, by an act of will, drew from nothingness heaven and earth, with all the wonders, all the beauty they contain. To create so much as a grain of sand requires the power of the Almighty. As God created this world by the power of His will, so by the same power He can annihilate it, and call into being thousands of other worlds yet more beautiful and wonderful. "What power girds thee about! In thy strength the mountains stand firm.". Ps 64, 7
In the Apostles' Creed we say: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty." It is because He is almighty that God is the Father of all living creatures. ""It is in Him that we live and move and have our being."Acts 17, 28.
All creation is full of Him; from Him it comes, to Him it will return; therefore it must love and praise Him. St Francis knew it when he sang: "All created things in heaven, on earth, in the sea or in the abyss, give God praise, honour, and blessing!"
Almighty God, we acknowledge, with King David, that we hold our lives from you: "His we are, he has made us!"
We belong to Him, to Him only; therefore we are bound to use all the powers of our soul, all our intellectual faculties, all our senses, according to His holy will. If we contemplate our own weakness, our courage will fail, but we must never forget that God's almighty power works within us, enabling us to do his will.
God was not almighty only when thousands of years ago He created world. Hi IS almighty when He sanctifies us, as He was almighty when he created us. Do we always remember it?
We do not sanctify ourselves by our own activities; if we imagine that we can do so, no wonder every fault, every failure, discourages us! That which sanctifies us is the grace of God, provided we co-operate with it. Our faith in God's power must be unshakable: "O God, you are almighty! Make a saint of me - EVEN of me!"
We must live humbly in the presence of Him without whom we can do nothing. The more we contemplate His infinite perfection, the humbler we shall become. If we thought more of God's majesty and less of ourselves, who cannot even pronounce His name without His help, no thought of pride in ourselves could ever enter our mind. Even if the aptitudes and talents that we imagine we possess were real, it is God who has given them to us. Of ourselves we are but misery and sin.
We have been chosen, by God's infinite and all-powerful love, to be His brides, thus increasing the nobility of our origin. Are we thankful enough for our vocation, and do we show it by by our fidelity to the duties it imposes? If so, a great reward awaits us in heaven. "Keep faith with me to the point of death, and I will crown thee with life."Apoc. 2, 10.
Almighty and everlasting God, we kneel humbly and reverently before your infinite majesty, imploring you that, by your grace, we may know you better and love you more; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Mary, whose prayer is all-powerful, obtain for us the grace we desire so fervently.

After "With the church - Meditations on topics from the Missal and Breviary" Ed. by Fr Matthias Goosens OFM, Gothmer-Gobrevi 1962