Choosing to Accept

... “Unforgiveness locks us into unbelief, and unbelief deepens the unforgiveness. It revolves endlessly unless we make a stop. Unless we forgive.”

    “Forgiveness?” Pawel murmured coldly. “What is forgiveness?”

    “Forgiveness”, said the priest, “is a key.”

    “A key?” Pawel said tonelessly. “A key implies that a door exists.”

    [priest] “Or a narrow gate.” 

... “We wish to be worthy of being saved”, [the priest] continued. “Which is another way of saying that we, every one of us, whether we know it or not, wish to be our own god, that is, to save ourselves. We want paradise without his Cross, forgetting that the Cross is the only way to reenter the original harmony we lost in the Fall of Man. This is the narrow gate.”

    “I see no gate. I see only the walls of a prison.”

    “We do not like to be poor, Pawel. Yet it is this very poverty that opens one to the life of God. It is this that cracks open the prison wall.”

    “Why is it so complicated? Why does God not fix it all?”

    “It is not complicated. God has saved us, but he will not force salvation upon us. Love never forces. Love thrives only in freedom. We must choose to accept what he offers.”

~Michael O’Brien (from Sophia House)