Pillars of Fire In My Soul

5. ... in the sense of “colorless” or “clear”. 6. The expressions “... the wrath of My Father” and “... the just hand of God ... lay hold of him” might strike the reader as being completely out of place within the context of a message dealing with “God’s mercy”. They must, therefore, be understood correctly. In the Scriptures, human feelings, actions, and physical parts are often attributed to God, not that they are really in Him, but because such effects proceed from Him, much as the effects that flow from such things in our human experience. The wrath of God , far from being the effect of a mood-swing in God, is a state in the human being which results from one’s deliberate turning from a God who has revealed Himself in the created universe (see Rm 1: 18-23). Divine anger is essentially the human being’s self-imposed alienation from a Good God, and the results of this separating of one’s self from one’s source are moral chaos and perversion of the moral conscience (see Rm 1: 23-32). Therefore, the statement “Christ’s Blood and Water shield the soul from God’s wrath” expresses the fact that the soul is actu- ally protected from the evil consequences (the rotten fruits which are the natural effects of sin) which the soul has invited upon itself when it cut itself off by sin from God’s ever-flowing and divine- life-giving as well as divine-life-preserving blessings. As long as we cling to sin, we can experience God only as wrath , for we do not permit ourselves to take advantage of God’s forbearance in order to escape the punishment which God wants to withhold from us: “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight” (Sir 27: 30). When that is the case, because of the resulting perversion that affects our moral conscience, instead of acknowledging: “I’m to blame for my hurtful situation” (being struck by the lightning attracted by the lightning-rod that I refuse to let go), we shift the blame, exclaiming: “God is angry with me!” 68 Pillars of Fire in My Soul