Out of all the creatures in God’s created world, as humans, we are the only ones created in His image and likeness. Wow! That says something about who we are… at least it should. We all know that God is love. From the beginning of time to the ending… He is Love.

And we… these miserable creatures that we are … We are created in this same love. So it just goes to figure that we should have the same capacity of love that God has. But because we are marked with the stain of original sin, (here is where the miserable part comes in)… unlike God, we are prone to act on this sin, and often times, because of our nature, we waste our time, allowing that sin, our predisposition to sin, to rob us of our image and likeness to God. Because we are fallen, we often take what rightly belongs to God and we throw it away… or worse, we give it to the devil, by wrapping our actions with sinful intentions…

Holding onto grudges is just that. It is one of the ways that we choose as a wasting away of God’s precious gift to us. When we hold onto grudges, we are actively participating in the removing of the grace that God has bestowed upon us at the moment of our baptism, and we are replacing it with our sins… our vices… those imperfections that keep us from holiness.

Even if we have been wronged or hurt… we must learn to forgive… seventy times a thousand… if we must, otherwise we risk losing it all. And I am not just talking about damaging our relationships with one another here on earth. No, I am talking about losing the one thing that we were created for… and that, is to be with God in Heaven. It is that big of a deal.

Now, I know some of you wonder why this is something I keep writing about, well, it is because it is because many people don’t even recognize this behavior as a vice anymore. In our society that promotes self, it is this one vice that so often gets overlooked and ignored. So many people feel that they love God and that’s enough and still others, they figure that since they are good… I mean they are good in that they can say “I go to Church every Sunday”…. or, ‘So what does it matter if I hold a grudge against so and so… they deserve it anyway’… Or …’Jesus will understand, after all He got mad in the temple‘… Or better yet, they say ‘my anger is a just anger…’ or some other such nonsense as that.

Many people don’t realize the seriousness of actively holding onto grudges.  They fail to realize that this kind of unjust anger affects in their souls… damaging them… their sense of peace and joy are destroyed. Often times, instead of looking inward, they want to blame the world for their unhappiness… for their lack of joy. They don’t realize that it is this action that is destroying them. They fail to realize that in order for their soul to experience joy… there must be love…. and in order for there to be love there must be charity and in order for there to be charity, there must be God’s grace, so that not only may we experience peace, but also gain that self awareness of soul that allows us to understand that all of our good…. all of our virtue…. comes from God.

This self awareness is precisely where our path to holiness begins. And these grudges, they do nothing but separate us from this path and soon we forget that we were created to be like God…. in His image and likeness… We start to rely on our own judgments and we forget that we must rely on God alone and His Grace… We cannot separate ourselves from this Truth or we risk the chance, that when we go before the Lord, He will not even recognize us as one of His own. Remember, in order to do God’s Will, we must love one another… As we Love Christ…

None of us want to risk our eternal reward, for a few ‘satisfying’ moments of ‘I told you so,’ it is too big a risk, and there really is no real satisfaction in this. But other times these grudges are motivated by something else. A deeper hurt… an unrelenting interior pain. Sometimes the desire is to share the pain, as it were. Because we have lost sight of God in our life, we have backed ourselves into a corner of hopelessness and fear. And we come lashing out, wanting others to feel our pain. To feel our hurt.

But as I recently read, no one ever healed their hurt by hurting another. It doesn’t work like that. It never has. It never will. Those whispers of revenge are lies of the devil. He would be more than satisfied to help you on the path to hell. He is after all the Father of all lies… the destroyer of all that God has made as good….Remember that nothing good ever comes from sin. During times as these, when we are in pain, we must cling to God, and not these grudges… for He is Truly our only Hope.

We are just a few short weeks outside of lent…. when letting go of things… clearing out our  clutter becomes the order of the day… It won’t be an easy task and it will be a daily struggle to let go and let God, but with confidence in God and a humble acceptance of His Will, it is possible. So let us take this opportunity to pray that God will give us the necessary  graces we need to help us to let go of whatever is keeping us from reaching Him, including these grudges that have done so much damage to our souls.

Then, once you have made the change from vice to virtue… (with God’s help of course!) And God’s love has been restored, charity will return, and when charity returns, peace will return and there will room in your heart for God’s grace to work wonders in your soul… Returning it to it’s former glory... of being created in the image and likeness of God… And when that happens.…You will be grateful that you finally let go of those grudges which have held you down for so long. Have a blessed day my friends.