A strategy for victory

There are times in life where there seem to be no good options: disaster seems inevitable and inescapable - the world is going to crush us.

It is at times like these that opening words of today's first reading (1 John 5:5-13) are a great source of consolation and strength:

Who indeed is the victor over the world
but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Victory is ours through faith in Christ and most importantly by his grace, which opens us to the horizon of eternity: to a certainty and a bliss that is unassailable and inexhaustible.

Things may be good or bad in our lives for a time, but it is very, very temporary and the joys being prepared for us are everlasting.

St. Paul puts this most beautifully in Romans 8:35-39 with a magnificent assurance that seems at once to be both a hymn and a shout that can pierce even the darkest shadow with the unstoppable power of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation, or distress,
or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

As it is written,
"For thy sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered."

No, in all these things
we are more than conquerors
through him who loved us.

For I am sure that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities,
nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord.