Spiritual readings _ If you want to, you can


"If you want to, you can"
You should show kindness not in the easiest, but in the most loving way possible.   
Blessed Isaac of Stella
It was for your instruction that divine Wisdom, our Medicine and our Doctrine, chose to heal the leper by touching him, though a word would have sufficed. You should show kindness not in the easiest, but in the most loving way possible. There must be no shrinking back; keeping Christ ever-present in intention you must prove yourself fully compassionate. After all, Christ, no matter what the person, place, or work, is ever beautiful, pure, noble, and worthy.
His words, you remember, were: "It is my will; be you made clean." What business have we, brothers, discussing those who are more able than willing to do good when every day I must listen to your complaints and groans and sighs? I mean your groans that you are unable to achieve, no matter how much you will it, all that you desire, in either rising to the Father and the one thing necessary, or in descending to the manifold business of helping a brother.
"If it be your will," said the leper, "you have power to make me clean." Such is the power at his free disposal, dear friends, that everything is possible to the Almighty; this does not mean that he always wills all that he is able to do. He is able to do much that he has no intention of doing and will never be able to do in spite of himself. When confessing one's sins one need have no doubt whatever of God's power; and yet, since he who can do all whatsoever he wills does not will to do all that he can, one rightly implores his favour and adores his power. In God we must consider both will and power. His willingness to heal the leper because he is able to - "it is my will; be you made clean", understood as implying "because you say I am able to" - teaches us not to shy away from whatever good deeds are in our power. Rather, we should as the Apostle says: "Practise generosity to all, while the opportunity is ours without discouragement; we shall reap when the time comes."