How does this work? Let us apply it to our personal experience. What is something that has been troubling you lately? Perhaps it’s an ongoing disagreement with your spouse in which you feel undesirable and unloved. Perhaps it’s the presence of a co-worker who triggers fear and anxiety in your heart and always seems to have the last say in all your interactions. Perhaps it is an addiction, general anxiety about the future or current events, or a relationship with a parent or friend that is not as close as you wish it to be. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you an area of your life to focus upon.

Notice what comes to the surface of your heart as that situation/person comes into view in your mind’s eye. What are the honest thoughts that arise when you think of it/them? Be very attentive to the emotions that arise with the thoughts as well. Our emotions are clues to what we truly believe about something/someone. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what you are believing about yourself in that situation. Be very honest. The beliefs often sound like this: “I am all alone, I cannot trust anyone, I have to fix this all by myself, I am dirty, I am ugly, no one gets me, I can’t tell anyone, it’s my fault, I will never have the love that I truly desire,” etc. The beliefs that are etched into our daily experiences are very powerful and dictate how we live our lives.

As you notice these things in your heart, I would like to invite you to very vulnerably ask Jesus to show you the truth of who you are in this situation and how he loves you in this very place. Ask Jesus to reveal the truth of who he is and who you are in this moment of suffering. You do not have to strive or tell yourself nice things; allow Jesus to speak to you.

As you experience Jesus in this place, test the revelation in your heart against the truth of who Jesus reveals himself to be in Scripture and Tradition. God does not contradict himself. Even when the Lord speaks a challenging truth to us, he always does so in love with the impetus toward repair, reconciliation, and communion. Repeat the truth of what Jesus says within your heart. Let the eternal truth echo within you and forge new pathways in your heart and mind. Each time we do this, we are transformed on a deeper level.

This very experience is exactly what is happening to the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1–11. We see a woman brought into the middle of a condemning public spectacle because people in her life wanted to exploit her sinfulness. Yet Jesus attends to every aspect of this situation in a very particular way. Jesus evokes the truth in both the men who wanted to stone her (who were just using her to trap Jesus) and within the woman herself. As she stands before the men, exposed and humiliated, Jesus appeals to what she is believing about herself and the truth of who he is and who she is.

After inviting the men to consider their own interior state and corresponding exterior actions, Jesus bends down to the ground to write in the dirt. In the truth of their inability to rightfully condemn her, the men depart, leaving Jesus alone with the woman. From the ground, the King of heaven looks up at her. In profound kindness and strength he says to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she quietly replies.

And then he speaks the truth to her hurting heart, mind, body, and soul in deep love and freedom as he declares, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again” (John 8:11).

I can imagine that these words were like water to her parched life on every level. His words and his love challenged everything she was believing about herself and her actions therein. I can also imagine that she thought about Jesus and the words he spoke to her and the love he showed her over and over again, every time washing her heart anew in freedom and mercy. In one of her most shameful experiences, love literally intervened and interrupted her sin, self-contempt, and sorrow. This is Jesus. This is healing. This is the truth.

It would have done the woman no good to deny the truth of her sin or her feelings or how humiliated she felt. Only in honesty are we healed and brought into wholeness. Only in the truth is there freedom. She received Jesus that day in truth, and that truth and love set her free. She knew him. And so must we. This knowing is a lifelong process that expands and grows little by little, day by day. Because love never ends, healing is always occurring.

Isaiah 53:4–5 majestically proclaims, “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”

God is with us. He never leaves us nor forsakes us. He goes before us. Jesus has suffered everything we have ever suffered in love and in truth, and in him is our home. There is not a moment of our lives that is outside the sovereignty of God or where he is not present. He is always there and desires to heal all things and bring us home to his heart.

We can have experiences of being abandoned and rejected by people and still know and experience in the core of our being that we are neither rejected nor abandoned in our identity. We can suffer trauma and helplessness and powerlessness and know that this is not our identity nor the end of the story of our lives. Jesus teaches us that it is through, with, and in him that our lives are ushered into passion, death, and resurrection. This is the promise of our Baptism, that we belong to God and he to us.

This life with Jesus is not just intellectually knowing something or knowing objective truth but the reception of that truth into the emotional and experiential realm of our hearts and lives. It is receiving the truth into ourselves, into the experiences of isolation, fragmentation, and sorrow and of hope, beauty, and joy. It is receiving Jesus in every way and allowing him to receive us in every way. This is transforming union. This is how we are transformed from the darkest places and are brought into his own marvelous light. This is holiness. This is the truth. This is the love that never ends.