A Lesson from Full House's Uncle Jesse. Monday, April 14. Lent 2014.

After my sisters and I saw Full House and heard

Uncle Jesse’s coined term, ‘Lord have mercy!’

it was repeated quite often with the low growl

until we got it juuuust right.

According to Montfort,

maybe Uncle Jesse was onto something.

All good things come from above.

From God.

If all good things comes from above,

then nothing good can come from below.

No, not below as in Hell,

but below as in from man.

Montfort believed that man is not capable of good.

This reiterates his lessons on how man is truly a helpless creature.

One clarification should be made.

When saying ‘good’ Montfort is not talking about doing good works

such as helping your neighbor.

We are capable of those

and we should do good works.

The ‘good’ that Montfort is speaking of is understood in the sense of

leading to salvation.

Because of original sin,

we are incapable of obtaining this good of salvation.

On our own,

we have nothing,

we are nothing,

we are capable of no good.

And we can do nothing to fix this.

While we cannot fix original sin,

“Man can do only one thing: become a person of prayer who repeatedly cries out: ‘Lord, have mercy on me!’”

God has grace.

We need grace for salvation.

We need to pray for mercy

and to pray for grace.

We need to become dependent on God,

which requires humility,

which is not something that comes in droves for most of us.

It is something that we have to work on

and recommit ourselves to every single day,

sometimes multiple times a day.

Many times in a day I will forget that God is in charge,

I will forget about mercy, grace, and humility.

I have to have a bit of a talk with myself in my head.

Squash my pride,

beg for forgiveness,

beg for mercy,

beg for grace,

and hope for salvation.

For He is the author of all good

and the fountain of mercy and grace.

This Lenten blog series is based upon St. Louis de Montfort's writings. Unless otherwise noted, all the phrases in quotation marks are taken from the book Jesus Living in Mary.