Thursday, August 14th, around 4 o’clock pm, the North-East Coast of United States and south Canada were paralyzed and thrown into chaos by the most serious power blackout in the history of America.

In only a few minutes, millions of people remained without electricity and were affected in a way or another. Some of them remained blocked underground, in the subways, or hundreds of meters above the earth in the elevators of the skyscrapers. Some of them were on the street or in different transportation vehicles.  This catastrophe makes me think of the paralysis brought by sin in our relationship with God and in our relationships with each other. In the Bible we read that Jesus Christ came so that we can have an abundant life. The devil doesn’t like this promise; he declared war to our relationship with God and he is looking for different ways to cause all sorts of “short-circuits”. At first, he offers things we really need so that he would draw our attention. Once he gained our interest he tries to offer us things that are against God’s will and thus to cause the first “blackout”: the sin.  Afterwards, he offers more and more attractive things just to keep us too busy to take our sin to God and ask for forgiveness. Staying away from God we enter a state of spiritual numbness and the second “blackout” occurs: the lack of prayer and relationship with the Source of Life. Persevering in this state we go from numbness to spiritual paralysis. This spiritual paralysis can get to us if we don’t remain connected to the Source. Let’s develop our relationship with God and with others; without this we can not stay spiritually alive. We are called to reestablish and then maintain our relationships.