[28] And apart from these things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches. [29] Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is led to sin, and I am not indignant? [30] If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. [31] The God and Father of the Lord Jesus knows, he who is blessed forever, that I do not lie. [32] At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas guarded the city of Damascus, in order to seize me, [33] but I was lowered in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands.
(CCC 1550) This presence of Christ in the minister is not to be understood as if the latter were preserved from all human weaknesses, the spirit of domination, error, even sin. The power of the Holy Spirit does not guarantee all acts of ministers in the same way. While this guarantee extends to the sacraments, so that even the minister's sin cannot impede the fruit of grace, in many other acts the minister leaves human traces that are not always signs of fidelity to the Gospel and consequently can harm the apostolic fruitfulness of the Church. (CCC 271) God's almighty power is in no way arbitrary: "In God, power, essence, will, intellect, wisdom, and justice are all identical. Nothing therefore can be in God's power which could not be in his just will or his wise intellect" (St. Thomas Aquinas, STh I, 25, 5, ad I). (CCC 273) Only faith can embrace the mysterious ways of God's almighty power. This faith glories in its weaknesses in order to draw to itself Christ's power (cf. 2 Cor 12:9; Phil 4:13). The Virgin Mary is the supreme model of this faith, for she believed that "nothing will be impossible with God", and was able to magnify the Lord: "For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name" (Lk 1:37, 49).
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