Another meditation about God's love

Here is another thought about that subject, so that it can help you to better understand God and his mercy (which is not extended to the blatantly unrepentant, but that's another subject). God is the source of and the capacity for infinite love, on such a dimension of vastness that humans cannot comprehend. Here is a real life recollection of mine so you can compare (and also see things a bit from my point of view).

Years ago I had great affection and ardor for a man who did not return it (and indeed, was quite insincere). One of the women who worked for me, and who was on a friendly basis with me (though I cannot call it a friendship as she would never socialize with me beyond the occasional work luncheon) commented basically the following to me:

She said, with some disdain (kind of like she thought I was a rather pathetic sort) something like "I would find it a great turn-off to love someone who didn't love me in return." In other words, she thought it rather stupid and pathetic of me to care for someone who did not care for me in return.

I thought, but could not say at the time (since as my regular readers know, I was not public in my witnessing at that time, since it was both not my time yet and also a matter of my safety): "Wow, it's sure a good thing for YOU and for everyone else that God does not feel the same way!"

You see, God is used to loving humans who do not love him in return. In fact, if you think about it, there's no human that deserves his love at all, yet he continues to pour it onto them, mostly through the constant urging and nudging of the Holy Spirit, who tries to reach and soften even the hardest of hearts.

If God felt the way this lady suggested, there would be no human beings at all, none would be created and none would be alive.

God understands that no one can love him the way he is able to love a human. He doesn't expect even a fraction of what he can extend in love. But constant scorn and negligence of God is not only foolhardy but also such a wasted opportunity, since God extends such leeway in the amount of love that he would find pleasing from any human being. If God was "turned off" by a human not loving him in return, well, let's just say earth would be abundant in plant and animal life, a garden of Eden, with no non-loving humans!

But God created humans in his own image and as a result 1) they all have the capacity to love God and 2) the Holy Spirit works constantly to touch the heart of every human being with love, whether they believe or not, and whether they love in return or not.

For you idiot cult believers, she was a Libra ha ha, you know, the sign of "relationship experts" har har har.

How can humans ever spiritually advance, say nothing of being saved, if they consider love a "you first then maybe I will love in return" game?

Really, it is sad.

Another thought, what if before Jesus was born, Jews were given ballots with a brief description of him in advance, and could vote whether he was worthy of their love before "allowing" him to be born? Like I said, if God waits for the love first, none of you would be around, alive, at all, that is for sure.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

And, to show you I always think of you.... Hey again, my young people readers and fans! I wish that I could speak with you in person. When you wrestle with love and its issues, be sure to think of what I just said, which is that God loves you first, no matter how much love you offer him in return. Believe me, if you begin to know God as he really is, you would not be able to halt in loving him, no matter how much you tried! :-)

Christmas meditation

I'd like you to think about something, so I'm presenting it as a meditation, one that is easily applicable to anyone who believes in the one true God and the Holy Spirit. It's particularly appropriate to think about on Christmas Day, however, it is something that I try to explain to people in my spiritual direction ministry all the time.

While the Holy Spirit must and needs to be defined in a number of ways in order to be truthfully understood, there is a meditative image that is also proper and essential, which is to think of the Holy Spirit as God breathing outward and exuding pure love.

Many Christians think that they understand God's love because they are grateful to God for the gift of salvation, after suffering and rejection on their behalf, of God the Father's Son Jesus Christ. Friends, here is what I am trying to share with you. Even if you fully understand and appreciate God's love in the form of Jesus Christ's love for you and sacrifice on your behalf, you only understand a fraction of God's love.

Loving God through Jesus Christ is good and it is correct, but understand it this way. To consider yourself completely aware of God's love only through the gift of Jesus Christ is like loving your parent because he or she gave to you an awesome and perfect present. You are still in danger of only loving your parent, and in this case God, because he gave you the best gift that you ever had. You still are not loving God, and thus, not feeling in return, all of God's love that you could experience, just as you are not appreciating the parent for all that he or she does because of the awesome one time for all gift.

In other words, I am telling you that you can understand and experience God's love directly, which is the source of the gift of Jesus Christ. In addition to loving God for having given to you, to all of you, Jesus Christ, you should also love God, and receive his love, simply for being God day after day, minute after minute. God is constantly exuding, through the Holy Spirit, a purity and constancy of love that few, except the most special saints through the ages, have comprehended even exists. But the Bible is complete with beautiful words, often those of God himself, expressing his love before he sent the best gift of his love in the form of Jesus Christ.

Do not love God because he gives you things, either real or imaginary (as you assume to have "abilities" that you presume are from the Spirit) because even as correct or well intentioned that love is, it is only a fraction of the entire spectrum of love that constantly beams down from God in the heavens upon you. That is another useful analogy. Loving God for all he has given to you is good, and correct, but if you love God only for the good things you have received (or hope to receive) it is like loving just the yellow visible band of light in the light spectrum, without loving the light itself.

If one experiences even for a few seconds a genuine acceptance and reciprocation of God's pure love through the Holy Spirit, it is amazing beyond belief and makes all other imagined loves (and transcendental experiences) fade in comparison into nothingness... but here's the thing. God's pure love through the Holy Spirit does not rival earthly attachments but enhances them in their goodness too. In other words, you do not become addicted to being totally within God's love through the Holy Spirit, rather, you are able and empowered to experience genuine earthly love... you do not need continual "hits" in order to carry on. Once one realizes in one's heart the amount of love that is available from God through his Holy Spirit, it does not have to be "re-administered" as if it were a ritual or a "high," but it makes you aware of the light in its fullness, even as you continue to live in the partial reality of material and earthly life.

When you feel the pureness of the Holy Spirit's God bearing love for you, it rocks your world and changes you forever. Rather than detaching and diminishing it makes you more protected and secure within actual reality, including life in an imperfect world. Too many modern "meditations" lead people away from attachment to the source of all pure love, which is God through his Holy Spirit. As one thinks one is reaching spiritual enlightenment and spiritual strengthening, one is actually detaching not only from the reality of the world, but the reality of God's personal and individual love available to you.

Here is another analogy to help. Suppose that your mother gave you an awesome gift, the best gift you could ever have, and it is a good thing to have, for it is godly and worthy. But suppose by having that gift you are immensely grateful to her for giving it to you, but you forget about all the times she bound your wounds when you fell, encouraged you in your homework, gave you hugs and kisses even when you considered yourself too grown up for them, when she went without new things of her own in order to provide for you, etc. You have become so blinded by the one awesome gift that she gave to you that you no longer notice how she does the other 99 percent of the time things of love and sacrifice FOR you, not given to you. Likewise you could love your father for something great that he gave to you, but forget that he labors in a job he detests but endures in order to support you.

That's how it often is with God. Even the most godly person is overwhelmed with gratitude for God's gift of the Savior Jesus Christ so much so that he or she no longer gives or seeks God's day to day love, in its most awesome and even knee shaking form, the pure love of God given to you through the Holy Spirit. It's like even the most godly people are so focused on being (correctly) grateful to God and the things he has given to them (both individually and also in the form of the Savior) that they never experience and thus do not feel even a fraction of the awesome purity of God's love like a beam of the purest gold and silver enfolding them in wings. If you catch the Holy Spirit's eye in genuine love, not trying to "summon" its "force," the purity of love will just about bowl you over and it will change you and your understanding of God forever.

Bible Reading: Proverbs 4:1-9

Hear, O children, a father's instruction, be attentive, that you may gain understanding! 2. Yes, excellent advice I give you; my teaching do not forsake. 3. When I was my father's child, frail, yet the darling of my mother, 4. He taught me, and said to me: "Let your heart hold fast to my words: keep my commands, that you may live!

5. "Get wisdom, get understanding! Do not forget or turn aside from the words I utter. 6. Forsake her not, and she will preserve you; love her, and she will safeguard you; 7. The beginning of wisdom is: get wisdom; at the cost of all you have, get understanding. 8. Extol her, and she will exalt you; she will bring you honors if you embrace her; 9. She will put on your head a graceful diadem; a glorious crown will she bestow on you."

Understanding God: advice and role models

In my previous post in the series “understanding God” I explained how the error of predestination is the result of misunderstanding the attribute of God’s all knowingness. I want to dovetail a related concept here, just to build upon this basis of understanding.

God is impossible to fully understand, not because he keeps part of himself secret, but because his vastness of “perspective” is genuinely unknowable. In fact, the more that the great religious minds have come to know God, the more they are in awe of all that is unknowable by the human mind, which is bounded by limitations of matter, energy and time. Saint Thomas Aquinas is the shining example of the saint who most used intellectual and logic capabilities to explain faith and through the centuries many have revered and studied him for precisely that reason. He is the one who has brought generation after generation to God through “the human mind.” Thomas Aquinas left volumes of writings, all based on faith and logic through reasoning, which are treasures today. Still, what was the thing that enraptured him so much that ultimately he stopped writing? It was the mystery of God in the Holy Mass, specifically in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. The way that God reveals himself, physically and spiritually, in the Holy Mass, in all its mystery and simplicity was what gave Aquinas more understanding, and at the same time more awe of the mystery, than any intellectual progress in understanding God.

Before I continue on my main point, let me make an aside. Many people outside of the Catholic Church misunderstand why Catholics venerate the saints so much. There are two reasons, one of which is related to how we understand being part of their community, the “communion of saints,” even as they are already in heaven and we are still alive here on earth. The other reason that I want to explain to you is that the saints are teachers and role models, not just as examples of holiness and redemption, but also in the many varied ways that each of them grew in their understanding of God. There are many techniques, for lack of a better word, for individuals to better understand God and often one or two saints are role models that a person can relate to in their progress themselves toward understanding God. St. Thomas Aquinas has for centuries been the inspiration for those who desired or needed to approach their understanding of God through a rigorous path of logic and reasoning. He is one of the thirty-three Doctors of the Church. Yet in direct proportion to his logic, reasoning and intellectual approach to God, Aquinas also had an intense and mystical communion directly with God, one that yielded miraculous fruits. Thus one of his titles is “The Common Doctor,” for he leads the average person to reason their way to God, while another of his titles is “The Angelic Doctor,” for his mystical qualities are comparable to how the angels themselves know God. I cannot recommend St Thomas Aquinas highly enough, therefore, to modern generations for veneration and role modeling in emulating his intellectual approach, and being inspired by the divine gifts that he, in parallel, received.

In his prologue to his best known work, The Summa Theologica, he wrote: Since the teacher of Catholic truth must instruct not only the advanced but also the beginners, according to the word of St. Paul (1 Cor. 3:1-2), “as to little ones in Christ, I fed you with milk, not with solid food…” so that the purpose and intent of this work is to treat those things that pertain to the Christian religion in a manner suitable to the instruction of beginners…with confidence in the divine help, try to present the contents of sacred doctrine as briefly and clearly as the matter allows.

Father Rengers in his book “The 33 Doctors of the Church” comments that “St. Thomas, who fought fro and is remembered for his emphasis on the place of reason in theology, relied primarily on the guiding hand of divine love” and quotes St. Thomas, “Ardor precedes illumination, for a knowledge of truth is bestowed by the ardor of charity.”

Just as another aside, Shiite Muslims have a similar understanding of saints with Catholics, where they understand that saints are to be revered, but not worshipped, and that saints are the role models for not only their virtue but also their methods of learning about God and teaching accordingly.

Therefore, St. Thomas Aquinas, who has such an intellectual approach to teaching about God, role models and articulates two important things to bear in mind,. One is to always remember that “baby steps” are needed in understanding and teaching about God, not demonstrations of one’s supposed intellectual prowess and “sophistication” of thought. He critiques previous works as being too difficult and agenda driven for many to learn from, and that is a problem that moderns are especially vulnerable toward. Indeed there is an entire industry of very marginal people writing books about God and faith who have little if any solid factual education, particularly in Christianity, yet peddle to the public books filled with the most bizarre and arcane claptrap, presented as “lofty” and sophisticated “spiritual insight.” In contrast, the greatest “expert” in God in modern times, Thomas Aquinas, always built his writings on solid intellect and baby steps, ensuring that neither his doctrine nor the readership goes even one inch astray. When Aquinas taught he started with the basics, from truly the very beginning, such as why God created humans, and what are the attributes of heaven, not with sweeping declarations of his “personal revelation” and condescending “wisdom.” The true geniuses, especially those on the subject of God and faith, are always remarkably humble and allow only one step at a time on solid factual and theological foundation that is not of their own invention.

The second thing that Aquinas role models and articulates is that when writing about God, one cannot, no matter how intellectual, write from a perspective of no love. No one can accurately discuss or represent God if one does not have or actively aspire to having love of God. At the face of this, moderns might object that loving God presents then “bias” into written works about God, but on examination that is ridiculous. God is love and all of love comes from God. One cannot genuinely write about God, including in a strictly intellectual way, without having love of God, “ardor” as St Thomas calls it or at the very least is seeking to have love of God, acknowledging that as his or her objective in writing and study. To attempt to write about God without loving God as God exists (and not how you wish him to be) is like a chemist trying to write about chemistry but not believing in hydrogen, or a physician writing about the treatment of wounds and refusing to believe that bandages exist, or a home builder who seeks to build a shelter but refuses to believe there is such a thing as walls and a roof. Thus one cannot explain or study God without feeling love of God as he is, since ultimately the sum total of understanding God is understanding and feeling love of God. One can no more understand God without loving God than one can hope for rain in a drought yet not believe in water.

So to understand God one must take baby steps based on sound and factual basis of reasoning, but one must also have love of God in one’s heart as one’s motivation, even if that love is painfully imperfect at first. One other error that moderns make is the excessive focus on God, specifically in Jesus Christ, as some sort of symbol of unconditional “love,” a love that excuses sin, and is not actually directed toward genuine love of God or genuine, rather than self serving, loving charity of neighbor. If one reads the Gospels, yes, Jesus preaches a great deal about love and charity, but he also in equal measure dishes out a great deal of criticism and reminder of the penalty of failure and of a continually sinful and godless life, which will end in being burned as the chaff. Moderns, ever since the so-called hedonistic “Love Generation,” ignore the reality of what Jesus taught about God and instead portray Jesus as some sort of pastel colored ever forgiving and ever accepting love machine. In order to write intellectually honest and correct works about God, one must have genuine love of God as either one’s reality or one’s objective, and not an agenda driven self serving interpretation of the “endless boundaries” of God’s love.

For example, many of the saints loved to read about God and write about God. But there is a remarkable difference between their motivations and the motivations of many today. The saints loved to read about God because they loved God, not because they were trying to analyze, dissect and understand him with the intent of controlling his powers. For example, when one is truly in love one wants to know more about the object of one’s love because love creates the desire to know more and immerse one’s self in the loved one’s milieu. One should not, however, wish to read more and more about one’s loved one as a way to manipulate and control him or her. Thus one who is well balanced seeks to read about God because one loves God, or wishes to love God or love him even more, and not to wrest imaginary “secrets” out of God as a way to accomplish some sort of secondary agenda in one’s life.

Likewise the saints loved to write about God because, again, they loved God and wished to share their love of God with others. Similarly, many moderns also misunderstand and misuse their own motivations for writing about God. Far too many, especially in the so-called New Age arena, write about God in order to show off their supposed enlightenment and cash in on it. I’m not saying that one cannot charge money for a book, to earn a living or to at least break even in the cost of publication. What I am saying is that too many so called “spiritual” writers write about God or their New Age “spirit” as ways to self promote. They often proclaim their “humility” while at the same time puffing up their possession of spiritual “insight” and “gifts.” Thus you have New Age Hindus or Buddhists or whatever actually writing and marketing books about Jesus Christ, and then doing the “talk show circuit” as “spiritual experts.”

Think again about my example of the chemist who wants to write a chemistry book but does not believe in the existence of hydrogen. Would you want to read anything that he or she has to say? Would you want to conduct any of his or her experiments? I mean, go ahead, light up that cigarette since hydrogen does not exist, LOL. That would be irresponsible and crazy enough, to be a chemist who does not believe in the existence of hydrogen and teaches accordingly. However, imagine this. Suppose it is a biologist who writes that chemistry book and the biologist is both is not a chemist, but also does not believe in hydrogen! So that author would not even be an irresponsible expert; he or she would be an irresponsible non-expert, a uneducated intruder into the field of chemistry.

Now imagine that a biologist writes a book about chemistry where not only do they not believe in hydrogen, but they think that neon has been treated “unfairly” and does not get sufficient “attention,” and thus pushes a “neon agenda” throughout their chemistry book. “It’s not fair that neon is an inert gas,” the author thinks, and decides to insert neon into many equations and chemical reactions in the place of the actual element that occurs there. They do not believe in hydrogen, and they think that neo does not get enough attention. Thus they teach that the chemical formula for water, H2O, is actually Ne2O. Need some water? Smash some neon and oxygen together!

To understand God one must understand God the way God actually is, based on the facts of God’s interaction with the faithful and his inspired words on the subject, not on how someone wants God to be in order to enable their own agendas. The saints are the reliable way who show the genuine path to understanding and loving God, and that is why thousands of these role models exist. The saints have all come to God in a myriad of lifestyles and life experiences, so there’s a saint that resonates somewhere for anyone in any station of life. However, they all come together in one commonality, which is orthodox and reliable, faith and reasoning based understanding and love of God. None of them, no matter where they came from in life, “made up” out of their own minds their own theology and their own “interpretation” of God. They found their way on their own paths to the same God; they did not invent different Gods as the result of “going their own way.” I cannot believe how foolish people are today when some of them basically say they are finding the “right” God who “suits their needs.” I’m sorry, but there’s only one God, the powerfully eternally consistent one, who is waiting when your life is over and you are judged, and it’s not the “convenient” God who was “best suited to your lifestyle.” God is God and the same God, no matter what people are doing on earth, or even if this planet is blown to smithereens. God never changes and it does not matter one iota if you think that God is not “suitable to your present needs.”

To summarize, just as one learns how to drive a car from someone who knows how to drive, one can rely on studying one or more of the saints for ideas about how to better understand God and make him real in your life. Do not let “the blind lead the blind.” People used to read about and study the saints so that they would have ideas and role models about how to learn about God, not to follow the saints to the stake, LOL. Many saints were not martyrs and had even ordinary and non-dramatic lives, with the problems and challenges that all average people encounter in life.

Let me give an example of how that works best, and how that might be misunderstood. St. Paul has been through the centuries one of the most frequently role modeled of the saints, but there is a correct way to role model St. Paul and an incorrect way to role model St. Paul. Remember that Paul, when he was still Saul and a violent persecutor of Christians, was an ardent believer in God. Saul was extremely God fearing and very studious in his Jewish faith. It was this love of God that became extremist zealotry which motivated his erroneous persecution of Christians. In a way Saul was like the Pharisees who persecuted Jesus because obviously the Pharisees believed very much in God. So both Saul and the Pharisees were filled to overflowing with belief in God’s existence and in the tenets of their faith. In a way Saul was better than the Pharisees because he was not a hypocrite. Saul did not have the material and prestigious benefits of the wealth of the priesthood, for example; he was a tent maker. However, obviously Saul was worse off than those Pharisees who only argued with Jesus but who personally did not seek his death, leaving that to the other Pharisees. Saul did not argue with Christians; he sought to arrest them and have them killed. Then Saul was thrown from his horse on the way to Damascus by the light and the voice of the resurrected Christ, and he was converted.

Therefore St. Paul has been a role model for many generations of Christians who relate to several aspects of his life: his belief in God but disbelief in Jesus, his dramatic conversion rather than one based on gradual study, his transformation from a destroyer of a faith to a planter of churches, and his suffering for the faith through many trials and pains after his conversion to Christianity. However, I have noticed that St. Paul has been somewhat popular as a modern role model for those who did not believe in God at all. I’m not saying that such moderns are not welcome to use St. Paul as a role model, far from it, I welcome it. But I need to point out that an important aspect of understanding St. Paul is that he always was a God fearing pious believer. The resurrected Christ’s confrontation with him did not prove to Saul that God existed, since Saul always believed that, but was irrefutable proof of the identity of Jesus Christ as specifically the Savior and the Messiah. Moderns who do not believe in God but seek him through St. Paul’s role modeling tend to make one mistake accordingly. Moderns who do not believe in God and role model themselves after St. Paul tend to maintain an inner weakness toward disbelief and pagan practices. This is because St. Paul does not offer in his own life a refuting of total disbelief or of pagan superstitions because he himself had no need of that witness and testimony in his own life, since he always believed in God.

Thus selection of a “role model” saint is very important to proper faith formation. People who have no belief in God or cultist pagan New Age temptations are often better off emulating saints who grew up in pagan households who then converted. They can surely, and should, venerate and honor St. Paul studying, as all aspiring and actual Christians should, his life and his writings. But for moral support and for approaching God through the proven path that is most near one’s own actual situation in life, one should look at the other saints for guidance and both moral and intellectual support. For example St Justin Martyr is one of the best known and helpful of the saints to those who come from a disbelieving, pagan, or excessively secularized pseudo-intellectual background. Justin Martyr lived circa 100-165 and was of a very educated pagan family. As a pagan teacher of philosophy, rhetoric, history and poetry he was inspired by an old man who had met to study Christian Scripture. He became a Christian at the age of thirty, debated with pagan philosophers, and opened a school of philosophy. Justin Martyr was raised as a child, became an intellectual, a teacher and ultimately converted when paganism was by far the majority, and Christianity was the radical, persecuted minority. Thus someone with a very godless background, especially one that was intellectual, can especially relate to Justin Martyr and his existing writings.

For many generations Christian men, whose vocation was to have an average married life with children looked to St. Joseph, spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary and stepfather to Jesus, for their path and inspiration, even though Joseph authored no testimonies or sacred literature. During the generations where many did not read or write, who were poor, and who attempted only to do the best they could for their families, the deeds of St. Joseph, his obedience to God, and his love of Jesus were all the inspiration that they needed. They read about the Apostles, studied the Bible and their catechism, but they simply loved St. Joseph. I still remember the time when millions of men looked to St. Joseph for their support and strength, finding God through St. Joseph’s humble and unique example. Oddly we live in times where people buy St. Joseph statues and bury them in the ground upside down so that they can have “better luck” in selling their real estate properties. Maybe that has not been the right approach to God, no? St. Joseph is often forgotten except as a pagan practice to shill someone’s real estate. How sadly the times have changed. As St. Joseph has fallen away as a role model for the average Christian man, we have a real estate crisis (where his statue was used for pagan purposes, not totally a coincidence) plus we have the epidemic of stepfathers and “boyfriends of the mother” brutalizing and killing infants. A generation of humans is very much like the saints that they emulate, and, to their detriment, the saints that they ignore or defy in role modeling. I can think of no more stark example, except for the degrading of God himself, of the downfall of an entire category of humans (men) and their falling away from the best human role model they ever had, St. Joseph, spouse of Mary and step father to Jesus.

Thus to better understand God it is obvious that hundreds and indeed thousands of saints who have already found their way there can and must provide role modeling and example setting to people from a full diversity of life experience and perspective.

Further, one does not better understand God by omitting one’s God given intellect and believing any baloney that anyone makes up and sells to you, including your own self delusion. Far from abandoning reason and intellect, Christianity, Islam and Judaism are rich in the opportunities to use your brain, not put it in mothballs (or some other chemicals).

Additionally, love of God, even if it is unknown to you or painfully incomplete, must be your motivation for seeking to understand God. Motivations other than love of God all lead to truncated, misleading or dead ends and great error in interpretation. Likewise, however, the love of God must be understood correctly, and not as human labeling of weakness or hedonism as being justified by some open ended sloppy agenda based philosophy of supposed “love.” God’s love is infinitely strong and infinitely pure, and one cannot understand God if one has an unwillingness to understand that. God is both understanding and forgiving, but one must also remember that God’s purity of love is never compromised. Thus that which is stained and full of sin, no matter how much God “loves all his children,” cannot enter heaven.

The many paths to finding the one true God as demonstrated by the thousands of saints, both famous and mostly unknown, demonstrates again that God wishes all to find him, and does not “predestine” anyone to heaven or hell. Like evolution and natural selection has developed many thousands of species of birds in nature, for example, each person finds the same God in their own heart and soul through various paths. What is important to remember is, however, that the paths are all real and grounded on actuality, not self invented delusion. The saints demonstrate that people can and do come to God in various directions at various times in their lives: some were child saints, holy at even a small age, while others became saints late in life after much error and sinfulness. Obviously if people were “predestined” God would not have allowed such many examples of those who individually find sanctity and role model to others. Just to close this topic, here is the statement of the Catholic Church doctrine regarding predestination:

1037. God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of the faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance”:

Father, accept this offering
From your whole family
Grant us your peace in this life,
Save us from final damnation,
And count us among those you have chosen.

Bible Reading: Psalms 118:161-168

Princes persecute me without cause but my heart stands in awe of your word. I rejoice at your promise, as one who has found rich spoil. Falsehood I hate and abhor; your law I love. Seven times a day I praise you for your just ordinances. Those who love your law have great peace, and for them there is no stumbling block. I wait for your salvation, O Lord, and your commands I fulfill. I keep your decrees and love them deeply. I keep your precepts and your decrees, for all my ways are before you.

Building on previous post, more re loving God

Here are a few more thoughts, building on my previous posting about vocations.

One of the reasons that God sent Jesus Christ was to bring God’s love to humans, in person. One of the afflictions of the age during which Jesus was born was that the Israelites had lost much of their love of God. By love of God, I mean the personal relationship of love dialogue, as I described in my previous posting in this blog.

I know that many of you assume that a personal love of God is something that really did not exist in the Old Testament times, but you would be wrong. I can explain this in several ways. One is to point out the obvious love of God that is expressed in books such as the Psalms, the Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, and Isaiah and in many other places. You can distinguish the fervor of love from the feelings of fear of God. So many of the faithful did indeed feel a fervor of personal love for God, although it was not the focus of the law and obligations for worship as documented in the scripture. You have to read between the lines a little bit to understand where the authors are swept away in the grandeur of God, and in appeal to him for justice, or fear of his wrath, from the contemplations of the wonders of his work and also their sense of personal love for him.

Second, love tended to be expressed in parent and child terms during those times. There really is no way to describe to modern humans exactly the love between a father and his first born son, for example. So much of the personal love dialogue that I speak of is cloaked in the depth of love that a father and first born son have for each other, rather than ardent friendship, shepherd, and consoler that Jesus brought in person. So you have to remember that love for God was just as personal and ardent during Old Testament times, but tended to be expressed and felt in much more of the treasured father-first born son as it was back then. In fact, readings for the Mass from this week indicate times when God is frustrated with the hypocrisy of their ritual worship of him while at the same time sinning. It is not that the sinning “makes God mad” so he “doesn’t care about the sacrifices,” but rather, when one sins one does not love God. Sin is the expression of not-love of God. So you have to understand that from “God’s point of view,” when one sins one is acting in a way that is not indicating love of God. Trust me, people did not obey God just because he cracked the whip and threatened them with punishment or hell. Many, MANY people in Old Testament times had a fervent personal love relationship with God, but it was perceived as something that did not have to be preserved in scripture as a special point. The many allusions to father-first born son love was really the way the people of that time felt, in its nearest equivalent, their personal love relationship and dialogue with God. It has wrongly been portrayed as a time of when fear wrung obedience out of the people, but as I said, the fervent and personal love of God is evident but in a much more subtle way throughout the Old Testament.

A third point to make is that when Jesus was born there were many “distractions” from a person’s love relationship with God, much as today. The Roman occupation, the secular temptations and the corruption of the money changers and much of the priesthood were all interferences between the faithful and their personal love relationship with God. Some of it was understandable, as they kept “waiting” for God to “do something,” in the miraculous fashion to impact the political or military situation. Impatiently tapping one’s foot at God expecting an army of angry angels to whoop the butts of the Romans is not exactly conducive to the love and adoration of God, and this had a very corrosive effect on the faith of the Israelites and the fervent love of God that their forefathers had. So this is another reason that in the beauty and, to humans, mystery of God’s perfect plan, he sent “his Son.” The people still well understood the father-first born son devotion that was culturally historic, as I describe above, and so remained relevant and a way to make God again “accessible.” Through Jesus God opened that door to re-personalize the mutual love that had been blocked and corroded by the dire condition of the Israelites. This is why you can read in the Gospel that thousands responded over and over to the obvious “magnification” of God’s love onto the people through Jesus. Jesus allowed the people to overcome the corrosive times, the cynicism, and the oppression of pagan conquerors, plus their own priests’ corruption, and once again connect to God using a love metaphor that they understood of father and first born son. Jesus never had to declare God his Father to the flock who listened to him, or that he is the Son, for this love metaphor to work. You see, Jesus was acting as the loved “agent” of God, just as the first born son would for his father in family business or work. Jesus explained God to the people, demonstrated his obvious love and obedience to God in all things, and magnified his love for God so that the people could see through unspoken example. This is why people did not run around trying to worship Jesus himself on the spot. When people left one of Jesus’ “sermons,” they left feeling more fervent love for God.

This is why it is perfectly alright to love Jesus with one’s whole heart and soul, and to focus one’s love on him. However, it is not being one hundred percent true to either Jesus’ intentions or what he actually accomplished when he was here on earth to have the love “stop at Jesus” and not extend through to God. If one truly wants to imitate those who heard Jesus in person and who believed, then you must come away from an encounter with Jesus loving him, yes, but recognizing that your love is really extending through Jesus to loving God, and feeling his love in return, himself. I do worry very much about this pious generation and the parts of Christianity who have forgotten this, or never realized it. Why is it that people, even as Jesus performed incredible miracles, did not throw themselves at his feet in organized worship on the spot? Because, obviously, it was their faith in God and love of God that was refreshed and restored, and that is exactly what Jesus wanted. Jesus came in order to be the Savior and the Messiah, but this does not mean that he was not “bringing God” to the people, but only himself. I often repeat how Pope Benedict XVI wisely phrased it in his book “Jesus of Nazareth,” that he, Jesus, “brought us God.” When the son represents the father, and is his agent, for the Israelites (and many cultures of the land, including what would become the Muslim people), the son speaks for the father, and has the authority “as if the father himself is there.” But that does not mean that the son wants people to only “deal with him” and forget about the father and his authority. Jesus made God, the Father, more accessible, restoring the love dialogue between the people and God, and between the individual and God. And then he died, resurrected and “returned to the Father.” If you want to imitate “how the Church really was” “in Jesus’ time” then one must understand that exposure to Jesus resulted in more fervent and personal love of God himself.

I hope that you find this helpful. It is a source of great concern for me, especially regarding Christians who are outside of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church in its liturgy retains more of the continuity of devotion to God and this is why I am not quite as worried about those within the Church as I am for those outside of it. Here is a practical example of how to reflect on what I mean. How often does one feel an experience of loving God very deeply in gratitude for sending Jesus, compared to how often one focuses all of one's love on Jesus? I'm not talking quantity here, but giving you an exercise to see if you are truly "loving God through Jesus" or if you have stopped feeling the "follow through" through Jesus all the way to God, and thus do not really contemplate your love for God and fully extend and receive the dialogue in return from God in his fullness.

Addressing priests, bishops, & called to vocations

While commenting on a blog about the status of vocations as it pertains to the level of bishops, I was able to put into words some of my views on vocations, and why priests deserve much more credit than they receive. My comments might also be helpful to those starting in on their vocations, or even long time priests who have reached a period of spiritual aridity, or have been too afflicted by the pressures of the world.

Most everyone understands that when one first thinks about being a priest, in the very early stages, they describe it as hearing a call or an attraction to vocation. The first thing that the potential future priest may feel, often as a youngster, is a pull to the vocation itself. It is the “job” that is what seems to be the voice that God uses to call them with. So I do not mean that they view it just as a secular job but one that serves God, far from it. But what I mean is that the language of inner, interior dialogue, the invitation, that God extends tends to center around “what the priest would be doing for God,” as in the specifics of the service. The young proto-priest often envisions himself performing priestly roles, and may admire priests in his parish, or long distance role models such as the Holy Father in Rome.

But what these proto-priests, who first hear the call to vocation, don’t realize is that a second dialogue that is much more subtle is taking place. That is, to hear an invitation from someone who loves them dearly to love them in return. At the same time that God is extended the “call to vocations” by framing the dialogue as being about having a “job” that is in service to God and his flock, there is a second conversation which is, especially if one is a youngster, the first spiritual invitation to love and be loved.

I would explain to you, even though most priests probably could not explain it themselves this clearly, that their formation is not just learning the “job” of priesthood, but understanding and developing their personal love relationship with God. We all know priests who are marvelous, while others struggle. Some of this is a matter of how much they are able to take the love they freely exchange with God and now magnify God’s love onto their parish, or whatever their assignment or religious community. The most successful and serene priest is the one who is not the most “hip” or the most “modern” or the most “popular,” but the one who can authentically magnify the love he has learned about with God onto his flock.

A bishop, then, finds an even greater challenge, which is why it is so daunting to some, but welcome to others. Just at a time when one must bear an extra burden of secular administration types of responsibilities, one must also magnify their learning of God’s love onto and throughout their entire diocese or archdiocese. They are literally the interpreters of their personal “love dialogue” with God for now tens of thousands of people, or even a million. It is an enormous challenge for the consecrated clergy at all levels, but one must have special appreciation for this part of their vocation that they themselves often do not recognize, understand, or give themselves credit for. This is one reason why the Blessed Virgin Mary loves the priesthood and prays continually in God’s presence for their intentions. This is because she well knows, and indeed foretold that, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior” (Luke 1:46-47).

With those words, Mary essentially wrote the first lines of the job description of future Catholic priests and bishops. Just as her purpose was to “magnify” the Lord, with “rejoicing,” it is the vocation of priests and bishops to magnify their personal love dialogue with God so that it is visible and easily attained by their flock. THAT is their number one task, in addition of course to the sacraments, most especially the Sacrifice of the Mass, though obviously that is the shared expression of worship of God’s love for his flock.

Priests and bishops also have much more serenity with the personal sacrifice, including chastity that they have made through their vocations when they mindfully deliberate and promote this magnification of God’s love. As a priest is formed, and then throughout his maturing, he must constantly work on, and benefit from, his personal dialogue of love with God. In some ways it is like any love relationship in that there is potential for miscommunication, aridity, or the competition of outside forces. Recommitting and refreshing oneself in one’s personal dialogue with God is only enhanced when one recognizes that he must “magnify” this love dialogue for his flock. Magnification means to make visible what the eye cannot see without assistance. A priest who can take the love dialogue he feels with God and now “display” it through his works, words and feelings onto his flock is “magnifying.” Likewise, the bishop does the same although the day to day activities differ from that of a parish priest.

I have to emphasize that I do not mean to rack up a longer list of charitable works in the name of Jesus. And I do not mean that the flock must be made happier because "you" love them. What I mean is to display the depth of love that you have with God in public, magnifying it, just as a spouse who is with someone he or she adores does so automatically with just a look. A priest cannot be serene and totally fulfilled in his calling if he is not continuing, even through periods of aridity, to be "in love with God" on a personal level and in dialogue. It is that love of God that YOU feel that should translate into your demeanor, works, and deeds, as naturally as rain falls. You are not magnifying your personal feelings toward the flock in imitation of Christ, you are magnifying the love dialogue that you have with God himself onto your flock. (And no, this does not mean you tell them your secret prayers to God! :-)

When one learns how to dialogue with God in his love, he is truly accessing something that is infinite and immeasurable. It is a source of refreshment, rather than a burden. Unlike activities that place a physical, intellectual or emotional strain on a person, increased access to God’s love and the sharing of it with others only refreshes and sustains, rather than depletes. This is one of the unspoken but obvious ways that the Blessed Virgin Mary endured what she did during her life, and two thousand years later, continues to touch the hearts of millions through her intervention and understanding. It is not her power that she wields, but instead, she continues to magnify her love dialogue with God onto all of those who believe and listen.

So I hope that those in the priesthood, bishops, those in formation, and those considering vocations take these words of illumination, explanation and encouragement to heart, and God bless all who serve him.