The Better Part

The Spirit of truth shuns those whose love does not reach beyond themselves.  His will is that he, and he alone, should be loved for his own sake.  Not only does he desire to be the sole object of our love, but our love for him must be total.  He will have no rival in love, any more than he can be rivaled in the generosity with which he rewards those who love him.

Yet God desires to be loved by us in such a way that we love everything else together with him, and love nothing apart from him.  As their Creator he is the source of all created things, and every created thing is good simply because he made it.  In loving created things, therefore, we should love their Creator.  We must not love them for their own sake, but for the sake of him who gave them existence.  Anyone who sets his heart on gold or silver, material goods, or possessions of whatever kind for their own sake is a stranger to the Father's love.  It is the Creator we must love in all created things, and all created things in him.  By loving him in this way we love everything else too, yet God is really and truly the sole object of our love.

Blessed Oger of Locedio

-Blessed Oger (1264) was a disciple of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and an abbot of Locedio in Piedmont, Italy.

"I desire mercy"

A wise man said:  The man who hides his fault cannot be saved, but the Lord has mercy on one who acknowledges his sin and repents.  If you suffer injustice, the world will despise you.  The Lord's heart is set against the proud to humble them, and humility receives mercy forever.  

If you take a humble role in all human affairs you will raise yourself above the rulers of the world.  Let everyone see that you are really humble, and bow to others first as if they were the important ones.  He who is renowned for his wisdom is humble among men, in spite of his wisdom and learning, and is wise in what he finds in his spirit.  Blessed is he who offers himself in everything he does, for he is raised above all.  

Those who make themselves humble for the Lord's sake, and diminish themselves to the Lord, praise the Lord; and those who endure hunger and thirst for the Lord's sake he will honor with suitable gifts.  Those who comfort others for his sake he will clothe in splendid garments, and those who are poor and in distress for his sake he will comfort with true riches...

The eyes of the Lord are on the humble:  the prayers of the humble are heard as soon as they are spoken.  Service and humility turn a human being into God on earth.  Faith and mercy quickly lead to wisdom.

Blessed are those who for love of the Lord plunge headlong into trials and troubles without anger or sadness; when they escape they soon reach safety in the harbor of the divinity, and through their good works come to God's home and have rest from their troubles, rejoicing in their hope.  Those who run the race of life in hope are not frightened by the trials on the way, nor do they cease from following it; on reaching the end of their course they see the Lord, and praise him for having saved them from perdition and from the many adversities they suffered in their ignorance.  

John Moschus

-John Moschus (619) was a Byzantine monk and spiritual writer.

The Lord Under Our Roof

Who can speak of God's being, of how he is everywhere present though not invisible, of how he fills heaven and earth and every creature, according to the text:  "Do I not fill heaven and earth?  says the Lord"; and elsewhere, as the prophet says:  "The Spirit of God has filled the whole world"; and again:  "Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool"?  God, then, is everywhere, utterly immense, and everywhere close at hand, according to his own testimony about himself:  "I am a God who draws near, he says, and not a distant God."

Therefore, it is not a God dwelling far away from us that we seek, since if we are worthy we have him within us.  He dwells in us like the soul in the body, provided that we are his healthy members, that we are not dead through sin, that we are free from the taint of a depraved will.  Then he truly lives in us who said:  "And I will live in them and walk among them."  And if we are worthy to have him within us, then we are really brought to life by him as his living members, for as the apostle says:  "In him we live and move and have our being."

Who, I say, can investigate the sublimity of this unutterable and incomprehensible being?  Who can examine the depths of God?  Who would dare to treat of the eternal source of the universe?  Who could boast of knowing the infinite God who fills and surrounds all things, who penetrates and surpasses all things, who embraces and eludes all things, whom no one has ever seen as he is?  Who he is and how great he is, he alone knows, but since he is our God, though we cannot see him, we must seek him, seek him continually.  We must always hold fast to God, to the deep, immense, hidden, sublime, and omnipotent God, and beseech him, by the merits and intercession of his saints, to shed at least a ray of his light upon our darkness to shine on us, dull and ignorant as we are, on the dark road of this world, and lead us to himself by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, belongs glory throughout all ages.  Amen.

Saint Columban

-Saint Columban (615) was born in Leinster, Ireland, and was the founder of several European monasteries.

How Christ Does the Father's Will

"Could not God make people perfect right at the beginning?"  someone may ask.  Take the example of a very small child.  The mother can give her baby grown-up food, but the baby is still unable to take adult nourishment.  Similarly, God could have given humanity perfection right at the beginning, but humanity could not have received it because it was only a child. 

For that reason our Lord, who sums up all things in himself, when he came on earth in these last days, came not in full glorly which he could have done, but in the form we could see.  Certainly, he could have come in his imperishable glory, but we should not have been able to bear the greatness of his majesty.  

Therefore, like giving milk to infants, the perfect Bread of the Father revealed himself to us on earth in human form, so that we might be nourished by his Word like babes at the breast and so by degrees become strong enough to digest the whole Word of God.

Saint Irenaeus of Lyons

-Saint Irenaeus (early third century) was a pastor, missionary, and a heroic writer in defense of the Church.

Where Our Heart Is

Create a clean heart in me, O God:  and renew a right spirit within me.  This verse corresponds with, "Thou shalt wash me and I shall be made whiter than snow"; for he asks not only for a remission of his sins, but for such an infusion of grace as may renew his soul, and make it bright and beautiful, a petition, telling against those who make justification to consist solely in the remission of sin.  We are not to take it that a new heart is asked for, when he says, "Create"; the expression merely expresses a wish that his heart may be thoroughly cleansed and purified, and made, as it were, a new heart.  The meaning, then, is create cleanness in my heart; and there is a certain point in the word "Create," to imply that God finds nothing in the heart of a sinner, whence to form cleanness in it; but that entirely, through his own great mercy, without any merit on their part, it is that he justifies men; for, even though sinners are disposed to justification by faith and penance, still, faith, penance, and all such things are purely the gift of God...  "Creating a new heart" is nothing more than creating cleanness in the new heart...  a "right spirit" means a right affection, in other words, charity;  for by avarice or cupidity the affections of the heart become distorted, turn to creatures, especially to self, while charity or love directs them to the things above, especially to God.  "A right spirit," then, is renewed in me when the heart having been cleansed by grace, an ardent love of God, that had been displaced by sin, is renewed in the soul.

Saint John Fisher

-Saint John Fisher (1535) was chancellor of Cambridge University and a cardinal.  He was beheaded for the faith.

Love and Perfection

Let anyone truly possessed by the love of Christ keep his commandments.  Who can express the binding power of divine love?  Who can find words for the splendor of its beauty?  Beyond all description are the heights to which it lifts us.  Love unites us to God; it cancels innumerable sins, has no limits to its endurance, bears everything patiently.  Love is neither servile nor arrogant.  It does not provoke schisms or form cliques, but always acts in harmony with others.  By it all Gods chosen ones have been sanctified; without it, it is impossible to please him.  Out of love the Lord took us to himself; because he loved us and it was God's will, our Lord Jesus Christ gave his life's blood for us - he gave his body for our body, his soul for our soul.

See then, beloved, what a great and wonderful thing love is, and how inexpressible its perfection.  Who are worthy to possess it unless God makes them so?  To him therefore we must turn, begging of his mercy that there may be found in us a love free from human partiality and beyond reproach.  Every generation from Adam's time to ours has passed away; but those who by God's grace were made perfect in love have a dwelling now among the saints, and when at last the kingdom of Christ appears, they will be revealed.

Happy are we, beloved, if love enables us to live in harmony and in the observance of God's commandments, for then it will also gain for us the remission of our sins.  Scripture pronounces happy those whose transgressions are pardoned, whose sins are forgiven.  Happy the person, it says, to whom the Lord imputes no fault, on whose lips there is no guile.  This is the blessing given those whom God has chosen through Jesus Christ our Lord.  To him be glory forever and ever.  Amen.

Saint Clement of Rome

-Saint Clement (96) was the third successor of Saint Peter.

Why We Turn the Other Cheek

Having poured out his precious blood for our sake, Christ himself will deliver us from our sin.  Let us not despair about ourselves, nor be cast down into a state of utter hopelessness.  It is a terrible thing not to believe that there is hope of repentance.  A person who does not expect salvation recklessly adds sin to sin, but one who has hope of healing will readily take care of himself thenceforward.  The thief who does not expect such a gift goes off into a frenzy, whereas the one who has hope of forgiveness will often come to repentance.  If a snake sloughs off its skin, can our sin not be sloughed off too?

God loves us, and loves in no small measure.  Do not say, then, "I have fornicated and committed adultery, I have done terrible things, and not once but many times.  Is it possible that he will make a concession for me, that he will grant me an amnesty?"  Listen to what the psalmist has to say:  "How great is the abundance of your goodness, Lord!"  Your accumulated sins do not prevail against the wealth of God's compassion; the supreme physician is too experienced to be defeated by your wounds.  Just hand yourself over in faith and tell the doctor your disease.  Make David's words your own:  "I said, I will confess against myself my transgression to the Lord."  Then what he speaks of next will happen equally to you:  "And you have forgiven the sin in my heart."

Do you want to contemplate God's kindness and great forbearance?  Then listen to what is said of Adam.  Adam, God's first-formed creature, disobeyed.  Could not God have put him to death at once?  Yes, but see what the Lord did in his exceeding love for humankind.  He did indeed cast Adam out of paradise, but he resettled him a little distance off, so that Adam, keeping view that state from which he had fallen and realizing what a change for the worse there had been in his circumstances, might thereafter be saved through repentance.

Truly this is an instance of God's loving kindness, but a small one in comparison with what follows.

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem

-Saint Cyril (386), bishop of Jerusalem, was expelled three times from his see by heretics who opposed his unfailing orthodoxy.