Showing all posts in 3 Minutes for God the Father

“Vigilance, but without fear; courage, but without recklessness; recollection, but active” (Inner Word).

Here is some advice on how to live fruitfully our following of Christ. Vigilance is part of our basic equipment as Christians. It is not only a matter of identifying and repulsing the devil’s insidious attacks, but of being attentive to our whole way of life, in accordance with the Apostle Paul’s exhortation: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:15-16).

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“Divine Providence rules all things, and what we consider evil is a remedy” (St. Jerome).

These words are spiritually challenging and should instill in us a deeper faith. For understandable reasons, we all resist the evils that may befall us, and rightly so, for evil cannot simply be tolerated. However, since our heavenly Father integrates even evil into His plan of salvation, He will use it for the good of His own. Here we must make a distinction that is as subtle as it is essential: God can never actively will evil, but He can allow it to happen and thus turn it into a medicine that heals and strengthens us.

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“Sadness is a great obstacle: it suffocates life, dims the light and extinguishes the fire of love” (John Tauler).

The masters of the spiritual life warn us insistently against the gloomy thoughts to which we give space in ourselves. The Desert Fathers refer to them as ‘tristitia’, which means disordered sadness. This is quite different from the sadness we may feel for our personal sins, which leads to repentance, or the sadness for the sins of the world, which leads us to pray and sacrifice for humanity.

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‘If the soul seeks God, much more does her Beloved seek her’ (St. John of the Cross).

We must always be attentive to the Lord and seek Him in everything. This is the language of love, and it is God Himself who invites us to do so: “Seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you!” (Mt 7:7). If we follow the inner invitation of our Father, our soul will have set out on the path prepared for her. “Our heart is restless until it rests in you”, exclaimed Saint Augustine, whose deep search for God we know from his Confessions.

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“How little is known the merciful goodness and love of your heart” (St. Teresa of Avila).

St Teresa expresses here what we also know from the Father’s message, as a kind of lament that this relationship of deep trust between God and His children has not yet been realised as He wants it to be.

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“God’s concern is mine.  Nothing that concerns Him is foreign to me.”  (St Bernard of Clairvaux).

These are the words of a soul aflame with love, who has already come very close to our Heavenly Father and whom He has filled with His love. The intimacy between St Bernard and our Father is palpable, and we recognise this profound relationship in another beautiful sentence in which he invites his brothers to draw near to the Father. In this loving invitation, which we will hear next, we see how he had made God’s cause his own, because we know very well that our Father longs ardently for all people to be close to Him, to know Him, to honour Him and to love Him. Then He will be able to give them all that He has in store for them.

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“Thou hast put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound” (Ps 4:7).

Earthly pleasures, though they may stimulate and even delight our senses, pass quickly and then have to be repeated. Spiritual pleasures, on the other hand, leave a deep impression on our soul and are capable of shaping it. If we seek earthly pleasures too intensely, we run the risk of becoming dependent on them and seeking spiritual joys less and less. Therefore, while we may enjoy “grain and wine”, we should do so only to the extent that they do not become too valuable to us and we do not lose sight of the true joys.

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“Calumny only harms those who take it to heart” (St. Francis de Sales).

One of the most terrible offences that we humans inflict on each other is slander. In other words, it is the very common vice of speaking ill of other people. If we look at it more closely, it is a kind of psychological homicide against the person in question. Unfortunately, it is not just something that happens from time to time. We have even witnessed a kind of ‘public execution’ of people through the media and, nowadays, through the Internet.

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‘In my love, I have taken possession of you. You are mine!’ (Inner Word).

We know a similar phrase in Sacred Scripture: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine” (Is 43:1). And St Paul exclaims: “Nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:39).

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“Never lose heart. God is with you and will never leave you” (Inner Word).

There is no doubt that we Christians are called to fight a battle, and it is coming to a head in an increasingly anti-Christian world, with its politics and mentality. But it is not only visible tribulations that we face. As St Paul tells us, our struggle is against “the principalities and powers” (Eph 6:12), that is, against the spirits of evil, the fallen angels, whom we must fight with the power of the Lord. To this battle are added various inner afflictions that come from our soul, as well as the experience of our own weakness and all kinds of limitations and trials.

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