Category Archives: The Way
Citations included from “the Way” by St. Josemaria Escriva
Give thanks for “them”! God is Using “Them” to Make You Holy!
Thoughts which carry me to Jesus, and to the Cross
“And have you forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as sons? “My son, do not scorn the Lord’s discipline or give up when he corrects you. “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son he accepts.” Endure your suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline? But if you do not experience discipline, something all sons have shared in, then you are illegitimate and are not sons.” (Hebrews 12:5–8, NET)
“O LORD, restore our well-being, just as the streams in the arid south are replenished. Those who shed tears as they plant will shout for joy when they reap the harvest. The one who weeps as he walks along, carrying his bag of seed, will certainly come in with a shout of joy, carrying his sheaves of grain.” (Psalm 126:4–6, NET)
Wherever they may be, let all my brothers remember that they have given themselves and abandoned their bodies to the Lord Jesus Christ. For love of Him, they must make themselves vulnerable to their enemies, both visible and invisible, because the Lord says: Whoever loses his life because of me will save it in eternal life [Lk 9:24; Mt 25:46]
174 Don’t say, “That person bothers me.” Think: “That person sanctifies me.”
The art of being a disciple of Jesus requires you to embrace God disciplining you.
Many books which talk about the practices of Christian Discipline, I have used and been blessed by them. Authors like Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, John Michael Talbot, Fr. Timothy and ancient classics as well. They are full of good advice, as they recommend ways to deepen your prayer life, meditate on scripture, and do things to promote what is now called Spiritual Formation (a kinder, nicer title!)
But there is an aspect of discipline I rarely see talk about, the discipline of the Lord.
The art of receiving the discipline of God.
That discipline that happens, when God separates us from our sin, and because we stubbornly cling to it, the discipline isn’t easy. It can feel like all of God’s wrath is being poured out on us, or at least God removed His protection and providence. As Hebrews notes, it can be painful, but it is necessary, and more, it is proof that we are God’s children, for He cares enough to punish, so He doesn’t have to condemn us. It is part of the transformation of repentance that God’s disciplining occurs, and is effective.
One of the challenges of such discipline, is how God chooses to discipline us.
In the Old Testament, for example in the books of Joshua and Judges, Ezra and Nehemiah, God uses the enemies and adversaries of Israel and Judah to disciple them. Those enemies and adversaries conquer God’s people, enslave them and torment them. Sometimes, it would take decades to achieve God’s purpose, when God’s people cry out to Him, to remember them and rescue them. God had warned them, as Moses delivered the Covenant to them, that these punishments could happen if they sinned.
They sinned, they chased idols, dishonored their parents, were unfaithful, stole and gossiped, etc…
So God disciplined them, and they came back.
God hasn’t changed.
So will accept it when God confronts our sin? When God allows us to experience some of the consequences, that He can heal us, as He comforts and cleanses us?
Will we remember – as Francis points out, that we turned our lives over to God? That when we lose our life and let God mold it, we gain our lives in an incredible way?
Will see Escriva’s point, that those who are “bothering us” are being used by God to draw us to Him, because any other option is simply too frustrating and too trying?
Will we see them as examples of God’s love, calling us back to Him, as He uses even these “relationships” to draw us close, to transform us into the likeness of Christ?
And once you see this – can you give thanks for their presence in their lives?
This is strong discipline, and it requires us to grow in our trust and dependence of God.
That is a good thing, btw.
——-
Pasquale, G., ed. (2011). Day by Day with Saint Francis: 365 Meditations (p. 267). New City Press.
Escrivá, Josemaría. The Way (p. 47). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
The Cost of Discipleship is far less than you think (or has been told to you)
Thoughts carrying me to Jesus, and to the Cross…
“And when the people saw it, they all complained, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”But Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, half of my possessions I now give to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone of anything, I am paying back four times as much!” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this household, because he too is a son of Abraham!For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”” (Luke 19:7–10, NET)
But hope in the resurrection allows us to take the proper measure of our brief time in this world, and this does not make us neglect our neighbor, it stirs up greater generosity. We have seen this in the lives of many mystics. The saint with a soul soaring upward into heaven does not forget the world; to the contrary, he or she is in the most radically free position to transform it. Chesterton said his first attractions to Christianity came when he realized that Christians were the only ones to preach the paradox that one must be “enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it.” Hope allows us to love the world radically, without practical calculation or cost analysis.
Back int eh 1980’s, there was a great focus on the the idea of the “Cost of Discipleship.”
Some of it came because of the great work by Bonhoeffer bearing that name, which many people would read and not finish! Or if they did, would struggle and give up applying it. Others would talk about it based on Jesus’ parables and stories–illustrations like the general going to war, or the warnings about following Jesus costing family, friends, and even require accepting martyrdom and persecution.
In some ways, the Kingdom of God was put forth as requiring such a sacrifice that you would be considered a “hero” of the faith, a saint because of inner fortitude and a willingness to pay any cost to be with Jesus, and it turns the Church into a rest haven for weary crusaders fighting against that “ole Satanic foe.”
Count the cost – the pastors and evangelists told us… and held up images of those who left everything to go on the mission field, or serve in the inner city, or give up the tech career to work in the church. They counted the cost, and accepted the cost, and paid for it with their blood, sweat, and relationships.
And often burnt out – for the cost analysis they did was inaccurate, and minimized the cost to one’s heart and soul. (that is another blogpost entirely!)
Simply put, if our focus is on the cost analysis, we won’t make it.
But those who encounter Christ, as Zacchaeus did, don’t calculate the cost of walking with God, he didn’t perform a cost analysis or look at his bank account when he determined where God was leading him. He did check his credit card balance before throwing a massive parry at his house, so people could meet Jesus, he did it. And as he restored and multiplied his victims wealth, there was no one at his should, laying out a payment plan.
There was no need for a cost analysis, because he could see the value God put on restoring him… and nothing could compare. Those who serve God for 40-5070 years will tell you the same thing – nothing can compare to what they have, indeed they rejoice in their hardships!
This is why Fagerberg’s saints are so generous, why we are free to love radically–even to the point of bloodshed and death. dying for the world that we had to die to.
Which brings up a last point… if we were dead in sin prior to being brought alive in Christ, what price could we have paid, and what cost is there now?
This isn’t cheap grace _He paid for it…and as we receive it – we realize that only our relationship with Him, and walking with Him as we love others with Him matters.
Fagerberg, D. W. (2019). Liturgical Mysticism (p. 96). Emmaus Academic.
Can a Lutheran (Or Catholic or Presbyterian or) Pray for Revival?
Concordia Lutheran Church – Cerritos, Ca , at dawn on Easter Sunday
Thoughts which carry me to Jesus, and to the Cross
““So I will set apart as holy the tent of meeting and the altar, and I will set apart as holy Aaron and his sons, that they may minister as priests to me. I will reside among the Israelites, and I will be their God, and they will know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out from the land of Egypt, so that I may reside among them. I am the LORD their God.” (Exodus 29:44–46, NET)
544 The Communion of the Saints. How shall I explain it to you? You know what blood transfusions can do for the body? Well, that’s what the Communion of the Saints does for the soul.
I don’t know why I felt the need to write on revival this morning, and to be honest, I didn’t see the connection at first in my devotional readings. The seem as far from the concept of revival as the horizon seems to the sailor in the Pacific Ocean.
What great thoughts ar expressed in them though! The idea that God’s reason, His “so that” for the Exodus, was not just so they could recognize Him, but that He could reside, that He could dwell with us! And as He does this community that is formed with Him in Him and through Him becomes the place of the transfusion, as the trust in God that sustains this saint becomes common to that one. Where the hope of that little group becomes the hope for all, as we are reminded of the Lord’s presence,
And as I long for those thoughts to become reality at Concordia – I realized what I was longing for was the result of revival–it is the end game result, the people of God knowing the love of God for man that enables us, no that compels us to share the life we’ve been given.
All the rest that goes with revival, from the repentance of people who have learned to grieve over their and their communities’ sins, to the flood of new music, to the care for those who are widowed and orphaned and who have immigrated to the community, are complimentary and caused by the people of God dwelling in His presence, communing together, as they are made God’s.
But it is the communion, the community of God and man (all of us) that is the goal. Not the change in morality, though that will happen, nor is it about filling every church and planting thousands of others-thought this will happen as well. It’s not about political agendas, or denominational superiority. It is even about the signs and wonders that happen…..
Revival is simple- it is about people rejoicing in the presence of a loving God as He cares for us.
And this we can all pray…even as the psalmist did:
6 Won’t you revive us again, so your people can rejoice in you? 7 Show us your unfailing love, O LORD, and grant us your salvation.
Psalm 85:6-7 (NLT2)
Escrivá, Josemaría. The Way (p. 117). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Have A Missionary’s heart, not just a missional one
Thoughts which drive me to Jesus, and to the Cross, and give me hope!
17 Since many people in the crowd had not made themselves holy, the Levites killed the Passover lambs for everyone who was not clean. The Levites made each lamb holy for the LORD. 18–19 Although many people from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun had not purified themselves for the feast, they ate the Passover even though it was against the law. So Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, “LORD, you are good. You are the LORD, the God of our ancestors. Please forgive all those who try to obey you even if they did not make themselves clean as the rules of the Temple command.” 20 The LORD listened to Hezekiah’s prayer, and he healed the people. 21 The Israelites in Jerusalem celebrated the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days with great joy to the LORD. The Levites and priests praised the LORD every day with loud music. 22 Hezekiah encouraged all the Levites who showed they understood well how to do their service for the LORD. The people ate the feast for seven days, offered fellowship offerings, and praised the LORD, the God of their ancestors. 2 Chron 30:17-22 NCV
727 Your flesh is tender and raw. That’s how you are. Everything seems to make you suffer in your mind and in your senses. And everything is a temptation to you … Be humble—I insist. You will see how quickly all this passes. The pain will turn into joy, and the temptation into firm purpose. But meanwhile, strengthen your faith; fill yourself with hope; and make constant acts of love, even though you think they come only from your lips.
LOST beloved Lord Jesus Christ, reconcile me with the Father; intercede for me His grace; wash me thoroughly from my sins; protect me against the evil spirit; save me from the power of hell; defend me against eternal damnation; and, finally, translate me to eternal glory. O, Crucified Jesus, hear me, for I trust in Thee; despise me not, for I love Thee; reject me not, for I revere Thee: even the bitterness of death shall not sunder me from Thee. Amen.
I’ve probably read this passage about Hezekiah and the reestablishment of the Temple’s sacramental services a dozen or two times. This morning, as I did, it hit me–how outrageous his actions were, to not only allow the “unclean” to participate in communion with God, but to encourage it, and to work with the Levites to do what could be done to sacramentally bless the people of God.
People who weren’t prepared, people who were not ready, people who wanted God and recognized their need for Him, but didn’t meet the standards set forth in the law. They were the people in Jesus parable about the wedding of the King’s son, who were invited late, dragged off the streets. They were like David’s followers, who ate the bread dedicated to God in the temple.
And knowing this, Hezekiah prayed for them, and resonated with the heart of God who want no one to persih, but all to be transformed by the grace He pours out.
These are the people St. Josemaria identifies with, who are raw, neaten, depressed, struggling with temptation. The ones he tells to be humble, to accept the struggle–for it will pass! There is our hope, there we find the power of God which enables us to love and adore Him, which He finds acceptable as the Holy Spirit intercedes and translates.
This is the prayer that Loehe penned and encouraged us to pray, even when we think we have “lost” Jesus. When we need to be reconciled (not to reconcile, but to be reconciled) with the Father. This is a prayer the Father will joyously answer, even as He healed those who hadn’t properly cleansed themselves – God did it for them.
The heart of Hezekiah was one prepared to see Revival occur in the midst of a broken people. He yearned for something that he didn’t know possible–and he saw it happen. This is the heart of a missionary, one who goes beyond strategies and plans and programs, and works with the people directly, knows their weaknesses, and guides them into the presence of Christ. Not just talking missional strategy, not just talking about outreach, but being there, in the mud, sent by God to seek and save the broken, the lost, those not ready.
That is where the church needs to be, doing that, and helping people who aren’t ready, interceding for them, even as the Spirit does for us.
Escrivá, Josemaría. The Way (pp. 128-129). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Lœhe, William. Seed-Grains of Prayer: A Manual for Evangelical Christians. Translated by H. A. Weller, Wartburg Publishing House, 1914, pp. 372–73.
The Road to Holiness Starts With Significant Failure…
Thoughts that drive me to Jesus Christ, and His cross:
The king’s demand is impossible. No one except the gods can tell you your dream, and they do not live here among people.” Daniel 2:11 NLT
605 “Father, how can you stand such filth?” you asked me after a contrite confession. I said nothing, thinking that if your humility makes you feel like that—like filth, a heap of filth!—then we may yet turn all your weakness into something really great.
The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ, the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him. It will be God working in him to will and to do.…
When the wisemen around the King heard his demand, they heard only a death sentence, for they knew all their intellect and wisdom was not up to the king’s demand. And unknowingly scripture records a prophetic statement – that only a God that would live among men could possibly save them.
There was no other way. The task was too great.
Daniel will step in, and walking with God will have the impossible made possible, the unknowable revealed, and will become the savior of the wisemen. All of them, even those who served other gods and demons.
His words to the king reinforced this: it isn’t about our strength or power.
And it is not because I am wiser than anyone else that I know the secret of your dream, but because God wants you to understand what was in your heart. Daniel 2:30 NLT
That’s why St Josemaria finds hope for the man confessing the filthiest of sins. For he has realized the need for assistance that only God can provide. Not only can He help and heal us, He will. He promised that help, that comfort.
Similarly, Tozer finds that the man so convinced that he cannot purify himself has finally reached the point where holiness is assured – because his only option is to look to Jesus!
Therefore, while receiving the sacraments is important, it is critical to meditate on what God is doing, as He sprinkled water on us, as He feeds us His body and Blood, as we realize what it means for Him to say, “My Child, you are forgiven all your sin, all injustice has been cleaned from our lives. We need to think that through, not just 2 minutes before church. These sacraments were not established, so God could look down on us as well behaving muppets. He established them so that we could be ministered to, so that we would have something tangible to remember, to think through, to have our souls captivated by. As He captures out hearts and minds, we reflect His glory into the dark world in which we live. That is what holiness is, to be so caught up in the relationship that we unconsciously take on the image of Jesus.
Our God is here. He is with us… and He makes us holy, as we find peace in His presence.
Escriva, Josemaria. The Way . Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
A. W. Tozer, Tozer for the Christian Leader (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2015).
The Meaning of Life… (warning – graphic illustration included)
Thoughts that encourage loving and being devoted to Jesus
But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. 9 And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. 10 For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. 11 So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God. Romans 5:8-11 NLT
Without argument, most things are at their best when they are fulfilling their purpose and design.
For instance, a piano is made with a specific purpose: to produce music. However, I happen to know that someone once stood on a piano in order to put a fastener of some kind in the ceiling. Some artistic women have used piano tops as family picture galleries. I have seen piano tops that were cluttered filing cabinets or wide library shelves.
There is an intelligent design in the creation of a piano. The manufacturer did not announce: “This is a good piano. It has at least nineteen uses!” No, the designer had only one thought in mind: “This piano will have the purpose and potential of sounding forth beautiful music!”…
Do not miss the application of truth here. God was saying to Abraham, “You may have some other idea about the design and purpose for your life, but you are wrong! You were created in My image to worship Me and to glorify Me. If you do not honor this purpose, your life will degenerate into shallow, selfish, humanistic pursuits
556 The Way of the Cross. Here indeed is a strong and fruitful devotion! May you make it a habit to go over those fourteen points of our Lord’s Passion and death each Friday. I assure you that you’ll gain strength for the whole week.
I love Tozer’s illustration, but struggle with the application.
Simply put, we weren’t created to worship God, or to glorify Him. I have seen too many people over the years try and fulfill that purpose, only to burn out, then drop out.
We were created for a purpose, and understanding that purpose can result in the most amazing worship, and result in God’s being glorified, a glory we are promised to share in. (see Col. 1:26-29)
Our purpose, our erason for existence is simpler, and more amazing.
As the piano was made to make music, we are made to be loved by God! We are created to be His friends!
Nothing less that being the ones whom God pours Himself to, whom God has chased throughout History, planning each step to bring us into this wonderful relationship.
We can’t mistake our response for the reason. It doesn’t work backwards. St Josemaria wants us to encounter that passionate love, that is why He wants us to contemplate the cross. Not out of duty, but because we need to know we are loved. And the Way of the Cross shows it to us, step by step, as Christ embraces torment, because it will show that love in a way that is undeniable.
It may be a blunt and graphic illustration, but saying that worship is the purpose and meaning in life is like saying going to the bathroom is the purpose of eating and drinking. Worship isn’t the purpose, it is the consequence. The purpose is being loved – a completely passive experience, and something we have no control over. This even works into my somewhat profane illustration, because a major part of worship is relieving oneself of everything impure… for God’s love will cause the eliminating of waste in our lives.
Therefore His sustains us through the most painful points of life. In the places where everyone else abandons us, He is there, comforting us, drawing us into His peace.
Finally, the glory of God has someone to love. In fact He draws us to Himself and loves us, that is truly glorious.
That is our purpose – to be loved. That is what gives meaning to our lives.
Know that you are loved beyond measure, experience that love that is unexplainable… and find out why we praise His name!
A. W. Tozer, Tozer for the Christian Leader (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2015).
Escriva, Josemaria. The Way . Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Imitate her faith and her sacrifice…for she was like Jesus
36 And she said, “Father, if you have made a vow to the LORD, you must do to me what you have vowed, for the LORD has given you a great victory over your enemies, the Ammonites. 37 But first let me do this one thing: Let me go up and roam in the hills and weep with my friends for two months, because I will die a virgin.”
38 “You may go,” Jephthah said. And he sent her away for two months. She and her friends went into the hills and wept because she would never have children. 39 When she returned home, her father kept the vow he had made, and she died a virgin. Judges 11:36-39
113 You were telling him: “Don’t trust me, Jesus. But I, …I do trust you. I abandon myself in your arms; there I leave all I have—my weaknesses!” And I think it’s a very good prayer.
There are a lot of women in scripture whose faith is remarkable. The woman who washed Jesus’s feet, the women who stayed at the foot of the cross, when the apostles had abandoned Jesus. Deborah the judge, Ruth, and who would ever forget Mary, the mother of God.
But I think the greatest example of faith is Mizpah, the daught of the judge Jephthah. It is her story above, how she acknowledged the call that God had on her life, becauseof her father’s vow, and the victory God gave him.
He didn’t know the victory would cost his only child’s life, yet she takes the news with a grace that trusts God, and rejoices in the victory. She simply acknowledges the price to be paid for saving her people was her life – and accepts it.
God our Father sent Jesus, they knew the price beforehand, and accepted it – knowing the joy that would come from the victory of sin, Satan and death. This young lady knew the victory, and judged it was well worth her life. She abandoned herself to God, as St. Josemaria, in all her weakness.
And she accepts God’s will even as she does…
You and I will probably not be offered as a sacrifice that the Ukraine might defeat Russia. But we have already been saved – and we can offer our lives to God, in recognition of that victory. To trust Him to send us out to whoever needs to know of the victory, to send us out to plead with people to be reconciled to God – and then reconcile with each other. There are sacrifices we are asked to make, to use the gifts God gives us, whereever He thinks they are needed. (see Romans 12:1-15)
This is faith – to be able to depend on God so much – that we are free from attachment to our life… and can serve Him and the people He is gathering to Himself… in whatever way He leads us. No matter the cost – no matter the sacrifice.
Lord, help us to embrace Your plans for us, whether they be big or small. Empower us for this, by revealing Your Presence in our lives daily. Amen!
Escriva, Josemaria. The Way . Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Why Do We See Scripture Reading as a Duty, Not a Blessing?
Devotional Thought of the Day:
2 You’re blessed when you follow his directions, doing your best to find him. 3 That’s right—you don’t go off on your own; you walk straight along the road he set.
Psalm 119:2-3 (MSG)
Let us use texts of Scripture as fuel for our heart’s fire, they are live coals; let us attend sermons, but above all, let us be much alone with Jesus.
When I made you a present of that Life of Jesus, I wrote in it this inscription: “May you seek Christ. May you find Christ. May you love Christ.” These are three very distinct steps. Have you at least tried to live the first one?
I have often struggled to find the words to encourage people (and pastors) to meditate on Scripture.
To treat it more than a textbook, or a self-improvement novel, or something they have to do, in order to be better believers, to be loved by God.
I would love to blame it on the enlightenment, or modernism and the need to rationalize and have a purpose for everything we do. But we, conservative or progressive, high church or low church, all seem to be willing to forgo spiritual disciplines like prayer and meditation on the words through which God reveals Himself to us.
It is too easy when trying to encourage people to spend time contemplating God and His love, to resort to tactics which can produce guilt or shame. It is challenging to help someone see the blessing of spending time, no, cherishing the time that comes when we slow down and hear the word of God, describing how we are loved by the Word of God.
Notice that the translation doesn’t say go and find your blessing? It simply acknowledges you are, when you follow the directions to find Him and do. He’s not that far off, even today amid a pandemic. Spurgeon says we need to be alone with Jesus, he gets the blessing that it is! St. Josemaria urges us to find Jesus, with the same concept. Not because we have a duty too, but because of the blessing.
This is our time of refuge, our time of peace, it is the time where we are loved and affirmed, and our hearts set on fire, our passion for God grows because we realize how passionate He is about us. It is the time of restoration, a time where we spend intimately with God, a time we need to survive, to take a time out, to breathe, to regain hope, to be healed, to realize that God is even dealing with our sin.
All that and more happens when a believer finds Jesus, right were they are. When they spend time savoring the message of Scripture when they don’t just read it to read it, but let it soak deep inside them.
I can only but urge you to do so, to spend time with God as He reveals Himself to you… and how He is you God, and you are His beloved people.
C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).
Escriva, Josemaria. The Way . Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Why We Don’t Understand the Sin is Sin… a matter of perspective.
Devotional Thought of the Day!
31 So you should earnestly desire the most helpful gifts. But now let me show you a way of life that is best of all. 1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing. 1 Corinthians 12:31–13:3 (NLT)
999 And what is the secret of perseverance? Love. Fall in Love, and you will not leave him.
We must see things in their proper and real perspective if we are to live well. But the key to this seeing, in turn, is loving things rightly. If we over-love things, we tend to over-value them in our minds in order to rationalize our over-valuing of them in our lives. If we under-love God and people, we tend to undervalue them in our mind to rationalize our undervaluing of them in our lives. If I love money more than God, I tend to think of money as an absolute need and God as a mere extra. Thus loving and seeing depend on each other. If I do not love properly, this clouds my vision. And if my vision is clouded, I will not love aright.
This sounds complicated, but it is simple when we live it. Say I want to take revenge on someone. God forbids this. Therefore I see God as a bother. But if I first loved God, I would then see that revenge was the bother. When I am in the grip of a lust, God appears as a puritanical interferer. But when I am in the grip of God’s love, lust appears as it truly is: a pale perversion of true love and joy.
Since the 1980’s I have been reading books and articles written by Peter Kreeft, from Socrates meets Jesus and the Best Things in Life, to the classic “Christianity for Modern Pagans” (which is simply a modernized version of Pensees by Pascal) The man is brilliant, as much of a scholar as any I’ve met or worked with over the years. Nothing he has written has hit me as deeply as this.
We see God as a bother, we see His rules to heavy-handed, too restrictive, As Kreeft notes we see him as the puritanical interfered, whose disciples are for the most part hypocrites. If we are honest, we don’t understand the logic in them, simply because we don’t understand that we are truly, deeply, loved by God
And it all boils down to what the Apostle Paul wrote nearly 2000 years ago. It boils down to love. It boils down to what we adore, what we cling to, what we cherish and value, what we try to perfect in life. What we love, we are committed to, what we love, we guard and protect. We persevere to keep it in our own lives.
In Colossians, the apostle Paul talks of circumcision our hearts, cutting away these idols, letting them fade into the distance. In doing so, we can see His love clearly. demonstrated there on the cross. A love for us that no person, nothing could ever have. The more we love God, the more these other things we cling to are revealed to be what they are. The more we don’t need them around. When we realize we can love God, this stuff we have wrongly loved is revealed to be the crap that it is. And its grip on us grows dim, as the hymn noted, in the light of His glory and grace (love).
That is why we preach Christ crucified, the hope of glory, the hope of finding what we can truly love. For He loves us.
I pray we all come to know Him more, that this time leaves us the room to contemplate His love. AMEN!
Escriva, Josemaria. The Way . Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 192.
We are tired…and yet…
Photo by Ric Rodrigues on Pexels.com
Devotional Thought of the Day:
10 Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.
Isaiah 41:10 (NLT2)
994 “My enthusiasm is gone,” you wrote me. Yours has to be a work not of enthusiasm, but of love, conscious of duty— which means self-denial.
There are times we are physically exhausted.
There are times where we are emotionally exhausted, or spiritually exhausted.
There are some days when these all roll in together, and staying away, or even getting out of bed seems like to great a burden.
In this pandemic, there are too many of these days. When we feel like the person St. Josemaria is advising, where enthusiasm is gone, where we feel drained, where life is without energy.
It is that moment that what we have left is love.
Not just our ability to love.
God’s love, sustaining us.
Enabling us to love others, enabling us to love ourselves…
God has promised us to be here… with us, given g a reason to get beyond the lethargy, to get beyond the discouragement, to get beyond the weariness.
Listen to these promises… rely on them… and know He loves you. AMEN!
Escriva, Josemaria. The Way . Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
