The Violent Announcement Infinite Love storms the very gates of our life. It could be that I’ve already achieved a kind of peaceful co-existence with God. Perhaps I’ve been able to convince myself that I am more or less “in order” with my soul and therefore more or less at ease with myself. Maybe I’ve even foreseen a happy and peaceful ending to my earthly life. Then suddenly all these assurances are turned upside down
“You are loved” “My child,” God declares, “this word that I speak to you places you in the very heart of the Burning Bush. You are no longer on the threshold of the mystery, you have entered it fully. You are loved. If you truly want to receive them, these three words can shake and transform your very life. “You are loved. We have to begin at the beginning. In the first place we have
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, (flourished c. 500), probably a Syrian monk who, known only by his pseudonym, wrote a series of Greek treatises and letters for the purpose of uniting Neoplatonic philosophy with Christian theology and mystical experience. These writings established a definite Neoplatonic trend in a large segment of medieval Christian doctrine and spirituality—especially in the Western Latin Church—that has determined facets of its religious and devotional character to the present time. Historical research has been unable to identify the author, who, having assumed the name of
1 Corinthians 13 might be the supreme piece of condensed theology in the entire Bible. The whole message of Scripture is there. In this one short part of a longer letter, Paul shows himself to be an excellent philosopher, theologian, mystic, teacher, and psychologist. If he had written nothing else, he would still deserve a place in spiritual history. Honestly, I could preach for two hours on this one chapter and wouldn’t scratch the surface
Authentic love is of one piece. How you love anything is how you love everything. Love is a quality of relationship more than a statement about the worthiness or deservedness of the object loved. (Read that twice!) Jesus commands us to “Love our neighbors as we love ourselves,” and he connects the two great commandments of love of God and love of neighbor, saying they are “like” one another (Matthew 22:40). So often, we think
Only love can move effectively across boundaries and across cultures. Love is a very real energy, a spiritual life force that is much more powerful than ideas or mere thoughts. Love is endlessly alive, always flowing toward the lower place, and thus life-giving for all, exactly like water. In fact, there is no form of life that does not need water. No wonder water is such a universal spiritual symbol. When you die, you are
The Doorway of Hope “My child, as soon as you speak these words, ‘Love without limits,’ as soon as you give this supreme reality a place in your heart, you open a door. This is the doorway that leads into the Kingdom of freedom and light. “This is the doorway of Hope, the threshold that leads to the infinite expansion of your being. Hope: awaiting what is to come, awaiting the One who is to
Self-centeredness is in the end coldness, isolation. It is a desert. It’s no coincidence that in the Lord’s Prayer, the model of prayer that God has given us, and which teaches what we are to be, the word “us” comes five times, the word “our” three times, the word “we” once. But nowhere in the Lord’s Prayer do we find the words “me” or “mine” or “I”. In the beginning of the era of modern
Upon Which Foundation? “My poor children,” God says, “you want to live without me. What, then, do you depend upon? What is your essential foundation? “My poor child,” He declares, “you think you can escape from me by plunging yourself into what you conceive to be the ‘natural world.’ But what you cling to is not at all the natural world in its very depths. “You think you can lead a better life by distancing
We should not be surprised or scandalized by the sinful and the tragic. Do what you can to be peace and to do justice, but never expect or demand perfection on this earth. It usually leads to a false moral outrage, a negative identity, intolerance, paranoia, and self-serving crusades against “the contaminating element,” instead of “becoming a new creation” ourselves (Galatians 6:15). We must resist all utopian ideologies and heroic idealisms that are not tempered
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