The Building of a Civilization of Love

The third area of commitment that comes with love is that of daily life with its multiple relationships. I am particularly referring to family, studies, work and free time. Dear young friends, cultivate your talents, not only to obtain a social position, but also to help others to “grow”. Develop your capacities, not only in order to become more “competitive” and “productive”, but to be “witnesses of charity”. In addition to your professional training, also make an effort to acquire religious knowledge that will help you to carry out your mission in a responsible way. In particular, I invite you to carefully study the social doctrine of the Church so that its principles may inspire and guide your action in the world. May the Holy Spirit make you creative in charity, persevering in your commitments, and brave in your initiatives, so that you will be able to offer your contribution to the building up of the “civilisation of love”. The horizon of love is truly boundless: it is the whole world!

- Pope Benedict XVI, WYD 2007 MESSAGE, Growing in love each day


3:12. Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect: but I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend, wherein I am also apprehended by Christ Jesus.
3:13. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. But one thing I do: Forgetting the things that are behind and stretching forth myself to those that are before,
3:14. I press towards the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation of God in Christ Jesus.


-St. Paul to Philippians

Friday, August 31, 2007

"Mother Teresa Dark Night of the Soul"

That's a document by Dinesh D'Souza. Apparently atheists seem to think that they have a new card against believers. D'Souza reminds us that what happened to Mother Teresa is normal to Christians, and especially to saints.

But Mother Teresa's heart-wrenching self-examination is entirely familiar to
thoughtful Christians. For instance, her insistent theme that she is being
forsaken by God recalls Christ's plaintive cry on the cross, "Why have You
forsaken me?" From Augustine to Luther to John of the Cross, there is a
whole body of Christian literature that sounds exactly like Mother Teresa.
In John's Dark Night of the Soul, for instance, the initial exhilaration of
conversion is followed by a "dark night of the senses" that is "bitter and
terrible to taste." Even so, this suffering is nothing compared to what
follows, the "dark night of the soul" in which "the soul feels itself to be
perishing and melting away, in the presence and sight of its miseries, in a
cruel spiritual death, even as if it had been swallowed by a beast and felt
itself being devoured." John interprets these travails as the purification
of the sinful part of man, so that he is ready for the holy eternal embrace of
God.

Bl. Teresa Of Calcutta pray for us.

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