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

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

One Bread One Body

Just like our bodies, our souls seem to need some sort of daily bread. Devotees of any religion have different kinds of spiritual maintenance. But sometimes it is amazingly similar. While Christians constantly meditate on the Bible, Muslims on the Coran, etc, astrology readings seem to be a new kind of spiritual food for some 'no-religious' spirituality.

Today we see astrology readings in almost all news papers. Since when did they become standard? An alien would think that they come from some common 'spiritual' institution to which every body belong to. It is said that they are from the New Age Movement. I once read that this movement is not an organization as such, however it is amazing how it manages to convince everybody about its ideas. Astrology readings are all clear signs of spiritual hunger in our society. We all need something to rely on in order to spend the day with some hope and reason for joy.

I think I unconsciously manufactured my own superstitious beliefs for sometime out of a misunderstanding of how Divine Providence works. I would think that God time is when all things matches perfectly right. That Love rides on a perfectly smooth, gentle kind of curve. So part of my life existed in this 'waiting' mode until I learned what it means that God's name is I AM. Actually what had happened is: I had contaminated a virus called Pride. The terrible virus which attacked the 'First Intellectual': (Lucifer turned Satan) and made him heavy for Heaven.

Pride makes us think that we are in control of situations, events, even our lives. All we need is to input some information in our brain and we can almost predict what we will be tomorrow. It can attack any person who think they know 'enough' or much. Despite learning all this earlier, and knowing that the only way to defeat it is through love, I contaminated it. Why? I neglected constant prayer. I always talk about prayer on this forum because this failure hurt me so much. I naturally hate to fail in anything. So every time I fail I tried to make sure it does not happen again. Prayer is our only weapon against evil forces. It was by prayer full of love that St. Michael defeated demons.

In our society we seem to be slaves to the intellect. The only way we can explain how people accept astrology readings is because they think those things have something scientific therefore logical in/with them. It is all about the "intellect". And people are willing to be bound to some 'hard' statement even if it tells you that today you are guaranteed to have a bad day! It is sad that some people actually pay for their readings.

The good news for Christians is that we are freed from those cosmic laws and forces. Instead of being to some laws of nature, those laws obey us if we are in Christ. Saints have an habit of constantly overriding the laws of nature just like Jesus-Christ. Simple Christians who don't read astrology or who don't go by what everybody thinks, also, in those small ways they override common laws.

I have been reflection on daily Mass readings proposed by the Church and it is amazing on how liberating and confirming they are. While astrology tells you (which is mostly lies by the way) how your day will be, the Holy Spirit through the Church tells you how you will make your day. Year after year, we are fine tuned to the life of Christ from his birth to his resurrection.

As Jesus said, we should not worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will take care of itself. We should worry about the Kingdom and its righteousness, we should worry about NOW and act NOW.

This way of living can free us from superstition and making crazy engagements like Herod in today's Readings. Pride made Herod make such a promise, and soon after the same pride prevented him from doing the right thing because he was concerned about his future. How he would be seen as a King who changed his word. But who said that kings shouldn't change their word at least for the sake of Righteousness and Justice?

Humility and allegiance to Christ and his Church allow us to have our true daily bread. Everyday we are assured of blessings and the Joy of Christ. In Him we have our being. And as St. Augustine said, as long as we truly love, we can do what we want. We are free.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very well written, I enjoyed it. You are in my prayers as we continue our path towards sanctity! :)

+Ad majorem Dei gloraim+

Unknown said...

Thank you very much Lisa! Your prayers are a great blessing.

Glad that you are the first to comment on my blog too:)

God bless