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, May 30, 2008

Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Happy Feast of the Sacred Heart to everyone!
Or I hope everyone had a great one!

Ever since I was a child there was the well known picture of the Sacred Heart around. But I never really stopped and think about it until recently.

Have you ever stopped and looked closer?

We see the fire he has come to set on earth.
We see the thorns and blood of his suffering...

I think it was this 'hurting' aspect which had caused me unconsciously for a long time not to set my eyes on it for a long time. The picture looked odd.

Yet we feel it often or causes others to feel it without realising it. How many time we hear or see people 'hurt'. I find that it can help us to realise that every hurt is represented by at least one of those thorns. Didn't Jesus say that whatever we do to one of our neighbor we do it to him?

It also help to remember this picture when we are hurt ourselves. And suffer in communion with the Lord.

I find that whenever I unite my heart with Jesus I share in the real Reality. The reality of God's love for us. Remembering that our heart is a sacred Temple where the Lord reside. And that he is in us since we received him in the Holy Eucharist. Is good to remember that whenever they have been a Eucharistic miracle when the Lord shows his flesh to his people, he often show a 'beating heart' or a tissue of flesh of a human heart.

So if you lower your head into your heart, and see yourself as in a little Temple, you are not imagining things. It is real. That's how we are fully the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the Temple of God. Tabernacles of the living God. As we stay in grace, we share the heart of Jesus, so we can share in that sacred fire of love which endure all things, believe all things, last forever...

Someone asked about the meaning on this site of 'civilization of love'. I would say that it is the civilization that springs from this fire that the Lord has come to set on Earth. A fire which has been burning on Earth for 2000+ years and is still being spread around the globe. But we often quench it when we sin.

Let's us love one another, and pray for one another that "we may keep his commandments and so be able to abide in his love" in his heart.

God bless
Posted by at
Labels: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)