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

Saturday, February 5, 2011

God is himself the Gift

I have been pondering on God's love with special focus on the subject of 'gift'.
Now I have some good news to share.

God, in the most basic terms, is internal exchange of self-gift.
This is because God is love. This love is so infinite that it is personal.
So God was revealed as the Blessed Trinity to those who are grown in love.
Here is a progressing way through which I discover this great wonder.
God is:
To Be ->infinitely -> - The Father - the lover
To Love ->infinite -> - The Holy Spirit - the love
To Be Loved ->infinite -> - The Son - the beloved

Note that God is those persons from all eternity, but men take on those at Creation.
When man is created, since all things are created in the Son, he becomes son right from nothingness (or from dust if you will).
Then he is loved, he learns about love as he grows in Holiness (or in the Holy Spirit). This largely depends on his mother as the process of being loved starts at his creation/conception.
Last when he wants to love, he becomes father at an other moment of creation, that is the creation of his child.
This tells me that all human persons are ministries. Our ministry is to image God. We become ministers of what God is always. We BECOME but God IS always.

All this to teach us love which is also an other way of saying 'to teach us God'.
All this we received as gifts.
God gave us gifts to introduce himself who is the final gift.

How can you be a gift to someone who does not even exist?
You create him as a person for only a person can understand what a gift is.
But even for a person to understand it, he must be used to receiving gifts.
So you send gifts before you.
God surrounds us with gifts and through them we slowly get ready for him.

So slowly we learn to receive what God himself is for all eternity.
At the end when we are fully tuned to the template, it will be Heaven.
God is himself Heaven.
When we are perfectly in him, it will be perfectly in Heaven.

God bless!

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