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                Given August 5, 2015

                R. Fr. Carter would always say to me:
                Rita, if you could only see your own
                graced soul –
 

                R. Sin is a turning away from God –
                Sin stains the soul –
                Sin brings punishment –
                Sin brings remorse –

From Response in Christ by Fr. Edward J. Carter, S.J.
 

^NINE  Christian Hope

         1. God as Object of Hope

If faith gives a special vision of God and His plan for us, hope enables us to desire to participate in the realities of faith's vision. Hope enables us to desire the supernatural order with God at its center. This desire is to be partially fulfilled on earth, but perfectly in eternity. Hope also enables us to trust that the good and omnipotent God will give us the means of achieving our desire. Moreover, hope, as do the other Christian virtues, contains a communal dimension. The virtue of hope is concerned not only with my own personal relationship with God. It also gives me a desire to want all men to participate increasingly in the mystery of Christ.

     Our need of hope for the maintenance and growth of our Christ-life is immediately evident from the very nature of the life of grace. As we have said before, our merely natural efforts cannot achieve grace and develop its life. Grace is completely above nature, although, obviously, not contrary to it. God must always take the initiative in giving us grace. This He is always willing to do. The point we are stressing here is that we are completely helpless in the supernatural order without God's assistance in grace. The need for hope or trust in God is manifest. It is not that God refuses to give us grace unless our hope is what it should be. In His mercy and love He can overwhelm a person with His grace even though that person had been previously void of supernatural hope. However, the general principle is that we receive from God according to the measure of our trust in God.

     We have every reason to trust greatly in God. Christ reminds us of this: "Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they are?" (Mt 6:26). Here is another truth which should bolster our trust in God. The Father loved man overwhelmingly even when he was His enemy in sin. He showed this love by giving His Son to live and die for the human race. How much more, then, we should trust in God's love, now that Christ has re-united us with the Father.

     This does not say that we always find it easy to trust as we should. In time of special difficulty or crisis, as our heads are bowed in anguish, we can especially experience the difficulty of properly hoping in God. Yet it is precisely at these times when trust is all the more necessary to us. Despite the pain, then, we must trust, even though at times it seems we are hoping against hope. We must learn to trust as did Abraham: "Though it seemed Abraham's hope could not be fulfilled, he hoped and he believed, and through doing so he did become the father of many nations exactly as he had been promised: Your descendants will be as many as the stars. Even the thought that his body was past fatherhood – he was about a hundred years old – and Sarah too old to become a mother, did not shake his belief. Since God had promised it, Abraham refused either to deny it or even to doubt it, but drew strength from faith and gave glory to God, convinced that God had power to do what he promised." (Rm 4:18-21).

     God can act similarly with us as He did with Abraham. He can do great things with us if only we allow Him to do so. Among other attitudes, we must have that of hope or trust. We must trust that God can bring us to maturity in Christ. We must trust that the Father will give us all the graces necessary to accomplish our mission in life, difficult as this mission may seem at times. We must trust in this manner despite the great sense of our own weakness which can become especially manifest at times. As a matter of fact, the more we experience our own weakness, the more optimistic we should become.

     This was the attitude of the saints. I think we often view the saints in the wrong light. We imagine that they must have felt very secure in the strength of their spiritual development. It seems rather that they were more aware of their weakness and helplessness than we are. Because of such an awareness, they more and more went out of their weakness into the strength of Christ. Therefore, they were secure. But, paradoxically, they were secure because they knew how weak they were. They became secure because they gave themselves completely to Christ, and to His reign of strength within them.

     In our own measure we can imitate the saints. We, too, can learn to build upon our weakness. The realization of our weakness should actually increase our hope. The more we admit our helplessness, the more God tends to strengthen us with His grace. As long as we do not capitulate to our weakness, let us glory in our helplessness so that Christ may possess us as He desires. St. Paul tells us: "So I shall be very happy to make my weaknesses my special boast so that the power of Christ may stay over me, and that is why I am quite content with my weaknesses, and with insults, hardships, persecutions, and the agonies I go through for Christ's sake. For it is when I am weak that I am strong." (2 Co 12:9-10). . . .

     Christ, despite the suffering in His life, rejoiced greatly in the accomplishment of His work. Let us also, despite the pain and the effort and the suffering involved, rejoice greatly in the Christian task allotted to each of us. Let us realize that such rejoicing mingled with suffering is part of the death-resurrection involved in evolvement of the secular city. Just as death-resurrection was present in the life of Christ, just as it is present in the life of the Church and each Christian, so it is present in the evolving world order. Through the process of pain and effort and suffering we believe that the world is slowly but surely being more perfectly inserted into newness of life, into Christ's Resurrection. Through our Christian hope we desire to make our contribution to hasten the process. As we so labor with Christ we look ahead to the hour at which Christ will bring to completion His redemptive work. Then, as all becomes subject to Christ in perfect harmony, hope or expectation will be fully realized in regard to the entire universe. Let us recall the words of St. Paul: "After that will come the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father. . . . And when everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subject in his turn to the One who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all." (1 Co 15:24-28).

^TEN  Christian Love

Prayer for Union with Jesus

Come to me, Lord, and possess my soul. Come into my heart and permeate my soul. Help me to sit in silence with You and let You work in my heart.

    I am Yours to possess. I am Yours to use. I want to be selfless and only exist in You. Help me to spoon out all that is me and be an empty vessel ready to be filled by You. Help me to die to myself and live only for You. Use me as You will. Let me never draw my attention back to myself. I only want to operate as You do, dwelling within me.

    I am Yours, Lord. I want to have my life in You. I want to do the will of the Father. Give me the strength to put aside the world and let You operate my very being. Help me to act as You desire. Strengthen me against the distractions of the devil to take me from Your work.

    When I worry, I have taken my focus off of You and placed it on myself. Help me not to give in to the promptings of others to change what in my heart You are making very clear to me. I worship You, I adore You and I love You. Come and dwell in me now.

-God's Blue Book, January 17, 1994

                From Response in Christ by Fr. Edward J. Carter, S.J. - Chapter Ten - Christian Love continues

    God is the tremendous lover. And yet, we know that only too often we fail to respond to Him as we should. But we must keep trying. We must keep trying to fulfill more completely the commandment Christ has given us: "But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees they got together and, to disconcert him, one of them put a question, 'Master, which is the greatest commandment of the Law? ' Jesus said, 'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second resembles it: You must love your neighbor as yourself. . .' " (Mt 22:34-40).

    St. Francis de Sales, a great spiritual master and a Doctor of the Church, aptly describes how we are to love God: "We have two principal ways of exercising our love for God; the first is affective and the second effective, or as St. Bernard calls it, active. By the first we have affection for God and what he loves. By the second we serve God and do what he ordains. The first joins us to God's goodness; the second enables us to fulfill his will. The first fills us with complacence, benevolence, and spiritual impulses, desires, aspirations, and fervors, and causes us to use the sacred infusions and minglings of our spirit with that of God. The second pours into us the solid resolution, firm courage, and inviolable obedience required to carry out the ordinances of God's will, and to suffer, accept, approve, and embrace all that comes from his good pleasure."¹

    Father Joseph de Guilbert gives another excellent version of the distinction and connection between affective (internal) love and effective (external) love: "From what has been said about the Christian life being more perfect in proportion as charity elicits or commands the free acts of man in a more universal, actual, and intense manner, it follows that this perfection depends primarily on the exercise of affective charity. For if that disposition of charity does not inform the soul in some way, even the external acts which are perfectly performed in their own order will be of no supernatural value: and if this disposition is slothfully evoked or influences only weakly the external acts, then the acts will be of little value. But when the disposition is aroused energetically and has strong influence, then the external acts will be of great value. And if in such acts there are any imperfections arising from a source independent of the will (invincible ignorance or some physical or moral impossibility), the supernatural value of the acts will not in any way be lessened."²

    Besides showing the connection between affective and effective love, these words of de Guibert indicate the primary requirement for dynamic progress in the Christian life. Love of God and neighbor must more and more influence everything we do. This love must become more actual, more conscious. Of course, all this must take place without strain. But we cannot equate strain and effort. It takes effort to live increasingly in a spirit of actual love. Sometimes a great effort is required. If we are not willing to pay the price of love, we will never develop into the Christians we are destined to become.

    How do we know if we are loving as we should? If interior (affective) love is the more important, it is not always easy to judge. We have a tendency to confuse our feelings with our wills. If we feel completely dry, or even burdened with a sense of repugnance concerning our Christian lives, we tend to think that we are not loving God properly. Consequently, the best criterion we often have for judging our love of God and neighbor is the manner in which our interior love incarnates itself in external action. If, with the help of God's grace, we are doing our reasonable best to implement God's will in all the various dimensions of our existence, then we can be assured that we are loving as we ought.

    Finally, we should be aware that God intends our love for Him to be focused in Christ, for it is in Him that God loves us and calls for our loving response. It is in Christ that we are being constantly led to a deeper love of the three divine persons. "For I am certain of this: neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, or height or depth, nor any created thing, can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rm 8:38-39).

Fr. Carter had a Dream.

                From Response in Christ by Fr. Edward J. Carter, S.J. - Chapter Ten - Christian Love continues

         3. Love of Man

"My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.  . . . Anyone who says, 'I love God', and hates his brother, is a liar, since a man who does not love the brother that he can see cannot love God, whom he has never seen. So this is the commandment that he has given us, that anyone who loves God must also love his brother." (1 Jn 4:7-21).

    Our God is a God who knows and loves. This divine knowing and loving exists not only among the divine persons themselves. Father, Son and Holy Spirit also go out in knowledge and love to man and the rest of creation. Consequently, since our life in Christ is a share in God's life, we are called to love not only God, but also man and the rest of creation. The Christian has structured within his life of grace this deep desire – sometimes very latent – to give himself to his fellowman in various forms of love. If this desire is not thwarted, it can truly help change the face of the earth.

    What are some of the characteristics of our love for others? First of all, our love of neighbor should exclude no one. It should embrace every single person the world over. As Christ's love for man was universal, so must ours be. And as Christ truly achieved good for men in His love for them, so must we. In other words, in our universal love for men we must be willing to act to help promote their good. We can at least do this in our prayer for their various material and spiritual needs. This constitutes no slight contribution of love, for prayer is one of the great means of channeling God's gifts to the world.

    Secondly, our love for man must take the form of a life service in one form or other. Christ came to serve. He was fully the man for others. Can our lives be orientated in any other direction? Through our lives of loving service we make our contribution to God's creative and redemptive effort. God's love brought about creation and redemption. Our love united to His continues the process. Man and his universe are making their way back to the Father in Christ through the dynamism of love. It is interesting to note that this fact is at the heart of Teilhard de Chardin's cosmic evolutionary process in Christ.³ Teilhard, in contemporary thought patterns, is enunciating a traditional Christian truth.

    Whatever the service is that we offer – as engineer, as doctor, as priest, as teacher, as mother, as nurse – it must be permeated with love. If it is not, it does not achieve its full effect in promoting God's creative and redemptive efforts. 

    At times it is only the motive of love which will keep a person faithful to his particular form of loving service. What but a deep love for her children supports a woman who has been deserted by her husband? What but a deep love of God and man can make a young man give up his family, the prospect of marriage, his homeland – all so that he may become a missionary priest? What but a deep love for the underprivileged can support an inner city worker amidst the squalor, the disease, the bitterness, the hopelessness which he meets daily? No, redemption cannot be continued without love – God's love or ours.

    There is a final point concerning our service of love. We serve not only as individuals. At times we will be able to make our greatest contribution as a member of a group. This is an application of the communal dimension of Christianity. This common service could be as a member of a parish or civic organization, as a member of a religious order or a secular institute. There are numerous possibilities. One important thing members of such groups must realize: it takes love, sometimes great love, to remain properly selfless in group activity. There is no room in such group enterprises for the person who is always mistakenly looking for the wrong type of self-fulfillment at the expense of the particular organization. He who seeks his life shall lose it, and he who loses his life shall find it.

    There is a third characteristic which must accompany our love for others. We must be willing to love without receiving love in return. This is a hard lesson for us to learn, but a most necessary one. Our Christian love is a participation in the love of Christ. And what is one outstanding feature of Christ's love? He has first loved man, and He has not always been loved in return. Yet Christ continues to love. In our love for others we also must be willing to take the initiative. God in His providence wants us to receive love from others also. But if this love seems to be lacking at times, or only faintly manifest, then God can supply for the lack. The important thing is that we ourselves keep on trying to love. 

    There is another characteristic of our love for man which pertains to those whom we directly encounter. Our love for these persons must manifest an appropriate human warmth. We are supposed to love God and man with our entire being. This means, in part, that our love is emotional. This is the way Christ as man loved, with His entire human nature. In the proper sense, Christ was a deeply emotional man. He wept in love over Jerusalem, and He wept in love at the tomb of Lazarus. We know also that the children loved to flock to Christ. He must have been a warm personality, for children shy away from those who are cold and austere. Our love, like that of Christ, must also be properly influenced by the emotions. Otherwise it is not a fully human love, and, therefore, not a fully Christian love. 

    In regard to our direct encounter with others, it is necessary that we be cognizant of another very important point. To a considerable extent, these persons experience God's love for them through ourselves and others like us. This is an application of the law of incarnation. God has loved man through the tangible, visible humanity of Christ. Christ no longer walks this earth, but the same principle holds true. We Christians are extensions of the heavenly Christ. In union with Christ we help in continuing the tangible, visible presence of God's love in this world. Through the love of our visible, concrete persons we continue incarnational love. In loving those whom I directly encounter in this manner – and let us remember I can love a person with a basic Christian love without "liking" things about him – I help to give them the courage to be and to become. Love received is a powerful force in developing the goodness in a person. Truly, when I love a person I help that person become what God destines him to be.

    Furthermore, we in part show our love for others by allowing them to love us. A person grows by loving. In receiving love from others, therefore, we are loving them by giving them this opportunity to grow. We ourselves need this love which others give us. We are not self-sufficient beings; we are social beings who need others in so many different ways in going to the Father in Christ. We have to learn to open ourselves up to others and allow ourselves to be loved by them. At times in our pride we shrink away from this truth: that we need others – a need, of course, which must be always regulated by God's will. But we must resist these moments of pride that tell us we are self-sufficient. Remember, no man is an island.

                end of excerpt

                R. How can we be a friend with God
                    when we have never had a
                    friend.

                We watched the movie Karol and
                    what came clear to me is
                    his love of others –

                One who loves like Jesus - loves
                    others - has friends - is
                    not closed in.

                    In this retreat I saw that some
                live their lives - not going out
                as we are commissioned in baptism,
                but being self-enclosed –

                    Trying to keep the space around
                them - free so they can run things,
                everything, control things, never
                answer to anyone.

                    It is a thwarted flight that
                is consuming in a man's actions,
                when his whole life is so
                self-enclosed as this.

                    A man has an idea in his head –
                a vision for what he wants to happen
                around him in his life –

                    When he is thwarted by his own
                superiority of guarding this space
                around him so nobody can interact
                or get in –
                    How can such a person open
                their arms to even see the
                vision of God?

                Every man has this space in his
                vision of things –

                    The selfish man sees his
                brothers as enemies, closed down
                in heart – he can see every
                opportunity with others in pride
                to put himself on top and others
                under him and he can work
                in relationships through holding
                out – even brute punishment
                to try to force his ways in
                his dealings, Church, school,
                countries, marriages –
                etc.

                What vision are you trying to make
                in the world?

                Is it this Christic image as our
                founder, through the eyes of
                God the Father has put before
                us –

                    The vision of Christ – crucified
                    The vision of the Resurrected Lord
                    The vision that IS REALITY –

                Our founder, Fr. Carter, sets what
                    loving God and loving others
                    as ourselves is about!

                    The Blue Books speak of love – giving
                oneself – unity – growth, Christian maturity,
                relationship –

                    Closing down shop, closes the
                doors to customers.

                    I watched Morrow go from
                100 people on Sunday when Jesus
                gave me the rosaries on Sunday
                you see in many Blue Books –
                    Jesus wanted a chapel there –

                When the vision of any person is to
                recreate their own vision that
                brought the dark, pain, closing
                down – crouching in goal of
                failure and not unity and love
                and building the Kingdom of God – it
                brings punishment for those
                with a light heart to come
                and watch a rule of darkness
                forced on us through punishment
                and rules that are dark rules
                against the vision of God –

                    Praying for greater faith gives us
                the vision of God. The Church, the
                world, the individual Christian
                being more Christic – being in
                the state of becoming more Christic –
                the words of our founder in
                Response to God's Love –

                    A Captain guides the ship
                in rough waters, but never
                takes his eyes off his destination –
                Hope is like this –

                    A Captain guiding his life
                in the world of turmoil, unsettledness,
                bad visions –

                    But he never takes his goal
                from the eternal goal of heaven.

                    Sin brings the sinner down.
                A sinner turns away from God
                for some lesser good he
                seeks, a desire above God –
                The sinner charts a path that
                is like a Captain running
                the ship on purpose in the
                black, torrential waters, but
                his vision becomes so impaired
                by his constant turning from
                the light – he sees in a
                cloud and his pride, anger
                jealousy, envy, slothfulness
                feeds his distorted reasoning –
                he does not have right reasoning –
                his desires are impaired by his
                own sinfulness and turning
                from God and staying away from
                the right destiny –

                Faith brings the vision of seeing
                    through God's eyes –

                Hope keeps our hearts on the
                    right goal for why we
                    were created – to be
                    with God forever in heaven
                    and to help lead others to
                    that goal

                Love is being one more and more
                    in God –

                Love is being more and more
                    like the image for why we
                    were created –

                The jealous person, the envious
                person is always in the wrong
                place with their thwarted bad
                habits – vices – and their
                pride can make them like an
                angry captain taking down
                the house to lead the whole
                boat to his dysfunction because
                he thinks he is right even in his sin.

                    God is the source –
                    Man has a fallen human nature –

                Man has tendencies toward the
                    deadly sins –
                    pride, greed, envy, wrath,
                    lust, gluttony, and sloth

                Where we could all have
                this same vision of the
                Heavenly Father and doing
                His will –

                    Individuals drive
                themselves in the dysfunction
                to implement their
                vision, so they don't
                have to change – when
                the pascal mystery is
                death/resurrection and we are to
                die to those things not like Christ
                and live the life of resurrection

                    God the Father sent His
                Son – the Son of God –
                to teach us how to be
                sons of God and live according
                to God the Father's will and Jesus
                showed us this – how He did
                His Father's will and died and
                rose for our sins.

                    When a leader imposes his
                vision on a body – and
                his vision is not aligned
                with the vision of the
                Heavenly Father then the body is
                at the discretion of the
                leader and how he intends
                to impose upon them the
                vision he has within.

                    If a person underneath does
                not recognize that authority
                with the vision of God
                is imminent then they
                too, can usurp the position
                of implementing their
                erroneous vision upon
                a body – trying to implement
                that vision through some
                force –   

                    Is a law, lawful, when
                a law is contradictory to the
                laws of God and yet today
                laws are enforced by "leaders"
                who attest their commitment
                for the common good and yet
                their whole demeanor is
                that of deception before
                the men they attest to
                represent
   

                R. What is this man's vision –
                how does he drive himself to enforce that
                vision in the face of
                others. It can be under deception
                where he is lying about
                what is behind his words.

                We see Hitler –
                    no one knew where such
                    deception could take
                    the lives of so many
                    destroyed by his
                    falsity –

                and yet every individual
                has a vision of some sort
                they bring to the cosmic
                table and throws at the
                world –

                    How have we contributed
                to bringing the vision of
                the Heavenly Father into this world –
                through seeking greater
                faith that we truly
                follow in the footsteps of
                our Fore-Fathers (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph) that were
                doing the work of God that
                went before us –

                Abraham whose faith was
                    unshakable –

                Our Father who gives us
                    this virtue of faith in baptism and
                    yet we stoop to give into
                    vices or bad habits
                    that bring to the
                    cosmic table the
                    deadly sins that
                    cripple and deaden that
                    vision God the Father wants
                    us all to have – God the Father
                    that created us and loved
                    us into existence.