Wednesday, January 29, 2014


All PRAYER, READING AND MEDITATION are aimed at purity of heart -

 an unconditional and totally humble surrender to God, a total acceptance of ourselves and of our situation as willed by him.  It means the renunciation of all deluded images of ourselves, all exaggerated estimates of our own capacities, in order to obey the will of God as it comes to us in the difficult demands of life in its exacting truth.  Purity of heart is then correlative to a new spiritual identity - the "self" as recognized in the context of realities willed by God - Purity of heart is the enlightened awareness of the new man, as supposed to the complex and perhaps rather disreputable fantasies of the "old man."

     Meditation is then ordered to this new insight, this direct knowledge of the self in its higher aspect. (CTP 68)

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Your LIfe!

Are you sure that the meaning of your life is the meaning God intends for it?  Does God impose a meaning on your life from the outside, through event, custom, routine, law, system, impact with others in society?  Or are you called to create from within, with him, with is grace, a meaning which reflects his truth and makes you his "word" spoken freely in your personal situation?  Your true identity lies hidden in the call of God to your freedom and your response to him.  This means you must use your freedom in order to love, with full responsibility and authenticity, not merely receiving a form imposed on you by external forces, or forming your own life according to an approved social pattern, but directing your love to the personal reality of your brother, and embracing the will of God in its naked, often impenetrable mystery.
LIFE IN SOCIETY

We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios. (SSM 133)

Science and Technology are indeed admirable in many respects, and if they fulfill their promises, they can do much for man.  But they can never solve his deepest problems.  On the contrary, without wisdom, without the intuition and freedom that enable man to return to the root of his being, science can only precipitate him still further into the centrifugal flight that flings him, in all his compact and uncomprehending isolation, into the darkness of outer space without purpose and without objective. (FAV 224)