True tradition is allowing true love to be handed on. That is what the word tradition means. It is continually handed on to be received by each successive generation by the Risen Christ through His sacraments. In an earlier chapter I told the story of how a scripture scholar who wrote a book in the [...]
I asked the old priest about what is called “Quietism.”A friend had given me an old copy of Molinos’ Spiritual Guide, and I knew that the writer had been condemned and imprisoned for life, and yet I could not understand in what lay his crime. “It is difficult to put into words,” said the priest, [...]
There is only one power that can destroy this evil at its source within us, and that is the power of infinite love. When we do all in our power to invite infinite love into our hearts, we are doing the most important thing we can so that evil may be defeated and good may [...]
What can our poor prayers—so broken like ourselves—do for if not echo constantly the very petition Jesus has made known to us? Nothing else will matter in eternity. John 17: 20-26 continues the priestly prayer of Jesus that we have been listening to throughout the week. Again, we hear its simple but sublime themes rehearsed: [...]
When St. Peter was asked how to receive the outpouring of God’s love on the first Pentecost he answered, “repent,” just as Our Lady keeps asking us to keep repenting in prayer. For it is here alone that our acts of love enable us to receive God’s love in return. All good parents hope their [...]
Anyone who has known moments of intense joy will know that these experiences would be diminished if they could not be shared with another. Surely this is why God created other beings to receive and return his love, to know and experience true joy on earth and the fullness of happiness in the world to [...]
Authentic discipleship transforms all aspects of life, every day, at work, at home, in all relationships. My discipleship to Jesus is, within clearly definable limits, not a matter of what I do, but of how I do it. Dallas Willard One of the great oaks among us is fallen. Dallas Willard, who died [...]
It is precisely because God has implanted into all of us the profound and deep desire for infinite love, that anyone can become the genius that love can make of us. Only those with hearts of stone are excluded. Conventional wisdom tells us that geniuses are born. However, the Catholic metaphysical poet Francis Thompson, said [...]
There are within all of us innumerable drives and urges that if allowed to rule would destroy us. If we are not consciously and daily engaged in the spiritual combat that calls upon us to act selflessly, then we will be unable to admit the New Man which is Christ, so that he can do [...]
If other Angels have been given different tasks, only God’s Holy Angel, Christ himself, whose divine love can mix, mingle and merge with our weak human love, can enable our self-offerings to be received by God, because they are offered in, with and through him. No other Angel can do this. The Jewish religion began [...]
A culture without public prayer is a culture that no political intervention can preserve. If the life of prayer is a vocation offered to all, then it follows that the practice of prayer must equally be within the reach of all. It is not an esoteric exercise, in other words, for which only the most [...]
The offering of ourselves that we make is a “true” and therefore acceptable offering when it is made with a “pure and humble heart”. When we learn to thank, praise, adore and glorify him for who he is and for what his love has done for us, then we are learning the meaning of true [...]
Endless acts of selfless loving that are practised in prayer gradually develop into a habit, creating an inner disposition of selflessness that makes us at all times porous to the love of God, both inside and outside of prayer. This means that we are not only taken up into the love that prevails within Christ’s [...]
It was God who uttered the first word ever spoken in the language of love. That word was simply "love." It was later called the “Word” by St John because it was the most important word ever spoken. All we need to know, believe, and act upon is the simple truth that our Risen Lord [...]