And Elias, the prophet, stood up, as a fire, and his word burnt like a torch (Ecclesiasticus. 48.1, DRV)

Sunday, April 22, 2012

The God of Intimacy

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JMJ

Good Shepherd Sunday



I know Mine, and Mine know Me​​, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father ​ (Jn. 10.11,16, from today's Gospel). Although there is no question here of equality, but merely that of simple comparison, it is nevertheless very consoling and glorious for us to see how Jesus likes to compare His relations with us to those He has with His Father. At the Last Supper also, He said: ​As the Father hath loved Me, I also have loved you​, and again: ​as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in Us​ (Jn. 15.9-17,21). This shows that between us, the sheep, and the Savior, our ​Good Shepherd​ , there is not only a relation of acquaintance, but also one of love, and better still, of a communion of life, similar to that which exists between the Son and the Father. It is by means of the grace, faith, and charity which the ​Good Shepherd ​ acquired for us by His death, that we arrive at such intimacy with our God - so deep that it makes us share in His own divine life.

A close relationship of loving knowledge (with the Truth, that is, our Faith for its foundation: ​I will espouse thee to me in faith ​and thou shalt know that I am the Lord​, Osee 2.20) is here established between the ​Good Shepherd ​ and His sheep - one so intimate that the Shepherd knows His sheep one by one and can call them by name; and they recognize His voice and follow Him with docility. Each soul can say: "Jesus knows me and loves me, not in a general abstract way, but in the concrete aspect of my needs, of my desires, and of my life; for Him to know me and to love me is to do me good, to encompass me more and more with His grace, and to sanctify me. Precisely because He loves me, Jesus calls me by name: He calls me when in prayer He opens to me new [yet orthodox, of course] horizons of the spiritual life, or when He enables to know my sins, faults and weaknesses better; He calls me when He reprimands me or purifies me by aridity, as well as when He consoles and encourages me by filling me with new fervor; He calls when He makes me realize the need of greater generosity, and when He asks me for sacrifices or gives me joys, and still more, when He awakens in me a deeper love of Him especially by counting on me to share with Him, my ​Beloved​, the "burden of God".
Posted by Ignis Dei at 10:23 AM
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Salvation is in the "Blood of the Lamb"

Apocalypse XIV now unfolding (cf., our posts "The Wine of the Wrath of God" and "After Pope Benedict XVI, the 'Last' Roman Pontiff?"). The divine chastisement of world-wide conflagration (Lk. 17.29-30, cf., our post "Our Lady, Vatican II Disorientation, and the Annihilation of Many Nations") to annihilate the 'super-power' and cities and nations drunk with the wine of its immodesty, impurity, fornication, homosexuality, and blasphemies (Apoc. 14.8) is imminent - the close of our end-times period (distinct from the consummation of the world, Mt. 28.20).

They... have made them white in the Blood of the Lamb (Apoc. 7.14) ... All things... are cleansed with Blood: and without shedding of Blood there is no remission (Heb. 9.22).

The Blood of the [Divine] Lamb can be availed of in the traditional Rite of the Sacrament of Penance (cf., our post "On Concealing Sins in Confession") and of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist (the Traditional Latin Mass). Go to our traditional Catholic Mass Centers (links on the left-side bar of this site). Flee to the mountains... (Mt. 24.16).

See also the Messages and Appeals (on the upper right-side bar) of the Apocalyptic Woman in her title of Our Lady of Fatima.