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J.M.J.
Feast of St. John of the Cross
Father of the Teresian Carmel
"The property of love," says our holy Father John of the Cross, "is to desire to be united, joined, and made equal and like to the object of its love" (Dark Night II, 13, 9). Therefore, the more the Divine Love increases in the soul, the greater is the longing for union with God. Even if its love is still imperfect - since it has not yet brought the soul to union - nevertheless the soul experiences "hunger and thirst for that which it lacks, which is the union" to which love tends (ibid.). In the measure that the fire of Divine Love purifies it (its increase in the soul), God draws it to Himself by infusing new love in it. And to do it, He only waits for the soul to concur with His action, letting itself be purified all the more - despoiled of self, of every spiritual and material creature, and of every desire, delight, and affection that is not God and His good pleasure - and clothed completely with Divine Life.
The soul thus famished and left athirst for God, seeks Him without respite, "for, being in darkness, it feels itself to be without Him and to be dying of love for Him" (Dark Night II, 13,8). Divine Love makes the soul impatient to find the Lord, and it seeks Him with great solicitude, like Magdalen, who, after the death of the Beloved, gave herself no peace, but, rising early, ran to the sepulcher, and finding the sacred Body no longer there, went in search of it, questioning all she met. I will arise and go about the city, says the spouse in the Canticle of Canticles, in the streets and in the broad ways I will seek Him whom my soul loveth (3.2). This is the attitude of the soul who does not turn back or resign itself to being vanquished; indeed, it desires at any cost to find this God Whom it loves more than its very self. In this state, says St. John of the Cross, "the soul now walks so anxiously that it seeks the Beloved in all things. In whatsoever it thinks, it thinks at once of the Beloved. Of whatsoever it speaks, in whatsoever matters present themselves , it is speaking and communing at once with the Beloved... All its care is about the Beloved" (Dark Night II, 19,2).
God permitted the abomination of desolation (from yesterday's Holy Gospel, Mt. 24.15-35, the last Sunday after Pentecost) that hearts may be revealed - if all they care is about the Beloved. The Commandments, the laws and teachings of the Church, the devotions inspired by the Spirit of Truth in the Church most especially the devotion to the Immaculate Heart for our end-times - all direct our minds and hearts to the one zealous care of Divine Love. Prophet Daniel, to whom the vision of such a great evil, such as never was under all the heaven (9.12) proclaims the reason: that all Israel... have transgressed the law and have turned away from hearing [God's] voice; and its cause: they did not think on [God's] truth. Many souls have other things to think about - not in quest to be with God, Who daily used to remain with us in His Real Presence at our once Catholic sanctuaries, and thus be more and more perfectly purified of every remaining resemblance still to the proud devil unto that perfect transformation in Christ, and Him Crucified (1 Cor. 2.2), according to His image and likeness, according to His mind and heart. Because Deus charitas est (God is charity, 1 Jn. 4.8), the Word of Truth bids us to be increasing in the knowledge of God... in all wisdom and spiritual understanding [that is, by the facilitating swift operation of the Spirit of Truth called "gifts" that are not tied to the limiting operations of our human nature of which Theological and Moral virtues are] (from yesterday's Lesson, Col. 1.9-14) that we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth [of] ... the charity of Christ (Eph. 3.18,19). But because many have been increasingly caring only for convenience – ‘convenient truth’ and therefore ‘convenient religion’ – God left them, nay abandoned them, and giving them already their just temporal deserts of their New Order or the Novus Ordo [of Vatican II and of its 'spirit' - the revolutionary 'Rights of Man' upon which is built the Masonic ‘egalitarian-Republic-paradise’] which, because '[g]od is luv [that which is in the air in both the "New 'Catholic' DisOrder" and "New World DisOrder" '], bids ‘just luv’ and that will do.
A most blessed Feast to everyone!
Related post: Truth - the hard and narrow way to God
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