God is crazy about me.... and about YOU!

"God cannot cease to love me. That is the most startling fact that our doctrine reveals. Sinner or saint He loves and cannot well help Himself. Magdalen in her sin, Magdalen in her sainthood, was loved by God. The difference between her position made some difference also in the effect of that love on her, but the love was the same, since it was the Holy Spirit who is the love of the Father and the Son. Whatever I do, I am loved. But then, if I sin, am I unworthy of love? Yes, but I am unworthy always. Nor can God love me for what I am, since, in that case, I would compel His love, force His will by something external to Himself. In fact, really if I came to consider, I would find that I was not loved by God because I was good, but that I was good because God loved me. My improvement does not cause God to love me, but is the effect of God's having loved me."

— Fr. Bede Jarrett

What is truth?

When I tell Christians that the center of Christian faith is a person, they often look at my strangely. Many Christians are focused on propositional truth or the facts of the Gospel. They will tell me that true Christianity is about believing the right things (usually defined by them). I tell them that true Christianity is found in the person Jesus and a relationship with him. Here is what Fr. Richard Rohr says about this:

“Jesus’ center point was not an idea or theory about anything but, in fact, a Person—a thoroughly reliable, universal Love that he called “Father.” (You do not need to use the word “Father,” but I encourage you to find some form of endearment that inspires your trust because you will never fall in love with a mere idea.) This new Realm is based on a relationship with a God who can be experienced personally, presently, and existentially.

Jesus seems to be saying that God is not a philosophical system, a theory to be proven, or an energy to be discussed or controlled, although we have often reduced God to each of these. In the biblical tradition, we only seem to know God by relating to God face to face, almost as if God refuses to be known apart from love. It is all about relationship. As Martin Buber (1878-1965), the Jewish philosopher mystic, put it, “All real living is meeting.” [2] It is the “face to face” religion that began with Moses (see Exodus 33:11)” – Fr. Richard Rohr

Thoughts?

Life as inner and outer

"Not to try to live in interior silence is equivalent to giving up the effort to lead a truly Christian life. The Christian life is a life of faith, lived in the invisible for what is invisible. Anyone who is not in constant contact with the invisible world runs the risk of remaining always on the threshold of a true Christian life. ... Solitude is the stronghold of the strong. Strength is an active virtue, and our power of keeping silence marks the level of our capacity for action. 'Without this interior cell, we would be incapable of doing great things, either for ourselves or for others.'"

— Raoul Plus, S.J., How to pray always, p. 40-41