|
True Faith in God: the mystery of God in Christ by Martin Mule
by beatrice ofwona (A friend sent me this article. I liked it and thought that I should share it):- Just as a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or piece of paper, so the mystery of Christ in the Gospel concentrates the rays of God's light and fire to a point that sets fire to the spirit of man. This is why Christ was born and lived in the world, died and returned from death and ascended to His Father in heaven. God is everywhere. His truth and His Love pervade all things as the light and the heat of the sun pervade our atmosphere. But just as the rays of the sun do not set fire to anything by themselves, so God does not touch our souls with the fire of supernatural knowledge and experience without Christ. The glass of that manhood seeks out spirits that are well prepared, dried by the light and warmth of God and ready to take flame in the little knot of fire that is the grace of the Holy Spirit. Jesus mission on earth was to redeem and restore our lost humility. To bring humility to earth, to make us partakers of humility and by it to save us, He humbled Himself to become man. The humility we see in Him possessed Him in heaven, it brought Him, He brought it from there to earth where He humbled himself and became obedient unto death. His humility gave His death its value and so became our redemption. His humility is our salvation and His salvation is our humility. Humility is the only soil in which grace takes root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure. It's the root of all; it alone takes the right attitude before God and allows God as God to do all. However, we do not always have to force ourselves to picture Christ as we think He must have looked, or ought to have looked for really no one can be quite sure just how He looked. Every one of us forms an idea of Christ that is limited and incomplete. It is cut according to our own measure. We tend to create for ourselves a Christ in our own image, a projection of our own aspirations, desires and ideals. We find Him in what we want to find. We make Him not only the incarnation of God but also the incarnation of the things we and our society happen to live for. It is true that perfection consists in imitating Christ and reproducing Him in our own lives; it is not enough merely to imitate the Christ we have in our imaginations. The problem of forming Christ in us is not to be solved merely by our own efforts. It is not a matter of studying the Gospel and then working to put our ideas into practice, although we should try to do that too, but always under the guidance of grace, in complete subjection to the Holy Spirit. For if we depend on our own ideas, our own judgment and our own efforts to reproduce the life and the image of Christ, we will only act out some kind of pious charade which ultimately scares everybody we meet away because it makes us so stiff, artificial and so dead. It is the spirit of God who must teach us who Christ is and form Christ in us. Transformation into Christ is not just an individual affair; there is only one Christ not many. He is not divided. Do not think that you can show your love for Christ by hating those who seem to be His enemies on earth. If you hate the enemies of the Church instead of loving them, you too will run the risk of becoming an enemy of the Church and of Christ. Its not right to assume that your enemy is an enemy of God just because he is your enemy, perhaps he is your enemy precisely because he cannot find anything in you that gives glory to God, or because he cannot find anything in you of God's love and God's kindness, patience, mercy and understanding of the weaknesses of men. And do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God for it is perhaps your own coldness, avarice, mediocrity, sensuality or selfishness that have killed his faith. We receive Jesus in the inspiration of secret love and we give Him to others in the outgoing of our own charity. Our life in Christ is a life both of receiving and of giving. We receive from God in the spirit and in the same Spirit we return our love to God through our brothers. If we have this divine life in us, incidents of pain or pleasure, hope or fear, joy or sorrows will not matter that much to us. They cease to matter in our lives. (Word count-841) May these words (sermons), from various men and women of God be a blessing to all. contact:[email protected] Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |