The Love of God as the Basis of Holiness and Living a Pure and Happy Life

Nemo dat quod non habet. You cannot give what you do not have. We have come on retreat to pray and ask God to form us as apostles, evangelizers, as his workers, his instruments. This is beautiful! What a wonderful thing it is to be invited by God, to be chosen. All those great prophets, patriarchs, kings, warriors, disciples, teachers, apostles, and preachers in the Bible and all the saints, popes, martyrs, virgins, pastors, and all those holy men and women in history have experienced the joy of being called by God. Yet each of these were called by God first to prayer and formation. Moses and the burning bush, David in his years of prayer and growing in the love and fear of God while tending sheep, St Paul being called to the Syrian desert to be instructed by angels, St Patrick and his years of prayer while in slavery and then formation on the continent. The truth is you first need to receive from God his love and his wisdom before you can hope to serve others. Our hearts are very poor and very empty, they need to be placed beneath the infinitely flowing waters of Gods grace so that they may overflow onto the lives of those he sends us to serve. Apart from me you can do nothing. What is the basis of the life of holiness? How much you pray? How much you love? Serve? It would seem that holiness comes from the fulfilling of daily duties and spiritual regimen: Mass, Confession, Rosary, Scripture, Works of Mercy, Service, Self-denial, Penance, etc. If we can tick, or check, off all these boxes then perhaps we could say, he or she is a holy person. They are doing everything they need to become a saint. Yet all too often we may be tempted to look at holiness like it is some kind of evaluation or assessment, and if we complete a bunch of tasks we can be given a good grade or report card. What is flawed with this mentality is that it is entirely based on ones own performance. It is egocentric. The life of holiness is Christocentric. Holiness in truth is merely echoing to others the song of love we hear first from God. It is the hearts overflowing of the Love of God received first from him as a gratuitous gift of redemption. It is reflecting the light we first receive from the Lord. IT IS NOT ABOUT WHAT WE DO, BUT WHAT GOD DOES IN US. This principle is so important, because besides being the way of holiness and the life of grace, it is also the foundational principle of purity, of living graced/ chaste friendships. Living a holy life is about accepting and receiving first the Holy Love of God. Only then, can we love others. Jesus command is not Love God and neighbour and then God and neighbour will love you back. It is Love one another as I have loved you (John 13:34) This means that we must permit God to love us and experience ourselves being loved by him, experience ourselves as loved and loveable, then and only then will we be

given the grace and strength to love others. The word AS in the greatest commandment is very revealing. If we do not position ourselves in life to be loved by God how can we love others? You are Gods Garden Our hearts are like flowers. We need to place them in the Sun of the Fathers diving grace and give them the water of the Holy Spirit, cultivating the soil in Christ to be radically rooted in him, weeding any sins from our midst, enriching it with manure by accepting trials and humiliations and the general stink of life to be churned into rich growing conditions, protecting against the frigidity of a lack of human warmth or from the scorching of false notions of God and of his Mercy. The power of growth happens, but not from the power of the flower, but from placing the flower in the right conditions. Only God gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:7) And we are not the gardener but the plant. Our work, and it is a lot of hard work, is to place our hearts in all these optimum conditions for the gardener and the Son and the water to do their work. John 15 reads, I am the vine and my Father is the vinedresser...I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. This foundation of God being the source of all grace and mercy is so important for us not only as individuals but also as a community or apostolate. Whos work is it? Yours and mine? Gods. It is the work of God, into which we have been invited to participate. When we understand that, there is so much freedom. You mean I dont have to know everything, and have all the details planned out? No. You need only to respond to his invitation. Understand that we are not saying that you no longer have to pray or to do good works. We are saying that the prayer is really the prayer of Jesus you are entering into and the work of the Father in which you participate. Therefore, discipleship is simply the discipline of Christ, those daily life decisions were you permit God to be God, where you permit him to love you and increase his love in you. Any practices, prayers, regimen, you have are all geared toward making the human soil of your life more like the sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ, so that he can live and work through you. Trinitarian Communion Another principle that is terribly important is to understand that we are called into the communion of the Most Holy Trinity. This means that we cultivate an intimate, real, mature, child-like, graced, friendship with God the Father as our Abba, with God the Son as our Redeemer and Master, and with God the Holy Spirit as our Sanctifier and Evangelizer. We enter into a real friendship with the Immaculate Virgin Mary as our Mother, but also as the one who shows us how to be disciples of Jesus Christ, or rather we try to approach the Heart of Jesus with the very heart and spirit of Mary.

So many Catholics do not know that they need mightily a real tender relationship with the Father. They do not know their Daddy! They might pray to Jesus and try to imitate him. They may or may not have a real friendship and bond with the Holy Spirit as the source of their strength and peace. So many live a Fatherless life. They dont talk to their own Abba. But why? Why do we need this relationship with God the Father? Isnt Jesus enough? Why? Because Jesus himself needs the Father, and we are in Christ. We do not go to God and receive blessings from him to give to others ONLY because we are creatures and he is the Creator. We do this ultimately because God the Son receives all he is from the Father, and we have been baptised into Christs body. This is trinitarian communion: through baptism we are grafted on to Christ himself, in whom we go to the Father in his Name and we go only by the power of the Holy Spirit. IN other words, through Him, with Him, in Him, O God almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour are yours. Everything we do and say and are is IN CHRIST, TO THE FATHER, BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. Our prayer? The prayer of Christ to the Father though the Spirit. Our works? Christs works given to Him to accomplish by the Father with the Holy Spirits anointing. Even our very being- we live and move and have our being IN CHRIST as he is offered to the Father through the Holy Spirit. Chastity is Friendship with God and All His Friends Chastity in this context can be reduced to one word: friendship. CCC says: Chastity is expressed notably in friendship (number 2347). The soul of chastity is we live IN JESUS CHRIST as beloved sons and daughters of the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit, who is the Soul of our souls and who lives in our bodies as in a temple and sanctifies our hearts as an altar. The source of purity is the pure love of the Father for us. ALL of those who suffer and struggle the deepest with chastity and purity will reveal in their lives a LACK of love and friendship, first from God and then from others. Teaching chastity to others means that we first recognize our need for the pure love of God the Father. Only when we recognize that we gift our bodies united in the crucified, risen, and eucharistic Body of Jesus Christ to the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit will we be able to get to the deepest core of chastity and purity. It is really all about the Love of God for us. This is the basis of holiness and living a pure and happy life. This must be the basis of our teaching this gift to others. Chastity is only really taught by example. It is only learned as one is loved chastely.

The Means of Discipleship, the Means of Being Loved by God Now let us take a look at the means which God the Father has given us to experience his great Love for us in Christ by the Holy Spirits power: 1. The precious Body and Blood of Jesus, the Most Holy Eucharist Holy Mass is where we hear Jesus say to us in persona Christi He says, This is my body, which will be given up for you. Jesus wants to touch you, but not only Christ, the Father, who is perfectly united to Christ desires our embrace and the Holy Spirit, whom St Basil said is given substantially in the Eucharist, fills us to overflowing. It is important here for us to take a step back and try to examine how we understand this mystery. We focus so much on how we receive Christ. Yet, there is something much more profound going on - not what we are doing but what Jesus is doing. He receives us! God the Father receives us into himself. It is not that the Eucharistic species is converted into your bloodstream and becomes a part of your bodily structure, it is that you are incorporated into Jesus Christ and become part of his Bodily Structure. 2. The Sacrament of Peace and Reconciliation- What does God do in this Sacrament? If you read John 20 you find out that he: -Gives you his peace. -Shows you his wounds that you may show him yours and exchange. -Jesus sends you as the Father has sent him - clarifies your mission. -Gives you the Holy Spirit- places in you a new heart and a new spirit -Forgives you your sins - though they be red as scarlet they are washed clean whiter than snow in the Blood of the Lamb It is important to understand this Sacrament. Not many do. It has 4 parts to it, like the Eucharist is made up of the wheat flour and grape wine, or baptism is made up of water, the matter of this sacrament is: -Confession of sins in kind and number -Contrition - sorrow for sins, can be attrition - fear of hell -Satisfaction - do a penance after you finish -Absolution - the priest prays over you at the end. Notice: 3 of these parts are on the part of the penitent and so you have to understand that the quality of your confession makes up the quality of the Sacrament. This is different from the other Sacraments which are made up of physical things - well matrimony too is made up of the free and conscious act of the spouses but we wont go into that here. It is important to confess sins in kind and number because the quality of our confession will be the way we permit God to absolve us. St Teresa of Avila said that the chief obstacle to holiness is unconfessed mortal sin. Mortal sin: 1. Bad (Grave matter) 2. You know it. (Full Knowledge) 3. You do it. (Deliberate Consent) Why do we have to confess sins in kind and number? Lets go back to the garden analogy: If you are going to weed the garden, would you pull up the tops of the weeds? No, this would leave the roots of the weeds still deep in the

soil. You have to pull out each weed by the root. Confess it singly. This will also reveal its gravity and help you with contrition and satisfaction. 3. Prayer Commitment - This is a time of prayer where you, like Jesus, turn away from the hungry, the poor, the sick, and you turn to the Father. Christian prayer is centered on the Sacred Humanity of Christ - St Teresa of Avila. For this it is highly recommended to pray the Scriptures. Which scriptures? Well, the Church gives us a providential gift of scripture each day in the Sacred Liturgy. What is important though is that you offer to God a consistent time each day, minutes to which you can be held accountable, aside from which you will know that you have or have not prayed that day. Here are some of the best forms of Christian prayer: -The Most Holy Rosary, compendium of the Gospel, school of Mary -Contemplative prayer meditating on the Scriptures -The Liturgy of the Hours, the prayer of the Church, praying the psalms that Jesus, Mary, and the Saints all prayed. 4. Graced Friendships/Community Accountability- It is not good for man to be alone. We cannot do it alone. We need to experience not only being loved by God but also being loved by Gods friends. It is not enough to experience the love of God for us personally but also how he brings us into communion with each other and loves us as a community. I am absolutely convinced this is a non-negotiable part of living a graced/chaste life. Yet community relationships must be God-centered: -Based on Sacramental Communion -Pray together - rosary or prayer of the Church -Share together - reflections and thoughts, discussions and convos -Play together - recreation is a necessary part of things -Work together - learn to work as a team -Celebrate the feasts of the Church together -They must be ordered by a moral life - call each other to accountability -There needs to be a clear instrument of communion - authority Mary, the First Disciple and Model of Holiness The Blessed Virgin Mary shows us how to receive the Love of God and how to share it with others. As the first and greatest disciple, she shows us how to adore and worship Jesus in the Eucharist, how to be daughters and sons of the Father, and how to be animated and moved by the Holy Spirit. This is especially true for women disciples, who need to gaze upon her and contemplate her as the model of femininity and true measure of womanhood. Mary also has a special privilege of obtaining for us the gift of purity. This is because her heart was so humble that she permitted the pure Love of the Most Holy Trinity to always dwell and overflow from her heart as a sacred sanctuary, an immaculate tabernacle of grace. Let us not attempt to teach others about chastity and purity without her help. Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, pray for us!