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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20230223
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DTSTAMP:20260430T062231
CREATED:20230218T045828Z
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UID:10126-1677110400-1677196799@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org
SUMMARY:Reading: Thursday After Ash Wednesday
DESCRIPTION:Jesus Christ Deserves Our Love in Return 5\nFrom the writings of St Alphonsus de Liguori \nA person will become perfectly holy by loving Jesus Christ\, our God\, our chief\ngood\, and our Savior. He himself says that anyone who loves him will be loved by\nthe eternal Father: “For the Father himself loves you\, because you have loved me”.\n“Some people\,” says St. Francis de Sales\, “think that perfection can be found by an\naustere life; others make it a matter of much prayer\, or of frequenting the\nsacraments\, or of acts of charity. They are all mistaken. Perfection consists in\nloving God with our whole heart… \n…He has loved us from the very beginning of eternity: “With age-old love I\nhave loved you”. God was the first to love you. Before you existed\, indeed\, even\nbefore the world itself existed\, God was already loving you. For as long as he has\nbeen God\, he has been loving you. \nWhen God saw how human beings were attracted by good things\, he set out\nto win them over by his gifts: “I drew them with human cords\, / with bands of love”.\nEvery gift of his was created for human beings. First\, he endowed the soul made in\nhis image with its powers of memory\, intellect\, and will\, and gave it a body with all\nits senses\, created heaven and earth and all that is in them… everything was an act\nof his love. All these created things were for the use of human beings\, so that they\nlove him in return for so many gifts. “The heavens and the earth and everything in\nthem\,” says St. Augustine\, “cry out to me that I must love you.” \n…There was once a holy hermit. On his walks through the countryside\, it\nseemed to him as if the wild flowers and plants along the way reminded him of his\ningratitude to God\, and he would strike them with his staff\, saying\, “Be silent\, be\nsilent! You call me ungrateful. You tell me that God has created you out of love for\nme\, yet I do not love him. I understand you now. Be silent! Be silent! Do not\nreproach me anymore.” \nGod was not content simply to give us a beautiful creation. In order to win us\ntotally\, the Eternal Father has gone so far as to give us his one and only Son: “For\nGod so loved the world that he gave his only Son”. Seeing us dead and deprived of\ngrace through sin\, in his overwhelming love for us\, he sent his Son to make\nsatisfaction for us\, and to restore to us the life which sin had destroyed… \nWhat is even more astonishing is that he could have saved us without dying\nand without suffering. Yet he chose a life of affliction and contempt\, and a bitter\nand ignominious death. He went so far as to die on the shameful scaffold of the\nCross: “He humbled himself\, / becoming obedient to death\, / even death on a\ncross”. If he could have redeemed us without suffering\, why then did he choose to\ndie\, and to die on a cross? It was for no other reason than to show his love for us…\nThat is why St. Paul\, the great lover of Jesus Christ\, could say “the love of\nChrist impels us”. He meant that it was not so much what Jesus Christ has suffered\nfor us as the love he has shown in suffering for us which obliges us\, and indeed\nforces us\, to love him. Commenting on this text\, St. Francis de Sales asks… \n“Why\, then\, do we not throw ourselves on Jesus crucified to die on the cross\nalong with him who was willed to die there for love of us? I will cling to him\, and\nwill never more abandon him. I will die with him\, and be consumed by the fire of\nhis love. Let the same fire consume the creature as consumes the creator. My Jesus\ngives himself totally to me\, and I give myself totally to him. I will live and die on his\nbreast… Savior of our souls\, grant that we might sing for ever “May Jesus live whom\nI love\, I love Jesus who lives for ever and ever.” \n5 Alphonsus de Liguori. Selected Writings. New York: Paulist Press\, 1999. 112-115.
URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/reading-thursday-after-ash-wednesday-2/
CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings
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