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C) The glory of loving
and serving the FATHER
Opening our hearts to
God is a fundamental option. In these meditations of the first
week Saint Ignatius tells us to pray at the foot of the cross and,
looking at Christ, ask: "Lord, what have you done for me?" "How
much do you love me?" It is very important that we discover
Christ's love for us, trusting his saving grace and feeling
grateful for His love. We are asking for the grace to build our
love for God on the ground of a radical trust in his saving power.
We have received the grace to become aware of our sinfulness, of
our deep powerlessness to love God, of our need to be redeemed.
The awareness of our
sinfulness can discourage us. We need to know and feel in our
hearts the love God has for us. God Himself is my creator and my
redeemer. Who can separate me from the love of God? From this
faith and trust come our deep sentiments of gratitude. If He has
loved me so much "What shall I do for Him?" The foundation of my
faith and love for Christ is the awareness of His redeeming grace
in my life. For many of us the first encounter with God is our
experience of God's forgiveness. The graces of the First Week are
not assimilated until our relationship with God is permeated by
this confidence, hope and gratitude towards Him who will never
stop loving and calling us.
As any recovering
alcoholic knows well, if we want to be free of a compulsive need
and able to control our behaviour, we have to reach down into our
hearts and find out who we wish to live for. It is love that saves
us. The strength to deny ourselves comes from the power to love
others even more than we love ourselves.
Every event that
happens in our lives raises the question: "Who is God for me?",
"For whom do I live?", "Who is the lord of my heart?". When we are
tempted to become attached to money or power, when we fail, lose
something or somebody precious, when the law demands what we do
not like, when we have to die, the very core of our hearts is put
to the test: "Whom do I love with all my heart?", "In whom do I
put my trust?", "Who gives meaning to my life?". God Himself has
granted each one of us the power and the responsibility to open
our hearts to the one we choose.
We have to make up our minds. God, in His holiness, cannot share
our hearts with other masters. God wants us to be loyal, faithful
and persevering. When we let God's Spirit come and transform our
hearts we become new persons and share in God's own glory. But we
have to remember that God is "jealous" of our love. Though God's
jealousy is unlike ours. God doesn't ask us "to love Him alone and
to love every creature in Him" out of selfishness or need. God is
love. God doesn't need us. God's jealousy comes from his great
respect for us. God wishes us to become pure, loving and glorious
like Himself.
D) The nature of sin
Mortal sin is "the act
by which man freely and consciously rejects God, his law, the
covenant of love that God offers, preferring to turn in on himself
or to some created and finite reality, something contrary to the
divine will (conversio ad creaturam)" (Veritatis Splendor Nº70).
We wish to underline in this definition the "human person's
disposition of his self as a whole, his fundamental option to
reject God as the Lord of our hearts. We do not want to put our
faith, hope and love in Him. We reach this decision at a given
moment, confronted with a definite action. This commitment of
ourselves as a whole determines from now on the direction of our
lives. Our hearts become hardened, cold and distant from Him. As
we can see in the first pages of Holy Scripture, and again and
again in our own times, mortal sin is prepared by the seductive
attraction of pleasure or power.
Eve was tempted before
she raised her hand and snapped the forbidden fruit: "your eyes
will open, you shall be like God". We imagine and expect to enjoy
a world according to our wishes. At the same time there is a
twisted view of God. "God said: if you eat the forbidden fruit you
will die. This is not so. You will not die. On the contrary, you
shall be like God". Therefore, Eve concludes that God is not fair,
not good. He doesn't love me any more. In order to quieten down my
conscience I pretend to believe that sin is not so bad, sin is not
dangerous, nothing bad is going to happen to me, to others.
Finally I choose. I make the most important decision of my life: I
say yes or no to God.
A sin that is not
mortal (we call it "venial"), is still a rejection of God's will
and love, despite our commitment for Him. It is an option taken by
me, freely. The essence of sin is not weakness, uncontrollable
tendencies, or wrongdoing. These can be involuntary. An action is
more or less sinful in the proportion it is more or less
voluntary. The essence of sin is wilful rejection of God.
Thus the essence of
sin is understood in the history of the angels. Created by God as
free pure spirits their option was timeless and definite: Those
who opted to love and serve God were transformed by God's Spirit
into good angels. Those who chose to love and serve nobody but
themselves became utterly evil. Unlike the pure spirits we humans
make up our minds in time and space. There are different levels of
consciousness in us, humans. We are aware of our freedom in a
particular choice. We cannot be aware on the same manner of our
fundamental freedom or option[1].
Not even we ourselves know whom we love above everything and
everybody, whom we love more than ourselves. We can only figure it
out by our actions and our intentions. Yet we make these choices
and are responsible for them.
---------------
[1]
"Awareness of
fundamental freedom is not directly accessible to observation and
verification... the ethical fundamental option made by the person,
based on his fundamental freedom, is not itself a single act of
self-disposition, though it is always felt in particular acts of
deciding. Rather than an act, it is best seen as a process towards
an ethical disposition which can grow or decline". Joseph Fuchs
SJ. THE TABLET, Nov.1993
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