Thursday, April 20, 2017

Love Unites Us to God



Let the person truly possessed by the love of Christ keep his commandments. Who can express the binding power of divine love?  Who can find words for the splendor of its beauty?  Beyond all description are the heights to which it lifts us.  Love unites us to God; it cancels innumerable sins, has no limits to its endurance, and bears everything patiently. 
Love is neither servile nor arrogant.  It does not provoke schism or form cliques, but always acts in harmony with others.   By it all God’s chosen one have been sanctified; without it, it is impossible to please him.  Out of love the Lord took us to himself; because he loved us and it was God’s will, our Lord Jesus Christ gave his life’s blood for us—he gave his body for our body, his soul for our soul.
See the, beloved, what a great and wonderful thing love is, and how inexpressible its perfection.  Who are worthy to possess it unless God make them so?  To him therefore we must turn, begging of his mercy that there may be found in us a love free from human partiality and beyond reproach.  Every generation from Adam’s time to ours has passed away; but those who by God’s grace were made perfect in love have a dwelling now among the saints, and when at last the kingdom of Christ appears, they will be revealed.  Take shelter in your rooms for a little while, says Scripture, until my wrath subsides.  Then I will remember the good days, and will raise you from your graves.
Happy are we, beloved, if love enables us to live in harmony and it the observance of God’s commandments, for then it will also gain for us the remission of our sins.  Scripture pronounces happy those whose transgressions are pardoned, whose sins are forgiven.  Happy the man, it says, to whom the Lord imputes no fault, on whose lips there is not guile.  This is the blessing given those whom God has chosen through Jesus Christ our Lord. To him be glory for ever and ever.  Amen.  (Saint Clement I, pope)
Are we truly possessed by the love of Christ?  Do we keep his commandments?  Do we act in harmony with others, or do we belong to cliques?  Do we harbor hard feelings because of the past?  Have we asked for the grace to have a love of God beyond reproach?  Have you?  kvs

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