"God is love"? If "love is God," whoever loves love loves God. Homily 9 on the First Epistle of John (Augustine)

Homilies on the First Letter of John (Works of Saint Augustine A Translation for the 21st Century) [Paperback]

Saint Augustine (Author), Boniface Ramsey (Translator)

  

FIFTH WEEK OF EASTER SATURDAY

At the Night Office, Novice Br. S... prepared the Second Reading and found the challenge of Augustine’s vocabulary. He counted the number of occurrences of the word ‘LOVE’, found the number of 62 uses in passage of only 593 words.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Fourth Century View of God's Love for Us December 12, 2010

By Dennis J. Koupal Jr.

Format:Paperback|

Of the numerous published works by St. Augustine, "Homilies on the First Epistle of John" must be regarded as one of his easiest to read and understand. Unlike works such as "City of God" and "On Genesis" which tend to be highly rhetorical and somewhat verbose, "Homilies" is succinct, insightful, and lead one to a better understanding of God's love for His children. Using the actual text of First John, Augustine uses the Scripture to address contemporary issues that began creeping into the dogma of Christ's visible Church soon after Emperor Constantine gave the Church legal status within the hierarchy of Rome's political structure in the early fourth century.
For example, in The First Homily Augustine quotes 1 Jn. 2:1-2, "And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiator for our sins." The doctrinal trend he addresses is the growing belief that "Bishops and leaders... petition exclusively on behalf of the people." In other words, that individual believer needs the Clergy to intercede on their behalf in order to know God and His salvation. He applies the scriptural Truth that "we have an advocate with the Father" by stating that "We (Bishops, Pastors, Deacons etc.) pray on behalf of you, brothers, but you yourselves pray as well on behalf of us." Clear references to New Testament passages such as 1 Peter 2:9 on the "priesthood of all believers" are interwoven into his sermons on 1 John. That Christ's Church is comprised of individual believers who have access to God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is a spoken message, and unspoken theme throughout this great book.]

First Reading;

I John 4:11-21

FIFTH WEEK OF EASTER SATURDAY

Second Alternative Reading

From a homily by Saint Augustine of Hippo

(In John. 9,10: SC 75, 400-402)

Everyone who loves his brother or sister also loves God

If anyone says, "I love God." (4:20) Who is this God? Why do we love him? Because he first loved us, and gave us the grace to love him. He loved us in our godlessness to make us godly; he loved us as sinners to make us just; he loved us even in our infirmities to make us well. Question each of your brothers; let him tell you if he loves God. He cries out and confesses aloud: "I love, God knows it."

There is another question to be asked: If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar.(4:20) How do you prove that he is a liar? Listen: How can one who has no love for the brother he has seen love the God he has not seen?(4:20) What then? Does the man who loves his brother love God also? He must of necessity love God, must of necessity love him who is Love itself. Can one love his brother without loving love itself? Of necessity he must love love itself. What then? Because he loves love, does it follow that he loves God? Certainly it follows!

In loving love, he loves God. Or have you forgotten what you said a little while ago, "God is love"? If "love is God," whoever loves love loves God. Hence, love your brother and rest assured. You cannot say: I love my brother, but I do not love God." Just as you lie if you say: "I love God," when you do not love your brother, so you are deceived when you say: "I love my brother," if you think that you do not love God. Of necessity must you who love your brother love love itself; but "love is God" - therefore of necessity must whoever loves his brother also love God.

                    But if you do not love your brother whom you see, how can you love God whom you do not see? Why does he not see God? Because he has not love itself. That he does not see God is because he does not have love; that he does not have love is because he does not love his brother. The reason then why he does not see God is that he has not love. For if he had love, he would see God, for "love is God"; and his inner eye is becoming more and more purged by love, to see that unchangeable substance, in whose presence he will always rejoice and which he will enjoy to everlasting, when he is joined with the angels.

Only let him run now, that he may at last have gladness in his own country. Let him not love his pilgrimage, not love the way; let all be bitter for us save him that called us, until we hold him fast, and say what is said in the psalm: You destroy everyone who is unfaithful to you (Ps. 73:27) - and who are they who are unfaithful? Those who go and love the world. But what shall you do? He goes on and says: But for me, to be near God is my good.(Ps. 73:28)

All your good consists in clinging to God freely. For if you question him and say: Why do you cling to him? and he should respond: That he may give me ... Give you what? It is he that made the heavens and he that made the earth; what shall he give you? Already -you are clinging to him: find something better and he shall give it to you.

Responsory                                                        1 In 3:16; 4:19

By this we have come to know what love is: + Christ laid down his life for us, alleluia.

V. Let us love God, because he loved us first. + Christ laid down ...

A Word in Season, Readings for the Liturgy of the Hours - Easter,
Augustine Press 2001.

_______________________________________________________________

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/170209.htm

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Homily 9 on the First Epistle of John

Holy Sepulchre; David Torkington, 'Inner Life' A Fellow Traveller's Guide to Prayer.

Sr. Jo, 

Your Email/Journal of the Holy Sepulchre and photos have pictured the whole scene. 

It is rather dramatizing when we learn of David Torkington's experience in the Empty Tomb. 

On Friday, the Chapter Reading before Compline, we heard the Chapter from the the book by David Torkington, 'Inner Life' A Fellow Traveller's Guide to Prayer.

Later I found the Blogspot:

Posted by David Torkington at Saturday, March 30, 2013 

  http://dtorkington.blogspot.co.uk 

And David adds some lines, 'So now he can enter into us, as he promised, so that he can make his home in us and we can make our home in him. In the words of St Augustine this means that - “He can be closer to us than we are to ourselves.” That’s why de Caussade said that “The present moment contains far more than we have the capacity to receive for it is full of infinite treasures”. And that’s why he called it “the sacrament of the present moment,” because it is the only moment when time touches eternity.'

Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem The Holy Sepulcher or the Sacred Tomb, in Arabic called Al-Qeyamah,  which means the Resurrection.

See below ..........

Inner Life by David Torkington   

14  The empty tomb

Saturday, 30 March 2013

An Easter Reflection

The Empty Tomb  

It was almost twenty years ago that I was offered my first free holiday. It came like a bolt from the blue. All I had to do was to meet up with a group of pilgrims from the Outer Hebrides, bundle them on to a plane at Luton airport, and deliver them in one piece to Fr Kenneth, a Franciscan priest in Tel Aviv. It all sounded too good to be true, but it was true, and it turned out to be one of the most important spiritual experiences of my life.

It had all happened so quickly that I hadn't time to think about it, and when I did I'm ashamed to admit I thought of it as a free holiday rather than as a pilgrimage. Of course I'd visit the holy places and consider it a privilege, but my pilgrimages in Italy had stretched my credulity to breaking point. I'd become hard­ bitten and sceptical, only hard facts and incontestable evidence would impress me. I had no intention of wasting my time visit­ing dubious places where Jesus was supposed to have said this or done that, when I could be sunning myself by the Mediterra­nean. But I was in for something of a surprise. Oh yes, there were plenty of contentious places and pious legends by the bucket­ful, but there were more hard facts than I had imagined, more than enough to keep me happy and off the beaches, to return home as white as I had come.

On the first day I did the grand tour of all the major shrines in style as Fr Kenneth had been asked to act as guide to the Canadian foreign minister. There are more Gaelic speakers in Canada then there are in Scotland and, as the foreign minister was one of them, he and Fr Kenneth spoke to each other in their common tongue knowing full well that the official car was bugged. When for my sake he reverted to English whenever we left the car, I was amazed to hear the evidence for the authenticity of the Holy Places. After the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem in 70AD they built their own pagan shrines over them so as to obliterate their memory. However their action did exactly the opposite, guaranteeing their preservation until they were returned to Christianity when Constantine became the first Christian Emperor. When he proclaimed the empire Christian in 313, the exact spot where Christ died and rose again was pinpointed exactly. It was the Holy Sepulcher that impressed me most – not the architecture but the atmosphere of the place that touched me more deeply than I would have imagined.

Fr. Kenneth, who had lived and worked in the Holy Land for most of his life, seemed to have a key to every place that you really should see, and even to places that you shouldn't! On the night before we left, his famous key opened a door to me that seemed closed to everyone else, and opened to me an experience that has affected me deeply to this day. Although the doors to the Holy Sepulcher are closed every night, and cannot be opened until the next morning no matter what, I was allowed to remain inside for the whole night, with a room to myself in the Franciscan friary within. I never went into that room. I spent all the time before the midnight office at Calvary,

and the time after it alone in the empty tomb. I was so overcome that I began to wish I could spend the rest of my life in that friary so that I could return again and again, night after night, to what must be the holiest place on earth — the place where Christ had lain and from which he rose from the dead.

Then suddenly, in a matter of moments, I had a spiritual experience that changed everything. I didn't see anything, I didn't hear anything, but the words of God spoke to me in a way that they had never spoken to me before or since. In one sense it was nothing spectacular, but in another sense it irrevocably changed my whole attitude to the Resurrection that I'd believed in since I was a child, but which had never really touched me in the way it touched me that night.

I don't claim that the words came directly from God or anything like that; they most certainly came from my subconscious, but I'm sure God gave them a bit of a push. The words were these: "You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was cru­cified. See, here is the place where they laid him. He is risen now. He is not here. He has gone before you into Galilee." I changed instantly. I no longer wanted to live in that friary for the rest of my life; I didn't even want to return to the tomb where Christ had once lain in the past. The empty tomb suddenly lost its importance, though not its significance. The meaning of the Resurrection struck me acutely as never before, it was as if some­one had said "ephphatha" and my eyes had been opened to a truth that I had known with my head, but which had never fully pen­etrated my heart. Although my spiritual understanding hadn't substantially changed, it had been totally transformed in a way that I find difficult to put into words. It was as if I'd spent years looking at the Resurrection from the outside, as framed in a stained-glass window, then suddenly seen it again, this time from the inside with the sun shining through it.

The Resurrection meant that Jesus had been swept up out of the world of space and time in which he'd lived before, not to leave us alone but to be closer to us than ever before, and as he prom­ised "even to the end of time." Before the Resurrection Jesus was limited by the physical body which He had freely chosen to enter into. His choice meant that he could only be in one place at a time, so meeting him would have been as difficult as meeting any major personality in our time. But that's all changed now because the same otherworldly power that raised him out of this world on the first Easter day enabled him to re-enter it on every day. So now he can enter into us, as he promised, so that he can make his home in us and we can make our home in him. In the words of St Augustine this means that - “He can be closer to us than we are to ourselves.” That’s why de Caussade said that “The present moment contains far more than we have the capacity to receive for it is full of infinite treasures”. And that’s why he called it “the sacrament of the present moment,” because it is the only moment when time touches eternity.

Sacred times and sacred places are only man-made remind­ers of the One who is present at every time and in every place to men and women of faith who choose to receive him. Old fools live in the past; young fools live in the future. I know one fool who's lived in both, but thanks to Fr. Kenneth's fa­mous key he's trying to live a little more fully in the present moment.

Gabrielle Bossis HE AND I

Gabrielle Bossis

HE AND I

 

 

1941

February 6 -  Holy Hour. Notre Dame. Nantes. I wasn't pleased with my day
- so little had counted  for Him in it.

"That doesn't make any difference. I take you as you are, with your regrets; so just be sorry. Tell Me that you will be more careful tomorrow. Don't you think that I prefer someone who has fallen and repented to one full of pride in his good deeds? The self - righteous lose all merit. Then always belittle, My Gabrielle. Get a true picture of yourself in all your weakness, without even the possibility of being good without Me. But in the distress of your poverty, look at all My riches: they are all yours. Look at My goodness and throw yourself into My arms. Look at My love without ever being afraid; I am your Saviour. You know when John said, 'It's the Lord', it meant so much for him. And for you?"

"For me, too, it means much." 

"For you I must be everything. Everything! You - understand? Your life is Mine. (...) Move out of yourself; I'm living in you. Do you grasp what I mean? I take up all the room."

Sts Philip and James, apostles († 1st century) 'Philip - Jn.14:8' Commentary by St. Hilary

Saints PHILIP and JAMES
Apostles

        Philip was one of the first chosen Disciples of Christ. On the way from Judea to Galilee Our Lord found Philip, and said, "Follow me" Philip straightway obeyed; and then in his zeal and charity sought to win Nathaniel also, saying, "We have found him of whom Moses and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth;" and when Nathaniel in wonder asked, "Can any good come out of Nazareth?" Philip simply answered, "Come and see," and brought him to Jesus.

        Another characteristic saying of this apostle is preserved for us by St. John. Christ in his last discourse had spoken of his Father; and Philip exclaimed, in the fervor of his thirst for God, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough"

        St. James the Less, the author of an inspired epistle, was also one of the Twelve. St. Paul tells us that he was favored by a special apparition of Christ after the Resurrection. On the dispersion of the apostles among the nations, St. James was left as Bishop of Jerusalem; and even the Jews held in such high veneration his purity, mortification, and prayer, that they named him the Just.

        The earliest of Church historians has handed down many traditions of St. James's sanctity. He was always a virgin, says Hegesippus, and consecrated to God. He drank no wine, wore no sandals on his feet, and but a single garment on his body. He prostrated himself so much in prayer that the skin of his knees was hardened like a camel's hoof. The Jews, it is said, used out of respect to touch the hem of his garment. He was indeed a living proof of his own words, "The wisdom that is from above first indeed is chaste, then peaceable, modest, full of mercy and good fruits."

        He sat beside St. Peter and St. Paul at the Council of Jerusalem; and when St. Paul at a later time escaped the fury of the Jews by appealing to Cæsar, the people took vengeance on James, and crying, "The just one hath erred," stoned him to death.

Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]

Saint Hilary (c.315-367), Bishop of Poitiers, Doctor of the Church

Friday, 03 May 2013

Saints Philip and James, apostles - Feast

See commentary below or click here

http://dailygospel.org/main.php?language=AM&module=saintfeast&id=10134&fd=0 

 

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 14:6-14.

Jesus said to him, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him."
Philip said to him, "Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us."
Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves.
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.
And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it. 

Commentary of the day

Saint Hilary (c.315-367), Bishop of Poitiers, Doctor of the Church

The way to the Father

Our Lord has allowed no doubt or uncertainty regarding so great a mystery... Hear him revealing to the apostles everything we need to know to believe: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me then you will also know my Father... Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say: 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?”... Therefore he who is the way is not leading us along paths with no conclusion or in a desert without a way; he who is the truth has no desire to deceive us with lies; he who is the life will not abandon us in errors that end in death... “No one comes to the Father except through me”: the way to the Father passes through the Son...

“If you know me then you will also know the Father.” We see the man, Christ Jesus..., his outward aspect, namely his human nature...; so how is it that to know him is to know the Father also? In the mystery of the body he took, our Lord makes known the divinity that is in the Father, while keeping to a certain order...: “If you know me, you will know him and see him”... He makes a distinction between the moment of seeing and that of knowing; he says they must recognize the one who is speaking to them and they will see...; he has to teach them to recognize the divine nature within him.

These words, for which they were unprepared, trouble Philip. He sees a man and this man claims to be the Son of God... The Lord says to him that he has seen the Father and that therefore he knows him because he has seen him. The limitations of his humanness prevent Philip from understanding any such statement... That is why he answers that he has not seen the Father and asks the Lord to show him to him. Not that he wants to see him with his bodily eyes but he is asking to be enabled to understand who it is that he sees... Expressing a desire to understand rather than to see, he adds: “That will be enough for us”.

SAINT ATHANASIUS by Benedict xvi

SAINT ATHANASIUS
Bishop & Doctor of the Church
(+ 373)

General Audience, 20 June 2007

1. www.vatican.va/.../benedict_xvi/.../hf_ben-xvi_aud_20070620_en.html‎

   Jun 20, 2007 – BENEDICT XVI. GENERAL AUDIENCE. Paul VI Audience Hall Wednesday, 20 June 2007. Saint Athanasius of Alexandria. Dear Brothers and ...

   BENEDICT XVI

   GENERAL AUDIENCE

   Paul VI Audience Hall
   Wednesday, 20 June 2007

   
   

   Saint Athanasius of Alexandria

   Dear Brothers and Sisters,

   Continuing our revisitation of the great Teachers of the ancient Church, let us focus our attention today on St Athanasius of Alexandria.

   Only a few years after his death, this authentic protagonist of the Christian tradition was already hailed as "the pillar of the Church" by Gregory of Nazianzus, the great theologian and Bishop of Constantinople (Orationes, 21, 26), and he has always been considered a model of orthodoxy in both East and West.

   As a result, it was not by chance that Gian Lorenzo Bernini placed his statue among those of the four holy Doctors of the Eastern and Western Churches - together with the images of Ambrose, John Chrysostom and Augustine - which surround the Chair of St Peter in the marvellous apse of the Vatican Basilica.

   Athanasius was undoubtedly one of the most important and revered early Church Fathers. But this great Saint was above all the impassioned theologian of the Incarnation of the Logos, the Word of God who - as the Prologue of the fourth Gospel says - "became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn 1: 14).

   For this very reason Athanasius was also the most important and tenacious adversary of the Arian heresy, which at that time threatened faith in Christ, reduced to a creature "halfway" between God and man, according to a recurring tendency in history which we also see manifested today in various forms.

   In all likelihood Athanasius was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in about the year 300 A.D. He received a good education before becoming a deacon and secretary to the Bishop of Alexandria, the great Egyptian metropolis. As a close collaborator of his Bishop, the young cleric took part with him in the Council of Nicaea, the first Ecumenical Council, convoked by the Emperor Constantine in May 325 A.D. to ensure Church unity. The Nicene Fathers were thus able to address various issues and primarily the serious problem that had arisen a few years earlier from the preaching of the Alexandrian priest, Arius.

   With his theory, Arius threatened authentic faith in Christ, declaring that the Logos was not a true God but a created God, a creature "halfway" between God and man who hence remained for ever inaccessible to us. The Bishops gathered in Nicaea responded by developing and establishing the "Symbol of faith" ["Creed"] which, completed later at the First Council of Constantinople, has endured in the traditions of various Christian denominations and in the liturgy as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.

   In this fundamental text - which expresses the faith of the undivided Church and which we also recite today, every Sunday, in the Eucharistic celebration - the Greek term homooúsiosis featured, in Latin consubstantialis: it means that the Son, the Logos, is "of the same substance" as the Father, he is God of God, he is his substance. Thus, the full divinity of the Son, which was denied by the Arians, was brought into the limelight.      

COMMENT: photos Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday

                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                                 

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Jo McG........
To: Donald .......
Sent: Wednesday, 1 May 2013, 19:38
Subject: photos

Dear Don, I hope these two photos come through. They are at the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday. No. 7277 is of the Patriarch, four Bishops and the priests, etc at the Mass. No. 7355 is the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament around the Anointing Stone. I will still search for others that might be suitable. Tomorrow, I am off to the dentist!! Love Jo.   xx

++++++++++++++++++++++----- Forwarded Message -----

From: William ..............
To: Donald........
Sent: Wednesday, 1 May 2013, 19:39
Subject: Sr. Jo.fmm's journal

Dear Father Donald,

 

It is such a delight to have a copy of Sr Jo,fmm's journal to read alongside your own!

I have copied it into Word to keep it in my Holy Land folder with all that you have shared.

I wonder how much, or how little, may have changed there in the last ten years...

.... ten years!

 

With my love in Our Lord,

William

 

Like St Joseph let us trust in the Lord's abiding presence

Mass Introduction:  

----- Forwarded Message -----From: Nivard........
Sent: Wednesday, 1 May 2013, 9:31
Subject: The True Vine

Daily Reading & Meditation, adapted. 5 Wed 1 May, St Joseph Worker

 “Abide in me, and I in you”,  John 15:1-8

  

Here is a simple a truth.

We are either fruit-bearing or non-fruit-bearing. There is no in-between.

 

However, the bearing of healthy fruit requires drastic pruning. The Lord promises that we will bearmuch fruit if we abide in him and allow him to purify us.

Like St Joseph let us trust in the Lord's abiding presence with us, as we perform, our daily tasks.

 

Father, may we be one with you in all that we say and do. Draw us close that we may glorify you and bear fruit for your kingdom, through Christ our Lord.