Former Notre Dame Head Football Coach, Dan Devine …

Former Notre Dame Head Football Coach, Dan Devine has Died

Pipe Bombs Found in Indiana Mailboxes

Pipe Bombs Found in Indiana Mailboxes

Lawyers Argue that Shanley’s Bail Should be Reduce…

Lawyers Argue that Shanley’s Bail Should be Reduced

An Acid Cloud is Passing Over Grand Rapids, MI

An Acid Cloud is Passing Over Grand Rapids, MI

Mail boxes are exploding in the State of Washingto…

Mail boxes are exploding in the State of Washington, today!

Janet Reno was involved in a car accident today.

Janet Reno was involved in a car accident today.

This is a continuation of the 73 Steps to Spiritua…

This is a continuation of the 73 Steps to Spiritual Communion with God. The previous are posted below among the other posts and last week’s archives. Here is the 21st step:

(21) To prefer nothing to the love of Christ.

This is without a doubt the most quoted counsel of St. Benedict.

It an excellent guide for the spiritual life– to prefer nothing to the love of Christ.

One might ask, are we to focus on being loved by Christ or the act of loving Him? I think it is both.

In Mark 10:21 we have the account of the rich young man. The Gospel says that Jesus, ” looking upon him loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Notice that when Christ loves the rich young man, He points out what the young man lacks. It is out of love, that Jesus tells him to get rid of all his possessions.

Being loved by Christ will reveal similar deficiencies in us.

Our Lord looks upon us and recognizes what we really need. We often come to him with our own ideas about what we need.

If we prefer our ideas to the love of Christ, we too will join the rich young man who walks away sad “for his possessions were many.” We may possess the world, but without Christ it is nothing!

In John 8:42, Jesus is engaged in a heated argument with those who oppose him. He says to them “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.”

This takes us back to the first counsel of St. Benedict, to love God. Jesus is God and so we should prefer nothing to God and His love that Jesus has revealed to us perfectly.

How do we know if we truly love Our Lord? He addresses this in John 14:23-24 ” “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.”

A concrete way to always prefer the love of Christ throughout the day when faced with countless other choices might be to adopt the phrase that Jesus spoke to Peter and to hear it addressed to ourselves–continuously: “Do you love me more than these? (John 21:15)”

Catholic Light (not Catholic Lite) is a very enter…

Catholic Light (not Catholic Lite) is a very entertaining blog. I especially like his meditation on the size of poor boxes in churches:

My wife had an observation as we left choir rehearsal last night – “Why are the poor boxes here so dinky? You can hardly fit a folded dollar bill in the slot. At St. Mary’s in old town, the poor boxes were huge! People were emptying their pockets as they walked out of the church. Our poor boxes look like the brick walls so you can’t even see them.” and she ended with the Lay Person’s Call To Action: “I’m going to write the pastor a letter!”

She’s right. The poor boxes at our church look like little bricks. It’s certainly not a reminder of our responsibility. And it’s particularly fitting the we have options for directed giving that might not necessarily end up applied toward legal fees or court settlements.

From this site: "Was not Nagasaki the chosen v…

From this site:

“Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim,” Nagai writes in Bells of Nagasaki, “the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole-burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War II?”

The Florida Marlins are in first place in the Nati…

The Florida Marlins are in first place in the National League East!

Florida 18 15 .545 —

NY Mets 18 15 .545 —

Montreal 17 16 .515 1

Atlanta 16 18 .471 2 1/2

Philadelphia 14 19 .424 4

I watched A Hill of Redemption last night on EWTN-…

I watched A Hill of Redemption last night on EWTN–a description from the Catholic Treasures site:

This professionally produced video presents not only Our Lady’s warning to the world of a coming chastisement, but a complete overview of Japan’s Catholic heritage from the missionary activity of St. Francis Xavier through the 200 year persecution and banishment of Catholicism, the work of St. Maximilian Kolbe in the 1930′s, and the atomic destruction during World War II of the largest Catholic community in the country. All the main participants in the church approved Marian messages at Akita are on this video, including the Bishop for Akita. English narration with some segments in Japanese with English subtitles.

I fell asleep before the warning of the world wide chastisement so I can’t comment on that, but what struck me was talk that Catholic survivors of the the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki saw it as a sacrificial offering that they offered to end the war. I’d like to find a more coherent presentation of this (more coherent then what I remember).