Our soul purpose is to glorify God.
If I ever write a book it will be on the spiritual life via puns.
“when you confess, you come forth. For what does ‘come forth’ mean if not emerging from what is hidden, to be made manifest. But for you to confess is God’s doing; he calls you with an urgent voice, by an extraordinary grace. And just as the dead man came out still bound, so you go to confession still guilty. In order that his sins be loosed, the Lord said this to his ministers: ‘Unbind him and let him go’. What you will loose on earth will be loosed also in heaven” (St Augustine, In Ioann. Evang., 49, 24).
I like St. Augustine’s comparison of confession to the raising of Lazarus. Plus you know it is time to go to confession when Martha says “Lord, by this time there will be an odor.”
I was talking today to somebody who discovered the joy of reading Ratzinger. This made me very happy. There is a heightened joy when you share the love of something with your friends. For me this is especially true of shared authors.
Thinking about this I thought of the fact that God loves everybody and that I don’t love everybody he loves. Even in the Thomistic-sense of willing the good for the other I have work to do.
The other day I was struck by this line in the Gospel.
“Jesus came, although the doors were locked”
I certainly thought I had locked out all doors to God and that he could never intrude into my life. Like Thomas I demanded empirical knowledge, yet even if presented to me I would have denied it.
This reminds me for the hope I have in me for those currently outside the faith, that Jesus can burst through those locked doors giving us what we need to cooperate.
For Christianity there is a problem with heard immunity. People think they have heard the Gospels, but it hasn’t really penetrated. They have developed an immunity to what they have not really heard. Part of the problem is asymptomatic Christians. People who identify as Christian yet show no signs and will not pass it on to anybody.
