Book I'm Reading

One of the books I'm reading right now is Charles Journet's The Meaning of Grace. Ron insists that it is one of the best books he's ever read. He has put it in my hands many times and I am finally getting through it. 

Here is a summary of some of his first points in Chapter 1: 

1. Christian revelation is the revelation of God's unfathomable love for us. 

2. God's love is first poured out for us in creation which is not to accomplish some gain for himself, but through a superabundance of goodness, a pure desire to communicate his riches and love. 

    This harkens back to one of my favorite concepts in Aquinas: "The good is self-diffusive."

3. God's second act is, according to Journet, "still more overwhelming. It is a little like the act of a mother who feels the child she has brought into the world is too remote, and takes and presses him to her heart." Journet says God unites himself to souls who open themselves up to his grace and love. This is the presence of indwelling. God transforms these souls and and fits them for his immediate indwelling, the indwelling of the Trinity. 

Takeaway: God dwells in any heart that will accept him. He transforms that heart and readies it for acts of divine love that the person can make at any time he or she wills. This is to participate in the divine nature, to be in a supernatural state of relationship with God. 

Summary of Christianity

Here is a summary of Christianity: 

Even though it looks like things are bad in the world, God invites us to divine life (giving us grace we are nowhere near deserving) and forgives us (throwing our sins as far as the east is from the west). So, the dice are loaded--all in our favor. The takeaway: There are no people who are lost causes. Christianity is marked by relentless and unflagging hope.   

The True Christian

St. Catherine of Siena, whose feast we celebrated yesterday, describes the true Christian this way:

"But when people have the light, they become true servants of their Creator.  Though they are living in the night of this darksome life they walk with the light, and though they are on the stormy sea they receive and experience interior peace.  They are always running on toward perfection. . . "

May we remember to walk with the light!