Catholibertarian

A few weeks before my hysterectomy surgery I found a book at a Catholic book store called On The Love Of God Volume II by St. Francis de Sales.  I found these passages in the book interesting.  

“Sometimes this union is made without co-operation on our part except for a simple continuation in which we let ourselves be united to God’s goodness without any resistance. We are like a little child lovingly desirous of its mother’s breast but so feeble that of itself it cannot make any movement either to get to it or to cling to it once it is there.  The child is only happy at being taken up and drawn within its mother’s arms and at being pressed by her to her breast.”

“Sometimes we co-operate, as when we run willingly to assist the sweet force of God’s goodness which draws and clasps us to him by his love.”

“Sometimes it seems that we begin to join and attach ourselves to God even before he joins himself to us. This is because we perceive the unitive action on our part without perceiving the what God is doing on his part.  However, there is no doubt that his action always preceded ours, although we do not always perceive his previous action.  Unless he united himself to us, we would never unite ourselves to him.  He always chooses us and takes hold of us before we choose him or take hold of him.  He assists our feeble efforts and perceptibly joins himself to us, so that we perceive that he has penetrated and entered into our heart with incomparable gentleness.”

“Sometimes this union is made so insensibly that our heart neither feels God’s co-operation within nor our co-operation with it, but discovers the union alone insensibly completed. Sometimes this union is made by the will alone and in the will alone. At other times the intellect takes part in it ….  Sometimes this union is made by all the faculties of the soul.”

“The holy love of the Savior presses us, said St. Paul.  O God, what an example of surpassing union is this! God was united to our human nature by grace, like a vine to an elm, to enable it in some way to participate in his fruit.”

“But when he saw this union undone by Adam’s sin, he made a closer and more pressing union in the Incarnation and by it human nature remains forever joined in personal unity with the divinity.  To the end that not only human nature but all men might be intimately united with his goodness, God instituted the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist.  Every man may participate in it so as to unite his Savior with himself in reality and in the way of food.  Theotimus, this sacramental union calls us and assists us towards that spiritual union of which we speak.”

God calls us to be like little children.  From Matthew 18: 3-4   ^”and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”  God Bless.