Find Peace in Christ, receive Holiness from God, enrich the life that entails Understanding!

Find Peace in Christ, receive Holiness from God, enrich the life that entails Understanding!

A three step environment that will bring us closer to the God who became the payment to forgive our sinfulness. Take this truth and absorb its eternal mercy when we sin.  

Jesus spoke often about peace and the Catechism puts a safeguard on its truth:  “Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived when each of you will be scattered to his own home and you will leave me alone.  But I am not alone, because the Father is with me.  I have told you this so that you might have peace in me.  In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”  (Jn 16: 32 - 33).

Respect for and development of human life requires peace.  Peace is not merely the absence of war, and is not limited to maintaining a balance of power between adversaries.  Peace cannot be attained on earth without safeguarding the goods of persons, free communication among men, respect for the dignity of persons and peoples, and the assiduous practice of fraternity.  Peace is “the tranquility of order.”  Peace is the work of justice and the effect of charity.  (CCC 2304).

After his Resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and repeated these words; “Peace be with you.”  “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  Then he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit .  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”  (Jn 20: 19 - 23).  This is the peace that we as ministers, ordained or laity, to give hope to those who may be struggling in the need of forgiveness and we are sent to bring them assurance that Christ is the Peace that went to the Cross for that only reason.

The Holiness of God is a way to perfection;  The way to perfection passes by way of the Cross.  There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle.  Spiritual progress entails the ascesis and mortification that gradually lead the living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes.  (CCC 2015).

“He who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning, through beginnings that have no end.  He never stops desiring what he already knows.”  (St. Gregory of Nyssa).

I recently wrote on the subject of Holiness, and it is the one attribute of the giftedness of God that is open to all as a quest for a special closeness to him.  Everyone may not live that entity as it is different in reaching out for God that requires a continued trek of sanctity.  It is a prayer that we all might look for because it becomes you and God in a connection that is perfection.

Understanding God and our lives that are One in essence as Jesus explained in his Priestly prayer.  “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.  And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”  (Jn 17: 20 - 22).

Ralph B. Hathaway