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April 6, 2011Dear Family of Mary! "Dear children; With motherly love I desire to open the heart of each of you and to teach you personal unity with the Father. To accept this, you must comprehend that you are important to God and that He is calling you individually. You must comprehend that your prayer is a conversation of a child with the Father; that love is the way by which you must set out - love for God and for your neighbor. That is, my children, the love that has no boundaries; that is the love that emanates from truth and goes to the end. Follow me, my children, so that also others, in recognizing the truth and love in you, may follow you. Thank you." (April 2, 2011) I received many responses to yesterday's reflection featuring Fr. Slavko's discussion of the greatest sin. In particular, the question of "what is love" came up. What is love? To answer that question, I am going to continue with Fr. Slavko, because his next chapter answers this question, at least a little: "But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Cor 12:31, 13:1-13) "'I am not afraid to be judged for what I have done, but for what I could have done.' (Patrick Lennan, Bishop)'
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"Without any merit on our part, God's love enters into our hearts. The world, on the other hand, is entangled in evil, conflicts, hatred, and many other things. There is no person or system that can cut the Gordian Knot of the disorder of this world. That can only be cut with a divine sword, carried by a divine hand, and sharpened with divine strength. This is God's love. Without any merit on our part, that love is poured into our hearts. Saint John tells us, 'We, for our part, love because He first loved us' (1 John 4:19).
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If we think of love in any way as something human, we will be disappointed. Real love comes from God, is of God, and will draw us back to God. True love is God!! But we can be partakers in that love, giving it to others and receiving it through them, if we open our hearts to the Father and ask Him to fill us with His love. He is the source, we are the receivers. His love can begin to work beautiful things in us and through us! It is the Water of Life that Jesus offers us if we pray. Oh, if only we could all be flooded with that Love!In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
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