🎒 “The summons by Jesus to Saint Thomas the Apostle after the Resurrection to place his finger in the nail marks and his hand in his side is repeated again in conversions. Our Lord wants this probing, this sustained gaze and inquiry. The wounds remain in the body of Christ so that a wound of love may persist in the soul that gazes on
them. It is as though Our Lord has been shy to let these wounds be seen until a conversion has taken place. And now, with our soul conquered by him, he shares his secret. The wounds of Our Lord become for our soul a never fully fathomed reality in the mystery of relations with him. They always invite further probing and contemplation that can seem endless as our life continues. “Look at my wounds and contemplate them in love”, he seems to say. The secrecy of God in this mystery of his wounded love opens itself more with each entry of our soul into the depth of his thirst for souls. The depth is limitless”. By Fr. Donald Haggerty
🌑 “Know this, My daughter: if you strive for perfection you will sanctify many souls; and if you do not strive for sanctity, by the same token, many souls will remain imperfect. Know that their perfection will depend on your perfection, and the greater part of the responsibility for these souls will fall on you”. Divine Mercy Diary #1165, Jesus to St. Faustina
📖 Revelation 3:15 “I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot”
🔥 We have been called by name
🔥 And when we respond, we will no longer remain the same
🔥 Clocks reset, we enter a new game
🔥 The bar is set high, higher and higher must be our aim
🔥 Let us stay hot, red, red, red hot
🔥 Spiritually crossing every single “t”, and the “i’s” we must perfectly dot
🔥 To triumph in excellency is really our assigned lot
🔥 Lukewarm, self serving, wallowing in mediocrity, it certainly is not
🔥 God will not fail to douse us daily with the fuel of Amazing Grace
🔥 So that in our living, all in camp “Christian”, will earnestly seek His face
🔥 Then we’ll be transforming instruments, touching one by one, impacting the whole human race
🔥 Spiritually empowered we hit home runs & not strike out or be forever stuck on third base
🔥 It’s to desire and want it
🔥 Avail and open up ourselves totally to the Holy Spirit
🔥 Then the process will gain momentum bit by bit
🔥 We must always resolve to keep our Sacred fires lit
🔥 It’s amazing what God can and will ultimately do
🔥 When He finds a door wide open, He will certainly come marching through
🔥 I’m game and so should be you
🔥 So God the invitation accepted the fiat granted, whatever you want, just do
🔥 When you get right down to it, how totally amazing
🔥 Being invited to participate in the mission whose business is always and forever saving
🔥 An army equipped for battle, God Himself is truly constantly forming and mightily raising
🔥 That in truth they’ll be who the ones wholeheartedly working, singing and praising
🔥 No confusion
🔥 Not even the slightest of an illusion
🔥 We are called and can choose to not be part of the problem but contribute to the solution
🔥 Fired up, red hot to perpetuate and participate in Almighty God’s authentic Spiritual Revolution
tmm/TruGIG
™️
Info from this site:
www.catholic.org/news/hf/faith/story.php?id=49807
“God's name expresses his uniqueness--He is the one and only God. One of the "riches contained in the revelation of the divine name" is that "God is unique; there are no other gods beside him." CCC § 212
📖 Isaiah 46:6 “There are those who pour out gold from a purse and weigh out silver on the scales; They hire a goldsmith to make it into a god before which they bow down in worship”
God's name suggests that he is transcendent, that, as creator of heaven and earth, "He transcends the world and history." CCC § 212.
"The revelation of the ineffable name "I AM WHO AM" contains then the truth that God alone IS. . . . . God is the fullness of Being and of every perfection, without origin and without end. All creatures receive all that they are and have from him; but he alone is his very being, and he is of himself everything that he is." CCC § 213.
As a theologian, Joseph Ratzinger suggests that we go beyond these truths, without denying them in any sense, and discover something even more marvelous. Is YHWH even properly speaking a name? "This question may at first seem nonsensical, for it is indisputable that Israel knew the word Yahweh as a name for God," as, of course, does the Catechism. What Ratzinger suggests is that the revelation by God that his name is YWHW is really a "rebuff" or a "refusal to give a name than the announcement of a name." God's name may be that he is nameless because His real essence, as God, is unknowable.
As Meister Eckhart puts it "God is nameless, for no man can know or say anything of Him." Ratzinger suggests perhaps even the implication of a divine displeasure--I would have suggested coyness--at Moses' importunity at asking God a question which is unanswerable to men: "I am just who I am." (God, it seems, cannot be known by name until he became incarnate and received the human name of Jesus. There is no problem in naming a person who has a human nature.)Ratzinger compares the Mosaic theophany with a similar event in Judges 13:18 where Manoah asks the God he meets for his name. "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is a secret?" (or "wonderful") Through this deft question, God avoids having to reveal his name to Manoah perhaps because Manoah is incapable of comprehending it. Something similar happens to Jacob in the great wrestling match of Jacob with God.
📖 Genesis 32:29 “Then the man said, “You shall no longer be named Jacob, but Israel, because you have contended with divine and human beings and have prevailed.”
After his lengthy wrestling with God, Jacob asks this stranger his name, only to receive a deflection, a "gesture of repulse": "Why is it that you ask my name?" Since God's substance--his name--is incomprehensible, there is no good reason for asking such a question because even if God answered it, man has no capacity for it. Ratzinger suggest that the reason that God avoids giving his name in any ordinary sense is to distinguish Himself from the gods of the nations all about Israel. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob does not have the same kind of name as the many gods of the nations round about Israel. "The God of the burning bush will not put himself on a level with them." A name comprehends, restrains, allows control over a god, and the God will not--cannot--be comprehended by a creature.
At best, God's name--YHWH--is only a name in an analogical sense. God's name is similar to the names we give people and places and with which we are familiar. But there is an infinite difference or dissimilarity between God's name and those names, common and proper, with which we are familiar. God's response to Moses and His revelation of the name YHWH, suggests Ratzinger, "serves as a kind of negative theology." It is a name that is not an ordinary name, as it "cancels out the significance of the name as a name; it effects a sort of withdrawal from the only too well known, which the name seems to be, into the unknown, the hidden." It is a name infinitely above any other name that we know while pilgrims on this earth. It is beyond our experience.
So the name-which-is-not-a-name with which God responds to Moses, "dissolves the name into mystery, so that the familiarity and unfamiliarity of God, concealment and revelation, are indicated simultaneously.
The name, a sign of acquaintance, becomes the cipher for the perpetually unknown and unnamed quality of God. Contrary to the view that God can here be grasped, so to speak, the persistence of an infinite distance is in this way made quite clear." "To this extent it was in the last analysis a legitimate development that led people in Israel more and more to avoid pronouncing this name, to use some sort of periphrasis, so that in the Greek Bible it no longer occurs at all but is simply replaced by the word "Lord." This development shows in many ways a more accurate understanding of the mystery of the burning bush than multifarious learned philological explanations do."
In the Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures which occurred in the 2nd century B.C. under Jewish auspices, the Septuagint, the name YHWH was replaced in the text with Kyrios (the Greek word for "Lord). Therefore, referring to YHWH as "Lord" was a custom which was carried over by the Christians, who did not use the Tetragrammaton YWHW, but used the Septuagint where it had been replaced with Kyrios ("Lord" in Greek). In the Latin translations of the Old Testament, the practice was carried over with the use of Dominus ("Lord" in Latin). It is a custom followed by the Catholic Church in her official translations of the Scriptures, and in her liturgy, where the divine name--YHWH--is replaced by the word Lord (in capital letters to indicate that it is in stead of the divine name). We shall see in the next article that this practice has tremendous implications in our understanding of Jesus--His name, and Who He claimed to be--and in the way we worship God in the liturgy”.
🙇🏼♀️“Second prepossession in favor of Christians: Their sanctity. Not only were they well instructed in the doctrine of the apostles, but they were, most faithful to put it in practice. The proof of this is that they were very holy. Nothing is more clearly established, than that a high degree of sanctity was the general character of the early Christians. First, they preferred to lose everything, their property and life itself in the midst of tortures, rather than offend God. Their heroism lasted as long as the persecutions, that is, for three
centuries. Secondly, they were very charitable. Heaven and earth have united in eulogizing their mutual love, unparalleled in the annals of the world. They had but one heart and one soul, has God himself said. Behold how they love one another, and how ready thrust are to die for one another!
🙇🏼♀️Thirdly, they were filled with respectful love for the apostles, whom they obeyed with filial submission. St. Paul, who paid no compliments, writes to the Christians of Rome, that their faith is
celebrated throughout the entire world; and to those of Asia, that they loved him so much, that had it been possible, they would have plucked out their eyes to give them to him. At his request, all the churches fly to the help of the brethren of Jerusalem, and Philemon receives Onesimus.
🙇🏼♀️Fourthly, the Fathers of the Church, who were eye-witnesses,
have continually rendered the most brilliant testimony to their sanctity. Addressing himself to the judges, praetors, and proconsuls of the Empire, Tertullian gave them this solemn
challenge: “I appeal to you magistrates charged with the administration of justice. Among the multitudes of accused who are daily arraigned at the bar of your tribunals, is there a poisoner, an assassin, a profaner, a corrupter, or a thief, who is a Christian ? It is your people who fill your prisons; it is yours that fill the mines ; it is yours that fatten the beasts of the amphitheater, it is yours who form your troops of gladiators. Among them there is not one Christian, unless he be there for the sole crime of Christianity.
🙇🏼♀️Fifthly, the pagan historians recognized
their innocence, and their very persecutors rendered homage to their virtue. Tacitus, relates the frightful sole crime of butchery of the Christians under Nero: “An immense multitude perished amid the most frightful torments. They were innocent of that with
they were charged worthy of the hatred of mankind; Behold the word! What was this mankind of Tacitus? He himself tells us: It was living filth, living cruelty. What caused its hatred? Because evil is the irreconcilable enemy of good. The sanctity of our fathers was the relentless condemnation of the monstrous crimes with which the pagans sullied themselves. Thence came Nero’s butchers and his living torches. Forty years after Nero, Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, is charged by Trajan to inform against the Christians. Zealous courtier, he rigorously executes his masters orders, and causes our ancestors to be sought after. When put to the torture, he himself interrogates them. What is the result of his bloody proceedings? All the crime of the Christians, consists in assembling together on a certain day before dawn, in order to sing the praises of Christ as of a God; in binding themselves by oath not to commit any crime, but to fly theft, robbery, adultery and perjury. I have caused them to be put to the torture, and have found them guilty of nothing but an evil and excessive superstition. I have been expatiating on the sanctity of our ancestors. In my mind, it forms the most powerful prepossession in favor of the Sign of the Cross. When men of this character, living in the face of death, show themselves invariably faithful to a usage, it must be that that usage is a little more important than your new companions believe.”
Video link: https://youtu.be/fB4C7koWaWE