All You Need is to Love God

Peter Kreeft's How to be Holy is a guidebook.  If I were a spiritual director I would recommend this book.  I would be discussing the chapters with my directee.  Kreeft's style is easy, humorous, colloquial, and is an accessible, modern Abandonment to Divine Providence by Father Jean Pierre de Caussade. I confess I couldn't get through Caussade's book, but I had no problem reading How to be Holy.  That's my point.  

Kreeft unpacks  Romans 8:28—“We know that all things work for good for those who love God”.  His short chapters enable the reader to read and meditate on a chapter a day.  That's perfect for me.  

The Link between God and Me

 St. Charles de Foucauld wrote a prayer that more or less says he's such a sinner, he can't see how he will ever get to heaven.  Near the end of the prayer, he sees the heart of Jesus beating his name.  It's Jesus love that will draw us to Him and heaven.  

                                                Act of Confidence in the Sacred Heart of Jesus

As bad as I am, as great a sinner as I may be, I must hope that I'll go heaven, You forbid me to despair.

You forbid me to ever be discouraged, in front of my misery--You won't let me tell myself; "I can't go any farther--the road to Heaven is too steep--I'm going to give up and slide back down to the bottom."  Faced with my continually renewed faults, for which I ask Your pardon each day, and which I repeatedly fall into, You forbid me to tell myself: "I can never correct myself--holiness is not for me.  What have I in common with Heaven?  I am not worthy to enter there."  In light of the infinite graces You've heaped upon me, and the unworthiness of my present life, You for bid me to say to myself, "I have abused so many graces--I should be a saint and I am a sinner; I can't correct myself; it's too difficult; after all that God has done for me, I'm full of vices and pride; there is nothing good in me; I'll never go to Heaven."  You  tell me to hope in spite of everything.  I must believe that I will have enough grace to be converted and one day be with You in glory.  What is there in common between the perfection of Heaven and my miserable self? 
    This is Your Heart, Lord Jesus--Your Heart is the link between these two things which are so unlike one another.

Blessed Prison

 In a letter from St. Cyprian, when being Christian was against the law, he writes “How blessed is the prison honored by your presence, how blessed the prison that sends men of God to heaven!”

I can’t help but think of my “cloistered brothers”.  

  

Shirking Responsibility

 It's hard to think, know, and understand, that when praying to God, that's not the end.  One cannot sit back and think that God will solve our problems.  Worse, solutions will probably ask for strength and work.

God gave us intelligence, judgment, and free will.  We are to use them.  God will inspire us to use our gifts, but it's up to us to do the work.

Remember the story of the man who heard on the news that a flood was imminent.  He prayed to be saved.  The flood came, but he stayed in his home and prayed.  The police came and knocked on his door and asked him if he needed help.  He refused because he was relying on God.  As the flood waters reached his second story windows, the fire department rowed a raft to him and told him to come aboard.  He said no, God will save him.  Finally, a helicopter flew on his roof, and he still refused their help.

When he arrived in heaven, he asked God, "Where were you?  God replied, I sent the police, the firemen, and the helicopter.  Why didn't you use your gift of intelligence and judgement to accept their help?"

Some Conversions are Hard to Believe

 Please, Lord, teach me now how to serve you with all my heart, to know at last what it really is to love, to adore, so that I may worthily administer your kingdom here on earth, and find my true honour in serving your divine will.’

When Thomas Becket was consecrated bishop, this was the prayer he recited.  At least, this is the prayer, author Jean Anouilh put in Becket's mouth, in the play.  I think everyone can pray it.  Don't we all aspire to do God's will?

Public domain via Wikimedia

Becket had a religious conversion, and it defined his life from then on.  Hard to believe; it does happen.  Many monks, nuns, and other religious, can attest to that fact.

The Diary

The Case of the Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Auguste Groner is a free book, offered by Gutenberg eBooks.   I thought I would try it.  It was very short--a plus!  More delightful than that, it was good.  I was attracted by Joseph Muller.  He is a convicted felon.  He has proven himself valuable in solving crimes.  So much so, that he is a secret service detective with the Imperial Austrian police.  

This particular mystery starts with Ludwig Amster being fired from his factory job.  Dejectedly, walking home in the snow, he finds a diary, with a note attached saying to bring the diary to the nearest police station.  He does as instructed and ends up not only helping Joseph Muller solving the mystery but also being offered a job with the Imperial Austrian police.

The diary explains that a lady is being held prisoner.  Muller and Amster follow clues and figure out where the lady was held.  Consequently, they figure out how she was taken by taxi.  The next step was to find the taxi driver and go to where he brought the lady and her abductor. The story ends in confrontation with the lady being rescued.

This little free Gutenberg eBook will not be my last.

Selfishness

 Love can be defined as willing the good of the other.  The two major characters in The Divide by Nicholas Evans are too selfish to will the good of anybody but themselves.  They do what they want and to hell with everyone else.

The novel begins with two skiers in Montana, finding a frozen corpse.  It belongs to Abbie Cooper.  How poor Abbie ends up dead on the side of a mountain, is the story.

Abbie's father breaks up his marriage by dumping his teenage children and wife to shack up with an artist.  Everyone is devasted!  He does what he wants.

Abbie is crushed.  She is also away from home, at college in Montana.  Her family home is New York.  But it's not home without her father.  She feels traumatized.  She's majoring in environmental science, and it is through her environmental interest that she meets Rolf.  Rolf and Abbie write graffiti and hold signs protesting corporate rape of the environment.  Abbie becomes obsessed with Rolf--think Stockholm syndrome.  Soon Abbie is committing arson.  Then, the arson turned to murder.  Abbie is stuck.  She's on the run, away from government authorities, because she is now considered a terrorist.  Rolf uses Abbie and when she finally realizes it, she runs to hide with a former boyfriend.  

Right from the beginning of Abbie meeting Rolf, she wanted to go home to New York, but Rolf wasn't keen on it.  Is that love?  Is he willing the good of Abbie?  Abbie is as selfish as her father and sticks to Rolf, just as her father sticks to his new lover.

The author, Nicholas Evans writes masterfully.  His descriptions make me want to ski the slopes.  The book is so thrilling you could call it a page turner.  It was one of those that kept me up too late to finish it.  Then I couldn't sleep!