..on a soul’s journey
to God a balanced life of virtue is altogether necessary...for the virtues may
be taken in a symbolic sense to be our hands and feet and all the senses of a
bodily nature..yet this should be taken to be understood in a spiritual sense..so
it follows our eyes denote discernment by which we may practice prudence and
work our salvation in fear (temperance) and trembling (felicity)...when one
trembles out of love such a soul is ensconced with solicitude...solicitude is a
fruit of charity..as we are told in the Gospel without charity we are
nothing..since God is the cause of charity in all things..and he indeed has
created us from nothing...
..accordingly if we
are to practice prayer in just manner we must first imbue our prayer with
temperance...for temperance is nothing more than the fear of the Lord..or more
rightly fear of the loss of the Lord’s beneficence...yet so that our temperance does
not drag us down into desperation and sorrow from thinking of our sinfulness
and our short life which is empty without God..we must append to our temperance
the thought of God’s mercy..and in this way our prayer becomes balanced...for
if we pray while thinking our time is short and our need for correction of
faults is great (reform) then we must understand that also the action of God’s
mercy in such a sincere soul is also
great...and so the two virtues of temperance and hope meet...with the two
concerns in our minds of avoiding evil (temperance) and the belief in God’s
mercy (hope) which actuates within us the desire to do good we are able to move
forward in prayer...
..it is with the staff
of hope and temperance that we are able to support our soul in all good
action...thus we are equipped to climb up to the peak of perfection which is
the perfect love of God..which can only be begun in this life and realized in
the next...
...and so everything
for God must be done swiftly and gladly..swiftly out of fear and gladly out of
hope & a loving trust in his mercy...it follows we must obey our spiritual Authorities swiftly and gladly..through temperance and hope and love...
..yet we see at the
phenomenon in MEDJUGORJE...there is not this balance of hope and temperance..there
is no obedience borne of temperance ...for with most adherents we have hope in
God’s mercy..yet we have no fear of God’s ordinance which comes through the
office of the local BISHOP..as well as the decrees of HOLY MOTHER CHURCH...
...the culprit at
MEDJUGORJE is IGNORANCE..affected in some cases supine or crass in many
cases...it is ignorance which which makes people value penance..such as
fasting, kneeling, saying many prayers with no interior disposition but only
the sake of the length and quantity..such people think that bodily work is able
to take them to the heavenly abode..and they do not understand the value of the
spiritual virtues....this is why a REVERENT affection is required..yet in
MEDJUGORJE we do not see this..we see affection without reverence to the
precepts of HOLY MOTHER CHURCH....and so such prayer is empty of virtue yet it
is full of bodily emotion..and this is a character of the spirit of the world
which is not entirely of GOD...it is a product of fallen man or ORIGINAL
SIN...it is borne of concupiscence...
..this is why fasting
cannot replace charity..for charity is a bond of love which unites one to the
other through holy fear and hope..while fasting without virtue becomes a pious
exercise with no merit in itself rather it becomes a concord of wills opposed
to the precepts of MOTHER CHURCH which occurs in many schismatic sects....
...and so now we must
understand that reverent affection when borne out of temperance and hope may be
compared mystically to a tree full of FRUIT...
...fear (temperance) becomes
the root of the mystical tree of prayer..since this is the part which is the
anchor and enclosed in the ground...hope becomes the part which is above the
ground..and in this manner our hope is the trunk and the branches of the tree
of prayer...since our hope is certain in the certitudes of the deposit of the
faith in this way it is a strong trunk and upright in righteousness..and since this hope stirs us to do good
works it is the branches which reach out to others in the spiritual life...
..the FRUIT of the
mystical tree of prayer is the reverent affection...as long as our reverent
affection remains attached to the tree..this means to say as long as we do not
trust in God and all his precepts of HOLY MOTHER CHURCH then the fruit of our
prayer retains the green smell of the tree (the self will)..this is not poverty
of spirit..but inordinate self love..which bears the fruits of spiritual
gluttony borne of pride and denial of any authority but one’s own.... and this
is a fruit most fit for servants rather than for the KING (GOD)...yet when we
separate the fruit (reverent affection) from the tree at the right time it
becomes ripe and pleasing and tender since it is the fruit of TRUST & FAITH..without
obedience to God’s ministers there is no trust and our fruit is green..yet when
we obey God’s apostles who are acting within their authority and who do not
condone sin our fruit is ripe and pleasing to God..since this is the fruit of
justice and charity...since we do not withdraw any good from God’s ministers
which they are owed due to the power of their Authority which has been vested
in them by GOD himself....
..and so such ripe
fruit is no more than loving GOD for HIMSELF..and not for any benefit or any
gift which we wish to receive..but rather for the sake of the community of
believers which we have been given the grace to love God in the first place.. to strengthen the unity within the Church....
..let us all examine
ourselves with a conscience that is guided by the precepts of HOLY MOTHER
CHURCH.....amen
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