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The Pope Understands Me, Thank God

9/20/2013

3 Comments

 
Those who have opened their hearts to God’s love, heard his voice and received his light, cannot keep this gift to themselves.  ~ Pope Francis
Amen! Amen! Amen! What a joy, what a gift my heart has received from reading this message of God's Eternal Love delivered by the Pope Francis, the Holy Father of the Catholic Church. He speaks my language, the language of my heart. I have not heard this Truth, which I know so intimately, proclaimed by the Voice of the Catholic Church so blatantly. This is the Truth that we have failed to see. This is the Light we have failed to seek. But, alas It remains to be found by the ardent seeker. Yes, God's Love is True, just like I have been telling you for I can not remain silent. God's Love within me begs me to speak.

The following are excerpts from the encyclical letter Lumen Fidei of the Supreme Pontiff Francis which particularly speak to me and my own experience finding and following the Divine Light of God through Christ's Love most Divine. The complete Lumen Fidei discourse is available at this link.

- Debra Clemente, author of LISTEN HEAR, A Divine Love Story


A light this powerful cannot come from ourselves but from a more primordial source: in a word, it must come from God. Faith is born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals his love, a love which precedes us and upon which we can lean for security and for building our lives. Transformed by this love, we gain fresh vision, new eyes to see; we realize that it contains a great promise of fulfillment, and that a vision of the future opens up before us. Faith, received from God as a supernatural gift, becomes a light for our way, guiding our journey through time.   4. Lumen Fidei
The word which God speaks to us in Jesus is not simply one word among many, but his eternal Word (cf. Heb 1:1-2). God can give no greater guarantee of his love, as Saint Paul reminds us (cf. Rom 8:31-39). Christian faith is thus faith in a perfect love, in its decisive power, in its ability to transform the world and to unfold its history. "We know and believe the love that God has for us" (1 Jn 4:16). In the love of God revealed in Jesus, faith perceives the foundation on which all reality and its final destiny rest.  15. Lumen Fidei
Our culture has lost its sense of God’s tangible presence and activity in our world. We think that God is to be found in the beyond, on another level of reality, far removed from our everyday relationships. But if this were the case, if God could not act in the world, his love would not be truly powerful, truly real, and thus not even true, a love capable of delivering the bliss that it promises. It would make no difference at all whether we believed in him or not. Christians, on the contrary, profess their faith in God’s tangible and powerful love which really does act in history and determines its final destiny: a love that can be encountered, a love fully revealed in Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. 17. Lumen Fidei
In faith, Christ is not simply the one in whom we believe, the supreme manifestation of God’s love; he is also the one with whom we are united precisely in order to believe. Faith does not merely gaze at Jesus, but sees things as Jesus himself sees them, with his own eyes: it is a participation in his way of seeing. In many areas in our lives we trust others who know more than we do. We trust the architect who builds our home, the pharmacist who gives us medicine for healing, the lawyer who defends us in court. We also need someone trustworthy and knowledgeable where God is concerned. Jesus, the Son of God, is the one who makes God known to us (cf. Jn 1:18). Christ’s life, his way of knowing the Father and living in complete and constant relationship with him, opens up new and inviting vistas for human experience.  18. Lumen Fidei
The beginning of salvation is openness to something prior to ourselves, to a primordial gift that affirms life and sustains it in being. Only by being open to and acknowledging this gift can we be transformed, experience salvation and bear good fruit. Salvation by faith means recognizing the primacy of God’s gift. As Saint Paul puts it: "By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God" (Eph 2:8). 19. Lumen Fidei
Faith’s new way of seeing things is centered on Christ. Faith in Christ brings salvation because in him our lives become radically open to a love that precedes us, a love that transforms us from within, acting in us and through us... Christ came down to earth and rose from the dead; by his incarnation and resurrection, the Son of God embraced the whole of human life and history, and now dwells in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Faith knows that God has drawn close to us, that Christ has been given to us as a great gift which inwardly transforms us, dwells within us and thus bestows on us the light that illumines the origin and the end of life.  20. Lumen Fidei
We come to see the difference, then, which faith makes for us. Those who believe are transformed by the love to which they have opened their hearts in faith. By their openness to this offer of primordial love, their lives are enlarged and expanded. "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20). "May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith" (Eph 3:17). The self-awareness of the believer now expands because of the presence of another; it now lives in this other and thus, in love, life takes on a whole new breadth. Here we see the Holy Spirit at work. The Christian can see with the eyes of Jesus and share in his mind, his filial disposition, because he or she shares in his love, which is the Spirit. In the love of Jesus, we receive in a certain way his vision. Without being conformed to him in love, without the presence of the Spirit, it is impossible to confess him as Lord (cf. 1 Cor 12:3). 21. Lumen Fidei

Faith becomes operative in the Christian on the basis of the gift received, the love which attracts our hearts to Christ (cf. Gal 5:6), and enables us to become part of the Church’s great pilgrimage through history until the end of the world. For those who have been transformed in this way, a new way of seeing opens up, faith becomes light for their eyes.  22. Lumen Fidei
The question of truth is really a question of memory, deep memory, for it deals with something prior to ourselves and can succeed in uniting us in a way that transcends our petty and limited individual consciousness. It is a question about the origin of all that is, in whose light we can glimpse the goal and thus the meaning of our common path. 25. Lumen Fidei
This being the case, can Christian faith provide a service to the common good with regard to the right way of understanding truth? To answer this question, we need to reflect on the kind of knowledge involved in faith. Here a saying of Saint Paul can help us: "One believes with the heart" (Rom 10:10). In the Bible, the heart is the core of the human person, where all his or her different dimensions intersect: body and spirit, interiority and openness to the world and to others, intellect, will and affectivity. If the heart is capable of holding all these dimensions together, it is because it is where we become open to truth and love, where we let them touch us and deeply transform us. Faith transforms the whole person precisely to the extent that he or she becomes open to love. Through this blending of faith and love we come to see the kind of knowledge which faith entails, its power to convince and its ability to illumine our steps. Faith knows because it is tied to love, because love itself brings enlightenment. Faith’s understanding is born when we receive the immense love of God which transforms us inwardly and enables us to see reality with new eyes. 26. Lumen Fidei
The bond between seeing and hearing in faith-knowledge is most clearly evident in John’s Gospel. For the Fourth Gospel, to believe is both to hear and to see. Faith’s hearing emerges as a form of knowing proper to love: it is a personal hearing, one which recognizes the voice of the Good Shepherd (cf. Jn 10:3-5) 30. Lumen Fidei
 As a truth of love, it is not one that can be imposed by force; it is not a truth that stifles the individual. Since it is born of love, it can penetrate to the heart, to the personal core of each man and woman. Clearly, then, faith is not intransigent, but grows in respectful coexistence with others. One who believes may not be presumptuous; on the contrary, truth leads to humility, since believers know that, rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth which embraces and possesses us. Far from making us inflexible, the security of faith sets us on a journey; it enables witness and dialogue with all. 34. Lumen Fidei
Of Enoch "it was attested that he had pleased God" (Heb 11:5), something impossible apart from faith, for "whoever would approach God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him" (Heb 11:6). We can see from this that the path of religious man passes through the acknowledgment of a God who cares for us and is not impossible to find. What other reward can God give to those who seek him, if not to let himself be found? Even earlier, we encounter Abel, whose faith was praised and whose gifts, his offering of the firstlings of his flock (cf. Heb 11:4), were therefore pleasing to God. Religious man strives to see signs of God in the daily experiences of life, in the cycle of the seasons, in the fruitfulness of the earth and in the movement of the cosmos. God is light and he can be found also by those who seek him with a sincere heart. 35. Lumen Fidei
An image of this seeking can be seen in the Magi, who were led to Bethlehem by the star (cf. Mt 2:1-12). For them God’s light appeared as a journey to be undertaken, a star which led them on a path of discovery. The star is a sign of God’s patience with our eyes which need to grow accustomed to his brightness. Religious man is a wayfarer; he must be ready to let himself be led, to come out of himself and to find the God of perpetual surprises. This respect on God’s part for our human eyes shows us that when we draw near to God, our human lights are not dissolved in the immensity of his light, as a star is engulfed by the dawn, but shine all the more brightly the closer they approach the primordial fire, like a mirror which reflects light. Christian faith in Jesus, the one Saviour of the world, proclaims that all God’s light is concentrated in him, in his "luminous life" which discloses the origin and the end of history.[31] There is no human experience, no journey of man to God, which cannot be taken up, illumined and purified by this light. The more Christians immerse themselves in the circle of Christ’s light, the more capable they become of understanding and accompanying the path of every man and woman towards God.

Because faith is a way, it also has to do with the lives of those men and women who, though not believers, nonetheless desire to believe and continue to seek. To the extent that they are sincerely open to love and set out with whatever light they can find, they are already, even without knowing it, on the path leading to faith. They strive to act as if God existed, at times because they realize how important he is for finding a sure compass for our life in common or because they experience a desire for light amid darkness, but also because in perceiving life’s grandeur and beauty they intuit that the presence of God would make it all the more beautiful. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons tells how Abraham, before hearing God’s voice, had already sought him "in the ardent desire of his heart" and "went throughout the whole world, asking himself where God was to be found", until "God had pity on him who, all alone, had sought him in silence". [32] Any-one who sets off on the path of doing good to others is already drawing near to God, is already sustained by his help, for it is characteristic of the divine light to brighten our eyes whenever we walk towards the fullness of love. 35. Lumen Fidei
Right faith orients reason to open itself to the light which comes from God, so that reason, guided by love of the truth, can come to a deeper knowledge of God. The great medieval theologians and teachers rightly held that theology, as a science of faith, is a participation in God’s own knowledge of himself. It is not just our discourse about God, but first and foremost the acceptance and the pursuit of a deeper understanding of the word which God speaks to us, the word which God speaks about himself, for he is an eternal dialogue of communion, and he allows us to enter into this dialogue.[33] 36. Lumen Fidei
Those who have opened their hearts to God’s love, heard his voice and received his light, cannot keep this gift to themselves. 37. Lumen Fidei
3 Comments
hemaninilesh
9/20/2013 02:50:14 pm

yes you are right , yes jesus is right,yes the word spoken by jesus are right, as it is the only truth that has been revealed throuh the divine heart having divine love. it is only possible when someone empty the heart so that divinewith her divinity and divine love enters into it than this divine love speaks the divine word which is the supreme truth. all in this world what ever is existing is due to divine and divine love only . we are hear to serve divine love.only.

Reply
Debra Clemente link
10/14/2013 10:15:12 am

per an e-mail discussion I was asked:
I am wondering if he ever mentions the 'blood of Jesus …or the vicarious atonement ' …trinity etc in any of these letters…..Because if NOT ….that makes them even more extraordinary. jb

Thus I researched and replied:
I did a word search on the document and sited the word "blood" used once in section 44 "The bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, who becomes present in his passover to the Father: this movement draws us, body and soul, into the movement of all creation towards its fulfillment in God."

The word "atonement" did not come up in my search.

Jb responds:
It is truly interesting how in trying to explain the 'blood' sacrifice he stumbles over words that do not seem to make any sense: The bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, who becomes present in his passover to the Father: What is that supposed to mean ? so then he recovers by saying " this movement draws us, body and soul, into the movement of all creation towards its fulfillment in God….. Which is at least poetic if not hopeful.. I suspect he doesn't really buy into the whole blood sacrifice thing as most of the paragraph is devoted to remembrance and mystery ….but NOT to " jesus died for your sins and shed his blood for us …and therefore we must drink it to be redeemed" He kind of sidesteps that whole issue don't ya think?
Thank you so very much for posting ..
May God bless you with a great inflowing of His Love

My response:
"In remembrance" is key wording here. Do this in remembrance of me. Christ said and thus the Priest presenting the sacrament of the Eucharist repeats.

When we remember God our Father, and our Christ our Brother we call them forth into our memory, our mind and heart. They are always present but our remembrance makes us present with them. I am understanding now that this is the true purpose of this sacrament. I have felt this power and presence myself as I knelt in prayer after receiving Holy Communion in the Catholic Church, as noted in the excerpt from my book below. Please note that I am not a cradle catholic, but did join the Church 28 years ago. During these past few years of my finding and growing in Divine Love I have stepped away from the Catholic Church, in fact all church services as I have not been able to recognize the Truth I know within "Alive and well" within such frame works. This is one reason why I am so delighted to read this illuminating letter written by the new pope. Boy oh boy, I sure would love the opportunity to have an "audience" with him.

I can remember kneeling in prayer at my pew as I was supposed to do. My prayers were not rote, they were words so deep they stuck in my throat. Swelling within my heart tears then flowed. Yes, I knelt crying, for why I did not know. “This is not the place for tears,” I said to myself, and hear with my physical ears. “Contain yourself, behave. Wipe your face, appear with grace.” Yet, True Grace was what I had found but did not know for I had not heard it told as so. http://www.debraclemente.com/1/post/2013/10/true-grace.html

My Christ Mind ( the Voice of Love) just said to me....
If one is in the right frame of mind and heart they shall receive the blessing of my Love through this sacrament, although this is not the only way as you so shall know.

Let's keep the conversation going. I would love to have you comment on my blog. Thank you. Deb


Reply
Denis jackson
10/9/2015 09:39:12 pm

Just been reading thru this Debra .
I happen to be on holiday in Sicily, Italy ....and read of your joy on reading Pope Francis letter Luman Fidei .
I was reading that letter by chance three days ago ....and thought to myself 'hey, I've never read this I must persevere with it ! I was surfing the net sort of ....
Now having read your post , I am going to read the whole letter ! Thank you !

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