Religion & Spirituality
-You can't love God if you don't fill your mind with thoughts of Him; if you're not attentive to Him. You can't do it. -Fr. Brian -shema (Hebrew) — hear -(Deuteronomy 6:4-5) -The load-bearing wall of your life, is the love of God.... If you don't have that, if you take that wall out, it might stand for a little bit, but nothing else in the end will make sense. This is the centerpiece of everything—not just for Christians. The way that God created humanity, brothers and sisters, He made us so that this is the center of our existence. -Fr. Brian -He did not create you for a life of comfort, or a life of success, or a life of power, or a life where you did some great things. God created you to participate in this mysterious, beautiful, mystical word. This word we call love. And that's the reason you exist. -Fr. Brian -Real love means that I know how to sacrifice for you, it means that I choose you, even when it's difficult. Love is not just that feeling, it is something much more beautiful and something much deeper, it is something that lays claim to all of our existence. It is a love that is conformed to Jesus Christ. This is what our religion is about. Do you love God? -Fr. Brian -"But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days—oracle of the LORD. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people." (Jeremiah 31:33) -The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) -"You are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all, shown to be a letter of Christ administered by us, written not in ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are hearts of flesh." (2 Corinthians 3:2-3) -In the Old Covenant, He taught us to love Him and to love our neighbor and He wrote it on tablets of stone. But what happened on Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, and Pentecost—Jesus, the love of God, is not something that is outside of me. It's not something that I have to look up in a book. It's not that I have to read the Catechism. Jesus, the day you gave your life to me, you wrote the law of love on my heart. You engraved it into my very flesh. And that's why you made me. -Fr. Brian -What it means to be a Christian is not to follow a moral code. It's not to know certain truths about God. It's to encounter a miracle. And the miracle of Christianity is that the God who created the heavens and the earth, is Him (Jesus). And that He loves you enough to do that (be crucified). -Fr. Brian -kardia (Greek) - heart