Made To Reflect

 I came across these quotes from St. Ignatius again yesterday. These are very encouraging words that remind me to live is Christ, to die is gain . Our faith is a paradox. I have to die if I want to live. While St. Ignatius was going to his physical death, I am called to pick up my cross daily.... with my wife, my family, my church, my co-workers and the world. We don't consider ourselves dead for the sake of death, but for the paradox that we find True Life in our daily dying to self-will. ... request on my behalf both inward and outward strength, ... that I may not merely be called a Christian, but really found to be one. For if I be truly found a Christian, I may also be called one, and be then deemed faithful, when I shall no longer appear to the world. Nothing visible is eternal. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. The Christian is not the result of persuasion, but of power. When he is hated by the world, he is beloved...

Whatever has taken place in the history of salvation—whatever was done by Christ, the Father, and the Holy Spirit—must also take place within me. That's what it means for me to participate in the life of God. ... That is what is meant by "Let it be done to me according to your word", which means: "whatever you say, just as you said it. Even though I cannot understand it, let it happen just as you say." Do you have a sense of the self-emptying, the self-surrender that occurs? In response, God says: "Be filled with My grace, My energy; be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit." And this now happens to me. The Divinity bends down over me. I now have a personal experience of the self-emptying of the Divinity, of the divine energy. As a result, the whole of my being receives the radiance, the effulgence of divine energy. This is my divinization, my union with God, in consequence of God’s bending down to me. —The Way of the Spirit, Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simo...