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The Book of Love: Brief Meditations

The Book of Love: Brief Meditations

Auteur(s): WCAT Radio
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À propos de cet audio

 The Book of Love: Brief Meditations contains eighty-five brief, accessible, easily readable reflections on various aspects of love, including the following:


  • the essence of divine love as the selfless gift of self, given and received, as revealed by Jesus Christ
  • the various types of love, including God’s love for us and our love for God, self-love, marital love, parental love, friendship, love of one’s neighbor, and love of one’s “enemies”
  • the four key elements of genuine love
  • suggestions for living out those four key elements in one’s daily life
  • discerning and fulfilling one’s unique mission of love in the world
We human beings are all homo viator: people on a journey. We are all on a journey ad Amorem, a journey toward Love. Drawing upon some profound insights regarding love from a variety of thinkers, including Hans Urs von Balthasar, Josef Pieper, Thomas Aquinas, Pope John Paul II, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, and C. S. Lewis, Clements skillfully guides readers of The Book of Love a little farther along the path toward Love.Copyright WCAT Radio Christianisme Pastorale et évangélisme Spiritualité
Épisodes
  • 5. Red Blood Cell or Glob of Plaque?  

    5. Red Blood Cell or Glob of Plaque?  
    Jun 27 2023
    5. Red Blood Cell or Glob of Plaque?

    For most of us, the mission of love that God has in mind isn’t some dramatic, world-changing mission, something that will have a huge impact on the world as a whole or draw a lot of attention to us. Instead, most of us are called to local missions of love. There’s a saying that goes something like “Strive to make your little corner of the world a better place.” It’s a good saying. If we all did that, the whole world would be a much better place. The absolutely best way to make your “little corner” of the world a better place is to spread some of the divine love to that little corner. Start at home. How can you be more loving to your spouse? How can you be more loving to your children? Then extend yourself further: how could you be more loving to your friends? Your neighbors? Your co-workers? The people you perceive to be your “enemies”? We all have a choice in life: we can be red blood cells flowing within the Body of Christ, helping to carry life-giving oxygen (the divine love) to other members and prospective members of that Body, or we can choose to be globs of plaque, clogging the arteries of that Body and obstructing the flow of divine love. Most of us are a little bit of both. Resolve to be more of a red blood cell and less of a glob of plaque.
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    3 min
  • 4. Mission: Implausible  

    4. Mission: Implausible  
    Jun 27 2023
    4. Mission: Implausible

    But God did not intend for us to be merely passive members of the Body of Christ. God has entrusted to each of us a unique role, a unique mission of love, within the Body of Christ. That may seem hard to believe at first: God has given me a special mission of love to carry out in life? But it’s true. Each of us is given the great privilege, and the solemn responsibility, of helping to pass on the divine love to other members (and prospective members) of the Body of Christ. Which includes everyone, because God wants everyone to share in his divine life and love forever (Matt 18:14; 1 Tim 2:4). You have been given a unique mission to share the divine love with others. The unique meaning and purpose of your life lies in your mission of love. Your mission is irreplaceable. No one else can fulfill your mission for you. No one else’s life will touch the exact combination of people that your life will touch. No one else can add to the eternal circulation of love the contribution that you were born to make. What is the mission of love with which God has entrusted you?
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    3 min
  • 3. Blood Circulating in the Body of the Cosmic Christ  

    3. Blood Circulating in the Body of the Cosmic Christ  
    Jun 27 2023
    3. Blood Circulating in the Body of the Cosmic Christ

    But how could we humans possibly share in the divine life of God? How could we, who are finite beings, be united with the infinite God? There is an infinite chasm between us finite human beings and God. We cannot leap over the abyss separating the finite from the infinite. We need a lifeline of some kind to be thrown across to us from the shores of infinity, a bridge of some sort that will span the abyss and enable us to cross over into the divine realm. Jesus Christ is that lifeline; Jesus Christ is that “vaulting bridge”[i] who spans the abyss separating us finite beings from the infinite God. Jesus has forever united the human with the divine in himself, thereby making space for all human beings (indeed, the entire cosmos!) within the divine life of God. Think about it: God and humanity, the infinite and the finite, united in the one person of Jesus Christ, in such a way that the path for us to transcend our finitude and participate in the infinity of Being, to share in the divine life of God forever, has been opened up to all human beings and to the entire cosmos. Seemingly impossible; seemingly incredible. But if it is true (which it is), then this one person would be the answer to the riddle of human existence. That is why our individual destinies are determined by our answer to the single most important question confronting us in life: Yes or No to Jesus Christ, which is a Yes or No to love and therefore a Yes or No to God and to our ultimate fulfillment as human beings. We were all born to be “blood circulating in the Body of the cosmic Christ”, in Balthasar’s beautiful phrase.[ii] By uniting ourselves to the Body of Christ, we are united with God and with all the other members of that Body. By uniting ourselves to the Body of Christ, we join in the eternal circulation of love that is the divine life and find therein our ultimate fulfillment.
    [i] Balthasar, Prayer, 207.
    [ii] Balthasar, Heart of the World, 212.
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    5 min
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