Christian Catholic Hermit Mystic: On Love of God over Obsession with Temporal

 

Paul the Apostle repeats the impact of God's Law, the Law of Love.  Jesus so teaches this law, that it is hard to fathom how we can so easily draw away and become confused in the temporal aspects of the temporal human's existence.  One must constantly pray to live God's Law of Love with every moment of thought, emotion, spirit and soul--in some ways leaving the temporal body behind while learning to love others as God loves, yet while asking of our bodies to heed that of God's law of love.

If we read something  that is confused in length and purpose, the intent becomes that of twisting threads of temporal mind and emotions into knots of more temporally created confusion.  Then that which we read (or attempted to read) is not of God's love, but rather that of the temporal love of self, that of creating yet more temporal confusion of laws created by humankind to further elevate the self.

If when trying to exist in other than Christ's simple teachings--and this ca be of those who twist God's law of love into laws of temporally confused words of more power, prestige, privilege, possession and politicization of self, including trying to garner more like-selves as followers of such human-made laws, the simplicity of God Is Love is lost to that person or of what comes out of such a person's temporalized view of the numinous love of God.

To love others as oneself presupposes one's self is in Christ, in God, in the Holy Spirit.  This is the every-moment assessment of self that is so necessary.  To love as God loves, one must be in God.  To love as Christ loves, one must be in Christ.  To love as the Holy Spirit loves, one must be a vessel of the Holy Spirit.  To be consumed with the temporal world--even the temporal world of humankind's temporalization of the Church by the human-created laws which involve yet more temporalization of one's existence in what is a temporalized church--then God's Law of Love is lost to those temporal humans.  

This includes the path of life upon which God sets each of us, in whatever format that may be expressed in words.  Those who are so temporal as to not be able to envision a life lived in the Love of the Holy Trinity are not of those of temporal nor spiritual association.  The temporalization of Christ's Church, including the living according to laws created by humankind even if thinking is for Christ's Church, is to have lost the only "law" necessary, and that is that of the love of God and love of others as God loves.

A vocation is not a temporal law.  A vocation of God's calling, ordaining, and consecrating has to do with God and the soul of the person to whom God calls, ordains, and consecrates to Himself in His "law" of Love of God, and love of others through, with, and in God's Love.

Thus, this is all rather simple, is it not?  Christ built His Church upon the law of God's love.  Love God above all else, love others as God loves, which is loving through, with, and in God's Love.  The primary initial and eternal task is to love, to love to learn to love God.  Be draw into His Real Presence in love, not be drawn into temporalized laws of humankind's temporal creation.

A former priest, now an eremite, has asked regarding his leaving the one call to enter into another.  It is simply a matter of God's Law of Love.  God led him out of the one vocation and into the other, despite initial despair of wondering if he had too hastily left the one of which increasingly are temporal laws involving protocols to take leave and then more temporal laws in order to return if even feasible. Then God gave to the man priest, God's way of Love, and of love of the poor and hungry, and love of the God-created earth and seeds.  Then came from God to the man, also the eremitic path, free of temporal laws; for if one is led by God to follow His simple love call to the desert, this may be the desert of the poor whose need is that of food to sustain them. 

The God-called soul thus entered into God's call of a vocation into the desert of God's leading and providing.  God called, God consecrated this former priest as one of His hermits.  The man in God's love has since helped the poor and hungry in a land of which the poor are being taught to sustain the earth and grow their own food which is good for their bodies--but which also is very good for the renewability of the beloved soil of the earth that God created.  

All is well now with that soul, now a priest forever, more of the Order of Melchizedek than of temporal church laws, and an eremite in the desert of life, yet in the fullness of love of God and love of others as God loves.  He exists in the depths of the Law of Love Is God without temporal-created-by-humankind- laws of temporal words which create more temporal questions needing more temporal unraveling, than ever does require of God's Law of Love.

Be at peace within and without, in God's Law.  The Law of God Is Love.  Ponder, embrace, think, feel, and live in the Trinity of God's Love.  It is quite simple.  Breath by breath, consider what is God's love in each action, thought, feeling, and of what one's soul and spirit contains.  Obsession with the laws of humankind's temporally constructed laws of the temporal (even of the temporalized church), or freedom in the simplicity and eternal fecundity of God's Law of Love.  Love God above all else and love others as God loves--even more so than one can love oneself (for love of self is rooted in God's love of each of us).

This is truly simple, is it not? 

Reference, Letter to the Romans 13: 8;  

"Brothers and sisters:  Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law."

[Attempted to read some lengthy, online writings of obsessions with the temporal.  I was left needing relief for the eyes and stomach, the mind, heart, and soul.  I write the above as a reminder to self and any others.  Obsesssion with the temporal laws created by humankind (including for the church) is not in kind with God's law of Love.  Pray God, keep us on the path of God's Law of Love.  There is the Law of Love in Christ with Christ as Head of His Church; there is the Law of Love for those who are in Christ, in God, and in the Holy Spirit who comprise the Body of Christ: the Church.  Temporal laws created by temporalized humankind are not God's Law of Love.  Temporalized laws create more questions, problems, divisions, and chaos--not peace nor love of God above all things, not love of others as God loves, not as love of the self as loved by God.  Stay clear of such; protect my soul.]

"The Catholic Church Is a MESS!"

Twenty years ago this spring, this statement was the main response of this nothing Catholic hermit's aunt when it told her it was converting to Catholicism.  At the time, it seemed impossible and just yet another biased reaction against the Catholic Church by those who did not know Her from within.  Yet over the years, it has proven to be quite true, indeed!

Yes, the Catholic Church is "a mess".  The nothing Catholic hermit, within the first months, discovered some horrors first-hand in the initial parish.  Over the course of numerous priests, the problems, personality disorders, sins of immorality of all types, revealed themselves, one after another.  

The reality of Catholic-in-name-only surfaced time and again, example after example.  The beloved Godmother, a religious sister, eventually revealed her and her order's penchant for radical feminism and steep involvement in a church dissent group.  When this nothing declined to go along with it, that was the end of our earthly friendship.  So much mess hit the fan--too much to detail--and only two years of Catholicism under the belt.

The next 18 years continued to reveal more and more mess as far as the experience could see and as much as the mind could shoulder...or perhaps shudder.  You name the category of mess, the corruption, the abuses, the rude and nasty ill-treatment of those in the cloth and those in the pews, and there are examples to delineate: hard facts.

Yes, the Catholic Church is a mess.  For a long time, this nothing Catholic hermit tried to hide it from its own children and friends and family.  It hid its knowing the reality of the mess from the very priests who were steeply involved in some corrupt and immoral behaviors--right down to crossing the criminal line.  And some of the mess was starting to ooze out into the public, especially the mistreatment of the nothing Catholic hermit in some instances in which the persons perpetuating the nastiness no longer cared what they said or did, or how they reacted in anger and vengeance.

The wrongs continued to flow like rushing flood waters, and then into the muddy after-bilge, robbing the good earth, stripping it from previously fertile fields of a naive hope for a bountiful harvest in what could be a sure and perfect picture of Christ's own Church on earth.  And the condition of the mess goes on and on, parish after diocese after religious order after Vatican insider ills.

The Catholic Church is a mess because of us Catholics.  We all sprouted from a seed, sometime, somewhere, and somehow we did not absorb the nutrients available.  Or we got side-lined and distracted by others who did not absorb the nutrients available, or who fell to lesser or greater temptations and sin, and who got ourselves into envy or pride, or gluttony or sloth, or deception or scandal or intemperance or impurity of one sort or another.  

Or we got ourselves into a state of mess and caused the distraction and derailment of others who became disillusioned because of our making messes in our Catholic lives, our Catholic parishes, our Catholic religious houses and seminaries and in our overall human lack of attention to detail, to obedience to not so much the rules, but to the Gospel Rule, and to the Sovereignty (and humility) of His Real Presence.

Yes, the Catholic Church is a mess, and yet this nothing Catholic hermit loves Her for many solid reasons.  But the overriding reason is that in the Church, despite its being a mess, there is truth, goodness and beauty in the purity of the Faith in all its theological, doctrinal and Scriptural reality.  It is the Church Christ founded and instituted on this earth, for us messy human beings, steeped in our messes, and adept and perpetuating by our flaws, even more mess, thus keeping Holy Mother Church in a state of mess for those either wanting Her to fail or those hoping beyond hope for Her to be pristine and perfect in the Christian ideal.

And the Church could be and should be pristine and perfect in the Christian ideal, if it weren't for us people bringing our messes to muddy the image and also the reality.  

Yet the reason there is such love in this nothing Catholic hermit, despite having seemingly more than its share of persecution, abuse, and mishaps from the mess, is that there is hope.  There is such hope alive and possible in the pureness of the faith, and the faith and hope enkindle such love that it is futile to think of being anything other than one of the souls embodied in very human and imperfect flesh, who has the potential to either add to the mess or to be a seed in the mud, striving to grow beyond the mess of its own and others' contribution to the mess.  Yes, nothing Catholic hermit is a mess, as well.

A familiar symbol in the first few centuries for faith, hope and love were a beam, a light, and a disk. This nothing Catholic hermit desires to be a flashlight held in the Hands of His Real Presence, through which a beam of light shines and creates a disk at the end of the beam, a disk of light shining brightly and visibly against a wall--perhaps that of a temporal Catholic Church, or at least of the mystical Church.  And that disk of light becomes a beacon of His Love, of His Love of our messy souls trying to become beams of light-into-pure-light-disks of love to expose our mess and purify our mess, our individual and collective mess that sullies the Church--His Church, our Church.  Our Holy Catholic Church.

There is nothing stopping the nothing Catholic hermit from striving in faith, hope, and love:  beam, light, disk.  (The disk rather shines like His Real Presence in the species of a Host, does it not?) Become one with that Host!  Seek union with His Real Presence in Body and Spirit!  Even though we may falter time and again, as our human conditions can grow weary with slogging through our own muddy mess of interior ineptitude and exterior rude-and-crude and all vices in and out:  We can try.  

We have the virtues of faith, hope, and love to call upon, and these three are given us for the asking, by His grace.  He will never refuse us these, and by these we will be held as a flashlight in Jesus' Hands, and He will focus us time and again for the asking.  Beam, light, disk.  It can happen, soul by soul.  And this is how we can strive to be a little less of a mess, and how one by one and bit by bit, we can keep that faith, hope, and love alive to strive for these ideals of virtue-grace living even if the growth is slow and imperceptible to ourselves, like the seeds in the mud, gradually making progress to reach the sunlight and fresh air.

If one can fall into a mess of a house, deceived by some vice-mess in others and naive self-blunder, and learn to slowly dig through the mess and work hard to turn it around, clean it out, make progress even if might not be able to finish and surely not to remain after it is fresh and all things made new--and adapt to, have gratitude, and love for a place to be allowed to exist and seek God--then one can do far better of itself for Christ and His Church.

Sure worth this nothing Catholic hermit's continuous efforts, for we are all part of our mess.  Yet we cannot do other than dig in to our own lives and souls to begin clearing the mess, vice by vice, into virtue upon virtue.  Humility is key, unto love.

The Catholic Church is a mess, and this nothing Catholic hermit loves Her so!  Faith, Hope, and Love.  As the apostle writes, the greatest of these is love.