LJ,
I believe that Godâs grace, or seeking Godâs forgiveness, opens us up to receiving his love.
The love is there, wether or not we are able to receive it. This is the opposite of what Rebecca said.
I felt a parent not really loving their âbadâ child reflected what Rebecca said
Dear Todd,
You are correct in connecting Godâs Grace to the seeking of Godâs forgiveness, for it is He that compels us, by Grace, to seek His forgiveness. Sometimes this is called the prompting of the Holy Spirit ; however, I stray from such language because secular man imagines by this saying some grandiose or bizzare happening, perhaps preter- or supernatural in character, as in somehow being utterly miraculous ; whereas, Catholics know of Godâs gentleness, His sublime ways and motions, and His mysteriousness, wherein He is known as being âgentle,â âloving,â âkind,â etc., and not âgrandiose,â as in sensational, so as to make us all expect a kind of Mt. Sinai event being required to sense Godâs own seeking or calling of us to Himself ; no, we find this seeking and calling to God within us constantly, acting upon us, though we know not from whence it comes or why it comes, except from the teaching of Holy Mother Church, wherein we come to understand and realize Godâs calling us to communion with Himself.
Consider the important question God put to fallen Man,
âWhere art thou, Adam ?â
Certainly God knows where we are - this question was put to Adam for his own edification, for his own reflection, realization, enlightenment even : God Himself prompts Adam to consider his present state and being, to reckon where he is, and perhaps realize he knows now not, but knows that once he did. He realized a loss to himself, a lacking.
This is why any salvation of works philosophy, like the one the Masons imply to their poor followers, is folly, for they imply that man himself seeks or desires Godâs grace and forgiveness, and himself then acts to acquire and accomplish it, and - from that observation, which is the fault known as "after this ; therefore, because of this " - they conclude that man âsaves himself,â which belief destroys, ultimately, in all Godâs supremacy and righteousness as He is, for man has made himself God in that perverse formula : man has made himself his own saviour. How so does this error accomplish this ? Because the original flaw in the thinking was that man, of and by himself, felt compelled to save himself, whereas this is not so - for without God we would be as we are, which is, ultimately, nothing, for God created all things and beings out of nothing (that is, He required no outside âmaterial, support, or aidâ), and made us something, as it were. It is not âof manâ that we in any way seek or desire good, salvation, mercy, forgiveness, etc., especially from God Himself, but it is God in us ; namely, the acting of the Holy Spirit, seeking through us and in us to be re-united, both Him and us to that perfect Good and Blessedness of Being and State ; that is, communion with and in the Holy Trinity, which is of all being the only Being to have True Life and Blessedness in and of its own Being. This is why the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is so important, and so quintessential to orthodoxy in Christianity, for God can in no wise be divided from Himself, or seek division in and of Himself, but desires all things to be in and of Himself, and joined to Himself, so that - as the Apostle says,
âGod may be all in all.â
Without the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, we lack the knowledge of what may be called Godâs Character, and without it we could never understand how God has True Life in and of Himself ; that is, true communion, which we humans taste in the communion of persons, as in relationships, though this example is imperfect, as our human relationships are i) ravaged by sin, and can in no wise compare or constrast to the blessedness of perfect communion with God in the Life of Himself, and ii) finite, which in no wise can be compared to the infinite, and hence the saying,
âNo eye has seen nor ear has heard what God has in store for His Saints,â
(Quoted from my memory).
Pax,
Tim
You know, the part about us being, quite literally, Godâs children? Puts a whole new spin on the whole reason thing, yâknow.