gusano:
Pardon me if I seem rude, I am not.
But I am curious…for the sake of Truth.
OK
I’ll try
Part of the attraction people have to it, and that others do not, is, based on differences of temperament - some people’s devotional outlook is centred on the Incarnation, others notice the angels, others Our Lord’s Humanity, some find their principal delight in the Blessed Sacrament. St. Benedict’s outlook is informed by awareness of the greatness of God. And so on.
In themselves, certain things are more important than others - the Blessed Trinity is more important than the Church or the Papacy; both logically, and theologically (there could in principle have been an economy of salvation without a Church or a papacy: in actuality, it has pleased God to work by both.)
As we are beggars before God, full of sin, powerless to help ourselves but for God, ISTM that these different attractions answer different needs in us - and that they are hooks by which the Divinely attractive Christ draws us to Himself. There are many emphases - in one mystery of Christ ##
What is it about some branches of Protestantism (not all, only some) who seem to relish the idea
that man should have
NO GLORY ?
no wisdom,
no righteousness,
no honor…
This thinking puts God in a very bad light, …as if He is starved for all the attributes mentioned above; …
self centered, low-esteem, needy , etc.
I think this is the opposite of Why The Word became flesh !
Absolutely not !
On the contrary - it is:
- because God is so utterly perfect
- because He needs & can need nothing
- because we have nothing at all that has not come from Him
- because He is wholly unequalled
- because He is sovereign over every created being
and for a thousand other reasons, whether they come from our own misery without God, our helplessness to save ourselves, His limitless Providence, or any other source, that some Christians emphasise His Glory so much, and can see nothing in man to honour; can, in fact, not bear the though that man, who is nothing and who cannot even create himself, should be honoured. Man has no honour, no good, no praiseworthiness, that he has not received: so why praise man ? It’s absurd to do that - but God ? God* is* worthy of praise, and the Glory is His alone

Christ is our Wisdom, our Righteousness, our honour - compared to Him, all else is dust & ashes. Why look at our “glory” or “wisdom” or “righteousness” when we can be entranced and changed by
His ?
ISTM that this emphasis is needed in an age like ours - it utterly destroys all human pride, by emphasising our boundless dependence on our Sovereign God - He puts all this ridiculous ambitions we have in context, because they are worthless without Him.
Apart from anything else, to realise that God alone is glorious, & that we are by ourselves nothing, is a very powerful motive for action. It is liberating - not paralysing.
So I think we are reaching similar conclusions, but by contrary reasonings. So I agree with a lot of your post -with most of it.
Father Faber devotes some pages of “All for Jesus” to the devotional outlook which sees all things through the prism of God’s Glory. It is one of many forms of love of God. ##
Even though God created us GOOD in the beginning, because of the sin of Adam we are all born
Without glory,
with out wisdom,
withour righteousness,
without honor,
without Hope,
without Love
without Truth,
without any likeness of God except for His Image.
Jesus sold all that he had… Mt. 13: 44
Emptied himself, took the form of a slave… Phil 2: 7
to give his own life as a ransom for many… Matt. 20: 28
**I have given them the glory you gave me that they may be one, as we are one…" **John 17: 22
According to the Catholic Faith I received
Jesus comes into this world to give us His very own Nature, the Free Gift of His very own Person, his very own Glory.
Christ in us, God in us, our Hope of Glory
why ?
Because we had none.
He saw our pitiful condition and had Mercy on us.
For us to abase ourselves and reject His Offer of His Glory, is a huge insult
If the Chief of The Apaches offered you His War Bonnet as a Gift to honor you, and you in false humility rejected it…
within one hour you would be skinned alive and staked to the earth for the ants to feast on.
"Do you not suppose that a much worse punishment is due the man who disdains the Son of God,
thinks the Covenant-blood by which he was sanctified to be ordinary,
and insults the Spirit of Grace ?
Heb. 10: 29
Be careful what you hear and accept.
Test every spirit.
Hold on to what is Good, to what is True.
“…a wolf comes along with a heresy on his lips and a Bible verse to sweeten its taste.”
In the Peace of Christ
gusano