J
jmcrae
Guest
It’s the first line of the children’s Catechism.
Why did God create you? “To know Him, to love Him, to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.”
That’s it! The meaning of life.
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Why did God create you? “To know Him, to love Him, to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.”
That’s it! The meaning of life.
M
Michael_David
Guest
Thank You Bubba…
R
Ridgerunner
Guest
Having no basis for claiming to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, I suspect I might not understand this whole thing.
Seems to me all things tend toward that which is good for them. Plants turn toward the sun. Animals avoid poisonous plants and eat the nutritious ones. We tend toward all sorts of things; most of all toward the infinite because human beings are impossible to completely “fulfill” in many ways; e.g., there is no point at which, having learned “X”, we can no longer learn “Y”. But in all things, there are excesses and privations except as to the ultimate good. As to that, there is no excess, but there can certainly be privation. In all other things, there is a “golden mean”, the right balance of acid and base at a plant’s roots, the right balance of vegetation for an animal, the right balance of many things for us.
Consequently, our desires are not inherently disordered, but are good. However, I am sometimes put to think about the angel with the sword of fire at the gate of paradise. We are banished from there, and are put to the task of using our desires; (expressions of our nature) in action, to arrive at balances which can never be perfect in this life, but are as good as we can attain here and now.
But there is in us always the longing to go back to the paradise where, we understand, all desires are fulfilled. So, we have a tremendous tendency to try to recreate it, notwithstanding that there is an angel with a sword of fire standing between us and it. We are told we will eat our bread in the sweat of our brow, we are. Now, that’s not so bad, really. Bread, when one is hungry, is wonderful stuff, and we desire it. We desire it because we need it to continue being living human beings. Working up a sweat is oddly satisfying and much of the time we desire that too. That is one tiny element of “balance”. But the desire for bread becomes perverted and evil when we eat so much of it we become sick or die before “our time”.
But still, we look back at the gates of paradise, and sometimes we try to approach, as with the man who eats too much bread, and then we learn the meaning and effect of the sword of fire. It’s true in all things except the one thing; union with the infinite.
But can we be excessive in that as well? I don’t think we can love God “too much”, if it’s really love. If we really love God we give ourselves to Him in the way He wants, as that is the only thing he really wants from us…us as we are intended by Him to be. But we can seek union beyond our proper balance even of seeking that good, and meet the sword of fire. That’s the very nature of the occult; attempting to force a relationship that is excessive for our time and place. Always, between us and what we think of (hazily remember?) as the paradise of no wants, there is the angel with the sword of fire. Having chosen to “know both good and evil”, we got what we asked for, and still ask for. We must now always walk on a balance beam that is good, and avoid the falls into excess or privation that are evil. We can use our desires to keep our balance. Or, we can use them to try to go back to the worldly paradise that has been forbidden to us.
Seems to me all things tend toward that which is good for them. Plants turn toward the sun. Animals avoid poisonous plants and eat the nutritious ones. We tend toward all sorts of things; most of all toward the infinite because human beings are impossible to completely “fulfill” in many ways; e.g., there is no point at which, having learned “X”, we can no longer learn “Y”. But in all things, there are excesses and privations except as to the ultimate good. As to that, there is no excess, but there can certainly be privation. In all other things, there is a “golden mean”, the right balance of acid and base at a plant’s roots, the right balance of vegetation for an animal, the right balance of many things for us.
Consequently, our desires are not inherently disordered, but are good. However, I am sometimes put to think about the angel with the sword of fire at the gate of paradise. We are banished from there, and are put to the task of using our desires; (expressions of our nature) in action, to arrive at balances which can never be perfect in this life, but are as good as we can attain here and now.
But there is in us always the longing to go back to the paradise where, we understand, all desires are fulfilled. So, we have a tremendous tendency to try to recreate it, notwithstanding that there is an angel with a sword of fire standing between us and it. We are told we will eat our bread in the sweat of our brow, we are. Now, that’s not so bad, really. Bread, when one is hungry, is wonderful stuff, and we desire it. We desire it because we need it to continue being living human beings. Working up a sweat is oddly satisfying and much of the time we desire that too. That is one tiny element of “balance”. But the desire for bread becomes perverted and evil when we eat so much of it we become sick or die before “our time”.
But still, we look back at the gates of paradise, and sometimes we try to approach, as with the man who eats too much bread, and then we learn the meaning and effect of the sword of fire. It’s true in all things except the one thing; union with the infinite.
But can we be excessive in that as well? I don’t think we can love God “too much”, if it’s really love. If we really love God we give ourselves to Him in the way He wants, as that is the only thing he really wants from us…us as we are intended by Him to be. But we can seek union beyond our proper balance even of seeking that good, and meet the sword of fire. That’s the very nature of the occult; attempting to force a relationship that is excessive for our time and place. Always, between us and what we think of (hazily remember?) as the paradise of no wants, there is the angel with the sword of fire. Having chosen to “know both good and evil”, we got what we asked for, and still ask for. We must now always walk on a balance beam that is good, and avoid the falls into excess or privation that are evil. We can use our desires to keep our balance. Or, we can use them to try to go back to the worldly paradise that has been forbidden to us.
B
Bubba_Switzler
Guest
I was listening to Catholic Radio this morning while running errands, can’t remember that program, and the host mentioned an Eastern Catholic concept of apathia:
dictionary.reference.com/browse/apathia
It’s essentially an ascetic ideal, that passion and desire should be subordinate to the will.
It seems to me fair to say that one’s will should not be ruled by passion and desire as this would entail submission to evil in at least some cases.
But the opposite seems equally absurd if only because it denies motivation itself. At a minimum, one must desire to serve God’s will.
dictionary.reference.com/browse/apathia
It’s essentially an ascetic ideal, that passion and desire should be subordinate to the will.
It seems to me fair to say that one’s will should not be ruled by passion and desire as this would entail submission to evil in at least some cases.
But the opposite seems equally absurd if only because it denies motivation itself. At a minimum, one must desire to serve God’s will.
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