Three Steps to Love - Three Loves to happiness

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Love of God – Love of Neighbor -  Love of Self

Nowadays we would like to make Christianity exclusively a matter of head knowledge.  But a Christianity that is merely discussion, organization, and a bit of morality does not support us; we cannot grow fond of it; it does not provide joy and strength for our life.  IN order for the faith to support us and not to be a burden, it has to touch the heart, we must be able to grow fond of God.  And so [today] we want to call the Lord Jesus by his name, ask him to make us grow fond of this name again, so that by our fondness for this name we might again sense his own closeness and so that this might bring joy to our heart, the joy of not being alone, which remains and guides us even in the hours of darkness.  – A Homily from Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) in year 1998.

Sr.Eop  Elizabeth McDonough – Dominican nun. 80lbs. scared us all.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE   à  SELF-POSSESSION à SELF-GIFT

1.    Know who you are.  Strengths.  Weaknesses.  Gifts.  Wounds.  (HUMILITY)

2.    Mortification.  Interior battle of will.  Ideals.  “Brother ‘donkey’” (Francis)

3.    Choose love.

Then you find who you truly are, since “man does not discover himself except in a sincere gift of self.” (GS 24)

Love of self leads us to love of God.  And thus we have come full-circle, and Christianity is freed from being simply head-knowledge – it is what it was always meant to be: a path by God leading us back to God, through the journey of love.  May the Eucharist take us one step further along that journey.