Free Yourself Now from Deadly Mortal Sin 

With regard to gravity, the Roman Catholic Church has always taught that there are two divisions of sin: mortal or deadly sin and venial (see 1John 5:16). We must commit ourselves to live in the state of grace - free from mortal or deadly sin - for without this freedom our good works are meaningless and our soul is foul and dwells in darkness. Consider  St. Teresa of Avila's thoughts on the subject of mortal sin:

"...I want you to consider what will be the state of this castle, (each human soul) so beautiful and resplendant, this orient pearl, this tree of life...when the soul falls into mortal sin. No thicker darkness exists, and there is nothing dark and black which is not much less so than this...While in a state like this the soul will find profit in nothing; and hence, being it is in mortal sin, none of the good works it may do will be of avail to win it glory; for they will not have their origin in that First Principle, which is God, through whom alone our virtue is true virtue. And since this soul has separated itself from Him, it cannot be pleasing in His eyes...I know a person  to whom our Lord wished to show what a soul was like when it committed mortal sin. That person says that, if people could understand this, she thinks they would find it impossible to sin at all, and, rather than meet occasions of sin, would put themselves to the greatest trouble imagineable. So, she was very anxious that everyone should realize this. May you be no less anxious, daughters, to pray earnestly to God for those who are in this state and who, with all their works, have become sheer darkness...When the soul...through its own fault leaves this spring (of a state of grace) and becomes rooted in a pool of pitch black, evil smelling water, it produces nothing but misery and filth."1

We must all be committed to live in the state of grace! Should we fall, we know God's mercy is there for us - we can go to confession, repent and try again. But we must resolve once and for all to live in the state of grace, to never again practice mortal sin!  

"Save yourselves from this corrupt generation" (see Acts 2:40).

 1 The interior Castle, by St. Teresa of Avila

Copyright, 2012, Michael Ruggiero and CES.

 February 22, 2012 

When We Make God's Will Ours, We Experience Joy  

"Acknowledgment of the living God is one path toward love, and the "yes" of our will to his will unites our intellect, will, and sentiments in the all embracing act of love...The love story between God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment and thus our will and God's will increasingly coincide: God's will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments, but is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself. Then self-abandonment to God increases and God becomes our joy."  

- His Holiness, Benedict XVI

"Deus Caritas Est" (God Is Love) n. 17 

On Sacred Space

"While all space in the Cosmos is sacred to a degree (for it was made by God) the most sacred is space obediently set apart for the redemptive work of the Holy Trinity (within a Church or Chapel). The holiness of this space directs the perception of all who enter it away from the profane and toward the sacred. It immerses all who acknowledge and respect it into the ways of the one who encompasses it (the thinking and actions of Jesus Christ)."

- Michael Ruggiero, SFO, M.A.

(from "Sacred Space and Time," a feature article in the  Summer 2011  edition of Response.)

Love Unites Us to God

"Love grows through love. Love is divine because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a 'we' which transcends our divisions and makes us one until in the end God is 'all in all' (1 Cor. 15:28)."

-His Holiness, Benedict XVI 

Deus Caritas Est, n. 18 Boston: Pauline Books, 2006.

What Suffering Brings

"Christian faith knows that human life is life in a higher and more comprehensive sense than mere biology grants. Spirit is not the soul's enemy but a richer and greater life. Man finds himself only in that measure in which he accepts truth and justice as the locus of real living, even though the opening-up of life to these wider dimensions always takes on, in human history, the character of martyria. While faith does not deliberately seek out suffering, it knows that without the Passion life does not discover its own wholeness, but closes the door on its own potential plenitude.  If life at its highest demands the Passion, then faith must reject apatheia, the attempt to avoid suffering, as contrary to human nature."

-Johann Auer and Joseph Ratzinger

Dogmatic Theology. Eschatology, Death and Eternal Life. Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1988.

The Church Never Tires of Proclaiming the Moral Norm

 "As Teacher, she (the Church) never tires of proclaiming the moral norm...In obedience to truth which is Christ, whose image is reflected in the nature and dignity of the human person, the Church interprets the moral norm and proposes it to all people of good will, without concealing its demands of radicalness and perfection."

- Pope John Paul II 

from Familiaris Consortio, 1981.

People Who Live By Faith See What Lies Ahead

"To those who live by faith everything they see speaks of that future world; the very glories of nature, the sun, moon, and stars and the richness and beauty of the earth, are as types and figures witnessing and teaching the invisible things of God. All that we see is destined one day to burst forth into a heavenly bloom, and to be transfigured into immortal glory. Heaven at present is out of sight, but in due time, as snow melts and discovers what it lay upon, so will this visible creation fade away before those greater splendors which are behind it and on which at present it depends."

- John Henry Newman

"Heart of Newman," pp. 298-99