Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

• Deuteronomy 6:5

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

• Mark 12:30

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

• 1 Timothy 1:15-17

“ ‘[God to Catherine:] Listen attentively with your whole mind. To love me perfectly three things are necessary. In the first place, to purify and direct the will in its temporal loves and bodily attachments so that nothing passing and perishable is loved except because of me. The important thing is not to love me for your own sake, or yourself for your own sake, or your neighbour for your own sake, but to love me for myself, yourself for myself, your neighbour for myself. Divine love cannot suffer to share with any earthly love, and you lack in perfection and transgress my love in the measure that you let temporal things detract from it.
“in the second place: When you have reached the first stage, you will be able to go on to the second, which needs a greater perfection. Take my honour and my glory as the sole end of your thoughts, your actions, and all that you do.
“ln the third place: If you do that which l am going to tell you now, you will have reached a consummate perfection and nothing will be wanting in you. It is the attainment of an ardently desired and perseveringly sought disposition of the soul in which you are so closely united with me and your will so conformed to my perfect will that you never wish not only evil, but even the good that I do not wish.’ (Dialogue).”

• Tony Lane, A Concise History of Christian Thought

Catherine of Siena, aka Caterina di Jacopo di Benincasa (1347-1380) was a sister of the Dominican order.  She became devoted to God at about seven years of age.  She was 24^th in a family of 25 children.  When an older sister died in childbirth, her parents wanted her to wed her sister’s widower.  Catherine had given a vow of celibacy.  She began a severe fast in protest and when her parents still insisted, she cut off her hair to signify she would never beautify herself for an earthly husband.

She is canonized in the Catholic church.  She is noted for her extensive letter writing, but her greatest work was Dialogue, including the quote above.  In Dialogue, she has a conversation with God.

In the quoted dialogue, God wants Catherine to listen attentively.  He is about to tell her how you can love God perfectly.  The first step is to love others for God’s sake, not our own.

Many argue over who said that no one can perform a truly selfless act.  You do it for your glory.  You do it to feel good.  You do it in that you wish to have something in return.  But God says to forget all that and do it for His glory and He will take care of all the other details, and it is all a bunch of little details.

Then, if that was not enough, we must devote all our thoughts and actions to God’s glory.  No matter how hard we try, we will have a little slip here or there.  Again, our major thoughts and actions may be toward God’s glory, but then there is a bunch of little details.

The third step is to be at one with God’s will.

While the first two are incompletely attainable, the third may only be attainable in the next life.  There are those who eat and breathe their Christian walk, although I have not followed them into their closets where they may lose that crust of perfection.  Yet, most of us are far from getting the first two things done to perfection.

And as I told someone in class…  In our Sunday school class a couple of decades ago, I raised a question to the class as to whether they could be sinless for an hour.  One lady, a very devout lady, said that she thought that she could probably make it by being in an empty room.  She could sit in the corner and pray.  She thought she could make it an hour.  Then I asked, “But what happens when you reach 55 minutes of not sinning at all?  Would you possibly have a fleeting thought about ‘Ha!  I made it!  I am so proud of myself for lasting this long.’  Possibly?”  She started laughing and she admitted that might be the response.  If she lasted the full hour, the outburst of pride might be even more severe.

We cannot be perfect.  Only God is perfect.  Catherine of Siena had the pope’s ear and during the Great Schism, she supported Urban VI.  In thinking oneself to have perfect love for God, we might just find that flaw in our makeup.  We might find that one area that is indeed not perfect.  But to consider ourselves in perfect communion with God so that His and our wills perfectly mesh?

I am reminded of the statement that started every episode of an old radio mystery show, The Shadow.  “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?  The Shadow Knows.”

We do not have to search for a fictional Shadow.  God knows what evil lurks in the hearts of each of us.  And as for an earthly leader, I would prefer someone I could relate to, like the Apostle Paul who considered himself to be the chief of sinners.  Someone who thinks that they love God perfectly and are perfectly in tune with God’s will might just lead me to the same delusion.

And maybe that is where the truth really lies.  The truth can never lie in something we can do, but the truth lies in an infinite God that can do within us what we can never achieve.  And only achieved by humbling ourselves before God who is more powerful than what our finite mind can perceive.

But to borrow a phrase from C. S. Lewis, one day, maybe soon, cock will crow, and we will wake up in a perfect world where we all love God perfectly.  I await that day, but until then, I will muddle through, trying to do as best I can to meet Catherine’s first two requirements, but with God doing the work within me.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.