Bulletin message for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost offered pro populo
An Invitation Scorned.
There is but one God Who has called each of us into existence that we might share His Eternal Essence of Love with those who accept the call. Union with God (or heaven) begins within our hearts. We either choose to love Him freely and without reserve or we choose to turn our backs to Him. In refusing to love Him we have sinned for we have broken our relationship with the One who shares life with us. This sin breaks our relationship and unites us with the worldly desire that has prompted the rejection of the divine Heart of God.
Now God is supremely just and will never contradict our decisions. As we sow thus we shall reap. If we sow within our lives the rejection of God's truth, His love and His beauty, the God will respect this decision and turn from us eternally.
Hell begins here and now; just as heaven can begin here and now. Hell is not only the absence of divine love, the burning in self hatred, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the vision of horrific demons, the isolation in a stench filled environment, but it is primarily the loss of God's love for us.
On the other hand the wedding feast to which we are invited as God's Holy People, the Mystical Body, opens to us the immense love of all God's saints to form a family of love. In this love the light of God's truth shines totally in each of the saints and angels. We are immersed in the vision of the Divine Trinity and are captured in an eternal awe that stretches beyond the limits of our imaginations. We are captured in a Love that expands with the universe after universe. We will never in eternity reach the infinite depths of the mystery of Divine Love. We will be infinitely happy because we rejected the deceits of the devil, the world and our flesh.
Not so the souls that rejected this infinite love; their pain is in proportion to the love that was lost. In this case the loss is infinite and hence the pain is infinite. This pain of lost love burns interiorly and never consumes. The worm that dies not is the constant regret that I could have saved my soul in such simple ways. This worms eats and eats at us and is never finished with us. Then to make matters worse, God has created us in His image and likeness and now that the world is finished for us this longing burns more intently than anything else. Like a dog tied to a tree that seeks to reach the bowl of delicious food presented to him but cannot so too the soul will long for the love of God but a wall separates the soul from its desired goal. How horrendous the thought that we have chosen to reject God for some worldly delight. Our pleasure has deceived us and we are lost. We could have saved our souls and shared in the wedding banquet but we failed through our own fault. Let us examine our consciences well and accept the invitation of the God who loves us dearly.
In the hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
Fr. Richard Voigt
Topic: Spirituality with Fr Voigt (Read 881 times)