Judged By Our Love

Love and Union

I want you to reach a deeper friendship and intimacy with God in this life and so for the last few days I have been explaining the nine stages of prayer and that when you reach the 5th stage of prayer, infused prayer or contemplation you will begin to experience heaven on earth. To grow in prayer we need to foster a greater desire for God since as John of the Cross writes the desire for God is the preparation for union with Him. However, we cannot grow in union with God unless we grow in love for other people, including our enemies.

Love and Judgement

I don’t like this. I am all for the love of God, but I don’t want to love all people. Some people are my enemies, and the enemies of the things that are genuinely good, things I love and want to protect. In the 1st Letter of John chapter 4, John warns us we must be on guard against the enemies of Christ and against the world:

It is not every spirit, my dear people, that you can trust; test them, to see if they come from God, there are many false prophets, now, in the world. You can tell the spirits that come from God by this: every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus the Christ has come in the flesh is from God; but any spirit which will not say this of Jesus is not from God, but is the spirit of Antichrist, whose coming you were warned about. Well, now he is here, in the world…This is how we can tell the spirit of truth from the spirit of falsehood.

False, wrong and evil ideas are dangerous because they lead to evil choices and actions that are destructive to the individual, marriage, family and society such as Marxism that has infected every sector of our society, socialism, contraception, abortion, sodomy and gender fluidity; just to name a few. All bad ideas and destructive actions. We are right to have an aversion toward these destructive ideas and hate them and work to prevent them from having any place in our society. We must think about, assess and judge ideas and actions but we must not hate or condemn persons. This is a crucial distinction because God is love and we will be judged by our love of persons, including enemies. But the devil wants everyone to hate everyone else so that we destroy each other and the world. That simple.

Anyone Who Loves God Must Also Love His Brother

1 John 4:7 My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love…My dear people, since God has loved us so much, we too should love one another. No one has ever seen God; but as long as we love one another God will live in us and his love will be complete in us….We ourselves have known and put our faith in God's love towards ourselves. God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him. Love will come to its perfection in us when we can face the day of Judgement without fear; because even in this world we have become as he is…4:19 We are to love, then, because he loved us first. Anyone who says, 'I love God', and hates his brother, is a liar, since a man who does not love the brother that he can see cannot love God, whom he has never seen. So this is the commandment that he has given us, that anyone who loves God must also love his brother.

We Shall Be Judged On Our Love

John of the Cross writes: At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love. Learn to love as God desires to be loved and abandon you own ways of acting. Sayings 60

Love is a choice to think, speak and do what is good for another person.

The Golden Rule from the Sermon on the Mount given by Jesus is this: Always treat others as you would like them to treat you.

We judge ideas and actions. This is good or this is evil. We must never accept and tolerate evil ideas and actions out of some false form of tolerance. But we must love persons. We can never condemn persons, because we can never know the other two parts of morality: their intentions or their circumstances. Therefore, we can only judge ideas and actions but not persons. To do this we must be able to separate ideas, actions and persons.

Gratitude and Mercy

Why is this so important? Matthew 7: 1-5

'Do not judge, and you will not be judged; because the judgements you give are the judgements you will get, and the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given. Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the plank in your own? How dare you say to your brother, "Let me take the splinter out of your eye", when all the time there is a plank in your own? Hypocrite! Take the plank out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother's eye.

Everyone wants to change the world; no one wants to change themselves

A practical way to stop condemning others and grow in love for them is to focus on the beam in your own eye rather than the speck in your brothers eye. Every day begin your time in meditation with Gratitude. Thank God for all He has given you and does for you. then fearlessly identify the ways you have failed to live up to your dignity as His son or daughter. Take ownership and make the concrete choices to live differently today. That is an examination and daily resolution. Then take these sins to the Sacrament of Reconciliation at least once a month. The more you recognize how difficult it is to change yourself the less you will focus on the sins of others and you will begin to grow more merciful