God is Love August 25

I will put my spirit in you that you may live. Ezekiel 37:13

You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22:37-39

Piety
Let us prayer: God, you are love incarnate. Help us to be a mirror that reflects that love back onto you and also onto everything and everyone we encounter. Help us to make spending time with you our Ideal so that our lives filled with Piety, Study and Action might lead us to be the instruments of your love.

Be with the team for the 113th Cursillo as they prepare through Talk Day tomorrow to carry your way, your truth and your light to the candidates who will be on the weekend September 14-17. Guide their work so it, too, is an instrument of your love.

Deliver us from evil and grant us peace today. Amen.

Study
http://www.usccb.org/nab/082506.shtml

Imagine a circle. All things start and end with God.

God made us and loves us. There is nothing about us that God doesn’t know and love. But what are we to do about God? Throughout the Good News, people come up to Jesus and ask what they need to do to get life everlasting and Jesus freely tells them the way.

If God so loved the world that He sent His only son, not to judge us but to save us, then what are we to do?

1) Come to know God fully and completely. Just as we get to know or neighbor by spending time with them, spend time with the Lord in prayer and study. Our efforts will be incomplete if we do not engage our total person -- heart, soul, mind.
2) But that’s not all. Just as God loves us, we also need to direct our love both back to God and also to all that God created – our neighbors, our enemies, and the world in which we live.

How do we stay in God’s good graces? “Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” (John 15:9-10) It all comes right back to God who provides a circle of love that surrounds us and all we do and gives us the ability to love others and accept God’s love and the love of our neighbors in return.

“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4:16). Deus Caritas Est. How appropriate that the first encyclical from Pope Benedict XVI focused on this cornerstone of our faith and our life. As Pope Benedict taught us in that letter, “Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 John 4:10), love is now no longer a mere ‘command’; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us.”

Action

Easier said than done…as always. The society in which we live hands us a daily struggle between doing what is right for the common good or advancing our own personal situation. This brings us right back to the principles of Catholic Social Teaching where first and foremost, we are called to work for the common good. We have been given the tools we need to fulfill this second part of the commandment because God put His spirit within us so that we might live (Ezekiel 14), and that is a spirit of love.

How can we work for the common good today? You can some great ideas from two places.

First, read Pope Benedict’s Encyclical. This letter connects many of the scriptural readings we have encountered in recent weeks. It goes on to details that the responsibility for charity is a requirement of our faith. You can find the letter on the internet at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html

Second, the cover story in the National Catholic Reporter this week is on the common good and how we can carry it out in policy decisions that are consistent with Church teachings.

Cover story: http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006c/082506/082506a.php