“The Eucharist is not meant for comfort; it is meant to draw a soul to greater sacrificial offering.”
–Fr. Donald Haggerty, from Conversion
“And then the problem. If you don’t pray, if you are not searching for a personal relationship with God, if you don’t stay with Him for long periods in order to know Him, study Him, understand Him, litte by little you will start forgetting Him, your memory will weaken, you will no longer recognise Him. You will not be able to, because you will no longer know how to love.”.
“Have you not been praying, not seeking HIm personally because you don’t love Him or because you have no time?
Usually we are afraid to accept the first reality; it is easier to fix on the second.”
“It is impossible to pray to a personal God–that is, love a personal God–and remain indifferent to your suffering brethren.
It is impossible.
Anyone who prays without suffering for his suffering brothers is praying to a pole, a shadow, not to the living God.”
–Carlo Carretto, from The God Who Comes
From Lecture 11–“Purgatory V, VI, IX, X” in a 24-part series called Dante In Translation, given by Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta, and offered (for free) by Yale Courses:
Starting at 22:00:
Prof: The issue is that in a love relationship between God and the soul, we are always at risk. If you accept the principle of a love economy, regulating the universe, which Dante does, certainly does, then you understand this notion of hazard in– not as a principle of just chance in the sense of casual blind randomness, but in the sense of this risk–proposition risk element.
Then the canto goes on–this particular metaphor goes on with another meeting between two poets. Yes?
Student: What do you mean by love economy?
Prof: The economy of love–the question–the clarification is what do I mean by the love economy?
Dante’s universe, it’s a universe of love and that’s how creation takes place, the creation of the universe and the creation of human beings. So we are–the involvement that we–every soul has with God is one of love. Just as in the relationship between say, Beatrice and Dante, there is an element of risk in loving. What is that risk in loving? I can think of several.
I think we are all grown ups to understand that, one loves and one may not be reciprocated in love.
That’s a pretty bad risk. Certainly, it’s a risk of God who creates and may not be loved, which is the story of what disobedience is, and certainly is the existential experience of human beings to be involved with someone.
“What is a psalm but a musical instrument to give expression to all the virtues?”
–From Explanations to the Psalms by St. Ambrose, bishop
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