{"id":16057,"date":"2017-10-04T09:37:25","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T13:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16057"},"modified":"2017-10-04T09:57:58","modified_gmt":"2017-10-04T13:57:58","slug":"therese-of-lisieux-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16057","title":{"rendered":"Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ClBToJfO9xo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux, Part II<\/p>\n<p>I understand so very well that it is only through love that we can render ourselves pleasing to the good Lord, that love is the one thing I long for. The science of love is the only science I desire. \u2014Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux [1]<br \/>\nTh\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux died just before the most violent century in human history. What if we had studied the \u201cscience of love\u201d in the Little Way as she did? Harnessing the energy of love in the smallest interactions, moment by moment, we might have found that, indeed, \u201cLove is as strong as Death\u201d (Song of Songs 8:6). What if we had practiced confidence as Th\u00e9r\u00e8se did\u2014as deep trust in the mercy, love, and goodness of God? Maybe we would not have found ourselves in the position where good people participated in wars that killed over 100 million people in the twentieth century.<br \/>\nI am convinced that \u201cthe sin of the world\u201d (John 1:29) is ignorant killing, and as we see today, we are destroying the world through our ignorance. We need to recognize our own personal and structural violence. The death instinct always comes from people who are unconscious, unaware, and indeed do not know what they are doing. Now we can hear Jesus on the cross and know why he said, \u201cForgive them, Father, they don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing\u201d (Luke 23:34). When we love, we do know what we are doing! Love, if it is actually love, is always a highly conscious act. We do evil when we slip into unconsciousness.<br \/>\nTh\u00e9r\u00e8se learned the \u201cscience of love\u201d not by willfully forcing herself to be loving, but by being aware of and learning from the times she was tempted to be unloving or overly attached to her own emotions. Brother Joe Schmidt brilliantly describes how God taught Th\u00e9r\u00e8se to apply her initial weaknesses of self-consciousness and sensitivity to studying how to especially love the most unlovable of the sisters with whom she spent nine years in the convent. Then that widened to loving the whole world. Schmidt writes:<br \/>\nThrough prayerful self-reflection on her spiritual journey, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se came to know the depth of her self-centeredness, the extent of her God-inspired desires, and the role and significance of her thoughts, acts, and feelings in the spiritual life. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se had a great self-confidence in her ability to be honest with herself and an enormous intuitive capacity about the ways of human and divine love. Under the microscope of prayer, in her self-awareness, she came to learn universal truths about love: how love originates, how it is nourished or blocked, and how it grows. Her life became a microcosm of love, her teaching, a school of love. [2]<\/p>\n<p>Th\u00e9r\u00e8se has emerged as a primary teacher for many Christians throughout the world, Catholic and Protestant, lay persons, ministers, and formal religious. Many of us just think she \u201cgot it!\u201d And then she gets you!<\/p>\n<p>Gateway to Silence:<br \/>\nWe are all one with You.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Vision and The Reality<\/strong><br \/>\nBy Oswald Chambers<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>\u2026to those who are\u2026called to be saints\u2026 \u20141 Corinthians 1:2<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Thank God for being able to see all that you have not yet been. You have had the vision, but you are not yet to the reality of it by any means. It is when we are in the valley, where we prove whether we will be the choice ones, that most of us turn back. We are not quite prepared for the bumps and bruises that must come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. We have seen what we are not, and what God wants us to be, but are we willing to be battered into the shape of the vision to be used by God? The beatings will always come in the most common, everyday ways and through common, everyday people.<\/p>\n<p>There are times when we do know what God\u2019s purpose is; whether we will let the vision be turned into actual character depends on us, not on God. If we prefer to relax on the mountaintop and live in the memory of the vision, then we will be of no real use in the ordinary things of which human life is made. We have to learn to live in reliance upon what we saw in the vision, not simply live in ecstatic delight and conscious reflection upon God. This means living the realities of our lives in the light of the vision until the truth of the vision is actually realized in us. Every bit of our training is in that direction. Learn to thank God for making His demands known.<\/p>\n<p>Our little \u201cI am\u201d always sulks and pouts when God says do. Let your little \u201cI am\u201d be shriveled up in God\u2019s wrath and indignation\u2014 \u201cI AM WHO I AM\u2026has sent me to you\u201d (Exodus 3:14). He must dominate. Isn\u2019t it piercing to realize that God not only knows where we live, but also knows the gutters into which we crawl! He will hunt us down as fast as a flash of lightning. No human being knows human beings as God does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux, Part II I understand so very well that it is only through love that we can render ourselves pleasing to the good Lord, that love is the one thing I long for. The science of love is the only science I desire. \u2014Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux [1] Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux died just before [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16057"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16057"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16060,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16057\/revisions\/16060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}