Second Part in Relationship with God: Illumination

Science is confusing at first and may not even seem to make sense at first. However, when you give it a chance you can discover just how true it is? A relationship with God is likewise. Do we give God a chance? Have we truly been intentional and patient about letting God get through to us? To reach this stage of conversion, we must be open-minded and willing to receive God’s ideas in their actuality and not as we perceive them. Catholicism is more of a perspective than a religion in the sense that one who really acts like a Catholic does more than obeying the rules. A truly practical Catholic is one who understands things as Christ and His Church understand them. Our reason must be illuminated by the light i.e. the Mind of Christ.

Throughout the entirety of the New Testament, it is clear that what the mind contains is extraordinarily important. We must often renew our minds that our enemies may not thus enter i.e. our inclination to sin, the allurements of the world engulfed by sin, and the demons that seek to increase those things. Contrary to these things, the New Testament writers instruct us to fill our minds with the best of things. When the heart is corrupted it can only be so through the mind and in/through the mind that corruption is given expression through every kind of sin. Sin, in turn, closes our minds and hardens our hearts against God (in all aspects). Contrarily and likewise, every virtue is demonstrated. It is thus, we recognize that the mind is a sort of gate to the soul. The heart interacts with the world through the mind's permission. Thus, to truly be free from sin the mind must strike down every evil and prevent its entrance into the heart. Through the mind, the good God wants for us can enter the heart, and thus no transformation of the heart can take place if the mind allows it not.

In conclusion, “we cannot love what we do not know”. It is most essential to be cautious about whose assumptions you make your own. Indeed, there are many unhelpful perspectives out there and many that are only accurate under inadequate premises, and this dynamic is most apparent in the news media. However, if we can truly say “I am not interested in anything God has to offer me” then we must at least have accepted God on his terms. Without receiving God on His terms we cannot say that we actually know what God offers us. This dynamic is similar to the question of whether God’s existence is demonstrable. Would that we are able to see the world, our neighbors, and ourselves as God does that through this He May also transform our hearts to share in His life, love, happiness, and holiness. What do you allow to influence you?

Dearest son, thou wast once with me,

As I worked with thee patiently,

Sowing the seed on every ground,

And in thy presence joy I found.

Trouble of heart cast thee in fear.

When thou didst leave, I waited here,

Looking for thee both far and wide

To have thee once more at My side.

Now thou art home, alive and well.

Once and for all, old lies dispel!

Nothing, no one hast thou to fear,

If thou remainest with Me here.

Father, suffer me not to stray.

My Daily Bread give me this day.

Better to sleep in Thy sure care

Than to keep restless watch elsewhere.

1. There are three principal reasons why we find ourselves desolate.
1. The first is, because of our being tepid, lazy or negligent in our spiritual exercises; and so through our faults, spiritual consolation withdraws from us.
2. The second, to try us and see how much we are and how much we let ourselves out in His service and praise without such great pay of consolation and great graces.
3. The third, to give us true acquaintance and knowledge, that we may interiorly feel that it is not ours to get or keep great devotion, intense love, tears, or any other spiritual consolation, but that all is the gift and grace of God our Lord, and that we may not build a nest in a thing not ours, raising our intellect into some pride or vainglory, attributing to us devotion or the other things of the spiritual consolation.
2. Let him who is in consolation think how he will be in the desolation which will come after, taking new strength for then.
4. Let him who is consoled see to humbling himself and lowering himself as much as he can, thinking how little he is able for in the time of desolation without such grace or consolation.
5. On the contrary, let him who is in desolation think that he can do much with the grace sufficient to resist all his enemies, taking strength in his Creator and Lord.
6. The enemy acts like a psychopath, in being weak against vigor and strong of will. Because, as it is the way of the psychopath when they are quarreling with someone to lose heart, taking flight when they show the psychopath much courage: and on the contrary, if the victim, losing heart, begins to fly, the wrath, revenge, and ferocity of the psychopath is very great, and so without bounds; in the same manner, it is the way of the enemy to weaken and lose heart, his temptations taking flight, when the person who is exercising himself in spiritual things opposes a bold front against the temptations of the enemy, doing diametrically the opposite. And on the contrary, if the person who is exercising himself commences to have fear and lose heart in suffering the temptations, there is no beast so wild on the face of the earth as the enemy of human nature in following out his damnable intention with so great malice.
7. Likewise, he acts as a licentious lover in wanting to be secret and not revealed. For, as the licentious man who, speaking for an evil purpose, solicits a daughter of a good father or a wife of a good husband, wants his words and persuasions to be secret, and the contrary displeases him much, when the daughter reveals to her father or the wife to her husband his licentious words and depraved intention, because he easily gathers that he will not be able to succeed with the undertaking begun: in the same way, when the enemy of human nature brings his wiles and persuasions to the just soul, he wants and desires that they be received and kept in secret; but when one reveals them to his good Confessor or to another spiritual person that knows his deceits and evil ends, it is very grievous to him, because he gathers, from his manifest deceits being discovered, that he will not be able to succeed with his wickedness begun.
8. Likewise, he behaves as a chief bent on conquering and robbing what he desires: for, as a captain and chief of the army, pitching his camp, and looking at the forces or defenses of a stronghold, attacks it on the weakest side, in like manner the enemy of human nature, roaming about, looks in turn at all our virtues, theological, cardinal and moral; and where he finds us weakest and most in need for our eternal salvation, there he attacks us and aims at taking us.