DEVELOPING THE SPITITUAL LIFE- 1
A Christian grows in knowledge and the life of grace and reaches a certain grade of assimilation with Christ or a relative spiritual perfection in life by his faithfulness
to the practises of religion and to the life of prayer and penance .
If the individual is called to the religious state the obligation to pursue and achieve a relative perfection is a grave obligation. For he has willingly embraced the state of perfection by choosing the Religious Life. Also for those that live in the secular condition the obligation exists to seek a relative perfection in accordance with Our Lord’s command. Be you perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect
The members of the 3rd Order are obliged to perfection within the secular state of life.
Traditionally it is taught the practise of the spiritual life leads us to our full growth in Our Lord Jesus Christ. Spiritual Theology has expanded on this concept in the light of the Transcendental Dogmas revealed during the Palmarian Council 1980-1992. We say there exist four role models as examples in the pursuit of perfection, and I refer to perfection in evil as much as perfection in good. To deny to take the road to heavenly perfection automatically puts the individual on the road to the perfection in evil, under the direction and guidance of Satan who in this art also is the great imitator of God, and serves as the instrument of God’s punitive Justice. The truth is if you reject Christ as your Master you will get Satan as your Despotic Lord.
The role models for good Men and Women are Christ, and Maria –the ideal Model of the Good Man or Women and conversely the Anti-Christ, and Anti-Maria the ideal of the Bad Man and Woman..
We by our acts, good or bad in life are inexorably assimilated to a role model in grade and in conformity with our virtues or vices that confirm our spiritual choices which determine our spiritual eternity. .
The Society of today fallen under the malign influence and power of Satan, considers Catholic faith and practises outmoded, antiquated and out of step with modern human development. Today’s self-sufficient society aspires to independence from God infatuated as it is by its own scientific prowess that goes for progressive and enlightened? These new Society concepts are properly the beginning of the future society of total enslavement and the seeds of the perfect Anti-Christian society of the future that Satan will have permission to erect.
The exaltation of Man whereby man is determined his own first and last principal, he who subjects all to his own judgement and criteria; is a attitude that naturally rejects Catholic submission which is sacrificed on the altar of material and human progress.
God still receives lip-service whilst in reality divine values are erased from the heart and mind of modern man. The very description modern man is a deception and a myth, maintained in place by a ceaseless media bombardment that educate men anew in the new mode of thinking which inculcate ideas and philosophies that are anti-Christian; and serve to nullify and stifle the growth of the faith especially in young souls...The Blessed Virgin foretold in La Salette in 1846 bad books would abound, pernicious doctrines would be spread abroad Times have changed they say! But have they? The French have an expression. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
The essentials of Life do not change they remain always the same as the Catechism teaches, Birth, Life, Heaven, Hell.
It is our privilege to participate in the Divine Nature, the new life in grafted in our souls by Sanctifying Grace and to put on the image of our Role model Jesus or Mary.
How many graces and benefits they loose those who waste their lives in trifles and do not estimate the spiritual importance of time well spent, when each moment is a precious gift and opportunity to amass treasures and merits in eternity;
St Mary of Agreda in the Mystical City of God Part I Book II chapter 13 reminds us,
Remember that there are only two ways to eternity the one which leads to eternal death by contempt of virtue and ignorance of the Divinity, and the other which leads to eternal life by the profitable knowledge of the Most High.
In these Apocalyptic days faith must be true and must be bold. Heroically bold, against all things that come to deride it, oppose it and demolish it. The world and the flesh in addition to Satan constitute the enemies of faith against which we must be eternally bold.
The goodness of God is such that He grants the glory of Martyrdom not only to the actual Martyrs who die in their blood for the faith, but also to those who against everything and everyone are able to remain faithful, integrally faithful to the Lord.
How many battles are waged against faith? How many clever manoeuvres Satan uses to diminish it, to cover it with ridicule, to show it to be impossible to follow! .But this is were the justice of the three theological virtues (Faith, Hope and Charity) is seen. Faith supported by hope and above all by Charity, does not collapse for any reason and triumphs. Faith is knowledge that comes from love. The stronger love is, the stronger faith is, for love brings God to be known.
This charity that accompanies faith is the life of the Soul and the essence of the Spiritual Life. No one should despair by reason of their sins to grow in the life of love. Jesus contrasted, innocent love with the love of the Penitent. Speaking to a sinner He said,
Soul who loves me, put aside your desire to love me like an Agnes, Cecilia, Agatha or Lucy. You shall not be innocent love. You shall be penitent love. The uncontaminated Virgins passing through the world without using their feet but carried in flight by the angels, so that the mud of life would not even brush against their soles will not be your guides.
But the creatures that knew the sting of evil, who bit the dust in an hour of moral collapse, who yearned for the creature, loosing sight of the Creator, and then managed to rise again and be re-born with a new Soul formed of repentance and love, raising themselves so high in the life of the spirit that they regained a radiance not inferior to that of the pure through the grace of God and certainly more meritorious ,for it was painful and laborious beyond every other mode of conquest.
The supreme example of course of penitent love that reached great heights was of course St Mary Magdalene, who significantly in her great love reached the foot of Golgotha to partake with the Master in the horrific Immolation of Calvary. What was it Our Lord said about her, Much is forgiven her, because she has loved much or
said in another way .Charity
covers a multitude of sins.
