Today's morning insight is from my devotional reading of St. Faustina's diary. For context: I've been talking a lot about faith and good works, grace and free will, with the students in my Church History intro class this semester. One of the things we talk about is that although we don't earn our salvation with good works (Eph 2:8-9), we are expected to do good works to participate in our sanctification and salvation (Eph 2:10, the very next verse, and also Phil 2:12, etc.). But when we talk about good works, we sometimes get tripped up by the observation that unbelievers appear to do good works, and sometimes better works than Christians.
So then I read this today in St. Faustina's diary: I have come to know that only love is of any value; love is greatness; nothing, no works, can compare with a single act of pure love of God.
I interpret that as meaning that no matter how good a work seems to be, nothing counts as a true "good work" (in the sense of being something that cooperates with God's grace and participates in what God is doing in the world, and contributes to our sanctification and salvation) unless it is done as an act of love for God. This fits well with the passage we looked at recently in The Journey - that we should do our good works so as to: let your light shine before people, so that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven (Matt 5:16).
A good work, in the spiritual sense, is something we do as a labor of love for God.
I'm back, up and running, and ready to go - I should have a new JOURNEY episode within the next week or so - and because you are my loyal peeps, here is an exclusive, just-for-you, behind the scenes SNEAK PEEK into my new office:
This was for March 24th, recorded for the Ascension App
Thanks for your patience - here is our next installment of The Journey - it's session # 96, but I'm also calling it PART 1 of a "miniseries" on John chapter 6.
Whoever watches it first, please let me know if it looks good or if there are any problems with it - I get through the first two sections of the text on the feeding of the 5,000.
Enjoy!
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
So begins a song I wrote back in the day, to commemorate the martyrs of Rome - which was the point of the name of the band I had for about 20 years - the band was called Remember Rome. The song was called Midnight Light. At about midnight on the night between July 18th and 19th, in the year 64 AD, the emperor Nero's men started the great fire in Rome, which would be blamed on the Christians, starting the long trajectory of Roman persecution of the Church. Here's a video of Remember Rome playing the song - do I look younger? This was recorded right around the turn of Y2K, about 25 years ago.
I highly recommend this podcast in general, but this concept of "Transhumanism" is really important to understand, and in my opinion is not unrelated with the whole AI thing - check this out:
