2) "Greater Reverence and Love for Every Person" (2 of 4)
While God calls each of us to love Him and one another as Jesus has loved us, we also have an Enemy who desires just the opposite. The Enemy, using whatever means possible (especially the high-powered people and media of our age), tries to label, categorize, marginalize, and ultimately eliminate people - especially the poor and people who believe in God and love their neighbor.
Jesus died for everyone, setting us free to share in His own full, abundant, divine life eternally. By loving us first, He revealed God's Love for us and showed us what it means to love.
All of us are called to recognize in our brothers and sisters the sublime dignity of one redeemed by Christ's Most Precious Blood shed on the Cross for our salvation, and to receive them as we ourselves want to be received by God. We need to honor people for the goodness and gifts we see in them as reflections of God's own Glory and "living conduits" of His Divine Mercy, however weak or broken they may appear to be to our very imperfect spiritual vision.
We are created for compassion, to sympathize with others' sufferings, and to prodigally lavish the Love of our Heavenly Father upon all without limits. Only in completely giving ourselves will we also be filled completely and to overflowing by the Holy Spirit and His Divine Indwelling, Whom we have already received 'as a first installment' through Baptism, Confirmation, and in every Communion.
This is an essential part of the "New Pentecost" the Church is ardently longing for. It will come when enough people freely offer themselves as a living sacrifice of praise to the Father for the salvation of souls - in union Jesus, Mary, and the Church - however He wills.
+Br. Philip Maria Allen, CFR
St. Felix Friary
Yonkers, NY, USA
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