Why The Trees Aren't Reversed

I received a comment containing a question from 2.29.08. Here is the question: "I am not familiar with your theory (although I'd like to be) but I'm curious to know why the trees' representations aren't reversed -- The tree of life being our power and ability to conceive children and the tree of knowledge being the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God."

God put us on this earth, but He made us for heaven. We spend a very short time here on earth; it is but a brief stop on the journey to our true and everlasting homeland. We have eternal life only through our love, trust and obedience of God; we begin our eternal life here on earth by our union with Him; if we don't, then there is no eternal life in heaven for us when we die. Life, in the fullest sense of the word, is only given to us insofar as we are united to God, and our unity with God only happens via a heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. The heart is the channel through which we receive God's life. God's life is the life of our soul, and we have nothing, we are nothing, we have no life if we don't have God dwelling within us.

Having children is a wonderful reality and a marvelous gift from God. Raising children is one of the best God-given ways that He shows us and provides the arena for us to learn how to love, to learn how to be a self-sacrificing lover. One of the best adult educations is raising children; I remember Scott Hahn having a plaque in his office saying: "The best adult education--children." As much a blessing as having children is, it is not what gives us supernatural or everlasting life. The children we do have need to be born again in baptism for they are born spiritually dead without sanctifying grace. What really matters in the end is God's life in our soul, and that life only comes from the tree of life: the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. Marriage and children are a God-given calling to lead us and help us on our way to heaven, but there is no help in them if our heart is separated from God.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is our ability to have children because this is what served as the test of faith that God established for our first parents. Why it is given this name I haven't fully digested yet. I think there are a number of viable possibilities for why it has this name. For now, I am not going to get into this question.

Mary fulfilled the test of faith that the woman (after the Fall named Eve, mother) failed. Mary ate fully of her tree of life and trusted in God when it did not make sense. I have discussed Mary's test in a few other places. Because she ate of her tree of life, God provided her with a Son. He is no ordinary son, and God also gives all humanity to Mary as her children. Mary trusted God to provide her with children virginally, and God made her the greatest mother of all time. So Mary did have children through her tree of life, but only after she passed her crucifixion of her greatest earthly desire. Mary does not rely on her own abilities to provide life; rather, she trusts wholly in God, and He satisfies her greatest desires and infinitely more so. God is such a good God who wants us to be fully alive and our deepest desires abundantly fulfilled to overflowing. If we place ourselves entirely in His hands, we will be blessed beyond measure.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Eat the Tree of Life

The first reading from Jeremiah 17:5-10 is one of those perfect readings that harmonizes so well with my theory. I will quote it here in full:

“Thus says the LORD: Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season, but stands in a lava waste, a salt and empty earth. Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream: it fears not the heat when it comes, its leaves stay green; in the year of drought it shows no distress, but still bears fruit. More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it? I, the LORD, alone probe the mind and test the heart, to reward everyone according to his ways, according to the merit of his deeds.”

The first line of this passage is exactly, according to my theory, what the man and the woman did in the garden. They trusted in themselves and the strength of their flesh as their heart turned away from God and trusted in the serpent. My theory, which I have mentioned multiple times on this site, is that God made man to be His spouse. He created the first man and woman and gave them a test of faith.

He told them to be fruitful and multiply and then told them to remain virgins, to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This doesn’t seem to make sense. God told them to forgo the highest of the natural goods to obtain the highest of the supernatural goods; He wanted them to give up (sexual) marriage to a human being to obtain marriage to Himself; He asked them to give up the good and holy image of union with God (marital intimacy) to obtain the very thing itself: complete union with God forever in heaven in never ending bliss. Desiring to fulfill God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, they took matters into their own hands, trusted in themselves and their reproductive powers, distrusted God’s singular prohibition, and had marital relations.

They immediately realize they are naked and hide from God; their punishments revolve around bearing children and planting bad seed; the very first thing the man does after the punishments is re-name his wife. Now that she has conceived from the very first sin, she is no longer just woman, she is a mother. She has become a new reality, and so the man names her Eve, mother of all the living. The child she wanted and now conceived is Cain; when he is born, she names him “gotten,” i.e. Cain.

Back to Jeremiah, those who trust in man receive barrenness and death, and that is what the man and woman received: Cain the murderer. On the other hand, he who trusts and hopes in the Lord is fully alive. He is a tree planted next to the stream whose leaves stay alive in any condition and still bears fruit. It doesn’t matter how little rain falls, the tree is close to the stream, and so it receives all the water it needs. The tree flourishes and bears fruit because it trusts in God.

The tree of life is the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. The heart that trusts God has its roots deeply inside God, the source of all life. The trusting, obedient heart is the conduit for receiving God’s life, for being in communion with Him; therefore, since it is the means by which we stay connected to God, the heart is the tree of life: a heart united to God is united to Life.

The passage continues: “More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it?” The heart is the location of the battle which determines where we will spend eternity. When a heart doesn’t trust, nothing, other than a miracle of God’s grace, can help it trust. All our actions, all our deeds, flow from the abundance within our hearts. If our heart is full of disobedience and suspicion toward God, we will do all sorts of evil deeds; if our heart trusts Him and longs to please Him in all we do, then of course we will most always do what is good. The passage concludes: “I, the LORD, alone probe the mind and test the heart, to reward everyone according to his ways, according to the merit of his deeds.” Our deeds matter and decide our eternity because they reveal what is in our heart. In the end, all that matters is that we love, trust and obey God—that we eat of the tree of life.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Will You Marry Me? Poem

Interestingly, one of the main ways people find their way to my blog is by looking for a “Will You Marry Me?” poem on a search engine, usually google. I suppose that is because I have posted a few poems and my blog has as part of its name: will you marry me. I feel bad that these people usually don’t find what they are looking for when they visit here. On the eve of Valentine’s Day, it seems more people than usual are looking for such a poem as they prepare to pop the question. I’ve wanted to provide some sort of engagement poem here for some time, and with tomorrow’s celebration, it seems a good time to compose such a poem; I write it from a man’s point of view.

Keeper of My Heart, Keeper of My Life, Will You Be My...

My heart has found a home in your care
Your gentle and firm hands receive it well
And make it better and more true to tell
You inspire it with your vibrant flair.

With the keeping of my heart I want to say
That I want to be your protector and your sure stay
I want to lay down my life for love of you
Pouring myself out each day as the sun’s radiant hue.

You make my heart sing and give me life
With my heart in your hands, Will you be my wife?
I want to be yours till the day I die
Will you be mine, too, may I be your guy?

I am down on my knees and humbly beseech
That you be the keeper of my life
And my only cherished peach
Will you be mine, will you be my wife?

Let’s journey together on our way home
Let’s make a home together open to God’s gifts
That at the end of our journey we may not roam
But be taken to heaven where there are no rifts.

Will you be my wife and the center of my life
Except for God who is always number one
His name is Jesus, God’s only Son
Together we journey to Him through all life’s strife.


Well, you can’t say I didn’t try. It’s a first draft done in about twenty minutes. Feel free to use it and/or modify it to your needs. It is generic and a bit sappy, I fear. If it is too good, she may think you didn’t write it, right? This is just bad enough for her to think that you wrote it; of course, you wouldn’t want to deceive her, so you would have to modify it to take any credit for it. Or, you could just blame it on me; I mean give me the credit. Happy Valentine’s Day!


For a Bible passage that reflects some of what is in my poem, read this from Proverbs 31:

When one finds a worthy wife,
her value is far beyond pearls.
Her husband, entrusting his heart to her,
has an unfailing prize.
She brings him good, and not evil,
all the days of her life.
She obtains wool and flax
and works with loving hands.
She puts her hands to the distaff,
and her fingers ply the spindle.
She reaches out her hands to the poor,
and extends her arms to the needy.
Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting;
the woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
Give her a reward for her labors,
and let her works praise her at the city gates.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

God's Word Makes Our Heart Flow with Living Water

The first reading today in the Mass was a short one and came from Isaiah 55: 10-11. Here it is:

“Thus says the LORD: Just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.”

Although this is such a short passage, the context surrounding this little one is packed with awesome passages that resonate very well with my theory. I’ll have to unpack these chapters more on another occasion; for now, I will begin to explore this passage and two short sentences right before this one.

The two other passages I want to highlight are 54:5 where it says, “For your Maker is your husband,” and 55:1 which states, “Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters.” I bring up these two because these two themes, the husband and water, are the two themes of today’s reading. Rain and snow come from heaven and water the earth making it fertile; in the same way God’s word comes from heaven and waters the earth, making it fruitful. Water makes the earth fruitful. God’s word makes the earth fruitful.

How is a woman made fruitful? It is her husband who pours out his “water” so that she can bear fruit. In that sense, the husband makes the wife fruitful through water. God is our husband, but He is not so in a sexual sense. God pours out His Word to us in order that it accomplishes what He desires—our fruitfulness. How are we fruitful? We are fruitful when our tree of life is alive. How is our tree of life alive? It is alive when we have a heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. When we love, trust and obey God, we bear good fruit for Him, and He is our Husband.

How do we receive God’s Word in an effective manner? We do so by opening wide our hearts to Him to do whatever He asks of us. The responsorial psalm today says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; and those who are crushed in spirit he saves” (Psalm 34:19). Those who are humble, those whose hearts turn from their sin and turn back to God, those who are grieved that they hurt God who loves them so much, those who want to share in the sufferings of Christ and be a self-sacrificing lover, these are the ones who have a heart open to God to receive His Word and bear much fruit. Yes, these are the ones; he is the one who believes in Jesus, and “Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). When we open our hearts to God, He fills our hearts with His water so that out of our very own hearts, rivers of living water flow.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

"Live as Though You are Not Married"

I started my read through Saint Augustine’s “Of Holy Virginity” back in January, and this tonight is the fourth and final post on this work. In its concluding paragraphs, there are many wonderful quotes. Saint Augustine spends his remaining paragraphs encouraging virgins to be faithful to God and their virginity through their love of God and their humility and meekness of heart. In Sunday’s gospel reading today from Saint Matthew 5:5 it says: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.”

In paragraph 52, Saint Augustine says that virginity is guarded by love, and love’s home is humility: “Therefore there is none that guardeth the virginal good, save God Himself Who gave it: and God is Charity (1 John 4:8). The Guardian therefore of virginity is Charity: but the place of this Guardian is humility.” We all, therefore, need to learn from Jesus who said, “I am meek and lowly of heart.” With a humble heart, we can draw close to Jesus and learn from Him, Saint Augustine says, and in a holy humility, Jesus finds rest for His head.

In the next paragraph, 53, Saint Augustine continues to state the absolute necessity for humility and for not justifying oneself: “Let such among your number [of virgins] as persevere, afford to you an example: but let such as fall increase your fear. Love the one that ye may imitate it; mourn over the other, that ye be not puffed up. Do not ye establish your own righteousness; submit yourselves unto God Who justifies you. Pardon the sins of others, pray for your own: future sins shun by watching, past sins blot out by confessing.” We are to give ourselves to God and realize, if we stay free from certain sins, it is due to His grace and help. Therefore, we can love much because we have been forgiven much (either by confessing our sins or by being preserved from falling into the in the first place). We can also be merciful to those who do fall into sin and so pardon them.

Virgins, Saint Augustine says in paragraph 55, have given up marriage to a human person so that they can be married more fully to God. If this is true, then they should put all the energies one normally puts into loving one’s earthly spouse into loving their Divine Spouse: “If, therefore, ye despise marriages of sons of men, from which to beget sons of men, love ye with your whole heart Him, Who is fair of form above the sons of men; ye have leisure; your heart is free from marriage bonds. Gaze on the Beauty of your Lover: think of Him equal to the Father, made subject also to His Mother: ruling even in the heavens, and serving upon the earth: creating all things, created among all things. That very thing, which in Him the proud mock at, gaze on, how fair it is: with inward eyes gaze on the wounds of Him hanging, the scars of Him rising again, the blood of Him dying, the price of him that believes, the gain of Him that redeems. Consider of how great value these are, weigh them in the scales of Charity; and whatever of love ye had to expend upon your marriages, pay back to Him.” Since Jesus is a virgin’s primary and immediate Spouse, Saint Augustine says, virgins should love Him passionately, with all that they have and are.

In the second to last paragraph, 56, Saint Augustine repeats what he said in the previous paragraph and adds that it would be unlawful for a virgin not to wholly love Jesus: “If therefore ye should owe great love to husbands, Him, for Whose sake ye would not have husbands, how greatly ought ye to love? Let Him be fixed in your whole heart, Who for you was fixed on the Cross: let Him possess in your soul all that, whatever it be, that ye would not have occupied by marriage. It is not lawful for you to love little Him, for Whose sake ye have not loved even what were lawful. So loving Him Who is meek and lowly of heart, I have no fear for you of pride.”

Surely what Saint Augustine says of virgins is true: they are specially married to the Divine Spouse and are bound to love Him with their complete and entire self. Since all members of the Church are called to holiness and thus to deep prayer and intimacy with Jesus, all of us are also called to marry God. That is why He made us. A virgin has the opportunity for a special intimacy with Him, and he lives, to a certain extent, the life of heaven here on earth. Yet all people are called into a most intimate relationship with God. Marriage is a symbol of God’s relationship with humanity; in living in a committed and self-sacrificing marriage, one learns how to love and be loved and draws closer to God.

Our goal on this earth is heaven, where there is no marriage. There is no marriage among human persons there because we are all married to God in heaven. For those called to the vocation of marriage, it is the way God has called us to become holy and to love Him. Marriage is a God-given calling which sanctifies those who live it well and generously, as does any vocation. Earthly marriage will eventually pass away at the end of time, and it passes away for all of us who are married when our spouse dies. Earthly marriage, as our vocation, is the path to our heavenly, divine marriage with God. Human marriage is not the end point; it is our path to grow in our relationship with Jesus.

I think that is why Paul says a rather difficult sentence in his first letter to the Corinthians: “I mean, brethren, the appointed time has grown very short; from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the form of this world is passing away” (1 Corinthians 7:29). Paul is not saying that we should think little of marriage. He is saying that it is not the ultimate reality; the ultimate reality is our life in heaven and our marriage to the Divine Spouse. In a similar manner, sex, which the culture of death worships, is not the ultimate reality as good as it is; union with God is the ultimate reality. "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee, O God."

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

"The Deepest Passion of the Soul is Meant for God"

I subscribe to Magnificat, a monthly magazine which provides the daily Mass readings, prayers for the morning, evening and night, meditations, essays, poems, blessings, the order of the Mass, short saint biographies, etc. I enjoy it, and a donor at my school provides so that all the sixth through eighth graders get a copy each month.

The meditation after Mass yesterday, January 30th, was a selection from Peter Kreeft, a professor of philosophy at Boston College and an author of many books. It comes from his book, Back to Virtue, copyright 1992 and 2002 by Ignatius Press. On page 409 it says:

“First, remember a principle of God’s grace: God often withholds from us the grace to avoid a lesser sin because we are in danger of a greater sin. To avoid pride, he sometimes lets us fall into lust, since lust is usually obvious, undisguised, and temporary, while pride is not. So to conquer lust, we should focus less on lust and more on pride. Only when we are truly humble does God give us the grace to conquer lust.”

We live in a culture today that is ever increasingly lustful, saturated by sex, where more and more good men fall into this trap. What is the solution? How does one overcome this temptation and this sin? Peter Kreeft says that it is not by focusing on the lust; one needs to look more at the pride in one’s life. He continues:

“Second, remember Saint Thomas’ diagnosis of lust, which I think he must have learned from Saint Augustine: ‘Man cannot life without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures.’ God is not a substitute for sex, as Freud thought; sex is often a substitute for God. The deepest passion of the soul is meant for God. When the true God comes, the false gods go. To conquer lust, forget about lust and love God.”

When the deepest passions of our souls are not directed toward God, when we have no spiritual joys, it is then that we seek satisfaction elsewhere. We seek joy in bodily pleasures, but of course those never really satisfy either. Since we don’t have God in our life, we put sex or other pleasures in His place. As I said in an earlier entry, sex is not bad; sex is good. Carnal pleasures are a good, but they need to be rightly ordered and directed by our mind and will toward the good. It is easy to be consumed with the constant pursuit of carnal pleasures and only grow in our selfishness as a result.

What Peter Kreeft says here resonates with my basic theory. My theory is that God made us, right from the beginning, to be His spouse, His bride, His temple, and His home. The man and the woman were to be God’s spouse by eating of the tree of life, which is having a heart which loves, trusts, and obeys God. He tested the man and the woman by saying be fruitful and multiply but don’t have sex. Wanting to be like God, wanting to create a man as God had just done, they disobey God and have relations. God wanted them to trust Him to provide as Mary did and have children virginally. Instead, they trusted in their own powers and had Cain.

Pride, as Peter Kreeft says, is worse than lust, but lust is much more common. Lust is a symptom that our love for God has grown cold. The solution to lust is to increase our love for God. The antidote for many of our problems today living in this culture of death is to realize the great dignity we have as children of God, as temples of the Holy Spirit, as creatures called into the closest intimacy with God Almighty, as the very brides of Christ, and love Him more, give ourselves to Him completely and renew that total self-gift each day, place all our hopes and desires in His hands trusting in His provision, look to Him as the source of life and our solace in life, cling to Him as a rock of safety in the raging storm, ask Him for what we truly need, seek from Him a greater outpouring of His Holy Spirit, knock at the door of His heart with the hands of our heart so that our hearts speak to each other, heart to heart.

If we fully devote ourselves to the love of God and do everything within our power to grow and develop in that love, all else falls into its proper place. Saint Augustine said, “Love God and do what you will.” If we spend ourselves in the love of God, lust and pride and jealousy and hatred and laziness all fall by the wayside to make room for the real thing. God is the real thing and the only thing that truly and fully satisfies. His satisfaction is not of the bodily sort; it is of the spiritual sort, which far outpaces the bodily. Being fully united to the Living God is the greatest joy; it is to begin to live heaven on earth.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Repentance "Imprisons" Jesus In Our Heart

There is a connection in two passages from today’s and tomorrow’s Mass readings. In today’s entrance antiphon, it says: “I will raise up for myself a faithful priest; he will do what is in my heart and in my mind, says the Lord” (1 Samuel 2:35). This passage has a connection to the Gospel for Sunday’s Mass when Jesus begins His ministry and starts to preach: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:18).

The connection between these two passages is that they both have to do with the heart. The heart has a connection to my theory because the tree of life in the Garden of Eden is the heart. We have life when we are united with He Who Lives; we eat from the tree of life when we love, trust and obey God; when our heart turns back to God, when we repent, then we do what is in God’s heart to do. With a heart connected to God, our mind and heart conforms to God’s heart and mind.

The passage from 1 Samuel 2 proclaims the condemnation of the priest Eli and his family for not being faithful to God and for only being concerned with what was to their personal benefit: they did not care for God or others. God rejects them, and He says He will raise up for Himself a new, faithful priest who will do what God would have him do. Immediately following this prophecy, God calls Samuel and reveals Himself to the boy. Samuel is the new, faithful priest who will please the heart and mind of God.

Jesus begins His public preaching with the call to repent. Repentance means a turning back, and it signifies our hearts turning back to God. We have forsaken God and sought after ourselves like Eli and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, and we need to turn our hearts back to God like Samuel. Our hearts are meant to be a holy home for Almighty God, and so our hearts first have to turn back in love to our Maker to receive His life and love.

Jesus says two closely related items: the first is “repent,” and the second is, “for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Insofar as we turn our hearts to God again, insofar as we open ourselves to Him once more, He comes to dwell in our hearts. Where He dwells, there is heaven. Thus, repentance is the doorway to the kingdom of heaven. Heaven will forever remain unattainable as long as repentance is missing. Repentance is the all-powerful act whereby even the gates of heaven cannot resist its abilities. The repentant heart is the home for Jesus, whom it makes its permanent prisoner, and Jesus said of this heart which turns in love to Him, “Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water (John 7:38). Living waters flow out of the tree of life.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

"To Do Your Will, O My God, Is My Delight"

I want to say a few more words about Psalm 40, which was also last Sunday’s responsorial Psalm. The heart of Psalm 40 is the quote: “To do your will, O my God, is my delight.” It is a remarkable statement; would that all of us cherished that mentality within our heart.

There are two basic attitudes to God’s will: either disobedience or obedience. The former belongs to demons and Satan who said when tested: “I will not serve.” The latter belongs to the angels united to Saint Michael who said: “Who is like God? I will obey.” Michael literally means “who is like God.” Depending on whether we obey or disobey, decides to which side we align ourselves. Are we on the side of our own will, together with the demons, seeking our life and receiving only death and destruction? Or are we on the side of God’s will, together with the great hosts of angels and saints and all people of good will, seeking what pleases Him, denying ourselves and being enriched with His life?

On the side of those obeying, there are three basic levels or degrees of obedience. The first, the level of a slave, is not always faithful to God and often seeks to do his own will. A slave is worried about getting into trouble and is mostly concerned about not going to hell. If it weren’t for all God’s rules, the slave would have much more fun; whenever he can, the slave tries to get away with whatever he can. The slave asks, “How far can I go before I sin mortally?” The slave is reluctantly obedient; if it weren’t for hell, the slave would rather sin with abandon. Of course, it is better to be an obedient slave than to be disobedient.

The next level of obedience is the level of child of God, son or daughter of the Great King. Here, the son seeks to please his Heavenly Father and has left behind the poverty of the slave mentality. The son truly loves God and desires heaven. The son has peace and a unity with God in a similar manner to a father who has a close relationship with his son. It is in this environment that obedience begins to grow and flower and bear good fruit.

The culmination of obedience is when God becomes our spouse. When we have become one mind and heart with God, we desire what He desires and we say, “To do your will, O my God, is my delight.” God loves us with passion of a husband; this love led Him to His Passion. In His pursuit of us, we give ourselves entirely to Him and are ready to do whatever He seeks from us. Of course, obedience only really shows itself when something difficult, something we do not want to do, is asked of us. If it is something we want to do, there is not much obedience in that. Obedience comes alive when we are tested and we rise to the occasion. The spousal obedience does not mean that we have an easy path; on the contrary, Jesus was asked by His Father to endure the Passion; Jesus replied: “If possible, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but Thine be done.” Spousal obedience with God is beautiful, but it always leads us where it led Our Savior: to the cross.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

The Bridegroom Has the Bride

Today I want to take a look at the readings of the Mass. I’ll start with the responsorial psalm, Psalm 149, which is the one that was the inspiration for the poem I posted on January 4. The response is, “The Lord takes delight in his people.” God loves His people, and his people sing, praise, rejoice, and dance for Him. The love is mutual and deep. Remember that Eden means delight and often has a spousal connotation. Here, again, God delights in his people and seeks us as His spouse.

The first reading is the conclusion of Saint John’s first letter. A few sentences before the end, he says, “We know that anyone begotten by God does not sin; but the one begotten by God he protects, and the Evil One cannot touch him. We know that we belong to God, and the whole world is under the power of the Evil One” (1 John 5:18-19). The Evil One has power over the entire world and can touch anyone within his power. The children of God are under the authority of God and are not subject to the Evil One. One is either a child of God and belongs to Him or a child of the Devil who belongs to him.

The children of God belong to God and so do not sin (at least not with mortal sin which he just finished explaining). He is not saying that God’s children never commit a mortal sin; the point is that belonging to God and sinning mortally are mutually exclusive. When a child of God sins mortally, he gets himself quickly to confession and makes everything right once again, or else he ceases to be a child of God (at least as long as he stays away from confession).

Once one is made a child of God in baptism, God protects us. He protects our heart so that we can know, love and serve Him, so that we can be faithful and obedient to His will. The woman in the garden was made from the rib, and as such, was made to protect the man’s heart and lead him to heaven. She did the exact opposite and betrayed her love with a kiss in the garden. Then God sent the angel to guard the way to the tree of life. This guarding by the angel is not to keep man from eating the tree of life; the guarding is the giving of our guardian angel who protects our heart, our tree of life, so that it stays faithful and true. His mission is to help us get to heaven, and there is no way there except via a trusting and obedient heart.

To protect us, we also have the New Eve, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is the New Rib, Our Rib, who only leads us to her Divine Son and shows us how to love, trust and obey Jesus. There is no greater human protector of our heart than Mary; she is the true port in the storms of life. Her heart was sorely tested on numerous occasions, and it was spiritually crucified during at least two trials of faith. She knows what it takes to have a healthy and fruit-bearing tree of life, and she longs to protect our trees of life so that they can be a true and holy home for God and give birth to Christ in our life.

John’s gospel today has a very powerful sentence: “The one who has the bride is the bridegroom; the best man, who stands and listens for him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice” (John 3:29). John the Baptist is saying that he is the best man and Jesus is the groom. The groom is the one who ends up with the bride, and together they start a family and have children. Jesus’ bride is the Church; He will always remain faithful to her, even when she is not faithful to Him. He will never, nor has He ever, divorced her; He gave up His life for her, and He will remain with her to the end.

As each of us is one of her members, in that manner Jesus takes us on as a bride, too. All followers of Christ, all members of the Church, are thereby also His brides; we are brides in the one bride, the Church. This is the way it was from the very beginning. As God says in Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image.” Being made in God’s image means that God made us to be His spouse. Jesus comes to fulfill, above all else, this reality that was from the very beginning, from the very first words of the very first sentence that has anything to do with man in the Bible. We are made to be God’s spouse, and so now the Divine Bridegroom has come to take us to Himself. All we have to do is give ourselves to Him in return, as a bride gives herself to her bridegroom. If we do and only if we do, will we bear good fruit.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

The Heart Holds a Foretaste of Heaven

Not quite a week ago, I started writing a bit about Saint Augustine’s “Of Holy Virginity.” I have now read some more of it and will continue my reflections of it. As stated earlier, Saint Augustine spends the first section of his document on explaining that virginity is a higher calling and gift than marriage. In the middle, he spends a great deal of time talking about the need for virgins not to become, therefore, proud. He talks about Mary Magdalene and how she loves much because she was forgiven much; virgins need to thank God who kept them from falling into many sins, for apart from His divine help, they would, also, have taken that unhappy path.

In the course of this discussion on the need for humility, Saint Augustine mentions Saint Paul and says: “The Apostle says, ‘But I would that all men were as I myself; but each one hath his own proper gift from God; one in this way, and another in that way.’ Who therefore bestoweth these gifts? Who distributeth his own proper gifts unto each as He will? Forsooth God, with Whom there is not unrighteousness, and by this means with what equity He makes some in this way, and others in that way, for man to know is either impossible or altogether hard: but that with equity He maketh, it is not lawful to doubt. ‘What,’ therefore, ‘hast thou, which thou hast not received?’ And by what perversity dost thou less love Him, of Whom thou hast received more?” (#41). God makes different people for different purposes, and every good thing we have and are have been given to us by God. Those who have received much, those given the grace of virginity, should therefore love the more.

So if a virgin is not to be proud, “What therefore should a virgin do, what should she think, that she vaunt not herself above those, men or women, who have not this so great gift? For she ought not to feign humility, but to set it forth: for the feigning of humility is greater pride” (#44). Although virginity is a higher gift, how one lives virginity is an entirely different matter. To begin with, all God-given vocations are a gift from Him. Also, only God is able to judge how well and truly one lives his vocation, whether it be a high, medium or low calling by God. Whatever the greatness or lowness of the calling by God, each vocation is the very path God has called that one to reach heaven. Each path lived well and faithfully leads to deep union with God.

Several paragraphs later Saint Augustine continues the answer of what a virgin should think: “She hath, I say, a subject for thought, that she be not puffed up, that she rival not; forsooth that she so make profession that the virginal good is much greater and better than the married good, as that yet she know not whether this or that married woman be not already able to suffer for Christ, but herself as yet unable, and she herein spared, that her weakness is not put to the question by trial” (#47). Yes, virginity is objectively better than marriage, but they are both good and are pathways to holiness.

We cannot judge or compare ourselves with anyone for we do not know the heart; only God sees that. People with lower vocations may love God and be ready to witness to Him to the point of shedding their blood more than those with higher vocations. The hierarchal placement of the vocation tells us nothing about the holiness of the person. Residing in the heart is the love of God that is a foretaste of heaven, and we simply don’t have access to that knowledge. The best we can do on that front is to try to examine the fruit of that heart, but even that is often done poorly and partially. Thankfully, we have not been given the impossible task of judging another’s heart. God takes care of that for us. Our job is simply to love Him and our neighbor as our self.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

We Keep His Commandments

The end of today’s reading from the first Letter of Saint John struck me: “For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers the world is our faith” (5:3-4). If we replace “keep his commandments” with “obedience,” it would say, “The love of God is shown in our obedience to Him.” Jesus said the same thing: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). We show our love through our obedience.

Love gurgles up from a faithful heart that obeys; therefore, God’s laws are not difficult because we have conquered the world through our faith and become His children. When we love God above all things, then we want to please Him above all else, even over all the allurements of the world. In seeking His will only, we conquer the world and faithfully obey our Heavenly Father’s every command.

The united and interwoven themes today are love, obedience, faith, and God’s children. It is the “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5 & 16:26) that reveals and proves our love, the love of a child for His father. Jesus came to make us children of God and a new creation and to give us a new heart, a new tree of life that loves and trusts in Him and so obeys Him. Now we can draw close to God and give ourselves entirely to Him; He gives us the grace to become one with Him. That union is a foretaste of heaven. That union, when it comes to complete fruition, is the mystical marriage when our heart and will and life are totally taken up into God. Therein is pure peace and joy. That is the goal of life.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Virginity = Fruitfulness = Marriage (to God)

I plan to spend more time in future entries looking at Early Church Fathers and Church documents. Tonight I spent some time reading Saint Augustine’s work called, “Of Holy Virginity” or “De Virginitate.” I read the first twelve paragraphs, and I found four selections worth sharing.

The first comes from paragraph two: “Mary bare the Head of This Body after the flesh, the Church bears the members of that Body after the Spirit. In both virginity hinders not fruitfulness: in both fruitfulness takes not away virginity.” Normally, we think of virginity as being synonymous with barrenness. But in Mary and in the Church, virginity is synonymous with fruitfulness. This ties together well with my main theory; it is also interesting to note that no one is a member of the Church through natural birth. Natural birth does not work and is not enough. We need to be born again. In baptism, we are born again and become a new creation as a child of the virgin mother the Church.

In paragraph four, Saint Augustine talks about how Mary had already made a vow of perpetual virginity before the Angel Gabriel appeared to her: “This is shown by the words which Mary spake in answer to the Angel announcing to her her conception; ‘How,’ saith she, ‘shall this be, seeing I know not a man?’ Which assuredly she would not say, unless she had before vowed herself unto God as a virgin. But, because the habits of the Israelites as yet refused this, she was espoused to a just man, who would not take from her by violence, but rather guard against violent persons, what she had already vowed.” This ties in with my thoughts on Mary’s test.

Saint Augustine moves on in paragraph six to distinguish and compare marriage to virginity: “Forsooth both faithful women who are married, and virgins dedicated to God, by holy manners, and charity out of a pure heart, and good conscience, and faith unfeigned, because they do the will of the Father, are after a spiritual sense mothers of Christ. But they who in married life give birth to (children) after the flesh, give birth not to Christ, but to Adam, and therefore run, that their offspring having been dyed in His Sacraments, may become members of Christ, forasmuch as they know what they have given birth to.” In other words, anyone, a married woman or a virgin, who does the will of God is a mother to Christ. Married women, through natural generation, give birth only to a child who is not Christ but a son of man, so mothers run their child over to the Church to have their child be reborn as a child of God, as another Christ.

In paragraph twelve, Saint Augustine has a good paragraph on the distinction between marriage and the life of virginity. “Let marriages possess their own good, not that they beget sons, but that honestly, that lawfully, that modestly, that in a spirit of fellowship they beget them, and educate them, after they have been begotten, with cooperation, with wholesome teaching, and earnest purpose: in that they keep the faith of the couch one with another; in that they violate not the sacrament of wedlock. All these, however, are offices of human duty: but virginal chastity and freedom through pious continence from all sexual intercourse is the portion of Angels, and a practice, in corruptible flesh, of perpetual incorruption. To this let all fruitfulness of the flesh yield, all chastity of married life; the one is not in (man’s) power, the other is not in eternity; free choice hath not fruitfulness of the flesh, heaven hath not chastity of married life. Assuredly they will have something great beyond others in that common immortality, who have something already not of the flesh in the flesh.”

Marriage is very good, but virginity is the best, Saint Augustine is saying. Marriage is very good when children are well begotten and well raised and when the couple is faithful to the sacred marriage vows. However, marriage is of this world; there is no marriage in heaven. Virginity is possible through supernatural grace, is the portion of Angels, is the life of eternity, and will be greatly rewarded both on earth and in heaven.

The Church teaches that virginity is an objectively higher calling than marriage. Marriage is holy and good, yet virginity is better. Both are a vocation or calling. What matters to an individual is the question, “What is God calling me to?” God has different callings for different people; whatever He calls one to is the path He wants that one to take to get to heaven. Everyone is called to holiness and sanctity and to deep prayer. Marriage is a great and holy calling of God, and it is my personal path to holiness.

One last thought: marriage and virginity are essentially the same thing: they are both marriage. The first is marriage to another human person, and the second is marriage to God here on earth. There are of course many practical differences between the two, but at their essential core, they are of the same stuff. In the end, everyone in heaven will have no human person as a spouse, but we will all be married to God. God is asking you, “Will you marry me?” That is an invitation, no matter what your vocation, to deep communion with Him.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

The Desire: Divine Union

There are two main themes that run throughout the Old Testament and are fulfilled in the New: the quest for a child (a son, to be specific) and the quest for the Promised Land. These two quests are distinct but are often intertwined. They are the desires for land and a home together with the desires for children, a family, and fruitfulness. Another quest that is related to the quest for a child is the quest for a bride; sometimes it goes hand-in-hand with the quest for a son and other times they are completely separate.

Abraham’s quest was primarily for a son and secondarily for the land; the wife quest was only present in his life insofar as he “lost” his wife twice when he told two other guys she was his sister (she was his half sister). Isaac began with a quest for a wife, and he ended with a quest for a son. He was forty when he married Rebekah, but she was barren. He prayed for her to be fruitful, but almost twenty years went by before she conceived. When Isaac was sixty, Rebekah gave birth to twins: Esau and Jacob.

Jacob gets the blessing from Isaac and then flees for his life from his irate brother Esau. His quest begins with seeking a wife, and he ends up with two: Leah and Rachel. Rachel is barren and Leah has four sons one after the other. In the baby race, Rachel gives Jacob her maid who conceives two sons. Then Leah gives Jacob her maid who also has two sons. Leah herself has two more sons, and finally Rachel conceives Joseph and much later, Benjamin. Although Jacob had so many sons, his quest for a son was for his first-love and “true” wife, Rachel, to have a baby. She did have one only after a very long time of being barren. Jacob treated Joseph in some ways as his only son, and that is why his ten older half-brothers hated him so and devised a plan to kill him. Jacob eventually makes his way back to the Promised Land. Hence, Jacob had all three quests in his life, and after the Joseph story in Egypt, Jacob and his entire family leaves the Promised Land again and sets up camp down in Egypt.

400 years later, Moses had a mini quest for a wife and an even smaller one for a son; his main quest was for the Promised Land. He, of course, led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to make it to the Promised Land. Moses got close enough to see the Promised Land in the distance, but he himself did not bring the people in, Joshua did.

There are many other instances of the people of God seeking one or a combination of these three quests. There was Manoah and his wife who were barren, and God gave them Samson. Elkanah and Hannah were barren, and God eventually sent them the great priest and prophet, Samuel. In the New Testament we have Elizabeth and Zechariah who were of old age and barren, and God sent them John the Baptist. These three were all primarily seeking a son. Another instance of someone seeking a wife is Tobias, son of Tobit, who was given Sarah, and God protected Tobias from the demon who had killed all of Sarah’s previous husbands. Almost all of the faithful people of God were seeking to continue to live in the Promised Land, live in the Promised Land in freedom, or they were seeking to get back to it. The quest for the land is perhaps the most universal and constant.

How does this relate to the first man and woman? I say that God gave the woman to the man as wife, but He put them through a test saying be fruitful and multiply but do not have relations. They were to live as brother and sister like Joseph and Mary did, but they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they had relations and conceived Cain. So Adam was on a quest first of all for a child, and to get that child, he sought a wife in a way that God had forbidden him. In this respect, he was seeking both a son and a wife. He was seeking to preserve his life, and in so doing, he received emptiness, nakedness and death.

Did Adam and Eve have a quest for the land? It is commonly understood that they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. I say that the Garden of Eden as the Garden of Delight refers more to the man and the woman themselves. God gave planted many “trees” in their garden/bodies, especially the tree of life/the heart and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil/the generative powers. As God’s garden of delight, they were united to God. The Garden of Eden is a symbol of the Promised Land which is a symbol of heaven. Heaven is union with God. After they fell and lost sanctifying grace, the life of God in their souls, they lost that union with God, and so, in that sense, they were kicked out of the garden. They were created as temples of the Holy Spirit, and they ended up as empty vessels of clay. From that point forward, all humanity seeks that original unity with God our first parents had. That union with God that we all seek, whether we know we are seeking for that or not, that union with Him is symbolized in the quest for the land. In the land we have a home, and that home is for God.

All of our desires as humans can be reduced down, at the core, to this desire for union with God. Everyone, deep down, wants an unending, complete and total communion with the divine being. That is how God created us when He made us in His image and likeness, and that is what we are all looking for. Most of us think something else will make us happy, such as money, pleasure or power, but that is a fleeting shallow happiness. The quest for a spouse is tied up with this desire for union with God. God is meant to be our primary spouse, and in heaven we will all be married to Him forever; we will no longer have a human spouse. The quest for a son is tied up with these other two quests. True love is meant to be fruitful, and in our love for God, we want to bear fruit. Mary loved God so much and trusted in Him completely, and she bore the Son of God. You and I bear fruit for God when we love, trust and obey Him with the good deeds that flow out of our heart.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Canaan Stole Shem's Promised Land

Continuing the discussion from two days ago, Ham attempted a takeover of the family by sleeping with his mother, and Canaan was the fruit of his action. Noah curses Canaan, and then he blesses Shem in the very next verse: “Blessed by the LORD my God be Shem;
and let Canaan be his slave” (Genesis 9:26).

The blessing is a big deal; later, we see Esau and Jacob doing whatever they can to get the blessing from their father, Isaac. Shem gets the blessing, and then we no longer hear of the blessing until 290 years, ten generations, later when Abraham gets blessed by Melchizedek saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth” (Genesis 14:19).

Melchizedek is probably not a person’s given birth-name but a title-name. The letter to the Hebrews says of him that, “He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace” (Hebrews 7:2). So if Melchizedek isn’t his birth-name, who is he? Hebrews is not arguing that Melchizedek had no genealogy but that he did not have the correct Levitical genealogy required to be a Levitical Priest. The argument is about which is the enduring priesthood, and the answer is the bread-and-wine priesthood of Melchizedek.

Since Melchizedek is someone other than Melchizedek, and he is someone who possesses the blessing, could he be Shem, the last one we heard about who was blessed? Shem lived 210 years after the birth of Abraham, so he was around.

I’ll tell you what I think. Shem was blessed and given the inheritance, but the Canaanites and the Hamites continued to try to take over his inheritance. Shem’s descendants moved away to avoid the conflict, leaving Shem mostly on his own but still the king of Salem. Shem’s inheritance, the land promised to him, is taken by the Canaanites and becomes known as the land of Canaan. The land of Canaan is really Shem’s rightful inheritance stolen by Canaan and his family.

Abraham is called back to this land by God to retrieve it for God’s chosen people. As soon as Abraham defeats the four kings who had defeated the five kings in that region, becoming a sort of king of kings in what later will be called Israel, Melchizedek comes out to bless him. When Abraham reasserts authority over his family’s rightful inheritance over against the Canaanites, it is then that the ultimate family father, Shem, comes out to pass on the family blessing and inheritance. Abraham comes to set his people free and to regain the lost inheritance, and so he is blessed and made the new head of the family of God by the former head, Shem.

The Promised Land was controlled by the Canaanites because they had usurped it from Shem’s family. Abraham reasserted his familial claim, and so was made the family’s new head. This is all symbolic and a representation of the battle between humans and demons. The demons are jealous of us and seek to keep us from our God-given inheritance, heaven. The Promised Land is one of the strongest symbols of heaven, and through the disobedience of our first parents and the deceit of the devil, we lost our inheritance.

We have been trying to regain it ever since; this is represented in the Old Testament by the continual quest for the Promised Land. Abraham was the first one to reclaim it; David is the next one to get peace from his enemies round about, and then God makes a covenant with him promising that one of David’s descendants will reign on his throne forever. Jesus is the fulfillment of these prefigurements, for He definitively retakes heaven and opens its doors for all who are united to Him.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

"I am the Immaculate Conception"

Blessed Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception!

A few years after the Church, over 150 years ago, declared that Mary was the Immaculate Conception, Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette in France telling her: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” She does not say, “I was immaculately conceived,” but, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” No other human person can say this. Jesus is fully human and divine, but He is not a human person; He is one person, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, to which He has united two natures: a human one and His divine one. Jesus, in His divinity, was not conceived for He proceeded from the Father; his humanity was immaculately conceived, but His divine personhood has always proceeded from the Father. Properly speaking, Jesus cannot say, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

The night before Saint Maximillian Kolbe was taken away by the Gestapo to his eventual death at Auschwitz where he offered his life in place of another, He received a new insight into Mary and the Holy Spirit; it was the last thing he wrote. He said Mary is the created Immaculate Conception and the Holy Spirit is the Uncreated Immaculate Conception. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and in that way could be said to be conceived. One of the titles of Mary is Spouse of the Holy Spirit; Maximillian said that as they are both Immaculate Conception, Mary is an image of the Holy Spirit in a way similar to spouses who look like one another.

The grace for Mary to be the created Immaculate Conception came through the Redemption Jesus won on the cross; Jesus saved his mother from the stain of sin when He created her, making her the Immaculate Conception. His Redemption, the center and focal point of human history, opened the treasure chest of graces, so to speak, and He used those gifts to redeem His own mother whom He created. She, then, becomes the New Eve who passes the test and acts as a true rib protecting the heart, protecting the tree of life, encouraging her Son to trust, love and obey God even to the shedding of His blood on a tree.

Jesus, being God, obeys the Ten Commandments perfectly; as such, He would obey the fourth commandment, too. He would obey and honor his parents perfectly, both His Heavenly Father as well as His human parents, Joseph and Mary. Of course, Joseph and Mary were perpetual virgins, and this virginity was the test God gave them to see if they loved and trusted Him to the point of death (for virginity was considered death). There reward for eating of the tree of life in their acceptance of virginity was to become the parents of the Son of God and of the entire human race. They were rewarded with the very thing they gave up. We know that Mary was the true mother of Jesus; I think that Joseph, too, was, in a certain way, the true father of Jesus. We call him the foster father of Jesus so people don’t think that Jesus was conceived in a carnal way, but in the spiritual realm, Joseph is more a father to Jesus than I am to my five kids because Jesus was given Joseph by God when Joseph gave up that which he desired most on this earth: a child.

Since Jesus perfectly obeyed the fourth commandment, Mary had a certain authority over her Divine Son. If she had asked or demanded Jesus to not die on the cross, that might have been a problem for His fulfilling the fourth commandment. To a degree, Mary had to allow Jesus to suffer and die an ignominious death; at any time along the way she could have approached Him and ordered Him to call on legions of angels to deliver Him and instantly annihilate all His enemies. She didn’t do that. She stayed close by His side, encouraging Him along the way to lay down His life for His beloved.

Since Mary had already suffered her own crucifixion when she accepted perpetual virginity which usually means not having children, since she had already not put her trust in the powers of the body, she was able to be the rib and encourage Jesus to give up His entire body on the tree. As the beginning of the betrayal of Adam began with a kiss in a garden after the beloved consulted with the enemy, so the beginning of Jesus’ betrayal began with a kiss in the garden by one of his beloved friends who had consulted with the enemy. The first betrayer was Eve, and the second was Judas. The New Eve, Mary, does what both should have done and trusted in God for life and given up the body of her husband. Eve clung to Adam’s body and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the New Eve ate of the tree of life, clinging to God, and allowed her spiritual husband, Jesus, to offer his body unto death on the tree. Eve ushered in death for all her children, the human race; Mary ushered in life for all her children, the human race.

On this great feast day let us call upon our Mother, the Rib, to protect our heart, to protect our tree of life, so that we may always trust and obey God and be ready to lay down our life for our beloved. Mary always leads us to imitate her Son; she always leads us ever closer to Jesus; she is always ready to help us, when we ask her, to avoid sin; she is our mother, and her primary desire for us is to be there for us to encourage us to pick up our cross and follow Jesus to our very own crucifixion. Fully entrust yourself into her loving, motherly arms in a special way this feast day, and she will make sure you reach your destination—the Promised Land of Heaven.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Children of God

Yesterday I discussed how we need to be born again since our first birth didn't work, so to speak. This point is a major theme in the Gospel of John where he introduces it in the middle of the prologue or introduction to his gospel: "He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:11-13).

By receiving Jesus into our hearts and making it a fit home for Him, we become children of God. This process of receiving Jesus is formally begun when we enter into His death and then rise with Him in our baptism, and we deepen that union with Him at every worthy reception of Him in the eucharist. Each reception of Jesus in holy communion is made more fruitful the more we open our hearts to Him through a life of daily, continual prayer and deeds of charity to our neighbor. And the more we receive Him well in that most powerful event of this life, the better we pray and life out our faith. True children of God live the life of God, live a life in union with and imitation of our crucified Savior.

Before being reborn as God's children, we were originally born as children of men. John says we were born by the bloods of man, the will of the flesh of man, and the will of man; what do each of these mean? Our translations say "blood," but the Greek is the plural "bloods" which refers to the bodily fluids that result in conception. Jesus the Son of God was not born by any sexual union and exchange of bodily fluids, nor are we born again by any sexual union or by bloods. The will of the flesh refers to the sexual desire for union; again, being born of God involves no such sexual union. The will of man refers to the desire to have a baby, and so the couple comes together to accomplish that goal; when we are born from above, however, it is God who wills that we are made a new creation, and He is the one who gives us new life.

We are born, the first time, because of the abilities and desires of a man and woman. This birth makes us a "son of man" (to use the biblical phrase). A son of man has lost his inheritance as Esau sold and despised his inheritance to his younger brother, Jacob. Our ultimate inheritance is heaven; thus, the gates of heaven are closed until Jesus opens them through his death and resurrection. As a son of man, we have no hope for full union with God.

God's solution for his wayward, adulterous bride is to send His Son, who called Himself the Son of Man, to save us sons of men. As Saint Athanasius said, "The Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men might become the sons of God."

The next question I would like to venture into is to discuss exactly how Jesus makes us God's children; it is related to why Jesus dies as He does and what baptism actually does for us; it is also related to what exactly our problem was to begin with and how Jesus' acts and works are the precise antidote to our ailments. Tomorrow I will venture further down this path.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.