Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:01 The task few weeks we've been considering how to make serious progress in life of Christ, identifying our predominant fall and then attacking it with a particular resolution particular exam, and which carries us from confession to confession and spiritual contract, which carries us from forbid communion to fervent communion. Today, let's back up just a little bit and take a broad look at how really amazing this life has this life of grace and to do that worse rye, especially on St Alfonse, it's the late great father Deon, but we do that. Let's quickly review that idea of the order of being, the way, the order of being. We've looked at this several years ago. It's a way of categorizing everything that is everything that exists all being. It's stretches from the very bottom rung of created being, which is nonliving matter, things like rocks, minerals, planets, and so forth, and it goes up through living, living creatures, plants and bacteria, animals, man, angels, until it reaches the summit in uncreated being, of course, the most busted trinity.
Speaker 0 01:15 So that's the order of being. Okay, put that aside. We'll come back to it. Now imagine we're out camping like in the grand Tetons or some place. We're up there buying the beautiful mountains and at night we lay out and look at all the stars. Now that clear mountain, they're on a dark night. You can see Chileans and Chileans of stars. It's really awesome, but all the stars and all the billions and billions of galaxies right here for the Milky Way to the very edge of creation. Every one of those stars, all of them are less far, far less in order to be in just one little clamp, but bunch dress there by where we pitched Jack in. Why is that? Why is just a little clump? A bunch grass bar, four creators in order of being than all the stars in the entire universe. Consent grass is alive, it's alive. Stars is burn there.
Speaker 0 02:16 The vast silence since it's space, but that little clump of grass, it's alive. They can grow, it can nourish itself and they can reproduce, but even though it's alive, it's life has limits. He can't just get up one day and moved from one side of the matter to the other to get blood or sunlight for its growth. It doesn't have that kind of life, but then along here comes a bull l grace on the grass that opal elk is a much higher order of life, much higher order of being than the grass. It's grazing on. It can do everything the grass can do. It can nourish itself, it can reproduce, they can grow, but it can also see and hear and smell and touch and taste and move around. It can move around from one side of the metal and another one side of the mountain range to another, but his life has limits.
Speaker 0 03:12 There's things that bull elk can't do. He can't decide, hey, this year during hunting season, I think I'll take a vacation in the Florida keys and maybe study some marine biology. That's not something about well can do. He doesn't have that kind of a life, but now here comes a hiker. He's much, much higher on order of being in a bull elk. He can do everything the plan can do, can taken nourishment, can grow, can reproduce himself. He can do everything that elk can do. He can see, hear, smell, taste, touch, move around. But because he's got a different life principle than the grass, cause he's got a different life principle than the elk. He can do different things. He can know he can will and just like the hike or we're all born with the same kind of life and that's just the problem. Why is that a problem father? Because this kind of life is not enough for us. It's not enough for us. Our life has limits. There's things we still can't do and the most seriously that is that we've been made to know and love and serve God in this life and to be happy for him forever. The next we've been made for that. That's exactly why we've been created and yet every bit of that is completely beyond our powers.
Speaker 1 04:44 All of it.
Speaker 0 04:49 We don't have that kind of life just as a clump of blue bunch grass doesn't have the kind of life principle with a power to move from one side of a metal to another. It's totally beyond the nature of grass to move around just is it. Bulldog doesn't have the kind of life principle with the power to take a vacation to the Florida keys or studying marine biology. It's totally beyond the nature of elk to go on vacation or to study anything. So also we don't have the kind of life principle to enable us to know, love and serve God in this life and to be happy with him forever in the next. It's totally beyond our nature to fulfill the very purpose for which we are made. It's completely beyond our abilities. If all we've got is the life we were born with, we're in trouble because we just can't get it done.
Speaker 0 05:48 We need another kind of life. We need another life prince. We need abilities beyond our human nature and far, far beyond her human nature. In order to know and love and serve God in this life could be happy with him forever. The next you already live in heaven. We need to have another kind of life, a life above our natural life. We need supernatural life and that's what our Lord meant when he said I came, that they may have life and have it abundantly. He means he came to give us supernatural life to give us sanctifying grace. It's a new kind of life, far beyond our natural life. Sanctifying grace changes our being. It changes the way we are. It gives us the ability to know and love and serve God in this life and to be had with him forever. In the next, we actually become adopted sons of God and most blessed the Trinity God, the Father, son and Holy Ghost comes to dwell and the depths of our souls when we have this kind of life, but he only dwells there by invitation when we're babies or godparents invited him in on our behalf when he reached the age of reason.
Speaker 0 07:06 We confirm the invitation, but unfortunately, just like Adam, we do have one natural power. With this respect. We have the power to withdraw that invitation at any time by a mortal sin and God will respect that and leave sanctifying. Grace is actually created share in God's own life. He places it in our soul to give us that new type of life, supernatural life. That's what Saint Peter's referring to in second Peter one four when he writes of us becoming partakers of the divine nature, partakers of divine nature. Let's stop and consider just a few implications of this. We saw that little comp, a bunch grass is far, far greater in the order of being in all the stars in the universe because it's alive and elk is far greater than the grass because it has a higher life principle and the hiker as far greater than the elk because he hasn't even hired pledged principle, right?
Speaker 0 08:06 Just think of the huge difference between his hiker in Iraq there that he's walking over. No scene man would compare the dignity of a man to that of a rock, but that difference is at least in a certain sense, measurable because both a man in Iraq or in the natural order of things, but the gap between a natural man and a supernatural man, a man in a state of grace is infinitely greater than the gap between that hiker and the rock unnatural man in the rock. It's in truly greater and immeasurable because one is natural and the other's supernatural. We don't see it, but this is an absolute truth and it's stunning when we think about it. Just for a natural man, our nature is closer to a rock than it is to the baby. In a state of grace, it's stunning. Partakers of the divine nature.
Speaker 0 09:08 Think of Jess, what it cost to give us this incredible thing. Navy, nothing last in the passion, death of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ on the cross. It costs the death of God, the son, the partakers of the divine nature. God has actually given us powers to do things far, far beyond our natural abilities. Things like getting to heaven or to take another example. We all believe there are certain men, let me take pieces of bread and whisper certain words over them, and that piece of that becomes a man and that man is God. We all believe that. We have to believe that to get to heaven, but we don't believe that by natural powers, no one can we be with that because we have a supernatural power. The power of faith to believe things that people without this gift of faith cannot believe only the supernatural.
Speaker 0 10:11 Now gift to faith can believe that no one else can. Parties in the divine nature see no fonts. It says quote out of innumerable creatures which he might've made. God has chosen you and placed you in the world again from the midst of millions of infidels in heretics. He's chosen to place you in the true church is made you a Christian and a Catholic. How many millions are deprived of the sacraments of sermons, of examples, of good companions and of all the other helps to salvation which are found in the true church and God has resolved to give all these great helps to without any merit on your part and even with a foreknowledge of your demerits. For when he thought of creating you and bestowing these graces upon you, he foresaw the insults which you would offer to him, partakers of the divine nature. How can we ever thank God for so great dignity Shana Fonts.
Speaker 0 11:24 It says, quote, God's given us a way of thanking him worthy by offering to him to use this and the mass and this way God is fully thanked and satisfied. One single mass, one single mass is more honored to God than all the prayers and penances of the saints. All the labors of the apostles, all the torments or the monitors and all the burning low of the sheriffs fan and of the divine mother have given him, or we'll give him close quote one single mass, and he allows us to offer the sacrifice <inaudible> not just once in a lifetime, but weekly and even daily partakers of divine nature. Once we get a glimmer of this incredible day to day to which we've been raised, we begin to get some idea of the absolute disaster mortal sin, which drives the supernatural life of grace from the soul turns the man into an enemy of God and the slave of the devil and puts him under eternal sense of forever in hell.
Speaker 0 12:47 See Pants Francis to sail says where the ancients capable of weeping. They should shed tears of pity at the side of a soul that commits mortal sin and loses the divine grace. But I see now fox, this points out the greatest ministries the angels would if it were in their power, weak and a sinner. Leaps. Not Okay, here's my divine nature because a soul in the state of grace has it created. Share of God's own life. It hasn't created share in God's own unspeakable beauty. See, Richard used to say that a man could not be holding the beauty of a soul in this state of grace without dying from joy. Saint Catherine of Sienna did survive after seeing us on the state of grace, but she said that she would willingly have given her life <inaudible> that soul from losing such beauty. In fact, in Catherine even used to kiss the ground I which priest walk because through them souls obtain this beauty that is worth dying for the grace of God, partakers in the divine nature.
Speaker 0 14:00 You know fonts, it says quote, the saints got in very little to give their life and all things for the love of soul loving, I god. How many noble men, how many princes have left relatives, riches country, and even kingdoms to shut themselves up in a cloister, in order to live only to the love of Jesus Christ. How many martyrs have sacrificed their life in order to best make summer term for the affection of a God who ty for their sake, can you? What have you done thus far for the sake of Jesus Christ who's died for you? Okay. What do you intend to do with the remaining days of your life, which God gives you? Yeah, you may love him. Close call. What have you done as far for the sake of Christ who's guide for you work you intended to with her name, days of your life, which God has given you that you may love him? Perfect Canadians take your resolutions, good confessions at the least, at the very least, pray for the grades to prefer losing your life. Losing such beauty has God has granted you and making you a partaker in his divine nature.
