Aiming Higher
The Depths of God
We were made for Heaven. You are not made for purgatory. So skip it! You are aiming too low. Aim Higher, aim to become a saint; nothing less will make you truly happy!
Listen to the Prayer of St Paul for you in Ephesians chapter 3
This, then, is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name: Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God. Glory be to him whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine;
Keeping Order
Most people who reach heaven will go through Purgatory because they had their loves out of order while on earth. We love things of this world more than God. We love lesser things more than the greatest thing - God. We need to be reminded of the hierarchy of loves:
1. Superficial natural goods:
a. Coffee,
b. The beauty of the human body,
c. To be appreciated by others
2. Profound natural goods:
a. Physical goods, nutrition, sleep, exercise, safety, security…
b. psychological,
c. friendship,
d. knowledge,
e. achievement,
f. beauty
3. Divine Good – Union with God, sharing in His Life
We need all of these, but we must keep them in order.
Striving for Living Water
We must keep the good things in our lives in order. If we Love the lesser things less and Love the greater things more and we gain Virtue which is a rightly ordered love – then we are purified of disordered loves and we will experience infused prayer, contemplation, the beginning of Heaven on Earth.
· If we love lesser things more than God, and we die this way – then we are stupid, because now these disordered loves will still have to be purified in purgatory.
· So why settle for less? Why not drink of the living water, experience Heaven in this life.
· Its up to you – what do you really want? I want to drink of the Living Water here. I hate layovers!
Becoming a Saint
The infallible means to become a saint is to practice daily meditation and a resolution and you can do this through the Rosary.
Each day set aside time to Read or Listen to something from the Word of God, Scripture, Tradition, or the Magisterium. As soon as something profound strikes you – stop reading.
Reflect or Think about what struck you
Try to understand what you read
Apply it to your life
Draw practical conclusions for yourself
Talk over all of this with Jesus in your mind and heart
Resolution
· Choose some concrete and practical thing to remember from your meditation to put into practice that day.
· If you practice meditation and a resolution every day, you will grow in your desire for God and the habit of choosing Him. If you don’t, you will grow in your aversion for God and you will choose sin and reject God. Now you must choose!
Pain and Order
Pain, sorrow and suffering are some of the most beneficial things to help us become Holy and skip over Purgatory because they help us put our loves in the right order and strip us of our disordered loves. Suffering can be our greatest help to reach heaven sooner, that is, if we suffer well, meaning with trust, faith, hope, love and cheerfulness!
John of the Cross We must then dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig we will never find their end or their limit. Indeed, in every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides. For this reason the apostle Paul said of Christ: In him are hidden all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God. The soul cannot enter into these treasures, nor attain them, unless it first crosses into and enters the thicket of suffering, enduring interior and exterior labors, and unless it first receives from God very many blessings in the intellect and in the senses, and has undergone long spiritual training. All these are lesser things, disposing the soul for the lofty sanctuary of the knowledge of the mysteries of Christ: this is the highest wisdom attainable in this life.
Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross. Saint Paul therefore urges the Ephesians not to grow weary in the midst of tribulations, but to be steadfast and rooted and grounded in love, so that they may know with all the saints the breadth, the length, the height and the depth – to know what is beyond knowledge, the love of Christ, so as to be filled with all the fullness of God. The gate that gives entry into these riches of his wisdom is the cross; because it is a narrow gate, while many seek the joys that can be gained through it, it is given to few to desire to pass through it.