“Love in Human Form”

From Arcana Coelestia n. 4735:

The Lord’s Human, after it was glorified or made Divine, cannot be thought of as human, but as the Divine love in human form; and this so much the more than the angels, who, when they appear (as seen by me), appear as forms of love and charity under the human shape, and this from the Lord; for the Lord from Divine love made His Human Divine; just as man through heavenly love becomes an angel after death, so that he appears, as just said, as a form of love and charity under the human shape. It is plain from this that by the Lord’s Divine Human, in the celestial sense is signified the Divine love itself, which is love toward the whole human race, in that it wills to save them and to make them blessed and happy to eternity, and to make its Divine their own so far as they can receive it. This love and the reciprocal love of man to the Lord, and also love toward the neighbor, are what are signified and represented in the Holy Supper-the Divine celestial love by the flesh or bread, and the Divine spiritual love by the blood or wine.

Experiencing God

Just read a great article by Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit Priest, over at Huffington Post about experiencing God in moments of exaltation and clarity.  These are the two kinds of experiences that have been strongest in leading me to belief in the the Lord.  I particularly like the quote from W.H. Auden:

One fine summer night in June 1933 I was sitting on a lawn after dinner with three colleagues, two women and one man. We liked each other well enough but we were certainly not intimate friends, nor had we any one of us a sexual interest in another. Incidentally, we had not drunk any alcohol. We were talking casually about everyday matters when, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, something happened. I felt myself invaded by a power which, though I consented to it, was irresistible and certainly not mine. For the first time in my life I knew exactly–because thanks to the power, I was doing it–what it means to love one’s neighbor as oneself….My personal feelings toward them were unchanged–they were still colleagues, not intimate friends–but I felt their existence as themselves to be of infinite value and rejoiced in it.

It’s worth reading the whole article.

God Alone Acts

“God alone acts; man permits himself to be acted upon, and cooperates to all appearance as if of himself, although interiorly from God.” (True Christian Religion n. 588)