St. Thomas on the Horizontal - Are We There With Him?

St Thomas on the Horizontal – Are We Also There?
 
Hello Everyone:

Today – the Gospel talks about St. Thomas and his doubts. We are all guilty of this. God’s Love which put Him on the Cross and made Him Rise on Easter Sunday is so great and such a mystery that it literally is mind-boggling. Many saints who have contemplated this love – claim that God loved us to folly. This is a great meditation for this time of Easter Season. What is love – do we really know? We hear that Jesus’ love is one we are to all imitate. Can we? Are we willing to give our lives? Do we give on a daily basis what is expected of us in our daily duty – to our spouse, our children, our neighbor – most importantly to our God!

Again, we will turn to Archbishop Fulton Sheen on love. I have never read anything remotely more beautiful than his words! – How those of us who love this man would love to just once sit and have tea with him and chat for four hours. He had incredible knowledge – yet where did this knowledge come from? He claims it is his daily Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament. It is the knowledge of the Triune God penetrating his brain while before the Blessed Sacrament. We now have the answer – are we too going to soak up these rays of eternal warmth and love in our visits to the Blessed Sacrament! Let us make an Easter resolution.

Here are some words from “Three to Get Married” by Archbishop Fulton Sheen. It is a book about marriage but it is filled with knowledge for man – to understand --- love.  Enjoy!

“The only really progressive thing in all the universe is love. And yet that which God made to bloom and blossom and flower through time and into eternity is that which is most often nipped in the bud. Perhaps that is the reason why artists always picture love as a little cupid who never grows up. Armed with only a bow and arrow in an atomic universe, the poor little angel has hardly a chance. St. Paul speaks of faith and hope disappearing in heaven, but love remaining forever! Yet that one thing that mortals want to be eternal is that which they most quickly choke before it has begun to walk. If a man came from Mars and had never heard of the greatest event in history, which was the birth of the Divine Love in the person of Jesus Christ, he probably could guess the rest of the story and predict His Crucifixion! All he would need to do would be to look at the way even the best of human loves are divorced, denied, mutilated, bartered and stunted.

But if love be what the heart wants above all things else, why does it not grow in love? It is because most hearts want love like a serpent, not like a bird. They want love on the same plane as the flesh, and not a love which wings its way from earth to mountain peak and then is lost in the sky. They want a love that, like Cupid, does not grow; not a love which dies in order to ascend, like the Risen Christ, Who accepts defeat and conquers it by Love. They want the impossible: repetition without satiety, which no human body can give. The refusal to surrender the horizontal for the vertical, because it demands sacrifice, condemns the heart to mediocrity and staleness. Love is no bargain., It appears so attractive, like the precious violin advertised at a low price, but one discovers that after one has it without much effort it is useless unless one disciplines himself to its use. The cross is a far better picture of what love really is than Cupid. The latter’s darts are shot in the dark in a moment when the heart least suspects it; but the cross is something one sees on the roadway of life a long time ahead, and the invitation to carry it to a resurrection of love is frightening, indeed. That is why the Sacred Heart has so few lovers. They want that cross streamlined, without Him, Who said: “If any man has a mind to come my way, let him renounce self, and take up his cross daily, and follow me”. (Luke 9:23)