Skip to main content

Jennifer Fulwiler

Life is hard when all of your time is filled with doing things for and with other people.

Life is harder still when all of your time is empty and alone, and you struggle to find something to do to fill that abyss in your life. To have what some might think is the ultimate freedom, the radical autonomy to be without any duty or obligation to others, is actually a taste of Hell.

To be with others who have need of you, need of your love, need of your self-giving, is the more authentic freedom, paradoxical as it may seem, because it is more true to our nature as human persons — we are made to love and be loved in truth, and it is in such truth that we are set free. We are free to be who we are made to be, social creatures made for fruitful loving communion with others in one being.

The further paradox, though, is that to fully love the other, to better love our spouse or our children, we must in a sense, put them second, not first. That is, we must love God first, before we love them. But in so doing, we do not love our family members less, but more. In loving God before we love them, God takes our love, multiplies it by His own, and gives it to the other in an even greater and fuller measure than we could on our own. In love, God is not a competitor, He is a multiplier.
-Jennifer Fulwiler
http://www.conversiondiary.com/2012/10/7-quick-takes-friday-vol-190.html
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Amelia Uelmen

Similarly, our common work to improve economic and social structures becomes less an act of problem-solving ingenuity on the part of those with resources or skills, and more an opportunity for a reciprocal exchange through which we discover all the ways in which we have been created as “gift” for one another. - Amelia Uelmen Caritas in Veritate and Chiara Lubich: Human Development from the Vantage Point of Unity
Post a Comment
Read more

Blessed Pope John Paul II

It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards 'having' rather than 'being', and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself. - Blessed Pope John Paul II Centessimus Annus
Post a Comment
Read more

Pope Benedict XVI

The invitation is to live every situation united to Christ, who takes upon his shoulders the whole burden of the world’s suffering and sin in order to bring light, hope and redemption. So it is that Jesus makes us capable in our turn of consoling those experiencing every sort of affliction. Profound union with Christ in prayer and trust in his presence, lead to the readiness to share in the suffering and troubles of our brethren. St Paul writes: “Who is weak, and am I not weak? Who is made to fall, and am I not indignant?” (cf. 2 Cor 11:29). This sharing is not born simply from kindness, nor solely from human generosity or an altruistic spirit; rather, it stems from the consolation of the Lord, from the steadfast support of the “transcendent power [that] belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor 4:7).  -Pope Benedict XVI, Address to General Audience May 30th, 2012 (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2012/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20120530_en.html)
Post a Comment
Read more