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Is it possible for us to be lifted up? Yes, it is!
Can we really experience God’s presence in a way that makes us feel we’ve found heaven on earth? Yes, we can! Scripture tells us that Jesus stands knocking at the door of our hearts, with an invitation: “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20).
So as we ponder the hope of being lifted up into God’s presence, let’s look at two key considerations: First, God’s love is tangible; we can feel it. And second, if we want to be lifted up, we have to learn how to sense the presence of the Lord—and it is not all that difficult!
It’s Tangible. When we talk about being lifted up and experiencing God’s love, we are describing something that is invisible. We…
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It is such an utterly and dramatically different world inside me and outside me now. All these years it has been Him who has been with me, but only in retrospect do I know this. Even when I was far away from Him, I was still longing though lost, confused, and rejecting. In all my sins, my superficiality of religion, and my haughty vocation of philosophy- though brilliant and engaging as the world of philosophy truly is and not without its participation in goodness - He waited for me enenthough I was not consciouslly waiting for Him. At the rigtht convergence of events and of my inner heart and mind, He came to me powefully, so real and so palpably. He has revealed Himself to me and showed me things so powerfully that I am forever changed. I am His! Yes, He has and does lift me up. Slowly over several years He raised me up quite specifically - Oh! how He did! - by calling me into the Catholic Church. He, that is the Holy Spirit sent from the Father by virtue of the Glorified Christ, raised me up then and each day thereafter He abides with me during the day. His Presences can come so richly to me and to you because He has allowed me and you the grace to see what the human intellect alone surely can not see. and to embrace the all important primordial truth of the Church, namely, the presence in time of the eternal Incarnation given now to us who accept it without reservation - His actually presences in Liturgy and quite literally His presence in Scripture ( it is Incarnated also! ) and thus He is able and desires/intends continullay overtime to tranform us and continually to lift us up into Him. Praise God!
Iwall,
Thank you for your comments. Your words so aptly mirror many of the thoughts/feelings I’ve been experiencing over the past few years of my journey into Catholicism. (thoughts I didn’t have adequate words for.) Your comments about all the different aspects of Christ’s presence are very encouraging.
You seem to regret your vocation in philosophy. Actually one of the things that led me to Catholicism was the study of philosophy. (Peter Kreeft and C.S. Lewis playing a major role.) I’m definitely not an expert, but I don’t think true philosophy can exist apart from its participation in goodness. I believe philosophy leads us to discover truth, and the source of all truth is also the source of all goodness.
Oh no, I indeed love my vocation in philosophy. But I now know it lives only off grace and goodness imparted to the human spirit from the Glorified Christ. For I believe the Holy Spirit inspires and works his way anonymousy, so to speak, into other literary and artistic genres including so called secular writings. So I continue to love to study and teach philosophy as well as Scripture and theology… even more so. But there was a period in my studies where I began to “see” the impossibility of GOD - talk, that is, the concept :God: . as a concept seemed utterly beyond any coherent determinate concept- candidate - as with Wittengenstein, A J.Ayers, and more recently Donald Davidson who all argued as master linguistic philosphers, that the very notion God is non -sense. But I also was drawn back to more traditional arguments for God especially that of Kant - that God at least MUST be postulated - even the arguments of Descartes and Anselm which to this day still should be read and mediataed upon… as well as St Aquinas 5 ways. Currently I believe the case can me strongly made against all atheist arguments including Dawkins, namely, that it is now - in view of the discoveries of astrophysics and subatomic physics - intellectually bankrupt not to arrive at an agnostic position as minmum. I could expalin further but not now. And with my specialized thesis work on American Philosopher Richard Rorty, now deceased, I began to see that his professed atheism in no way prevented his rich elaboration of a most penetrating anaysis of our culture’s ills and that his conclusions and suggestions are very Christian! The most important thing for me now however is the nature of mystery that is the Christ as Incarnation/Mystery and His continuation in visible sacramental form as Church. Mystery must be the starting point of all genuine philosophy and religion. We as Catholics hold fast to the mystery of the Incarnation. It falls, the Church falls, and the universe falls. The Incarnation is the temporal presence of the eternal God manifest as the God-man invading if you will, suffusing himself, and thus altering and opening the human possibility of being mutually available to each other, that is, the Incarnation as God-man by virtue of his humanity, has thereby made it possible for every single human being to make saving contact with divinity-in-time ( this is another similar term for the hypostatic union) through His humanity! Such God-human contact is omnipowerful, converting, uplifting, and salvific! It is grace all the way down. This efficacious human contact , this mutual availability between the human race and the God-man made a reality because of His perennial glorified humanity, occurs until the very end of this our temporal realm So it’s all about the Incarnation as the periennial, eternal and present human bodily Incarnation of Christ, invisible to us humans now because He is glorified in heaven, but He has made Himself visible to us in a most human and loving sacramental form, that is to say, the Glorified Christ continues to love and contact us in human appropriate ways throgh His humanity from heaven : He is made sacramentally present to us by His using visible earthly things - the sacraments! and most primordially contacts us by Church. It is utterly joyous, humbling, and evocative of great love by the human upon realizing that the Glorified Christ has adapted His Glorified Humaniy in heaven so as to continue to show forth His human loving and saving contact with us of His Church! Mind blowing and heart swelling. Tears of joy and repentance. And not only the visible forms of efficacious contact we call the sacraments and Church, there is that vast dimension of His Holy Spirit speading over the deep waters and land masses of the world and especially concentrated and honed in the Church, the perrenial Pentecost emanating from His Glorified Humanity the Holy Spirit which so sweetly lures us more into Him, prompts us, remembers for us, gives spiritual insight, consoles us and convicts us, helps us pray, helps us interpret scripture as Jesus interpreted it Himself and as Church interprets it. Actulaly I am beginng a book that concerns the manner in which, from a neurophysiological perspective, how the Holy Spirit and Scripture-as-spirit dramatically alter our neurosynapses and neurocircuity thus changing our beliefs and desires.Drawing us deeper into Christ. So let’s praise God Almighty to the ends of the earth for His loving wisdom in having sent His Son as human body/spirit and the continued mystery of His living now in heaven and on earth, dwelling vibrantly in Church /Sacrament, still turning His human face and gestures of love towards us in sacrament and scripture.
Iwall,
Good, I’m so glad you haven’t given up the studying/ teaching of philosophy. I learn so much simply from your comments. As I said before, you elaborate so deeply on these little snippets of truth I’ve been learning recently. I’m assuming you’re writing the book you were referring to. I’d love to read it when it’s complete. I fully desire to have the understanding/passion for the incarnation and presence of Christ that you seem to have.