He told them “you are the architects of your own moral, cultural and spiritual growth. It is up to you to freely welcome into your hearts, your intelligence and your life the patrimony of beauty, goodness and truth that has been formed down through the centuries and that has Christ as its bedrock”.
“It is up to you to further develop this patrimony, freeing it from the lies and distortions which make it unrecognisable and which provoke your distrust and disappointment”. Pope Benedict concluded “Know that in this difficult journey you are not alone, there are many close to you, parents, teachers and friends, but above all God, who created us and hosts our heart’s secrets”.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

AEVIA

First, we understand that God Himself is Beauty, and Justice, and Goodness, and Joy, and Peace, and Love, He is the sum of all perfections. And so God’s will is simply an expression of that divine perfection, and it shares in that perfection. So whenever we accept the will of God in our hearts, we are in fact filling our heart with something of the perfection of God. We are filling our heart with beauty, and love, and peace, and justice, and joy, and goodness.
AEVIA Reveals the Source

No matter where you are or how you feel, find something to be grateful for. Give thanks for life’s small miracles, for a smile, or a sunset or for any of nature’s wonders. Even if the only thing you can appreciate is your next breath, then give thanks for that. Slowly, let the appreciation grow inside you. Feel the heart open as your gratitude expands. Even the smallest spark of gratefulness, fanned with enough attention, can grow into a raging fire of appreciation.

Why do this? Because gratitude is a “pattern-interrupt”. It is impossible to be in fear or negativity when we are filled with appreciation. Try it, it’s quite extraordinary. Giving thanks centers us. Giving thanks brings us back into this moment. Giving thanks drops us into the heart and creates a natural detachment from the fluctuations of the mind.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

Praise God with your pen.
Praise Him with the creativity of your mind.
Let stories well up which glorify His name;
Choose words that guide children in ways of truth.
The Lord is your Theme and Climax,
Your Beginning and your End.
Give Him praise as you sit at your keyboard.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

Securely ensconced in my own merit and goodness, I eventually found myself in a position to be the creator of my own belief system and my own judge of what was right and good, or wrong and bad. From that position, I could safely live however I wanted to, and simply draw back from anything that judged differently.

Very soon, that position pitched me down into a dark and dreary place, as I made choices that my heart condemned, even as my mind excused them. I stayed there for decades, running from the God who wouldn’t let me do whatever I wanted to do. I was securely snared in my need for my own goodness, and I had to be utterly broken before my eyes could be opened to the freedom, truth and beauty to be found in surrendering my Good Person status in favor of living under Christ’s grace and mercy.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

The search for God, for truth, for feeling of being completely good — not the cultivation of goodness, of humility, but the seeking out of something beyond the inventions and tricks of the mind, which means having a feeling for that something, living in it, being it — that is true religion. But you can do that only when you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

I think we need to re-examine what it means to be “good.” Does God meet our definitions of good? Sometimes not. But if He is the author of goodness, then it is He that gets to define “goodness” – and it may be a bigger, more complicated answer than we’re capable of grasping. Sometimes we want “good” to mean “nice,” and I’m not sure it ought to. Is God safe? comfortable? tame? No. But good, yes.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

We see in others only what we believe is possible to be seen. We don’t see others with bird feathers or unicorn horns because we do not believe it is possible. So, if we think we see in someone else a character flaw, we must be honest with ourselves and understand that we believe God could create someone with a flaw. At the same time, we are believing that flaws are possible in ourselves as well. If we see someone with a disease, in lack, homeless, dead, it is only because we believe it is possible for these things to happen.

When we really begin to see the world and the universe as God sees them, we will only see what is eternally possible. We will only see the truth about God and all of His creation.

So, each one of us must check our thinking, our words, and our actions to be sure they are in line with God’s, to be sure they are divinely truthful. This is no easy task, but if we really want to claim healing and good in our lives, we must include everyone in the blessing. We must work to see everyone as good, useful, alert, alive, healthy, well, etc. Only then are we really acknowledging the truth. Only then are we at one with the Father.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

My friend is a good and honest man, sincere in his zeal to find truth. Perhaps a bit too zealous, for I fear that he is trapped in modernist assumptions about truth (assumptions that go back to Plato). But as we talked, we looked at how the many atheists seem to have two messages:

Religion is flawed;
We should be really, really angry about this!

The first message strikes me as good and valuable. Even though religion is notoriously resistant to criticism, any perspective that shines light on its failings can only help to further the cause of truth (not to mention goodness and beauty). While I may not share all of atheism’s critique of Christianity, as a Christian who sincerely endeavors to love God with all my heart, mind and strength, I owe it to myself to have as accurate an understanding of my faith as possible — including an understanding of how others see (and disagree) with it.

But it’s the second part of the message that leaves me cold. There’s a level on which choosing to react to religion with anger, rage, hatred, or any other strong passion is simply to give religion power over our lives. And since the main beef of the atheists seems to be that religion seeks to expand its power over people, allowing it to trigger strong passion is, ironically, to play into its hands. The atheist who is consumed with anger and hatred toward faith is, in a very real sense, in hell. Not a hell of divine punishment so much as a hell of his own making. And that, it seems to me, is pretty much useless.

AEVIA Reveals the Source