Rooted in Love

How is the Domestic Church to be built? How are the Living Stones of it to be built? How can we ignore this necessity in the present day? How can we not see its need?

I pray for the clarity of this point, and in this point that I too may make this plunge into the Deep. No, the jump is not soon for myself. The Truth doesn't change with the delay of timing—it remains Truth. Truth remains timeless as does Love because both are one in the same.

It is because both Truth and Love is at its heart Sacrifice, not vain sacrifice, but rather it must be sacrifice with purpose. Dying to oneself and picking up one's cross is senseless without purpose and so it must be there to be seen and experienced. Purpose must reside where sacrifice and, therefore, where Love and Truth exist. Therefore, the day of the Domestic Church and its fruition of its Holy Desire is to be rooted in love to the sacrifice of the glory of the Lord, in His Sacrifice and His Resurrection.

Where He places each one of us is not our own wills in isolation; it is His will anchored in our individual free will to choose His will for the greater good of our individual souls and the multitude of the souls of others.

I pray for my Beloved for these reasons. I must be purified for the glory of this union that prefigures the one to come in Heaven with Christ the Bridegroom and His Bride, the Church.

My love lifts up his voice, he says to me, "Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come.
For see, winter is past, the rains are over and gone.
Flowers are appearing on the earth. The season of glad songs has come, the cooing of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree is forming its first figs and the blossoming vines give out their fragrance. Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come." - Song of Songs 2:10-13

Anew has this Springtime come. Time has no place for this new springtime; the prefigurement brings the Reality to come to the very Ground we walk upon. We are on Holy Ground because He has made us and, thus, this ground Holy.

Patience in love endures all things. Love endures all things because He is Love. No tribulation extinguishes love because "perfect love casts out fear." We must remember this Truth. Love find its way. Through all things—Love finds a way.

I pray for the Little Ones for these reasons. We must first be purified for the glory of this gift, this glorious gift, of the blessed union to be. Fatherhood flows from the gift of adopted sonship with the Heavenly Father, Motherhood from the gift of the Fiat to Love Himself. The Little Ones are the glorious gift of this blessed union. They are the fruits of Love. They are the fruits on the Vine.

We are the Vine's branches; the Father is the Vinegrower. As Christ is the Vine and we the Branches, we are to transmit the Holy Faith of Ages Past, the Holy Faith in Christ Jesus. We must be the Vine's branches that unites the Little Ones to Christ and His Church.

We are called to grow the Domestic Church in all Her glory for the Love of Christ. For the Love of Christ, we are given to the Other. Love's fate is to fully give Itself: freely, fully, fruitfully, faithfully. Love must be transmitted for Faith and Hope to even branch out and blossom. Love must come first.

This is the Call—to love, know, and serve the Lord. Too often we get caught up in how, but the most important fact is that we must first be rooted in love. Faith and Hope can only supplement this one virtue, and—in the End—Love is all that remains.

This is where my heart and my prayer rests, for my Beloved and the Little Ones: let us first be radically rooted in love, to Love Himself, and all the rest will be added unto this. To be radical is to be rooted in that which you believe, as the 1350-1400 Middle English word came from the Latin radix, root. Let us be rooted in His love. Let us go to the Root of Love.

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you. Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.

"I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another." - John 15:1-17

Being Animated by the Holy Spirit

The greater the gift of self and the desire to give it, the more one wants to be out of the time and space of the moment. We are finite creatures in an infinite universe. Why shouldn't we yearn for this completion?

The trick then turns out to be making the present moment a result of that very desire to give that gift to the fullest. It is here that the motion from the first moment to the subsequent takes place and all is animated. As it is, to be animated is, by its very root, to be indwelled with the Holy Spirit. What more can we pray for? This indwelling lifts the moment from the static page and makes it a motion picture of grace. The moment multiplies. Time now takes shape and even starts to fly. The dimension which was static to the total gift of self becomes a movement along a divinely-willed plane. As it is, our Creator did not want us to be static but rather dynamic.

So when we forget why we are where we are, let us remember that this is only a stage, a place on the dimensional plane, that spans from the finite to the infinite. Our gifts are not wasted if they are being stored as they ought to be for the appointed time and place. Grace can never be wasted, so as long as we cooperate not just in one moment but the trail of moments that follow until the Spirit that dwells within these enfleshed temples of the same Holy Spirit parts with the souls who strive toward that holy desire of greater gift of self. For in the end, that desire that was put on the heart of the soul indwelled at conception will finally see the fullness of the desire complete; it shall see that restless heart's desire consummated. It shall see God face-to-face.