Preparing to participate in the reign of God means laying aside our own schemes for building our little kingdoms and organizing our worlds the way we would like them to be. To herald the coming of God’s kingdom means confessing the provisional nature of our plans and welcoming the death of our private authority, our myth of “self-rule.” In Christ, disciples share in God’s reign, not vice versa.
Biographies of saints that get it right, Part 3 of 4
The lives of the saints are never mere biographies, because their real lives are hidden in Christ with God (cf. Col 3:3). To see these men and women as a saint means learning to see Christ’s beauty in their particular life. Perhaps no one is better suited to see a saint for who he or she really is than other saints. Some of these men and women even write about other their fellow members of the Church triumphant as a testament to Christ’s glory made present to and effective in the lives of those who have learned to love them.
In this third installment in a series on biographies of the saints, we examine two works about saints — one written by a saint himself (St. Bonaventure on St. Francis), and another written by one whose cause for canonization has begun (Dorothy Day on St. Thérèse of Lisieux).
Love Is Always Conditional
We want to say that love is unconditional. It seems right. It is equal parts comforting and challenging. It is comforting because if I am loved, then there is nothing I can do to lose that. It is challenging because in order to love, I have to will to be untroubled by obstacles. We do not want to say love is conditional because we fear submitting love to the twisted logic of relationship terrorism: if you do not meet my demands, I deprive you of what is good for you, or vice versa. We think of conditions as qualifications and we do not want to attach qualifications to love. So we say love is unconditional. But that is wrong. Love is always conditional.
The Wilderness Within: Pope Francis, Moses, and Religious Liberty
Retelling the story of the American People as a story that began in the pursuit of liberty, that progresses in seeking this liberty for all, and that shall always be an ongoing project to secure liberty so that dialogue and peace may become its fruits, makes the story of the United States a story of religious liberty.