passion of God

Galatians 5:18-25; Ps 1 Those who follow you Lord will have the light of life; Luke 11:42-46


A brief from the pope on Sunday: "God can conquer the heart of a person who has many possessions and move him to solidarity and sharing with the needy, with the poor, to enter into the logic of the gift.


TOday is the feast of Ignatius of Antioch.  Ignatius was the Bishop of Antioch, 70-107 AD, today what would be located in Turkey. 

IT is in Antioch, as scripture testifies that the followers of Christ were first called Christians. 


As Eusebius points out in his Chronicles of Church History, Ignatius was moved from Syria to Rome where he become food for wild beast on account of his testimony to Christ. 


Here are a few words from St. Ignatius as he makes his way to martyrdom, "It is better for me to die on behalf of JEsus Christ than to reign over all the ends of the earth...Him I seek, who died for us: him I desire, who rose again for our sake...permit me to be an imitator of the Passion of my God."

Think about those words for a moment.

St. Ignatius reminds us that the central focus of our lives is not so much what we give JEsus or what we get from JEsus but JEsus himself, "to know him and to make him known."

Secondly, that desire is meant to spur us on to imitate the passion of my God.

Wow!  Think about the passion of God.

How can we imitate the passion of our God?
The passion of God is directed toward unity, reconciliation, mercy, justice.

St. Ignatius points out that together in union with our bishops, and priest that we all together become "a choir, that being harmonious in love and taking up the song of God in unison you may with one voice sing to the Father..."

This is why when so called "catholic" who refuse to stand with the bishops in regards to issues of life, and religious freedom, cause so much turmoil and disharmony, they are singing off key and out of pitch and thus the one song of praise to the Father gets distorted.

We must rediscover our unity and thus our passion and align ourselves with the passion of God.

In unity with the bishops we are able to crucify the flesh and truly live in the Spirit and follow the Spirit.