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"The First Circle"  by Chuck Payne

At the center of Christianity is not an idea,  but a person , Jesus Christ. “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved” (Acts 4:11-12). He is our only hope for glory, (Col 1:27). We need a deep, abiding, personal relationship with him. We need to acknowledge him as our Lord and Savior. But is that the whole picture? What about his Father? The Holy Spirit? His mother? The entire communion of saints? How do they fit in? To answer this question, we need to ask another. What precisely is Jesus the center of?

I believe that Jesus Christ is the center of a community of persons, the Family of God, structured around him. “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner?’” (Mt 21:42). John Paul II says that, “Only he can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Holy Trinity.” ¹

In order to delve more deeply into this wondrous mystery that is a marvelous mixture of natural and supernatural reality, I suggest a meditation on the Celtic Cross. The original designers of this cross used the circle as a symbol of eternity, but whatever else they had in mind, we can now use it to help visualize The First Circle of covenant relationships around Jesus the Son.

Let us begin by considering his divine relationships. God has gradually revealed that in the Most Holy Trinity there exist two equal but very different and distinct orders. The Father is the eternal source of the order of authority, personified by the Son. “I received authority from my Father” (Rev 2:28). God’s authority is based on the facts of reality, absolute truth. “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (Jn 14:6). According to this order, we should have a holy fear of him who is infinitely above us. “The beginning of wisdom is fear of the LORD” (Ps 111:10, Prov 9:10, Sir 1:12). “Do not fear those who kill the body; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt 10:28). We must have a reverent awe of God. In truth, he is not an object, out there, that we can take or leave. Rather, we are in him, like fish in the ocean.

If that’s all there was, we’d all be in trouble. But the second order in God is love, it balances out the first and vice versa. The profound lesson for us is that truth without love is not really truth, and that love without truth is not really love.

The Father and the Son are the eternal source of the order of love, personified by the Holy Spirit, who is the eternal source of unity. “Make every effort to preserve the unity that has the Spirit as its origin and peace as its binding force” (Eph 4:3). According to this order, Jesus could tell us over and over: “Do not be afraid” (Mt 28:10, Mk 6:50, Lk 12:32, Jn 14:27).

“And who is the Holy Spirit?” asks St. Maximilian Kolbe,

The flowering of the love of the Father and the Son. … The Father begets; the Son is begotten; the Spirit is the “conception” that springs from their love; there we have the intimate life of the three persons by which they can be distinguished one from another. But they are united in the oneness of their nature, of their divine existence. The Spirit is then … this infinitely holy “immaculate conception.” ²

Unlike fallen human persons who have conflicting minds and wills, the three divine persons are of one mind and one will and they love each other as one in eternal self-donation. Each one completely fills the other two. What one does the whole God does because of their infinite, indissoluble unity.

The upper left part of the Celtic Cross symbolizes for me these divine relationships. The top vertical beam symbolizes the Father, the left horizontal beam, the Holy Spirit, and the center, Jesus the Son. The Son is coequal with the Father and the Holy Spirit from the perspective of the inner life of the Holy Trinity, but from our perspective, he is the center of everything.

God the Father chooses to relate to us through the two divine orders, his authority (truth), in the person of the Son, and his love, in the person of the Holy Spirit. “May God send his truth and his love” (Ps 57:3). “O Lord, you will not withhold your compassion from me. Your merciful love and your truth will always guard me” (Ps 40:11). He never forces his authority or his love on us, however. He offers them to us. We too should never use authority like a club, nor force “love” on anyone. “Rather, let us speak the truth in love and grow to the full maturity of Christ the head” (Eph 4:15).

Lucifer (“bearer of light”) is one of the greatest creatures God made by nature . After God created the angels, although they were in a state of glory, his Divinity was not manifest to them face to face until they merited such a favor by obeying his divine will. ³ He first tested them by the order of authority. Because he is their Creator, he commanded them to worship him. All the angels obeyed this command. The opposite seemed impossible. According to the order of authority, lower beings must serve higher beings. Lucifer and his followers have no problem with this. But their obedience was more from a sense of overwhelming compulsion than from a loving willingness to obey.

Then God tested the angels by the order of love. I believe that this is recorded in chapter twelve of the book of Revelation: “And suddenly a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon at her feet and twelve stars as a crown on her head. She was with child.” When the angels saw this sign of the woman carrying the God-man in her womb, they immediately understood that the order of love reverses the natural order. If love draws God to become a man, it clearly commands higher beings to serve lower beings. This means that those of us who have been given more, are called to serve more (Lk 12:48) .

This does not make sense to Lucifer. He has freely chosen to glory in his own dazzling gifts, attributing them to himself and loving them as his own (see Prov 16:18). In his disordered love of self, he boasts, “I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will be like the Most High!” (Is 14:14) . And so his eternal response to the order of love is, “I will not serve!” (Jer 2:20). He doesn’t believe in love. Therefore it is denied him. The very breath of hell is hatred. His name then became Satan (“adversary”). “And then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon ... Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky and hurled them down to the earth” (Rev 12:3-4).

On earth Satan does everything in his power to destroy love by replacing it with disordered love of self. His first victims were Adam and Eve. Through them sin entered the world. God then told Satan, “I will put enmity between you and the woman” (Gen 3:15). This explains his constant, insidious attacks on femininity. As we shall see, femininity is a human manifestation of the divine order of love, most particularly in the Blessed Virgin Mary. Then Satan boasted before the entire heavenly court, “When this woman appears on earth, I will crush her with my superior nature!” “You will crush her?” God replied, “I tell you, her heel will crush your head!” Satan was never able to conquer her or her Son in the slightest detail. Having failed to profit by the sign of the woman and her divine Son, he and his minions were conquered and crushed by it.

But what unspeakable joy this sign gave to the holy angels! This woman would please God infinitely more than the disobedient angels could ever displease him. “Then war broke out in heaven; Michael [“who is like God?”] and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven” (Rev 12:7-8). “ Jesus said, ‘I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky’” (Lk 10:18).

Satan cannot abide the fact that God has become a man and that his mother has been made Queen of heaven and earth, the greatest creature God made by grace, far exceeding all the rest of us put together. “God is unjust” he screams, “in raising human nature above the angelic.” “Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus” (Rev 12:17).

The lower right part of the Celtic Cross symbolizes for me the human relationships of Jesus. The right horizontal beam symbolizes Mary, and the lower beam Joseph along with those united to Christ. In the center is Jesus the Son. He has two natures, human and divine, which are in perfect union by virtue of his eternal person. In this life, we will never be able to comprehend the total permeation of God in man. “I am the vine, you are the branches” (Jn 15:5) . His Incarnation took place at the fullness of time (Eph 1:10;Gal 4:4).

In his letter, On the Dignity of Woman, Pope John Paul II writes that in the eternal plan of God, “woman is the one in whom the order of love in the created world of persons takes first root. This ‘order of love’ belongs to the intimate life of the Trinity, namely the Holy Spirit. Woman is therefore first in the created order to receive God's intimate life of the Holy Spirit.” ⁴

“And the angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God’” (Lk 1:35). The horizontal arms pointing to Jesus in the center symbolize this for me.

St. Maximilian tells us,

In the union of the Holy Spirit with her, not only do we have the love of two beings; in one we have all the love of the Trinity itself; and in the other we have all of creation’s love. Hence, in this union heaven and earth meet; all of heaven with all of earth, the totality of divine eternal love with the plenitude of created love. It is the true summit of love. ⁵

Mary is the plenitude of created love because she was conceived without sin and remained without sin. What is sin? “Every sin is a mockery of love, and God is love” Jesus said to Gabrielle Bossis in 1938. ⁶ Mary’s love was therefore absolutely pure; from the instant of her conception, she was wholly free from disordered love of self and entirely set on loving God.

In God’s plan, a child, while remaining a unique person, is a human expression of the love between his or her parents. When Mary leapt into God’s will with her “yes” (Lk 1:38), the totality of divine eternal love united with the plenitude of created love, and this union between God and man took flesh in her womb! She and her virginal husband, Joseph, named him Jesus (Mt 1:21 & 25) . That’s who Jesus is, fully Son of God and fully Son of Man, a human expression of God’s love for man. How can we possibly have a meaningful relationship with him without at the same time having a meaningful relationship with Mary and the Holy Spirit?

God invites us to participate in his covenant (marriage) with man through baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist, which make us other Christs. “Christ” means anointed with the Holy Spirit (Is 11:2). That’s who we are. We don’t just worship God in our way through prayers of praise and thanksgiving; we worship him in his way, every time we celebrate the Paschal Mystery–his suffering, death, and resurrection–in the sacred liturgy. The Cure of Ars once remarked, “All good works put together are not equivalent to the sacrifice of the Mass; they are the works of men, the Holy Mass is the work of God.” The Holy Mass has infinite value because it is the once and for all sacrifice of the Father’s only begotten Son, not repeated over and over, but made present to us as it is always present to him. It is the source and summit of the Church’s life, a meeting place between heaven and earth, a participation in the wedding feast of the Lamb. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood you have no life in you” (Jn 6:53). Proper reception of the Eucharist is the consummation of our covenant with God. We keep our commitment by cooperating with his grace in imitation of Mary who is “full of grace” (Lk 1:28).

Mary is the created Immaculate Conception, redeemed by Christ ahead of time. The original plan of the Father is reflected in her. Not by necessity but by mutual choice, her humanity is the willing instrument of the Holy Spirit, just as the humanity of Jesus is the instrument of his divinity. Indeed, she is a living image of the Holy Spirit. St. Maximilian says,

The Holy Spirit is in Mary after the fashion, one might say, in which the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word, is in his humanity. There is, of course, this difference: in Jesus there are two natures, divine and human, but one single person who is God. Mary’s nature and person are totally different from the nature and person of the Holy Spirit. Still, their union is inexpressible… ⁷

“We can say that Mary and the Holy Spirit are two persons who live in such union that they have but one sole life.” ⁸ The union of the horizontal beams symbolizes this for me.

Why do we join forces with Mary by consecration to her Immaculate Heart? Because by divine choice not only is she the Mediatrix of all grace, but she is also the channel for our love back to God. She is the new Eve, our spiritual mother. God chose to become man by uniting his Love with ours in the free union of Mary and the Holy Spirit. We participate in this union by giving ourselves to Mary, taking refuge in her Immaculate Heart, the Mystical City of God (Rev 21:2, 9-27; Ps 87:3) “a worthy dwelling place for God among men” (Rev 21:3).

The arches emanating downward from the upper beam symbolize for me the Father’s special relationship with the Holy Spirit on the one hand, and with Mary on the other. Mary’s relationship with the Father is unique among mankind, first because of her Immaculate Conception, second because of her absolute faithfulness and total submissiveness to him, and third because she is the human mother of his Son in time. That’s why she is such an effective advocate for us with our Father. He can refuse her nothing. She heard his Word and kept it. These are her two wings. “But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the dragon” (Rev 12:14). We can only escape the dragon with the same two wings. “Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock” (Mt 7:24-25).

The Celtic Cross helps us to visualize not only Mary’s unique relationship with each person of the Holy Trinity: Mother, Spouse and beloved Daughter, but also her divinely willed roles in our lives as Cooperator with the Son, Mediatrix of grace with the Holy Spirit, and our Advocate with the Father. She is the cause of our joy. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Lk 1:46-47).

The lower beam of the Celtic Cross united to the center symbolizes for me the Mystical Body of Christ with Jesus as its head, the Holy Spirit as its principle of unity and Mary as its mother. She who is mother of the head is certainly mother of the body. The role of the Holy Spirit in union with Mary is to draw us to Jesus, so that we can say, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20). The left and right arches emanating downward from the horizontal beams symbolize for me their continual assistance, without which we cannot become children of our Father in union with Jesus. “The proof that we are living in him and he is living in us is that he has given us a share in his Spirit” (1 Jn 3:24).

Although they had been with Jesus for three years, it wasn’t until after the Holy Spirit overshadowed them at Pentecost that the Apostles were set on fire and spoke out fearlessly. “I tell you the truth: it is for your own good that I am going, because unless I go, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I do go, I will send him to you” (Jn 16:7).

Saint Joseph is the first of all those with a fallen human nature to be drawn into The First Circle. He responded to God’s call to be both spouse of Mary and foster father of Jesus, and God’s call always comes with the grace necessary to carry it out. He was an extraordinary model of complete abandonment to God’s Providence. As we have seen, the humanity of Jesus is the instrument of his divinity, and Mary is the instrument of the Holy Spirit, Joseph is the instrument of the Father, who entrusted to him his two most precious treasures on earth: Jesus and Mary. How fitting it is then that he now entrust the rest of us to Joseph’s fatherly protection.

What’s wrong with fatherhood in our culture? Many flee its responsibilities, it is often abusive or self-serving, and frankly, our self-centered mindset finds authority distasteful. Abusive, self-serving authority is distasteful, especially when it constantly tries to control others. Nobody wants to be controlled. But God’s authority is always benevolent; he is never controlling, even to the point of letting us kill his Son. He respects our free will absolutely. He doesn’t lord it over us (see Mt 20:25-26). In fact, rather than clinging to his authority; he passes it on, first to his Son, who in turn passes it on to his Apostles. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (Jn 20:21) . The Father never imposes his help on us. We must ask for it. “Ask and it will be given to you” (Mat 7:7).

Our Father always seeks our greatest good. That is the key issue, and it is at the heart of the Good News. “So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love” (1 Jn 4:16). “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). The only thing that could ever cause us to find God’s authority distasteful is our disordered love of self.

While Jesus was on earth, he showed us the marvelous benefits of obedience to God by subjecting himself to both his fathers. “He was obedient to the Father even unto death” (Phil. 2:8). “And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them” (Lk 2:51). Joseph was a human image of the Father on earth. In his Apostolic Exhortation on St. Joseph, Pope John Paul II writes, “Saint Joseph was called by God to serve the person and mission of Jesus directly through the exercise of his fatherhood.” ⁹ Joseph’s fatherhood is a tangible reality to this day.

Catholic psychiatrists Baars and Terruwe speak of our need for affirmation:

Every child is completely dependent; left to himself, he is psychologically incapable of coping with life. He needs to be accepted and protected by someone else. Not until then will he feel safe and able to deal with life. The child must feel that someone is so concerned with him that he has been drawn, so to speak, into the safety of the orbit of that someone’s life. Only then is the void of the child’s dependency filled, only then is he in a condition in which natural growth and development can take place. ¹⁰

If we do not adequately receive affirmation as a child, we can spend the rest of our lives seeking it. Most of us seek it in the wrong places, in unhealthy relationships or in what we do. It doesn’t work. We end up in a constant state of defensiveness that prevents us from healthy growth. But, if we ask, God can put someone in our lives willing and able to provide us with healthy affirmation by loving us unconditionally . We must understand, however, that human affirmation by itself can only give us a good personality, emotional healing, not holiness. It’s possible to be very immoral with a great personality, and to be holy with a lousy personality. But a lousy personality can hinder our witness to God’s benevolence, and make it difficult for us to even care about others. That’s why we have an obligation to at least try to overcome our emotional immaturity and our addictions. “I don’t always expect you to be able to overcome your passions,” Jesus says, “But I do expect you to try.” ⁶ Sometimes in his divine wisdom, he leaves us in our weaknesses to keep us humble (2 Cor 12:7).

The order of authority demands humility before God. Humility is truth. The truth is that we are made from nothing and are therefore utterly nothing on our own. The order of love demands humility before our neighbor. It takes humility to serve. “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (Jn 8:32), free from disordered love of self so that we can be entirely set on loving God (see Deu 6:5), which draws us to love everyone else (see 1 John 4:20). That’s what we’re here for. Everything else is secondary. “Seek first the kingdom of God and everything else will be given you besides” (Mt 6:33).   

What we really need is to feel that God our Father is so concerned with us that we are drawn into the safety of the orbit (circle) of his divine life. He is the source of our being and we long to return to his arms. Some of us just don’t know it. But why does he “hide” from us? I believe it is because if we could see him face to face we would be so overwhelmed with his beauty and goodness that we would have to love him. What merit would there be in that? Like the angels, we must first merit such a favor by obeying his divine will, with his divine assistance.

If we cooperate with his grace, we will gradually come to realize that although our own parents have been less than perfect, their failings pale to insignificance when compared to the incredible magnitude of our Father’s benevolent care for us. “Even if my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take care of me” (Ps 27:10).

As hard as we try, what we do can never affirm us, but affirmation can empower us to do. And God’s affirmation empowers us to do good. When we do anything good, it is never we alone, and never God alone, but both working together. “Unless the Lord build the house, in vain do its builders labor” (Ps 127:1). “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5) . This is incarnational reality.

God doesn’t just love us as a group. All of his love extends to every one of us as if we were the only one he made . God is our Father, but each of us can also say, “God is my Father” (see Jn 20:17). Jesus said to Gabrielle, “Each soul is my favorite,” and, “Do you know who you are? You are my reason for tearing myself from the splendors of my Father and going to all the depths of human shame!” ⁶ (see Phil 2:6-8). My profound dignity comes from the fact that he “created [me] in his image; in the divine image he created [me]” (Gen 1:27). St. Augustine pointed out in the fourth century that my memory is a reflection of the Father, my intellect a reflection of the Son and my will a reflection of the Holy Spirit. ¹³ I am a reflection of the Holy Trinity. The sacraments of baptism, confirmation and Holy Eucharist make me like Mary, “a worthy dwelling place for God among men” (Rev 21:3). “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him” (Jn 14:23). I am reminded of this every time I make the sign of the cross.

Jesus is our way to the Father. “No one comes to the Father, but by me” (Jn 14:6). The lower beam meeting the upper beam at the center symbolizes this for me. God chooses to mediate his fatherhood to us, “For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). The Celtic Cross shows us that the mediation of Christ is itself mediated to us through many others. As he entrusted the infancy and childhood of Jesus to Joseph, he now entrusts the Body of Christ to him. In truth, God created every man to be a reflection of the Father on earth and to mediate fatherhood first to his own family and then to everyone else. God calls a man to give up his very life for his loved ones.

Just as a child needs both a father and a mother, so we need both Trinitarian orders. In our analogy of the Celtic Cross, clearly the vertical beams symbolize the masculine dimension of God’s relationship with us, while the horizontal beams symbolize the feminine dimension. “Can a woman forget her suckling child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Yet even if she forget, I will never forget you” (Is 49:15). Jesus is at the very core of both dimensions.

I believe God also wills that I allow myself to be governed by the two Trinitarian orders. The direct consequences of the original fall of Adam and Eve, however, has left me at war with myself. My emotions and my reason are at constant odds. I am capable of lusting after what I know is wrong. But, when my mind and my heart are in harmony, I have peace, a peace that he alone can give. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you” (Jn 14:27) . 

The affirmation of the Blessed Trinity is ours for the asking, through Jesus, Mary and Joseph—the crowning glory of the Church Triumphant. This is The First Circle . The second circle is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church on earth, the Church Militant. The Pope in union with the bishops is its God-given head. The Sacred Liturgy and the holy sacraments are its heart. Indeed the Church is our mother.

God has invested it with his own authority, even to the forgiveness of sins:

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Mt 16:18-19).

Jesus said to the apostles, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (Jn 20:22-23). What a marvelous gift the sacrament of confession is. When we hear the priest say “I absolve you from your sins ...” we get an answer back from God.

The Bible is the Word of God and we need to read it daily–especially the gospels–to let God speak to us. It has supernatural content, but it never claims to be the sole authority of truth. What has been the undeniable result of this claim? Disunity caused by endless human interpretations, all claiming to be from God. Disunity does not come from God. I am convinced that this unbiblical position results from the insidious philosophical error that underlies much of our modern thinking: human reason is the sole measure of truth. We think we are smarter than our Source! We end up living as if there is no God. Most of us just accept without questioning that scientific truth is more reliable than religious truth. In fact, the opposite is true. Religious truth comes from God. It is rock solid. We can continually delve more deeply into it. Scientific truth is constantly changing with each new discovery.

The Bible does tell us what the sole authority of truth on earth is: “But if I should be delayed, you should know how to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Tim 3:15). The Bible needs the Church guided by the Holy Spirit. It’s God’s way of insuring divine interpretation. “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

The arch between Mary and Joseph also symbolizes for me their holy marriage. Historically, the Holy Family is the source of the Church. Pope John Paul II says,

But whereas Adam and Eve were the source of evil which was unleashed on the world, Joseph and Mary are the summit from which holiness spreads all over the earth. The Savior began the work of salvation by this virginal and holy union, wherein is manifested his all-powerful will to purify and sanctify the family—that sanctuary of love and cradle of life. ¹¹

Truly, the Holy Church is the mystical extension of the Holy Family. Each of us has Joseph as our father, Jesus as our brother and Mary as our mother, they who are the living images of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is our Family. Some enjoy full communion with it, others only “a certain though imperfect communion,” as the Vatican II document on ecumenism puts it. ¹² “Once you were ‘no people’ but now you are God’s people” (1 Pet 2:10). “That they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (Jn 17:21). Jesus speaks of a divine communion that is infinitely more than mere human community. Salvation outside this Family makes absolutely no sense because it is precisely from being outside that we need to be saved! “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out” (Luke 13:28).

The third circle is the human family, the domestic church. “This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (Eph 5:32-33). In other words, let him submit to the order of love and let her submit to the order of authority. When these two orders are out of balance, all hell breaks loose, literally. On the other hand, mutual submission leads to mutual harmony. A husband submits to the order of love by learning to value it and deciding to do the hard work necessary to develop it in himself, even unto death. A wife submits to the order of authority by respecting it deciding to seek truth at all costs as given to us by God through his Son.

In heaven, there are no human families. “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Mk. 12:25). The second and third circles are but passing images on earth of The First Circle that empowers and enfolds everything about them. They are intermeshed and support one another like the two swirls at the bottom of the Celtic Cross. Made up of sinners, they are rather “messy,” and in great need of purification. Notice that the outer line of the Celtic Cross enfolds the swirls as if to roll them upward into itself.

The “box” between the swirls is pushed upward by them just as the souls in purgatory, the Church Suffering, are pushed upward into paradise by our prayers and sacrifices. The souls there have a joy unimaginable on earth, because they are absolutely certain of salvation. Their joy increases with each moment because it brings them that much closer to their heart’s desire. And even though they also endure suffering unimaginable on earth, they embrace it passionately because they now see its incredible purifying value. They are consumed with desire to be wholly freed from love of self and entirely set on loving God. So few of us achieve this on earth. “If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:15). “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mat 5:48) . We must be perfect before we can “fit” in paradise. Thank God for purgatory.

Jesus the Son saved us in a supreme outpouring of madly passionate love by his suffering, death, resurrection and ascension into glory. The entire Celtic Cross with Jesus fixed in the center symbolizes this for me. It shows me that the cross is God’s instrument for connecting time with eternity.

I believe that as long as we are on earth, we cannot have true, abiding, unconditional love without the cross. On the cross there is no room for disordered love of self. Jesus said to Gabrielle, “If there were any other way to draw you closer to myself than suffering, I would choose it.” Love without the cross degenerates into mere sentimentality (warm fuzzy feelings). Jesus has shown us that there are two sides to love: the emotional—love as a feeling (see Jn 11:33), and the volitional, love as an act of the will (see Jn 13:34). Although emotional love is an important part of mature love, we have little control over it. Jesus commands us to choose to love, to serve others, even when we don’t feel like it (Mt 5:44, Lk 6:35) . “What you do for yourself will be utterly forgotten. What you do for others will echo throughout all eternity.”

Love means recognizing the profound God-given dignity of every person and treating him or her accordingly. Love without truth is not really love. “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40). Love necessarily involves dying to self, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Lk 9:23 ). “On that day,” Jesus says, “how happy you will be if you have denied yourself to please your God, and how miserable you will be if you have lived only to please yourself.”

Make no mistake about it; the father of lies tries to convince us that those who embrace the folly of the cross are “mentally imbalanced.” “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18). The famous Catholic theologian, Scott Hahn, once remarked, “Jesus did not come to save us from suffering, but to make suffering saving.” Jesus has given suffering profound, eternal value, not in itself (that would be imbalanced) but in union with him as a radical act of love. “If you understood the value of suffering,” said Padre Pio, “You wouldn’t want anything else in this life.” I believe that the value of suffering derives from the value of a single soul, “you were ransomed … not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Pet 1:18-19).

We began by asking, “Is that the whole picture?” “When he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to the whole truth” (Jn 16:13). What is the whole truth? We cannot love one person of The First Circle, without loving all of them … without loving all those they love … without exception. We cannot possibly have a meaningful relationship with Jesus without at the same time having a meaningful relationship with all those of his heavenly circle. Prayer is simply conversation with them.

Before he ascended to his Father, he said, “And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (Jn 14:3). And what does he tell us about that wondrous place?

  They are all one through the bond of love. Their thought is one, their will is one, and they all love each other as one. Still—which is a far higher thing—they love me more than themselves or any merits of their own. Being lifted above self, they are wholly freed from love of self and are entirely set on loving me, in whom they also rest with fullness of joy. Nothing can turn them back from me, nothing can thrust them down from their glory, for being full of the eternal truth, they burn with the fire of an unquenchable love! ¹⁴

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^Endnotes

^{1.  Pope John Paul II, On Catechsesis [the teaching of religion] in Our Times, #5.}

^{2.  Manteau-Bonamy, Immaculate Conception and the Holy Spirit, “The Marian Teachings of St. Maximilian Kolbe,” (Franciscan Marytown Press, 1977), pp. 17-18.}

^{3.  For a detailed description of the fall of Satan claiming to be dictated by the Blessed Virgin Mary, see: Blessed Mary of Agreda, The Mystical City of God, (Ave Maria Institute, Washington, NJ, 1971), Volume I, The Conception, pp. 85-103.}

^{4.  Pope John Paul II, On the Dignity and Vocation of Woman , #29.}

^{5.  Manteau-Bonamy, p. 46.}

^{6.  He and I, Gabrielle Bossis, Daughters of St. Paul. Gabrielle claims that she heard the voice of Jesus and he asked her to write down everything he said.}

^{7. Manteau-Bonamy, p. 41.}

^{8.  Manteau-Bonamy, p. 44.}

^{9.  Pope John Paul II, Guardian of the Redeemer, p.16.}

^{10.  Baars, M.D., Conrad W. and Terruwe, M.D., Anna A. Healing the Unaffirmed, Alba House, New York,1976, p. 74, (emphasis mine).}

^{11.  Guardian of the Redeemer, p. 15.}

^{12. Vatican II, Decree On Ecumenism, paragraph 3.}

^{13. Saint Augustine, On the Trinity, book VIII, chapter 6, cited by Innerst, Sean, Catholic For A Reason, chapter VII, (Emmaus Road, Steubenville, 1998), p.152.}

^{14. Thomas A. Kempis, The Imitation of Christ.}  

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© 2007 Chuck Payne