Selections for Meditation: One

This should be part of a series appearing on the websites eventually...

One

'Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him.'

1 John 2:15

'God shows the Soul also, that all the benefits bestowed on her by creatures (whether spiritual or temporal) are given because God moves them to it; and hence she learns to take no heed of creatures, what service soever they may have rendered her, for she perceives clearly that it is God who has done it by the action of His providence. By this vision the Soul is more and more inflamed, and finally abandons herself to love, casting aside all creatures, and finding in God such fullness that she can regard nothing else but him.'

St. Catherine of Genoa

'We are not created for this earth. The end for which God has placed us in the world, is this, that by our good works we may merit eternal life. "The end is life everlasting."'

St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori

'When you find your intellect occupied pleasurably with material things and becoming fondly attached to its conceptual images of them, you may be sure that you love these things more than God. 'For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.'

Scripture calls material things 'the world'; and worldly men are those who occupy their intellect with these things. It is such men that Scripture rebukes when it says: "Do not love the world or the things that are in the world. . . The desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and pride in one's possessions, are not of God but of the world."'

The self-indulgent person loves wealth because it enables him to live comfortably; the person full of self-esteem loves it because through it he can gain the esteem of others; the person who lacks faith loves it because, fearful of starvation, old age, disease, or exile, he can save it and hoard it. He puts his trust in wealth rather than in God, the Creator who provides for all creation, down to the least of living things.'

St. Maximos the Confessor

'Blessed is the mind which, during prayer, is drawn neither to the material nor to possessions.'

St. Nilus of Sinai

'For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life, which is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the concupiscence thereof: but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever.'

1 John 2:16-2:17