Just for Today, July 16

They are all one through the bond of love; they have the same sentiments, the same will, and all mutually love one another. For being elevated above themselves and drawn out of the love of themselves, they are wholly absorbed in the love of Me, in whom also they rest by an eternal enjoyment. Nor is there anything which can divert them from Me, or depress them: for being full of the eternal truth, they burn with the fire of a charity that cannot be extinguished.

In many there is ignorance, especially in such as being but little enlightened seldom know how to love anyone with a perfect spiritual love. They are as yet much inclined to such or such by a natural affection and hu­man friendship. But there is an incomparable distance between what the imperfect imagine, and what en­lightened men contemplate by revelation from above.

-Bk. III, ch. lviii.
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One of the greatest graces I have received this year has been to understand in all its implications the law of charity. I had never fully grasped Our Lord's meaning when He said: The second is like to this: thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Matt. xxii, 39). I applied myself chiefly to the love of God, and it was in loving Him that I learned the true meaning of these words: Not everyone that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven (Matt. vii, 21).

I learned what is the will of God from Our Lord's words at the Last Supper, when in giving them His new commandment He bade them love one another as He had loved them (John xii, 34). I began to study in what way He had loved them; evidently not for their natural qualities, for they were ignorant, and did not look at things from a supernatural point of view. Yet Our Lord calls them His friends, His brethren; wishes them to share with Him the kingdom of Heaven. He throws open the way to Heaven by dying for them upon the Cross, saying: Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John xv, 13).

-The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Âme).
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Adapted from Just For Today(©1943 Burns & Oates)
Nihil Obstat: Reginaldus Phillips, S.T.L.,Censor deputatus
Imprimatur: Edwardus Myers, Vic. Cap.