CADRE Comments

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 53, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 54.] To this lynchpin people, at the heart of a world ready to hear the news, God will act, and send Himself, to be God with us, Immanuel. A great Light will shine in this wilderness, a light for all the chosens: for those whom God had told they were chosen, and for those still searching, and for those who have trudged or have flown past hope into outright despair; for the good men and women and children, such as they are... ...but most especially for the enemies of God--who are all of us, sinners. Within all the work God does, He lets us sinners have our own way, because He loves us too much to let us be something other than real boys and girls. But this produces a hideous disparity. It looks like God doesn't exist. It looks like God doesn't care. It looks like God is a monster. So what, if I say that God suffers, too!? That is a ...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 52, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 53.] I could follow Abram through his story--history or legend or both as we have it. But I would rather show, if I can, the intrinsic harmony underlying this odd and disturbing story--a harmony I could expect the general principles of, if I know enough of God beforehand to have some clue how He will work. So, I will go back instead to our nameless chosen ancestor of the knowledge of God, as if I did not already know to suspect his name. He may not get along very quickly with his knowledge--or more precisely with his learning. But it would be important to teach him that God works slowly, sometimes through channels seeming at first to be unprofitable. The lesson might be almost anything, so long as it is linked to the filling of a promise, in a fashion that this man, and people like him throughout the world in later history, could easily appr...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 51, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 52.] It is the beginning of a history--not of all humanity’s history, not of Nature, but of a particular story enacted by God, with us and for us, within the Nature we inhabit. God is beginning His greatest adventure: giving us hope in this life. For we --live-- in this life!--and God is committed to this Nature and to us, the synthetic persons He has molded, shaped, grown, begotten, within the womb of our mother. But quickly or slowly or some combination thereof, God will do it in His own time; for His purpose is not to provide some technical 'method of salvation'. Salvation from sin is a personal act, an act of God to co-operate with us as persons, and act of ours in response to the graces of God the Merciful and the Compassionate. But He wants people in this history, sooner or later, to know more about Him and what His love t...