Do You Acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Really In You?

That is the test, St. Paul says.  If you don't acknowledge that, then you have failed the test.  He was writing to the Corinthians in his second letter explaining that backbiting, gossip, obstinacies, disorders come because others are not as we would like them to be.  This was another lesson that the Holy Spirit served up for me this week when I grabbed a few minutes to check out the Office of Readings last Saturday.  I had come off a week which seemed to have daily recurrence of the backbiting, gossip . . . . and that was what was sending me walking around the pond to detox from at least once a day.

Here are his words that spoke to me and may to you as well:

What I am afraid of is that when I come I may find you different from what I want you to be,

and you may find that I am not as you would like me to be, and then there will be wrangling ---
jealousy, and tempers roused, intrigues, and backbiting and gossip, obstinacies, and disorder.

Examine yourselves to make sure you are in the faith; test yourselves.

Do you acknowledge that Jesus Christ is really in you?

If not, you have failed the test.

Try to grow perfect.  Help one another.  Be united, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,

the love of God

and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Corinthians 12:14-13:13)

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Many of you have read the following from St. John Mary Vianney and probably as recently as his feast last Saturday, but it is so beautiful and touching and impactful that I wanted to spread this good news around too.  Bold emphasis is mine.

On Prayer

Man has a noble task:  prayer and love.

Prayer is nothing else than union with God.  When the heart is pure and united with God it is consoled and filled with sweetness; it is dazzled by a marvelous light.  In this intimate union, God and the soul are like two pieces of wax molded into one; they cannot any more be separated.

It is a very wonderful thing, this union of God with his insignificant creature, a happiness passing all understanding.

We had deserved to be left incapable of praying, but God in his goodness has permitted us to speak to him.  

Our prayer is an incense that is delightful to God.

My children, your hearts are small, but prayer enlarges them and renders them capable of loving God.

Prayer is a foretaste of heaven, an overflowing of heaven.  It never leaves us without sweetness; it is like honey, it descends into the soul and sweetens everything.

In a prayer well made, troubles vanish like snow under the rays of the sun.

Prayer makes time seem to pass quickly, so pleasantly that one fails to notice how long it is . . . . 

Once almost all my colleagues were ill, and as I made long journeys (to visit them) I used to pray to God, and I assure you, the time did not seem long to me.

There are those who lose themselves in prayer, like a fish in water, because they are absorbed in God.  There is no division in their hearts.

How I love those noble souls!  St. Francis of Assisi and St. Colette saw our Lord and spoke to him as we speak to one another.

How often do we come to church without thinking what we are going to do or for what we are going to ask. And yet when we go to call upon someone, we have no difficulty in remembering why it was we came.  Some appear as if they were about to say to God:  "I am just going to say a couple words, so I can get away quickly."  

I often think that when we come to adore our Lord we should get all we asked for if we asked for it with a lively faith and a pure heart.

That is my prayer for you dear reader, and for myself.

Dear Father please give all who read this and myself  a lively faith and a pure heart.  
In Jesus Name, 
Amen