This title is a direct quotation from St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the saint who has accompanied me for most of my adult life.
He adds to the truth that we are all called to perfection. In the first of his sermons on the Song of Songs, he notes this: "Before the flesh has been tamed and the spirit set free by zeal for truth, before the world's glamour and entanglements have been firmly repudiated, it is a rash enterprise on man's part to presume to study spiritual doctrines....'an unspiritual person cannot accept anything of the spirit of God.'"
He, of course, is describing what I have been trying to teach on this blog for years-that unless we allow God to purify us, we cannot approach the intimacy with God He wants each one of us, while on earth, to know.
God calls us all to love, to "the gift of holy love, the sacrament of endless union with God."
In this union is the real renewal of our lives. How can we serve the Church without this renewal?
Again, there are too many worldly Catholics who have not allowed God to start the purgation, in order to make the hole in the heart for Him to fill.
I am starting the third series on perfection this week. This is the road we must all take now. The time for criticism and explanations of failures in the Church is over. I shall give warnings, but am backing off from the criticisms. We know what we have to do-become saints.
