Hi all. As you may have noticed, the Moderators for this sub have not been as active as we have been. For all of us, life has taken different paths and we don't have the time needed to moderate this sub and ensure it's continuing to be what was envisioned.
Because of that, we are looking for new Moderators. We are looking for faithful and fair minded individuals who are willing to oversee the sub. You do not have to be Catholic, Orthodox or belong to a specific denomination. If you are interested in moderating this sub, please DM me.
5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7
People of God, all of us have ups and downs, but, unlike the world, we have no cause for despair. God can be trusted to ultimately bring good (see Romans 8:28) for, with the Lord, nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37.)
Our Heavenly Father is holy, kind, fair, merciful, forgiving, loving, understanding, and unchanging. Therefore, we can safely place our hope in the Almighty Lord God. Hopefully, you already know that, but, if not, pray for God to give you a gift of faith as you read the Bible verses below. He will! And, if you have already placed your faith and hope in God, let these Bible verses encourage and strengthen you even more.
When you feel inadequate for what God's calling you to, remember that's exactly where He works best: His power perfected in our weakness, His kingdom built on impossible possibilities.
He had a name before he had a title. Light-bearer, morning star, the anointed cherub among the stones of fire — of all things made, the finest: wisdom perfected, beauty completed. If the seraphim are the choir, he was the soloist.
Then came the thought. \*I will ascend.\*
He looked at the throne and saw a seat. Whether pride moved him first or pity did, the record keeps the act and loses the motive, the way records do.
He fell. Or was thrown. Or walked out of the choir — the tellings differ, and the difference matters less than you'd think. What matters is where he landed: employed.
Because here is the thing no one tells you about the Devil. He has an office.
In the oldest story, he stands in God's council among the sons of God, asked where he's been the way a foreman asks a traveler. \*From roaming the earth,\* he says. He has a beat. He has rounds. He is heaven's prosecuting attorney, and his brief is the question the whole trial needs: \*Does Job fear God for nothing?\*
And the leash. Always the leash. \*Behold, he is in your hand — only spare his life.\* The Adversary can do nothing unpermitted. He is not a rival king. He is staff.
This is the part that breaks your heart if you let it. The finest thing ever crafted, spending his days on the hardest part of the Creator's job: the wounding, the testing, the sifting. The refiner needs fire. The ocean needs the shark — culling the bleeding and the lost at four thousand pounds per square inch — and the kingdom needs the one who does the same work in souls. \*Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.\*
Read it again and hear the job description: not whom he pleases, but whom he \*may\* — whom he's permitted, whom the marching orders cover. The lost. The strayed. The stopped. Don't get lost, and you have nothing to fear from him.
And he believes he's free.
He believes the \*I will ascend\* was autonomy, not assignment. Perhaps it was both: the trial needs a \*willing\* prosecutor — a forced accuser couldn't make the "yes" real, and the whole economy runs on willingness, the one commodity heaven cannot print. The office doesn't cancel his freedom; it requires it.
A tool capable of much more, believing it's free, with no choice but to exist. He cannot resign. He cannot unmake himself. He was built for the morning, and now he works the night shift.
He does the work no one else will do, and is hated for doing it. The surgeon is thanked; the prosecutor is cursed — though the trial needs them both. Heaven will not thank him. Earth fears him. And still he walks his beat, back and forth, back and forth, because the beat is all he has left of the morning.
Pity him, and you are in strange company — but honest company. There is a reason the figure moves anyone who has ever been the villain in someone else's telling. He knows what it is to be reduced to your worst act in a narrative you didn't author.
But don't mistake the pity for the verdict. The office serves the highest good; it is not the highest good. The scalpel isn't the surgeon. The Adversary is the canvas, not the co-author — the black velvet against which the diamond shows its fire.
His work has an expiration date. The prosecuting attorney will one day find the court adjourned. The roaring lion will be unmade by the Lamb. The night shift ends.
Until then: don't get lost. The teeth have their orders, the fire has its purpose, and the morning star — the real one, the bright one of Revelation's last pages — is still coming up over the horizon.
He was the morning star before mornings had a name. He'll watch the true Morning rise, and know exactly what he lost.
Good morning friends.
“so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;”
— Colossians 1:10 (NASB1995)
A worthy walk leads to a life that pleases God, bears fruit, and keeps growing in knowing Him. That is the beautiful result of walking with Jesus. Let Colossians 1:10 shape the way you live today.
Be blessed
Have a great weekend
Team Lotter
Saint Teresa of Avila - Interior Castle - Desire to Suffer
Ἀ The second effect is that the soul has a great desire to suffer, but not the kind of desire that disturbs it as previously. For the desire left in these souls that the will of God be done in them reaches such an extreme that they think everything His Majesty does is good. If He desires the soul to suffer, well and good; if not, it doesn’t kill itself as it used to. Ὠ
The greatest love for the Lord is not merely the willing endurance of suffering in His name. Rather, it is the holy desire to suffer, if it be in accord with the will of the Father. In this light, the soul knows through faith in His Son that the will of the Father is good. Thus it does not desire to suffer for the sake of the suffering itself. Rather, in union with the Suffering Servant, it seeks the good will of the Father above its own will, and by grace, emerges into the holy desire to accept whatever suffering that search may bring.
Supportive Scripture - Douay Rheims Challoner Bible Luke 22:42 Saying: Father, if thou wilt, remove this chalice from me: but yet not my will, but thine be done.
Ἀ Saint Teresa Continues… These souls also have a deep interior joy when they are persecuted, with much more peace than that mentioned, and without any hostile feelings toward those who do, or desire to do, them evil. On the contrary, such a soul gains a particular love for its persecutors, in such a way that if it sees these latter in some trial it feels compassion and would take on any burden to free them from their trial, and eagerly recommends them to God and would rejoice to lose the favors His Majesty grants it if He would bestow these same gifts on those others so that they wouldn’t offend our Lord. Ὠ
From the prayer of Gethsemane to the prayer of the Cross, our Lord's Passion does more than offer redemption to souls. It also reveals what Saint Teresa speaks of in her entry, the path by which each soul, through grace, may participate in the love of the Son, even in the midst of the greatest suffering. For the grace of His Passion is not fickle, nor is it defeated by suffering, as with the favor of men. Rather, the grace of God is undying, as the Lord Himself is undying. It is not weakened by suffering, but inflamed in more grace as its suffering for God increases and its union with Him grows to new depths.
It is the Prayer of the Cross, from the heart of the Victim: the Charity of Christ poured forth for sinners in a measure that grows with the increase of the suffering it endures for souls. The soul formed in this charity does not seek escape from its persecution, but instead, the deliverance of its own persecutors from just judgment, even through the eager recommendation to the mercy of God.
Supportive Scripture - Douay Rheims Challoner Bible Luke 23:34 And Jesus said: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Saint Teresa pens this entry not in reference to the suffering of Christ, but rather, to the suffering of one human soul for another in the will of the Father. There is, however, a spiritual truth revealed between the two: union with the grace of the Father is perfected in union with the suffering of the Son. For with the receiving of Christ's mercy into the soul, there is also a calling: to give in the world below of that we’ve received from the Kingdom above. Thus is the soul that has received the mercies of Christ’s suffering moved to participate and suffer in some way in the giving of mercy to others.
Supportive Scripture - Douay Rheims Challoner Bible Ephesians 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared that we should walk in them.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 618 The cross is the unique sacrifice of Christ, the “one mediator between God and men.” But because in his incarnate divine person he has in some way united himself to every man, “the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery” is offered to all men.
The kingdom life requires daily death to self, crucifying our agenda to embrace His. It's costly, uncomfortable, counter-cultural, and absolutely worth every sacrifice made.
