Above all else, God is Holy!

Love “wins”…., yes, but only when it’s holy.

Otherwise, it brings death!

Think of love as “what we give our heart to,” so, if we love what is empty or rotten, we end up with an empty or rotten heart…that kind of love doesn’t win!

The key question is what kind of love, and if you’re talking about God, you are talking about a love that is pure goodness and holy above all understanding.

In the end we will bow before God and proclaim not “…love love love is the Lord God Almighty,” but as it says in Revelation:

“…and day and night they never cease to say, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!’ ” [Revelation 4:8].

God’s love pours out as goodness without bounds BUT IT DOES SO from His HOLINESS. That goodness flows into all creation freely, and into us, but ONLY if we allow it to do so!

That means we must surrender “our will” to embrace “God’s will,” with a clear understanding that God’s will – and God’s Love – is HOLY.

Embracing God’s holy will demands righteous living from us.

Jesus many times made the point that it wasn’t what we said that counted in the end, but whether we did the will of Our Father in heaven!
He said that those who love him were those who were obedient to his commands, and those commands are commands to live holy:

“If you love me, you will obey my commandments. I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, who will stay with you forever. He is the Spirit, who reveals the truth about God.” John 14:15’16].

That’s the condition on receiving the Spirit: obeying to become holy.

We become holy to the extent to which we are obedient to God’s will, because God’s will is holy, making that our foundational “choice” in life, setting us on a path of righteous living as we sojourn forward toward an eternal heaven in a temporal, evil and corrupt world still under the control of Satan.

God’s Holy Spirit is life: It brings the “light of truth” into our consciousness when we live holy. giving us insights to discern what is good and true…it gives us awareness of what is “of God,” and what is not of God, but rather of the devil, lifting us out of the bondage and darkness of sin.

Now to the main point of this post.

We know we’re in the presence of God when we feel shame for sinning, or for even thinking about sinning.

Those living a life in the Spirit not only believe Saint Paul when he says “the wages of sin is death,” (as mentioned in today’s first reading from Romans), but EXPERIENCE a measure of the departure of that holy life when we sin and thereby distance ourselves from God.

But notice how St. Paul says “…things of which you are NOW ashamed…” implying that while living in sin, that shame was absent. Interesting. Why absent?

Because God’s Holy Spirit is rejected when a person turns their own will [“heart”, “desiring”…all the same] to satisfying and serving self: we can’t put our attention on self and God at the same time.

God’s Holy Presence giving spiritual life to the soul is not able to bring awareness of what is true and real by the person’s own choice in turning to sin and how that makes their attention unavailable to God’s Spirit.

If “God” is still mentioned in support of that life of sin that becomes habitual and permanent resulting in alienation from God’s Holy Spirit, it’s only as a “concept” in an elaborate mental self-deception, which we’re seeing now has become embedded in our entire culture with the association of divine goodness and God with love, but a love never defined as holy…it is not defined at all!

It used to be that society and it’s established cultural norms [not that long ago, actually] was itself a “conscience gauge” preventing people from so easily dispensing with “shame” for sin.

But as lawlessness becomes increasingly normalized as a form of pagan cultural life in our society and world, the very concept of “God” is perverted by this association with perverted “love”.

This “love wins” kind of love always remains undefined, but is understood to also encompasses and rest on a [1] belief in personal freedom without boundaries, and [2] socially-accepted individualism and a corresponding waning of a sense of the “common good,” so that no one interfere with another person’s decisions about any “boundaries”.

This “love wins” sloganizing fuelling the pagan movement of our day is an endorsement of a philosophy of the “primacy of the pursuit of ones own personal desires”, a collective endorsement of narcissism.

We all know that humans – especially when egged-on by the government and pressured by the entire culture – tend to seek personal pleasure and/or power when boundaries are removed, usually creating cultural chaos and social division [ looting is automatic now in cities whenever the power goes out]: these are not the things of God!

The things of God are Holy always… and pure… and entirely unselfish… reaching out to rescue, to build up and encourage others, to serve other people so as to help them meet their needs.

You’ll never hear a woke person talk about being “holy” or the importance of striving to be “pure of heart” [ie., “single-minded and constant in desiring only what God desires”].

Think about that for a minute… then read the attached reading from today’s liturgy.