Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us...
Romans, Chapter 8, Verse 35-39
35 What will
separate us from the love of Christ?
Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril,
or the sword? 36As it is written: “For
your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be
slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we conquer
overwhelmingly through him who loved
us. 38
For I am convinced that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, 39 nor height,
nor depth, nor any other
creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This is God’s
everlasting love for us. He desires that we seek Him for He never stops seeking
us. God created the heavens and the earth in seven days but at Christ resurrection
He recreated the heavens and the earth in His blood. This is the new creation
in Him, Christ our Lord and all who seek His love and mercy shall receive it.
2174 Jesus rose from the dead "on the first day of the week." Because it is the "first day," the day of Christ's Resurrection recalls the first creation. Because it is the "eighth day" following the Sabbath, it symbolizes the new creation ushered in by Christ's Resurrection. For Christians it has become the first of all days, the first of all feasts, the Lord's Day Sunday: We all gather on the day of the sun, for it is the first day [after the Jewish Sabbath, but also the first day] when God, separating matter from darkness, made the world; and on this same day Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead.
2176 The celebration of Sunday observes the moral commandment inscribed by nature in the human heart to render to God an outward, visible, public, and regular worship "as a sign of his universal beneficence to all." Sunday worship fulfills the moral command of the Old Covenant, taking up its rhythm and spirit in the weekly celebration of the Creator and Redeemer of his people.
Pope Benedict
XVI summed up joy of the church which families conformed in love should mirror “Doesn’t
the Church, with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the
most precious thing in life? Doesn’t she blow the whistle just when the joy
which is the Creator’s gift offers us a happiness which is itself a certain
foretaste of the Divine?” He
responded that, although there have been exaggerations and deviant forms of
asceticism in Christianity, the Church’s official teaching, in fidelity to the
Scriptures, did not reject “eros as such, but rather declared war on a
warped and destructive form of it, because this counterfeit divinization
of eros… actually strips it of divine dignity and dehumanizes it.”
Training in the areas of emotion and instinct is necessary, and at times this requires setting limits. Excess, lack of control or obsession with a single form of pleasure can end up weakening and tainting that very pleasure and damaging family life. A person can certainly channel his passions in a beautiful and healthy way, increasingly pointing them towards altruism and an integrated self-fulfillment that can only enrich interpersonal relationships in the heart of the family. This does not mean renouncing moments of intense enjoyment, but rather integrating them with other moments of generous commitment, patient hope, inevitable weariness and struggle to achieve an ideal. Family life is all this and it deserves to be lived to the fullest. Some currents of spirituality teach that desire has to be eliminated as a path to liberation from pain. Yet we believe that God loves the enjoyment felt by human beings: he created us and “richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy” (1 Tim 6:17). Let us be glad when with great love he tells us: “My son, treat yourself well…Do not deprive yourself of a happy day” (Sir 14:11-14). Married couples likewise respond to God’s will when they take up the biblical injunction: “Be joyful in the day of prosperity” (Ec 7:14). What is important is to have the freedom to realize that pleasure can find different expressions at different times of life, in accordance with the needs of mutual love. In this sense, we can appreciate the teachings of some Eastern masters who urge us to expand our consciousness, lest we be imprisoned by one limited experience that can blind us. This expansion of consciousness is not the denial or destruction of desire so much as it’s broadening and perfection.
Shemini Atzeret[3]
Shemini Atzeret (Hebrew: שמיני עצרת), means 'The eighth day break' or 'the eighth day of assembly'. It is celebrated preceding Simchat Torah and in some regions celebrated together with it. Services for this holiday often include a Geshem, prayer for rain.
Shemini
Atzeret Facts
Shemini
Atzeret Top Events and Things to Do
- · Pray for Rain. Shemini Azeret and Simchat Torah is often accompanied by prayers for the rain. The holidays are in the autumn, which is a critical period in Israel for harvests.
- · On Shmini Atzeret, it is customary for Orthodox Jews to spend an 'extra day with God' and postpone their return to work and to mundane tasks.
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