More Verses: Why Believe in Jesus

Jesus introduced us to His oneness with the Father.  He explained if we remain in His word, we will have truth and will be set free in His truth.  Now Jesus describes the difference in our lives when we remain in Him, as He is light and truth, to the problems and blindness resulting when we do not remain in His light.  We experience the effect of spiritual and temporal sluggishness and blight when we do not remain in His love. 

John 11:9-10 Jesus answered, 'Are there not twelve hours in a day? If one walks during the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.'

Next Jesus tells us that if we believe in Him, we will live even if we physically die.  When we believe in Jesus, believe He is the Son of God, one with the Father, and that we can remain in His love, physical death loses its sting.  Any deaths from the temporal world cease to affect us when we believe in Him for we then remain in His love and obey His commands.  What difference, then, if we are alive or dead in this world, as long as we are in Christ's love forever?

John 11:25-27  Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, will never die. Do you believe this?' She said to him, 'Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.'

John 11:40 Jesus said to her, 'Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?'

What more could be given than to see the glory of God?  The glory of God will unfold in unique and individual ways for each soul who remains in Christ.  Just believe in Him, obey His commands, remain in His love.  God is love.  Glorious!

John 12:35-36 Jesus said to them, 'The light will be among you only a little while. Walk while you have the light, so that darkness may not overcome you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of the light.'

And again, Jesus explains what occurs for those of us who believe in Him as well as the Father, the one who sent His Son into the world.  When we see Jesus, we see the Father.  (One Christmas a priest said all he wanted was to see the face of God.... Believe in Jesus, believe in the Father, obey His commands, remain in His love.  We will see the face of God.  Is His face infinite love?)

John 12:44-50  Jesus cried out and said, 'Whoever believes in me believes not only in me but also in the one who sent me, and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me. I came into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness. And if anyone hears my words and does not observe them, I do not condemn him, for I did not come to condemn the world but to save the world. 

Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words has something to judge him: the word that I spoke, it will condemn him on the last day, because I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. So what I say, I say as the Father told me.'

Jesus pleads with us to believe in Him!  He so desires us to understand what He is telling us.  And what He says, he qualifies, is not just His own words, but the words of God the Father who sent Him to speak to us, on earth, in these words we now have in holy Scripture.  If we do reject what Jesus is asking us, explaining to us--if we do not observe and do as He asks, Jesus does not condemn us.  No, but His very words that we rejected and did not observe, obey, will be our own condemnation!

Believe in Jesus Christ and God the Father!  Believe all these words that Jesus speaks, for His Father has sent Jesus to save our souls, to lead us through this world's life by His Light, and on into eternity.  Believe what Jesus says, obey His words. Remain in Christ's love!

Verses Augmenting "Remain in My Love"

The following verses from the Gospel of St. John, augment Jesus' words to us: Remain in my love.   [New American Bible: The Catholic Study Bible, Second Edition]

John 6:56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.

Catholics are quite familiar with Jesus' words that caused no small amount of questions among His disciples, the Scribes, and the Pharisees.  What does he mean, "eat my flesh and drink my blood"?  The disciples closest to Jesus believed even if they did not quite comprehend.  When others departed Jesus in their disbelief, others of His followers remained with Him. 

We Catholics know the reality of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. The consecrated Host is His Body.  The consecrated wine is His Blood.  By receiving the Eucharist--Jesus' loving sacrifice of Himself to us--with belief, Jesus clearly states here that we will remain in Him and He in us.

John 8:31-32  Jesus then said to those Jews who believed in him, 'If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'

Jesus here explains to those who believe in Him, that if we remain in His word, we will be truly His disciples, will know the truth, and will be liberated by the truth.  His is a spiritual truth and freedom that surpasses any bodily freedom, and that is why any of the martyrs are able to express the truth of Christ and exemplify tremendous freedom in love when they were being tortured and killed.  

Jesus is the Word of life.  If we remain in Him as Word but also remain in His word, meaning also what He has spoken to us--believing and comprehending, we will be truly His.  We will experience the kind of freedom that Jesus experienced in His earthly trials, as well as the freedom of spiritual truth now and forever.  How can this be? 

John 10:30b   'The Father and I are one.'

John 10:36-37  'I am the Son of God' ...so that you may realize that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.'

If we remain in Jesus, believe in Him, eat His flesh and drink His blood, Jesus leads us to the reality that He is the Son of God, that the Father is in Him and He is in the Father.  This is another truth, bringing us to glimpse the transcendent love that transforms our souls.  Jesus gently explains the loving relationship of God the Father with Jesus the Son of God.  Their oneness is what we are invited into: Remain in My love.

Key Verses for "Remain in My Love"

These are the key verses for "Remain in my love."  In the next posts will write and discuss additional verses that augment what Jesus says about remaining in His love.  But some have asked where in the Bible can we read that Jesus says: Remain in my love.  As for the Gospel Rule of Life in the Order of the Present Moment, it actually can be encapsulated and lived in John 15:9 and John 15:12.  This is it.  Live it.

John 15:9  'As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love.'

John 15:11-14  'I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you [15:12]. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.'

Remain Defined.

The word remain means: to continue without change of condition, quality or place.  We remain in Christ's love changelessly, because His love is effulgent, changeless, infinite.   

Remain also means: to stay or be left over after the removal, departure, loss or destruction of others.  We remain in Christ's love, we stay in His love after the removal, departure, loss or destruction of vices and sins.  

Remain also means: to be left as still to be dealt with.  Remaining in His love is on-going, forever, and this flows into the final definition: to endure.

Someone expressed concern.  What if I forget about remaining in His love, or am not aware?  Not a problem.  Once we desire to remain in His love (perhaps tired of the yoke being difficult and the burden heavy, or love-sick for Christ),  we simply tell Jesus we want to remain in His love.  We ask Him to let us remain in His love, always.  

Christ's love for us is infinite.  His love is eternal.  Once we desire, ask, and become aware, we will remember.  How?  Well, once we begin to experience the actual effects of remaining in His love, we will dislike not being in His love.  We will experience the difference.  Truly.  

If we sense drifting from His love, or discover some unloving thought trying to gain entrance into Christ's love where we now remain, all we must do is tell Him: Jesus, help me remain in Your love!  I want to remain in Your love!  This is simple, is it not?

Sure, we get busy, but the awareness of remaining in Jesus' love will be augmented by the graces, and we will come to delight in remaining in His love to the degree that we will not want to ever leave.  And we do not have to leave.  Nothing can separate us ever again from the love of God.  Remain in His love.  His love is so powerful. 

When we remain in His love, we remain touching His love in all other souls who remain in His love, such as the Virgin Mary, angels and saints who remain in His love in the Beatific Vision.  When our remaining in His love touches their remaining in His love, the love magnifies beyond all telling.  When we remain in His love and other souls here on earth remain in His love, if but one or two of these souls gather (don't even have to be in the same room or town or state) and pray in His love, the love is magnified.

So no, we will not forget to remain in His love.  Once we have desired, asked, and practiced even briefly the awareness and reflected upon the sheer, simple, reality of remaining in Christ's love, we become one with Him in His love.  If we desire, pray and remain, nothing can separate us from the love of God. 

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:38-39

Remain in His Love Epidemic

Am receiving phone calls, visits, and e-mails from embodied souls who grasp to desire, ask and simply remain in Christ's love.

This is powerful.

Two college students with struggles, older people, anyone.  Non-practicing Catholics, Protestants, anyone may receive the healing that is within His love when we remain in His love.  With a wordless prayer, the healing love touches their souls and those of many in vast numbers.

Am praying now, in His love, for a young woman who is going to evening Mass, and is excited to ask Jesus to shower Him with His infinite love for her, as she wants to remain in His love forever.  

Have been reading today, and fielding calls and questions, yapping explanations to people about remaining in Christ's love.  Some are passing this good news on to others, once they pray and practice and receive immediate results.  Of course!  Why not?  Jesus tells us He wants us to: Remain in My love.

Need to get some garden work done and trash out.  Experiencing a first head cold, while remaining in His love!  Fascinating.

Still working on finding pertinent Scriptures, plus will be writing out the promises Jesus makes, the benefits, the graces, the supernatural consequences of our remaining in His love.  His love transforms souls, and souls are the Body of Christ of which He is the Head.

Psalm Sings Remain in His Love

Am working on the Scriptures from Gospel of St. John in which Jesus expresses and explains: Remain in my love.  But this morning's Psalm in Office of Readings expresses the remaining, enduring quality of the Lord's love.

Psalm 107: O give thanks to the Lord for he is good; for his love endures for ever.

I consider the deeper conversion experienced in the span of one week, from being directed to be receptive to Jesus' love during Mass, to: remain in His love.  Then consider the infinite aspect of His love, when I remain in His love.  I remain in His love, and He is in the Father, and the Father is in Him, and the Holy Spirit dwells in them and dwells in me, and we are one. 

But that is not all. When I remain in His love, and am in the Father and the Holy Spirit and they in me, I am connected with all souls in the Body of Christ, living and dead, on earth, in purgatory, in heaven.  All that belong to Christ, given Him by the Father, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, thus belong to me...in His love.  And I belong to all of them. What His love fulfills, when I remain in His love, is astounding.

Last evening I pondered how peaceful it is to remain in His love, and all the years that I did not comprehend how simple to remain in His love.  Details of all the turmoil and unrest could not even enter my mind other than as acknowledgment that I had been in unrest seemingly much of the time, over various injustices, situations, incomprehensible people and behaviors.  But no more.  If a situation arises in present moment memory, or in present moment activity, His love assuages, sweetens, any negativity or conflict immediately.  

Over the course of some moments, the reality glimmers:  remaining in His love means receiving the graces of His love, very much including His mercy.  This is powerful.  This is part of what Jesus meant when He explained that those who believe in Him and obey His commands, who remain in His love, will be capable of miraculous acts, just as He did.  

What can be more miraculous to one such as I who has been frustrated by frustrating situations and people even in the Body of Christ, His Church, than to remain in His love's mercy and understanding?  Miracle within my soul!

Psalm 107 struck my heart in His heart of love this morning, His heart wherein loves His Blessed Mother, and is one with the Father and Holy Spirit.  I must thank the Lord for His allowing me to remain in His love.  Any present moment that I sense am not, I simply remand: remain in My love.  He wants us to remain in His love beyond all telling.  If we desire and ask to remain in His love, and obey His commands, He assures us this loving union.

Let them thank the Lord for his love, for the wonders he does for men.

For he satisfies the thirsty soul; he fills the hungry with good things.

Some lay in darkness and in gloom, prisoners in misery and chains,

having defied the words of God and spurned the counsels of the Most High.

He crushed their spirit with toil; they stumbled; there was no one to help.

Then they cried to the Lord in their need and he rescued them from their distress.

He led them forth from darkness and gloom and broke their chains to pieces.

Let them thank the Lord for his goodness, for the wonders he does for men:

for he bursts the gates of bronze and shatters the iron bars....

Let them thank the Lord for his love, for the wonders he does for men.

Let them offer a sacrifice of thanks and tell of his deeds with rejoicing.

Some sailed to the sea in ships to trade on the mighty waters.

These men have seen the Lord's deeds, the wonders he does in the deep....

Tossed up to heaven, then into the deep; their soul melted away in their distress....

Then they cried to the Lord in their need and he rescued them in their distress.

He stilled the storm to a whisper: all the waves of the sea were hushed.

They rejoiced because of the calm and he led them to the haven they desired.

Let them thank the Lord for his love, the wonders he does for men.

Let them exalt him in the gathering of the people and praise him in the meeting of the elders....

Do you see this?  Do you see that even this one psalm of many psalms, of one scripture of His many words, that if we remain in His love we remain in His word?  We begin to understand in many ways foretold and then taught and explained by Jesus, that His word is truth, and if we but remain in His love, we become one in His love.  O the wonders he does in the deep! He leads us to the haven we desire!  

So I thank the Lord for his love, the wonders he does for his own.  I exalt him in the Body of Christ and praise him in His love, during Mass, in all Sacraments. Jesus assures His love as living reality in every present moment. Remain in My love.

Whoever is wise, let him heed these things and consider the love of the Lord.

                 

Remaining in His Love

Visited the Irish Da the other day.  He read from sections of Gospel of John, chapters 13-17.  I took notes.  Excitement increased with each verse, as we made connection with what Jesus is asking of us, bequeathing to us, for us.  As the Da exclaimed, I have read these chapters at least a thousand times in my life [12 years in seminary, 63 years a priest], and I'm just now understanding!  This is IT.

Yes, it is.  He got another translation and read some of the verses.  The words used thus far are remain, dwell and live.  I will check other Bible translations and editions, but we gravitated to Jesus' words: Remain in my love.  There is so much unveiled once we began connecting with the fact that Jesus is explaining how to have union with Him.  The Da kept exclaiming:  This is about UNION in Christ!

Yes, it is.  And more.  Jesus tells who are HIS--those who believe in Him, remain in His love, obey His commands: the Body of Christ.  He does state the condition: if you obey the Father's commands.  What are they?  Love God and love others.  Jesus also says that if you dwell [remain] in me and my word dwells [remains] in you.... He's talking about Himself as the Word, and as the Word of God, the Gospel message.  

He explains how we will have His joy in full measure, those of us who put our faith in Him, remain in His love.  He says that if we love Him we will obey His commands.  The Spirit will be in us and we will see Him, and He is in the Father and the Father in Him, and we in Him and in the Father [the Trinity here!].  He says if we do not remain in Him but are separated, we will have no power to do anything.  

There is much more, but we see the truth of what Jesus is giving us.  The Da illuminated with excitement.  This is so simple!  This is union!  Why haven't I seen it before?  Love is the key--remain in His love.  

So I said yes, it is simple, and maybe the only reason we were meant to meet one another over 15 years ago was for this very moment, to understand that Jesus wants us to remain in His love, and He makes it very possible to do so.  All we must do is desire to remain in His love, and to practice it.  

The Da brought out a clipping, something he read recently but had cut out the title and author.  But whoever it was wrote about the spiritual journey and the need for perseverance...and to aim for holiness.  Yes.  Why not?

 

The Da then exclaimed: God loves us!  He wants us so that He can love us!  He needs to love us!  And He wants our love, too!

Writing about a conversation is bland compared to two people grasping something so luminous and life-altering, yet so simple that even now it pales...other than exuberation in our telling Jesus we want to remain in His love always and that we will jump right in and practice remaining in His love.

This is a critical conversion whether or not we feel anything.  This is faith, to make the leap, begin now in the present moment to remain in His love.  I shared with the Da about the previous four days of daily Mass, and how already my total life, inside and out, was being transformed by grasping and practicing remaining in His love.  

Especially at Mass, I have learned that Jesus wants us to be receptive to His love and remain in His love.  When other thoughts come  to mind, they, too, must either be able to remain in His love or leave the mind.  

But what is more, I discovered that Jesus can and does transfigure  thoughts into His love!  Insights are given when we remain in His love.  The Blessed Virgin Mary remains in His love, and she instructs from within His love.  All of His Body who remain in His love, are with me and me with them, and all with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit when we remain in His love.  

Remaining in His love becomes actualized.  We learn that we may remain in His love in confession, in the Eucharist, in any sacrament, in His Word.  We may remain in His love while sleeping, eating, writing, worshiping, working, driving, praying, playing, conversing. 

I have written to my spiritual director whose divinely simple suggestion six days ago has transformed and transfigured my existence, empowering every present moment to remain in His love.  With each Mass since, the reality that I remain in His love sings silently in my soul.  Remain in My love....  Remain in My love....  Remain in My love.... 

Not only the Da and the Spiritual Director, also "Ruth" who visited from a distance, and now you who may be reading this, know that we must practice remaining in His love.  How?  Simply repeat that we will remain in His love, or even in the stillness of deep within, the words begin to breathe: Remain in My love!  Every now and then stop what we are doing, and say aloud or silently: O Jesus, I remain in Your love!

Two days ago I had an encounter with a holy person who says things that seem insensitive, makes slights, and runs hot or cold, off and on.  I was distressed, and I did not like this. It disrupted the flow of remaining in Christ's love.  

I then cried aloud, Jesus, I am not remaining in Your love!  Help me remain in Your love!  I finally had to lie down and silently ponder:  Remain in My love.  Soon, surprisingly, an insight came.  I am convinced it is from the Virgin Mary who remains eternally in His love.  I was shown that the person cannot help the behavior, does not even see it, but suffers from it all the same.  

There is something within to be healed, and I was given immense understanding and compassion. Faith, hope and love: there may be healing for the person, if I remain in Christ's love.  And can be healing for myself, if I remain in His love.  

So I remain in His love, and the person remains here with me,  as I remain in His love.  In fact, thoughts of any person or situation that previously caused distraction or disruption that now knock at the door of my mind, are brought in to the heart of love, by love, because it is in Jesus' love I remain.

The next effort is to begin finding all verses in which Jesus explains about remaining in His love.  This will help us all immensely.  We can learn these and let Jesus' words remind us, train us, grace us to embrace His desire to unite with each of us.  He is knocking at the door of our hearts, ever whispering, ever wooing the invitation: Remain in My love.