– God loves us-
From Padre Pio writings:
… We are never done trying to improve our appearence. Indeed, all our efforts are direct towards improving the body and making it more and more beautiful. Less attention is perhaps devoted to the soul, which we may have treated as a negligible quantity. Well, then, if Providence has deprived us of our motive for neglecting spiritual things while we were busy improving our bodily life, God in his infinite wisdom has placed in our hands all the necessary means for the embellishment of our souls, even after we have disfigured them by sin. The soul’s cooperation with divine grace is all that is required to enable it to develop, to reach such a degree of splendour and beauty as to attract, not so much the loving and astonished gaze of the angels, but the gaze of God Himself, according to the testimony of Holy Scripture: ” The King, that is, God, will desire your beauty “. ( Ps 45:11) ( Letters II, 241)
From Padre Pio writings:
The Christianis raised up in Jesus at baptism. He is lifted up to a supernatural life and acquires the splendid hope of occupying a heavenly throne in glory. What an honour! His vocation demands that he aspire continually to the home of the blessed and consider himself as a pilgrim in this land of exile. The Christian vocation, I say, requires that we do not attach our hearts to this miserable world. The good Christian who really follows his vocation directs all his attention, all his study to securing eternal possession. He must look on the things of this world below in such a way as to esteem and appreciate only those which help him to obtain eternal things and must despise all things which do not help him to obtain what is eternal. ( Letters II, 243)
From Padre Pio writings:
The Christian, then, who has died and risen again with Christ by baptism, must invariably strive to renew and improve himself by contemplating the eternal truths and the will of God. In a word, ha must endeavour all the tima to reproduce in himself the image of the Lord who created him. Christian perfection obliges us to all this and the apostle exhorts us to act in this way, telling us with great wisdom that we ” have put on the new nwture which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator ” ( Col 3:9). But what is this new nature to which the apostle is referring here? It is our nature made holy by baptism which, according to the principles of sanctification, must live ” in righteousness and in true holiness” ( Cf. Lk 1:75) ( Letters II, 247)
Edited by Melchiorre of Pobladura and Alessandro of Ripabottoni
English Version edited by Father Gerardo Di Flumeri O.F.M.Cap. – Third Edition 2002 -
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