This is an interesting day since it is so totally secular, focused on the material gift giving and romance yet is founded on a Saints day. Odd mix! The Story of St. Valentine I’d say his story is one of willful holiness. 🙂 Another nice blog on St. Valentine. Anyway, Happy Valentine’s Day! … Continue reading
Category Archives: Willful Holiness
Our modern culture presses every person to conform to a relativistic secularism that demands every Christian compartmentalize their Faith so that it does not impact any aspect of their lives except Sunday worship services. We NEED to cultivate an attitude of Willful Holiness! Many Saints went their own ways in following Christ to the bafflement and even anger of the culture of their day. Many died martyrs deaths because they were determined to follow Christ even though it really paid off if you rejected him! They were bold in their willful holiness. Family and friends might with well meaning but … Continue reading
Saintly Examples The Saints were people who used their freedom to choose a path for themselves that the secular world and even the Church of their time found incomprehensible. These movers and shakers of the spiritual life were so willfully determined on the pursuit of holiness that they disturbed the people with whom they came into contact. Their success in living heroic virtue can be credited to God’s grace guaranteeing their freedom to use their free will and reason to decide what they wanted. In each case, their decisions led to lives of heroic virtue worthy of emulation. I read … Continue reading
God given Free Will is a marvelous gift. A godlike gift because it says of every human being that they, in the image and likeness of God, are free to live their lives so that the words, “I did it my way”, are true in ways that no other species on earth can say. Thanks to Adam’s and Eve’s sin, human nature is changeable and flawed. We are not automatically inclined to true Good. We do not automatically decide to follow God. This changeable nature means we must use our free will and our reasoning ability to decide who to … Continue reading