On Our Motives For Judging Others
COMMENT: You were talking yesterday about God knowing us and moving us and the importance of recognizing about another person that God is moving him, too. Could you say some more about that?
I guess it begins with the realization of what is happening here. If your whole life is a succession of acts which are motivated by your own judgment and your own objectives, that is to say, if you're not living by faith but by your own reason, you’ll judge others the way you judge yourself. But if you live a life of faith, as we are living here at Mt. Hope, then you realize from your own experience that even though the signs are to the contrary, when you say the name of Jesus, He is moving you to be loving Him, and therefore, you are good because of Him. You realize that when you live by faith. But when you live by your own reason, you become aware of deficiencies in yourself and then you say, if only I were this way or that way, then I could be good and God could love me. And you do the same with others; since you're reduced by that operation to a state of anxiety, the effort to be relieved of that anxiety causes you to look for evil in others so you can feel good about yourself.
COMMENT: All it does, though, is to make you feel worse about yourself.
You are trying to live by a goodness you don't really believe in: your own. Whereas if you live by the realization of God's goodness in you, then it is irrational to judge others, because you have no need to judge yourself. Or to be more accurate, you judge yourself as good only in Jesus. And so when you see, for example, that someone is doing something nasty, you don't say, that is the kind of person she really is. As soon as you do that, you cut yourself off from God, because you know if she's nasty, you're nastier! So it centers on the instinct of self-preservation, the instinct of supernatural self-preservation, which comes down to this, that if I look for evil in you, I destroy my connection with God Who sustains me. So you have to believe in the power of God which is relatively invisible, as against the signs of evil in you which are very real.
Unless you live by faith, you're going to be convinced all the time that you're not lovable, and since misery seeks company, you’ll look to see whether others are just as bad or worse. But if you're sustained by the goodness of God, you’ll judge others the way you judge yourself. That is the psychological part, but behind that is the mystical reality that God is actually moving you to communicate love for the other person, and you communicate that not by some kind of physical act, but by your whole way of treating him and yourself, so that the person knows in some kind of mystical way that you really love him.
COMMENT: That is extraordinary.
It is extraordinary in comparison with nature, but in the life of faith, it should be ordinary, according to the words, "Charity sees no evil." (Cf. l Cor 135) What is the meaning of those words if not what we're saying? Charity motivated by God's love doesn't look for evil, whereas false charity is a way of convincing yourself that you are charitable, that the goodness is in you. You're trying to communicate a goodness you don't even believe in yourself.
COMMENT: You’re looking for motivation to see goodness in yourself and evil in him.
If you see a person losing his temper, or catch him in an act of adultery, you can judge the thing wrong, but you can't judge the person. And if you live by faith you won't, because you want to see the person as you see yourself.
COMMENT: And how do I see myself?
By faith you see yourself as good in Jesus. At the same time, you're objective about the things that incline you to evil, but not in such a way as to deny your substantial goodness in Jesus. Another sign of this is joy, because you're united with your connatural good which is God; and if you're living like this, you're joyful. Also, you communicate that to others; since your joy is in God, it can't be exclusive.
COMMENT: Where does the suffering come in, then?
The essence of suffering is to take what you get. Suffering is not something you inflict on yourself; it's what God gives you and, therefore, if your joy is in God, your joy is in whatever He gives. So the joy and suffering go together. Jesus said, "Let this chalice pass," (Mt 26:39) but He also said, "Thy will be done." (Lk 22:42) The cult of suffering as such is morbid, because it is a way of contemplating your own suffering, which makes you feel like a victim.
And you're still contemplating your own goodness instead of the goodness of God. Remember in the movie “The Song of Bernadette” there was a nun who was tempted because she didn't see Bernadette suffering. "I want to believe," she said, "but I never see any sign of your suffering." Then Bernadette lifted her skirt and showed this terrible cancer of the knee; no one was aware of it because she never complained. Then the nun runs into the chapel, falls on her knees and says, "I didn't realize that one had to be chosen." One thing is sure, in the right state you’ll be suffering, but you won't be preoccupied with it.
COMMENT: In a sense, accepting yourself is both suffering and joy.
Accepting yourself the way you are is everything, because you're really accepting God as giving you whatever you have. You can see as a kind of a sign of this, even in the natural order, the fact that in a living organism the soul is in every part of the body - the whole soul. So my finger has life as well as my nose. Well, the supernatural life is in what happens each moment; the whole life is there in each moment. It isn't as though you're going to get this life by putting together a lot of moments.
COMMENT: So you live each moment as well as you can.
I think what it comes down to is living by faith instead of reason. And living by faith is not opposed to living by reason. When you live by faith, you're using your reason the way God moves you to use it.
COMMENT: And living by faith is peaceful. You're not always striving after understanding and certainty about everything.
Even psychologically, you would never get anxious, because you're sure of God's love. When you live by faith, you're living by what you get. But when you live by your own reason, you're living by what you want. And since your peace is contingent on getting it, you would have to be anxious. There is a story about a little boy whose family was very poor, and he was praying before Christmas to get a set of electric trains. But his mother was very worried, because she knew she didn't have the money. When Christmas came and there were no trains, she watched to see how he was reacting. "I suppose you're pretty sad because God didn't answer your prayers," she said. "Oh, no," he replied, "He answered my prayers. The answer was ‘No.’”
COMMENT: That is easy to accept right now, but I can sit here and say, I want whatever happens as what God wants, but then when something happens and I have to see what God wants, I'm not always sure I want what He wants.
Well, what God wants for you then is not to be so conformed to what He wants; not that He wills the rebellion, but He does want your realization that you're rebellious. So you go to Him with that rebelliousness.
COMMENT: When I'm somewhere else, I don't have that certitude that I have here.
Because here you're living by faith. It is like a child learning a language from his father. But the essential thing is that whatever happens is God's will, including the things which show you up.
COMMENT: I keep thinking there must be an out, instinctively you do that.
COMMENT: You really have to have someone else communicate to you that you really want God.
Your spiritual formation depends as much on the mind of the spiritual father as your physical formation depends on the womb of the mother. That is the way God made it. There is even a quasi-dependence of the Father and the Son in the Trinity. That relationship is there, so for us the life of the Trinity is not when you say, "I believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." The life of the Trinity is our actual rejoicing in what the Father has, so that it becomes ours.
COMMENT: Unless the father really believes that God is communicating his goodness, he won't be able to communicate anything.
All he’ll communicate is his own goodness: why can't you be more like me? And then the child communicates, even though he might not put it into words: who wants to be like you? What happens then is that psychologically you become your own father; and what you want is to rejoice in yourself. And then if you're spiritual, what you want is to rejoice in your own spirituality, and that is right out of hell, because it is centered in yourself instead of in God. And that is the origin of all impurity, because in the last analysis, impurity is a desire to get out of your flesh that ecstasy of being lost in another which is thwarted in every other way. And yet if you measure it morally, you would say that impurity is a serious sin. Objectively, it is a serious sin, but what is behind it is that frustration of the desire for ecstasy, for being lost in another. We know from experience that a happy child is a pure child, and a happy child is a child who delights in his father.
COMMENT: It is a real sign of our need for God when we stay around you.
He gives you that instinct to want to rejoice in another, and in that very act of rejoicing, you're becoming maturely dependent.
COMMENT: It is that getting out of yourself and rejoicing in another that makes you a person.
So the whole idea of independence is absolutely false. It is false because our maturity can't be in our self-sufficiency; it is our sufficiency in another.
COMMENT: So the most shameful sin of impurity is like a pointer to the life of the Trinity in us.
What do you think that Jesus was thinking about the repentant sinner, who bathed His feet with her tears, when He let her embrace him? He was seeing the goodness of her desire in God, not the evil of her desire in the flesh. She was moved by that, and turned away from her own impurity because her need for ecstasy was satisfied in Him.
COMMENT: I don't think we really believe that our need for ecstasy is satisfied in God.
It isn't satisfied in God unless you have that spiritual formation. People get married and have no capacity to delight in anyone except themselves. What's wrong is not marriage, but the people who are married.
COMMENT: Then maturity is really defined as the ability to take delight in someone else.
The capacity to be lost in another and to delight in another. The capacity for that kind of ecstasy is real maturity.
COMMENT: And if we think we can delight in God and not in another human being, it is really a lie.
Or a self-deception. The point of all this practically is that you cannot give this to yourself. That dependence on and delight in the father are essential to this formation. Here is a simple sign of this: man is the only animal that is rational and at the same time man is the only animal where the child is helpless for such a long period. The reason for that helplessness is that after the child is born, a process of spiritual generation has to take place in the relation to the father. That truth, which is the most fundamental truth of our being, is almost totally lost in our society, in the Church and out of it.
COMMENT: The heart of this psychological process is that you, as our spiritual father, know the worst about us and love us.
That's it. In fact, that would uncover all repressions. The only reason you repress the evil in yourself is because you can't face it. But if you know you're loved even with the evil, there is no motive for repressing it. Then you would be simple and honest.
COMMENT: When we have that openness with you, we can be open with each other. So the openness is like the bond between us.
COMMENT: It is only when we know we're loved the way we are that we can be free to delight in you and recognize our own holiness.
You depend upon my believing in your holiness in order to believe in it yourself.
COMMENT: What happens when people have these phony, cozy relationships that end up in sex?
They're trying to satisfy that fundamental need in something that is carnal. It begins with sense, so naturally it would end with something sensual. But remember, it is easy enough to see the helplessness of a newborn child; it is harder to see the spiritual helplessness of a grown child.
COMMENT: It is good to remember that, not only with ourselves but with others. I mean how much we need to believe in our own holiness.
Then you would love other people as the overflow of your own joy. It is similar to physical generation. You generate another person as the overflow of your physical maturity, and so you generate Christ as the overflow of your spiritual maturity.
COMMENT: To accept your own deficiencies is a monumental problem; not only to accept them but to believe that you're loved with them.
Judas acknowledged what he did and still committed suicide. It is not enough to accept them; you have to believe you're loved with them.
Unless you're convinced in your heart that all your goodness is from God, all your operations will be ordered to convince you of your goodness in yourself. You have to be sustained by something, and if it isn't God, you become the principle of your own being.
COMMENT: You can see that in everyday life, because there are times when you want to do something nice for someone and you sense that the reason you want to do it is to make yourself look good to that person and to yourself. The objective may be the same, but there's a difference in motive; you're doing it either for Jesus or for yourself.
COMMENT: But if you have a bad motive, that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
Your motive could be imperfect, but it is not bad. There is a big distinction between evil and imperfection. An act can be imperfect, but if it is the best a person can do, it is a good act. But if you confuse imperfection with evil, every time you see an imperfection, you would judge that it is evil, and the devil would have you. It reminds me of a friend - he's a monk now - who told me after I helped bring him into the Church, "I really appreciated your bringing me into the Church, but you could have done it with a lot more charity." "You're right," I said, "but would you have wanted to wait until I had it?"
COMMENT: You might even have mixed motives.
Mixed and, therefore, imperfect. But if you're doing something united with Jesus, you're doing the best you can. It might be imperfect, but you're imperfect. If you think you have to be absolutely perfect in everything you do, you won't have confidence in anything you do.
COMMENT: And you would end up not doing anything.
You would get paralyzed. A major part of correction is to recognize the secret desire you have to take delight in yourself. But you turn to Jesus with that; you don't stop doing it or judge that whatever you do, it's evil. If you become anxious and use that as an excuse not to do anything, it's because you're depending on your own integrity.
COMMENT: It's important to know you're not perfect.
No good mother is scandalized by dirty diapers. The embryo is in process; so we're in the process of becoming.
COMMENT: And besides, there is a right way of taking delight in yourself.
As coming from God we can, because there is a natural instinct to want to take delight in yourself.
COMMENT: So when people say, make your own decisions, live your own life...
The answer to that is, you mean for me to be like you?!
COMMENT: At the same time, people who talk that way are also big on community; they're preaching community at the same time.
It's like a despondent cry: “come, unity!”
COMMENT: It's as though the community is a concession to something.
Whereas a community is organic. The living soul of the community is Jesus Christ. The same Jesus Who sustains you sustains me. And if I am denying Him in you, I'm denying Him in myself. Also, if I'm denying Him in myself, I won't see Him in you.
COMMENT: So if you have a group of people trying to sustain themselves and ignoring Jesus in themselves and in other people, there is bound to be a lot of tension. That is why we get so tired.
COMMENT: That is why democracy is falling apart, because everyone is gathered in his own name.
When we are gathered together in the name of Jesus, we live together with His very life, knowing we are loved by the Father. And the natural foundation for that is being gathered together with our own spiritual father: "Wherever two or more are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them." (Mt 18:20)
I guess it begins with the realization of what is happening here. If your whole life is a succession of acts which are motivated by your own judgment and your own objectives, that is to say, if you're not living by faith but by your own reason, you’ll judge others the way you judge yourself. But if you live a life of faith, as we are living here at Mt. Hope, then you realize from your own experience that even though the signs are to the contrary, when you say the name of Jesus, He is moving you to be loving Him, and therefore, you are good because of Him. You realize that when you live by faith. But when you live by your own reason, you become aware of deficiencies in yourself and then you say, if only I were this way or that way, then I could be good and God could love me. And you do the same with others; since you're reduced by that operation to a state of anxiety, the effort to be relieved of that anxiety causes you to look for evil in others so you can feel good about yourself.
COMMENT: All it does, though, is to make you feel worse about yourself.
You are trying to live by a goodness you don't really believe in: your own. Whereas if you live by the realization of God's goodness in you, then it is irrational to judge others, because you have no need to judge yourself. Or to be more accurate, you judge yourself as good only in Jesus. And so when you see, for example, that someone is doing something nasty, you don't say, that is the kind of person she really is. As soon as you do that, you cut yourself off from God, because you know if she's nasty, you're nastier! So it centers on the instinct of self-preservation, the instinct of supernatural self-preservation, which comes down to this, that if I look for evil in you, I destroy my connection with God Who sustains me. So you have to believe in the power of God which is relatively invisible, as against the signs of evil in you which are very real.
Unless you live by faith, you're going to be convinced all the time that you're not lovable, and since misery seeks company, you’ll look to see whether others are just as bad or worse. But if you're sustained by the goodness of God, you’ll judge others the way you judge yourself. That is the psychological part, but behind that is the mystical reality that God is actually moving you to communicate love for the other person, and you communicate that not by some kind of physical act, but by your whole way of treating him and yourself, so that the person knows in some kind of mystical way that you really love him.
COMMENT: That is extraordinary.
It is extraordinary in comparison with nature, but in the life of faith, it should be ordinary, according to the words, "Charity sees no evil." (Cf. l Cor 135) What is the meaning of those words if not what we're saying? Charity motivated by God's love doesn't look for evil, whereas false charity is a way of convincing yourself that you are charitable, that the goodness is in you. You're trying to communicate a goodness you don't even believe in yourself.
COMMENT: You’re looking for motivation to see goodness in yourself and evil in him.
If you see a person losing his temper, or catch him in an act of adultery, you can judge the thing wrong, but you can't judge the person. And if you live by faith you won't, because you want to see the person as you see yourself.
COMMENT: And how do I see myself?
By faith you see yourself as good in Jesus. At the same time, you're objective about the things that incline you to evil, but not in such a way as to deny your substantial goodness in Jesus. Another sign of this is joy, because you're united with your connatural good which is God; and if you're living like this, you're joyful. Also, you communicate that to others; since your joy is in God, it can't be exclusive.
COMMENT: Where does the suffering come in, then?
The essence of suffering is to take what you get. Suffering is not something you inflict on yourself; it's what God gives you and, therefore, if your joy is in God, your joy is in whatever He gives. So the joy and suffering go together. Jesus said, "Let this chalice pass," (Mt 26:39) but He also said, "Thy will be done." (Lk 22:42) The cult of suffering as such is morbid, because it is a way of contemplating your own suffering, which makes you feel like a victim.
And you're still contemplating your own goodness instead of the goodness of God. Remember in the movie “The Song of Bernadette” there was a nun who was tempted because she didn't see Bernadette suffering. "I want to believe," she said, "but I never see any sign of your suffering." Then Bernadette lifted her skirt and showed this terrible cancer of the knee; no one was aware of it because she never complained. Then the nun runs into the chapel, falls on her knees and says, "I didn't realize that one had to be chosen." One thing is sure, in the right state you’ll be suffering, but you won't be preoccupied with it.
COMMENT: In a sense, accepting yourself is both suffering and joy.
Accepting yourself the way you are is everything, because you're really accepting God as giving you whatever you have. You can see as a kind of a sign of this, even in the natural order, the fact that in a living organism the soul is in every part of the body - the whole soul. So my finger has life as well as my nose. Well, the supernatural life is in what happens each moment; the whole life is there in each moment. It isn't as though you're going to get this life by putting together a lot of moments.
COMMENT: So you live each moment as well as you can.
I think what it comes down to is living by faith instead of reason. And living by faith is not opposed to living by reason. When you live by faith, you're using your reason the way God moves you to use it.
COMMENT: And living by faith is peaceful. You're not always striving after understanding and certainty about everything.
Even psychologically, you would never get anxious, because you're sure of God's love. When you live by faith, you're living by what you get. But when you live by your own reason, you're living by what you want. And since your peace is contingent on getting it, you would have to be anxious. There is a story about a little boy whose family was very poor, and he was praying before Christmas to get a set of electric trains. But his mother was very worried, because she knew she didn't have the money. When Christmas came and there were no trains, she watched to see how he was reacting. "I suppose you're pretty sad because God didn't answer your prayers," she said. "Oh, no," he replied, "He answered my prayers. The answer was ‘No.’”
COMMENT: That is easy to accept right now, but I can sit here and say, I want whatever happens as what God wants, but then when something happens and I have to see what God wants, I'm not always sure I want what He wants.
Well, what God wants for you then is not to be so conformed to what He wants; not that He wills the rebellion, but He does want your realization that you're rebellious. So you go to Him with that rebelliousness.
COMMENT: When I'm somewhere else, I don't have that certitude that I have here.
Because here you're living by faith. It is like a child learning a language from his father. But the essential thing is that whatever happens is God's will, including the things which show you up.
COMMENT: I keep thinking there must be an out, instinctively you do that.
COMMENT: You really have to have someone else communicate to you that you really want God.
Your spiritual formation depends as much on the mind of the spiritual father as your physical formation depends on the womb of the mother. That is the way God made it. There is even a quasi-dependence of the Father and the Son in the Trinity. That relationship is there, so for us the life of the Trinity is not when you say, "I believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." The life of the Trinity is our actual rejoicing in what the Father has, so that it becomes ours.
COMMENT: Unless the father really believes that God is communicating his goodness, he won't be able to communicate anything.
All he’ll communicate is his own goodness: why can't you be more like me? And then the child communicates, even though he might not put it into words: who wants to be like you? What happens then is that psychologically you become your own father; and what you want is to rejoice in yourself. And then if you're spiritual, what you want is to rejoice in your own spirituality, and that is right out of hell, because it is centered in yourself instead of in God. And that is the origin of all impurity, because in the last analysis, impurity is a desire to get out of your flesh that ecstasy of being lost in another which is thwarted in every other way. And yet if you measure it morally, you would say that impurity is a serious sin. Objectively, it is a serious sin, but what is behind it is that frustration of the desire for ecstasy, for being lost in another. We know from experience that a happy child is a pure child, and a happy child is a child who delights in his father.
COMMENT: It is a real sign of our need for God when we stay around you.
He gives you that instinct to want to rejoice in another, and in that very act of rejoicing, you're becoming maturely dependent.
COMMENT: It is that getting out of yourself and rejoicing in another that makes you a person.
So the whole idea of independence is absolutely false. It is false because our maturity can't be in our self-sufficiency; it is our sufficiency in another.
COMMENT: So the most shameful sin of impurity is like a pointer to the life of the Trinity in us.
What do you think that Jesus was thinking about the repentant sinner, who bathed His feet with her tears, when He let her embrace him? He was seeing the goodness of her desire in God, not the evil of her desire in the flesh. She was moved by that, and turned away from her own impurity because her need for ecstasy was satisfied in Him.
COMMENT: I don't think we really believe that our need for ecstasy is satisfied in God.
It isn't satisfied in God unless you have that spiritual formation. People get married and have no capacity to delight in anyone except themselves. What's wrong is not marriage, but the people who are married.
COMMENT: Then maturity is really defined as the ability to take delight in someone else.
The capacity to be lost in another and to delight in another. The capacity for that kind of ecstasy is real maturity.
COMMENT: And if we think we can delight in God and not in another human being, it is really a lie.
Or a self-deception. The point of all this practically is that you cannot give this to yourself. That dependence on and delight in the father are essential to this formation. Here is a simple sign of this: man is the only animal that is rational and at the same time man is the only animal where the child is helpless for such a long period. The reason for that helplessness is that after the child is born, a process of spiritual generation has to take place in the relation to the father. That truth, which is the most fundamental truth of our being, is almost totally lost in our society, in the Church and out of it.
COMMENT: The heart of this psychological process is that you, as our spiritual father, know the worst about us and love us.
That's it. In fact, that would uncover all repressions. The only reason you repress the evil in yourself is because you can't face it. But if you know you're loved even with the evil, there is no motive for repressing it. Then you would be simple and honest.
COMMENT: When we have that openness with you, we can be open with each other. So the openness is like the bond between us.
COMMENT: It is only when we know we're loved the way we are that we can be free to delight in you and recognize our own holiness.
You depend upon my believing in your holiness in order to believe in it yourself.
COMMENT: What happens when people have these phony, cozy relationships that end up in sex?
They're trying to satisfy that fundamental need in something that is carnal. It begins with sense, so naturally it would end with something sensual. But remember, it is easy enough to see the helplessness of a newborn child; it is harder to see the spiritual helplessness of a grown child.
COMMENT: It is good to remember that, not only with ourselves but with others. I mean how much we need to believe in our own holiness.
Then you would love other people as the overflow of your own joy. It is similar to physical generation. You generate another person as the overflow of your physical maturity, and so you generate Christ as the overflow of your spiritual maturity.
COMMENT: To accept your own deficiencies is a monumental problem; not only to accept them but to believe that you're loved with them.
Judas acknowledged what he did and still committed suicide. It is not enough to accept them; you have to believe you're loved with them.
Unless you're convinced in your heart that all your goodness is from God, all your operations will be ordered to convince you of your goodness in yourself. You have to be sustained by something, and if it isn't God, you become the principle of your own being.
COMMENT: You can see that in everyday life, because there are times when you want to do something nice for someone and you sense that the reason you want to do it is to make yourself look good to that person and to yourself. The objective may be the same, but there's a difference in motive; you're doing it either for Jesus or for yourself.
COMMENT: But if you have a bad motive, that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
Your motive could be imperfect, but it is not bad. There is a big distinction between evil and imperfection. An act can be imperfect, but if it is the best a person can do, it is a good act. But if you confuse imperfection with evil, every time you see an imperfection, you would judge that it is evil, and the devil would have you. It reminds me of a friend - he's a monk now - who told me after I helped bring him into the Church, "I really appreciated your bringing me into the Church, but you could have done it with a lot more charity." "You're right," I said, "but would you have wanted to wait until I had it?"
COMMENT: You might even have mixed motives.
Mixed and, therefore, imperfect. But if you're doing something united with Jesus, you're doing the best you can. It might be imperfect, but you're imperfect. If you think you have to be absolutely perfect in everything you do, you won't have confidence in anything you do.
COMMENT: And you would end up not doing anything.
You would get paralyzed. A major part of correction is to recognize the secret desire you have to take delight in yourself. But you turn to Jesus with that; you don't stop doing it or judge that whatever you do, it's evil. If you become anxious and use that as an excuse not to do anything, it's because you're depending on your own integrity.
COMMENT: It's important to know you're not perfect.
No good mother is scandalized by dirty diapers. The embryo is in process; so we're in the process of becoming.
COMMENT: And besides, there is a right way of taking delight in yourself.
As coming from God we can, because there is a natural instinct to want to take delight in yourself.
COMMENT: So when people say, make your own decisions, live your own life...
The answer to that is, you mean for me to be like you?!
COMMENT: At the same time, people who talk that way are also big on community; they're preaching community at the same time.
It's like a despondent cry: “come, unity!”
COMMENT: It's as though the community is a concession to something.
Whereas a community is organic. The living soul of the community is Jesus Christ. The same Jesus Who sustains you sustains me. And if I am denying Him in you, I'm denying Him in myself. Also, if I'm denying Him in myself, I won't see Him in you.
COMMENT: So if you have a group of people trying to sustain themselves and ignoring Jesus in themselves and in other people, there is bound to be a lot of tension. That is why we get so tired.
COMMENT: That is why democracy is falling apart, because everyone is gathered in his own name.
When we are gathered together in the name of Jesus, we live together with His very life, knowing we are loved by the Father. And the natural foundation for that is being gathered together with our own spiritual father: "Wherever two or more are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them." (Mt 18:20)