Page 159 - Built For God Handbook (Annotated and Explained Edition) - The Christian Edition of the Tao Te Ching - The New Evangelization - Pope John Paul II

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To be in a right relationship with God is, first of all, to be grounded in the
knowledge and experience of God’s unconditional love for us, first revealed
to us by the act of creation itself. Out of that same love, God created
humanity, as described in Genesis (“Let us make them, male and female, in
our own image”). While God can hold male and female energy together, we
can’t – we are created one or the other, and that instills within us a certain
incompleteness, a holy longing, a yearning for wholeness and
consummation.

That divine fire within us, if properly understood and used according to
God’s unselfish will, can provide us with the deepest experience of serenity
and contentment. Not understood and used selfishly, it leads us to become
over-attached to all kinds of secondary, created goods. These can become
false gods. Possessions, prestige, power, and pleasure, to which we can
eventually become addicted, threaten to destroy us.

To know contentment is to make the love of God, all others, ourselves, and
all of God’s creation our greatest priority in life, and to rest in the serenity
that the decision to love and be loved gives us.

c
b
a Romans 8:5-8; Jeremiah 6:8, Isaiah 59:2; 1 Timothy 6:6-10;
d
Ecclesiastes 5:10; Philippians 4:11-13.