First Week of Lent | Love Repays Love

02/23/23 • 28 min

In this podcast, Fr. Javier del Castillo invites us to reflect on how love makes God visible in the world because God gives himself entirely to us. “God is loving us with his 100%. He actually has nothing else to give us, except himself... Think of the Eucharist. There’s nothing else for Him to give.” And so, how can we pay back such great love? With love.
Recalling the Gospel passage of the Widow’s Mite, Fr. Javier reflects on Jesus’ comment to the Apostles: “She has put in from her want, not from her surplus.” This is an example of a worthy response to God’s love to hold nothing back. The only way to love God is to never be satisfied with what we have given up to this point. As St. Josemaria Escriva would say, “love is with love repaid.”
In this podcast, you will also hear how:
• If it is 100% of our love, then it is worthy of God.
• When we are united to God through the state of grace, we are able to love in and through the fulfillment of our ordinary duties.
• It’s a false assumption to think that in any vocation God does not ask us to give him 100%.
• Love is never satisfied with what it has done before because love is not about the logic of the least or the minimums.
• We cannot pay 100% of what we have been given, but we could do little details or pay attention to details of love and affection for others.
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Previous Episode

Lent: A Time for Conversion (Rebroadcast)

“Now is the day of salvation, now is an acceptable time... For what?”
As we begin the holy season of Lent, Fr. Javier del Castillo reflects on the readings for Ash Wednesday which remind us once again that now is the time for conversion — Lent is a time for conversion. Our Lord gives us an entire season of the liturgical year to turn back to Him, to be reconciled to God, to purify ourselves, and to identify ourselves with God’s suffering.
Our conversion does not have to be big and showy. In fact, Fr. Javier explains how simple acts of penance— like offering up our food and drink, setting a time for prayer, and participating in works of mercy— allow us to identify ourselves with Jesus Christ on the Cross and to bring about deeper conversions. He also explains how the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are ultimately participation in the life and mission of Jesus Christ that help us in our earthly life toward the goal of eternal salvation.
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Next Episode

Second Week of Lent | Jesus, My Closest Friend

In this podcast, Fr. Peter Armenio explains how knowing about Jesus Christ differs from knowing him. And, in order to know Christ, Fr. Peter encourages us to foster a personal relationship with him, with “the knowledge of the heart, the knowledge of a relationship, the knowledge a man and a woman have of each other when they’re courting...”

Getting to know him requires intimate conversation, which begins with the “desire to seek Christ.” As St. Josemaria would say, we must seek him “hungrily” and determinedly: “If you act with determination, I am ready to guarantee that you’ve already found him, and have begun to get to know him and to love him, and to hold your conversation in Heaven” (Friends of God, no. 300).

In this podcast, you will also hear how:

An atheist Jewish writer embraced the Catholic faith after a profound encounter with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.
Conversion never begins with a guilt trip, or even an examination of conscience, but with an encounter with Christ.
Getting to know a person doesn’t mean knowing more facts about the person, it means loving that person and having a relationship with that person.

View Transcript
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St. Josemaria Institute Podcast - First Week of Lent | Love Repays Love

Transcript

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins, and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph my father and lord, my guardian angel intercede for me.

We read in the first letter of St. John, “In this is the love, not that we have loved God, but that he has first loved