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The following story is attributed to
St. Thomas Aquinas:
I said to God, “Let me love you.”
And He replied, “Which part?”
“All of you, all of you,” I said.
“Dear,” God spoke, “you are as a mouse wanting to impregnate a tiger who is not even in heat. It is a feat way beyond your courage and strength. You would run from me if I removed my mask.”
I said to God again, “Beloved, I need to love you – every aspect, every pore.”
And this time God said, “There is a hideous blemish on my body, though it is such an infinitesimal part of my Being – could you kiss that if it were revealed?”
“I will try, Lord, I will try.”
And then God said, “That blemish is all the hatred and cruelty in this world.”
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There is that one who claims to love God, but he disdains looking upon the moral evil of the world. He longs for escape from the world, or he dreams of having a world all like himself and his "chosen few."
This man refuses, in his religious arrogance, to love those he judges to be cruel and sinful: of course, he claims that he has not joined in the social conditions that create evil and cruel persons, and he denies the ugliness of his own self-righteousness.
However, in his turning from such evil and evil persons, he turns from God. If God is present everywhere, then, God is present in the good and evil. We cannot rightly join God in one place and deny God in the other.
Of the one I say, "There is an evil person." Christ replies, "There is part of the body of God, love that part."
See next page for data on purpose of OneLife Ministries, biographical information on the writer, and how to order the author's book.
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