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Psychological Healing
in the Catholic Mystic Tradition

The law of the Lord is love

From the Moral Reflections on Job by Saint Gregory the Great

 
The law of the Lord

 
Love’s lively concern for others is reflected in all the virtues. It begins with two commands, but it soon embraces many more. Saint Paul gives a good summary of its various aspects. Love is patient, he says, and kind; it is never jealous or conceited; its conduct is blameless; it is not ambitious, not selfish, not quick to take offense; it harbours no evil thoughts, does not gloat over other people’s sins, but is gladdened by an upright life.

Those ruled by this love show their patience by bearing wrongs with equanimity; their kindness by generously repaying good for evil. Jealousy is foreign to them. It is impossible to envy worldly success when they have no worldly desires. They are not conceited. The prizes they covet lie within; outward blessings do not elate them. Their conduct is blameless, for they cannot do wrong in devoting themselves entirely to love of God and their neighbours. They are not ambitious. The welfare of their own souls is what they care about. Apart from that they seek nothing. They are not selfish. Indeed, in their eyes nothing is their own but what will be so always. They are not quick to take offence. Even under provocation, thought of revenge never becomes action. The reward they seek hereafter will be greater in proportion to their endurance. They harbour no evil thoughts. Hatred is utterly rooted out of a heart whose only love is goodness. Thoughts that defile others can find no acceptence. They do not gloat over other people’s sins. No; an enemy’s fall affords them no delight, for loving all men, they long for their salvation.

On the other hand, they are gladdened by an upright life. Since they loves others as themselves, they take as much pleasure in whatever good they see in others as if the progress were their own.

—Saint Gregory the Great, pope
(Office of Readings, Thursday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

 


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Where Catholic therapy (Catholic psychotherapy) is explained according to Catholic psychology in the tradition of the Catholic mystics.