George Matulaitis Journal

51 live in God’s own dwelling place. How clear his mind becomes then, how free his spirit, how open and expansive his heart! That is when you truly begin to feel that all men are brothers and that the human race is one large family. Then with a burning heart you long to embrace them all most tenderly. If you could, you would give all your blood, drop by drop, to bring your brothers, this family of God back to Him, back to unity with Christ and with His Church. When God’s love enters your heart, it opens up so wide that all people, regardless of class or nationality, find room in it. When a person’s soul, transported by the Holy Spirit, rises up and soars to those heights where the Holy Trinity radiates its eternal, ineffable, inexpressible, and infinite glory—and when from those lofty heights you survey this world, how small and pitiful it appears. Looking at the world from the heights of eternity, you learn the true value of each thing upon this earth and you put it in its proper place. You learn how to use earthly things as instruments for the greater glory of God. What use is this for eternal life? How can it serve the greater glory of God, the good of the Church, my own spiritual progress? 1 O God, grant me the grace to regard all things from the heights of eternity and to weigh all things on eternal scales. All things should be seen in the light of eternity. 2 We should conscientiously seek God in all things and try to please Him. But the Lord God is so kind and good that He takes the first step to look for us. His grace awakens us and raises us up from spiritual sleep. He constantly urges and encourages us to work for His greater glory; He leads and draws us to greater perfection and to do all kinds of good works for the salvation of souls and for the welfare of the Church. Only let us not hinder or impede the influence of God’s grace; let us not obstruct His work in our soul. On the contrary, we must make every effort to remove all obstacles and to yield to God’s grace. Fearlessly and ruthlessly we must sever, one by one, all those strings and ties, all those shackles, that bind our souls to self-love, to the pleasures of the body, to our self-will, to our limited human reasoning and that do not let us rise. We must break and destroy all those chains that bind us 1 “Quid hoc ad aeternitatem? Quid ad maiorem Dei gloriam, prosperitatem Ecclesiae, salutem animarum, propriam perfectionem.” 2 “Sub specie aeternitatis omnia respicere oportet.” The sources of these quotations are unknown.