PRAY - MEDITATE - SURRENDER - LOVE
Radical Love
His Living Presence is already here,
Closer than breath,
Waiting to be received.
Living in Relationship with God
Disclaimer: The contents of this website represent the personal reflections of Linda Saxton and are offered in a spirit of prayer and discernment. Intended to be authentically Catholic, these reflections do not necessarily express the official teachings or positions of the Catholic Church or the Discalced Carmelite Order.
GOD - THE FATHER OF ALL CREATION
MAKES US ALL THAT WE ARE AND ALL THAT WE CAN BE THROUGH HIS GRACE
Of all His creatures, only we humans separate ourselves from God with our thoughts, words, emotions, and actions. That's because we are the only living creatures who can exercise Free Will to make choices to either turn away from Him or to bring ourselves into communion and loving relationship with God.
GOD LOVES US
"What we think of as our search for God is, in reality, a response to the Divine Lover drawing us to himself. There is never a moment when Divine Love is not at work. . . . This work is nothing other than a giving of the divine Self in love. The logical consequence for us must surely be that our part is to let ourselves be loved, let ourselves be given to, let ourselves be worked upon by this great God and made capable of total union with Him".
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From the book "Essence of Prayer" by RUTH BURROWS
A Contemporary Carmelite Nun
God seeks our openness to and receptivity of His Love as much as we desire to be loved and in relationship with Him. His merciful and unceasing Radical Love is His gift to us, freely given as unmerited favor or GRACE.
God does not love us because we are good and that we 'deserve' it. He loves us as we are because that is His nature and He wants us to be free to love ourselves and each other. He created us in His image and came to experience us as Jesus Christ, who was fully human and fully divine. In His humanity, Jesus modeled a life of humility, compassion, love, joy, spiritual warriorship, and peace. He taught us to be forgiving and merciful, and sacrificed Himself to the will of the Father so that we might live as a Divine Humanity on earth, clearing the way to eternal life before the Glory of God in Heaven.
God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
Romans 5:5
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Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
John 4: 7-8
"God loves each of us as if there were only one of us".
St. Augustine
We gain an understanding of God and His plan for us through the Scriptures. We are sanctified by the Holy Spirit when we receive the Sacraments. We learn how to live holy lives through the teachings of Jesus and by living in community. Through reconciliation and prayer we develop a personal relationship with God as we ask for forgiveness and forgive and commune with Him so that we might get to know God with our hearts and souls. We seek His guidance and within the silence of our contemplative Hearts, we listen for His response, surrender to His Will, and receive His Grace
"The more we surrender to God, the more luminous, beautiful, and human we become".
Bishop Robert Barron
God embodied Himself as Jesus, who was fully divine and fully human, so that we might witness, interact with, and learn from Him as one of us. Jesus modeled how God had intended us to be prior to our fall from Grace, that is
TO BE LOVE ITSELF
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​​It is through Him, and only through Him, that our humanity is healed, elevated, and drawn into intimate communion with the divine life of the TRINITY: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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Christ is the bridge—the incarnate Son in whom God and humanity are forever united.
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His Living Presence is not abstract or symbolic; it is real, active, and sacramental—especially in the Eucharist, where He offers Himself to us as true food and true drink, that we might live in Him and He in us (cf. John 6:56).
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He is human and divine—not a man who became God, but God who became man, making the human capable of bearing divine life through GRACE.
To allow Him to transform us into HOLINESS is to SURRENDER to the process of SANCTIFICATION:
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It is to become what we receive in the Eucharist: the Body of Christ.
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It is to participate in His love, obedience, suffering, and glory.
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It is to be conformed not just morally, but mystically—to become vessels of DIVINE LOVE, dwelling in communion with the Triune God.
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This is not a loss of our humanity, but its fulfillment—what the Church Fathers called theosis or divinization. We are not absorbed into God, but made fully ALIVE in Him, becoming more truly ourselves.
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Thus, Divine Humanity is not a status we claim, but a mystery we enter. It is the fruit of COMMUNION, HUMILITY, and GRACE and for some it may be expressed as "sainthood". Christ alone is the source—and HIS LIVING PRESENCE within us, is the flame that transforms.
"I pray that, according to the riches of His glory, He may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through His Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God".
Ephesians 3: 14-19
Pathways to
Growing in Holiness
COMMUNITY DEVOTIONAL PRAYER
MENTAL PRAYER & CHRISTIAN MEDITATION
COMMUNING WITH LIVING PRESENCE
SPIRITUAL HEALING AND AWAKENING
"For I know the plans I have for you" declares the LORD," plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future".
Jeremiah 29:11