Friday, April 10, 2009

Heb 12, 4-8 Do not disdain the discipline of the Lord

(Heb 12, 4-8) Do not disdain the discipline of the Lord
[4] In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. [5] You have also forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as sons: "My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; [6] for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges." [7] Endure your trials as "discipline"; God treats you as sons. For what "son" is there whom his father does not discipline? [8] If you are without discipline, in which all have shared, you are not sons but bastards.
(CCC 2061) The Commandments take on their full meaning within the covenant. According to Scripture, man's moral life has all its meaning in and through the covenant. The first of the "ten words" recalls that God loved his people first: Since there was a passing from the paradise of freedom to the slavery of this world, in punishment for sin, the first phrase of the Decalogue, the first word of God's commandments, bears on freedom "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" (Origen, Hom. in Ex. 8,1: PG 12, 350; cf. Ex 20:2; Deut 5:6). (CCC 2090) When God reveals Himself and calls him, man cannot fully respond to the divine love by his own powers. He must hope that God will give him the capacity to love Him in return and to act in conformity with the commandments of charity. Hope is the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beatific vision of God; it is also the fear of offending God's love and of incurring punishment.

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