Health Tips - Steps to Better Nutrition - Pour une Meilleure Nutrition

On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring to humanity the Good News of the Father's love manifested and given in Jesus, the Divine Mercy. G.S.

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 STEPS TO BETTER NUTRITION          PDF ENGLISH FILE          FICHIER EN FRANÇAIS

Introduction               In 1981 while suffering from the flu in seminary in Ottawa I was diagnosed with functional hypoglycaemia. From that point on I researched to better understand and manage my condition and learned the importance of a better balance of exercise, sleep, nutrition, attitude, and spirituality; as well as simple things like chewing food thoroughly until the mouth salivates and liquefies the food before swallowing.

We can cook a variety of dishes which are good to excellent. From a raw food point of view, we can assure we eat a variety in greens and fruit. It is also highly recommended generally to include beans and lentils and also avocado, which also provide protein as substitutes to meats and fish. It would be better for us to include in our diet more of raw greens with local naturally ripened fruits as much as possible, as well as nuts and seeds. It is a myth that nuts will make you gain weight.
 
So, what about our need for proteins, right? Well, it turns out that proteins are complex combinations of essential amino acids (there are 14), and these are abundant in greens, which are more easily and quickly absorbed by our metabolism than already combined amino acids in animal proteins. Instead of requiring our body to metabolize complex animal proteins to extract from them the amino acids, it is far easier, more direct and beneficial, for us to metabolize the amino acids themselves in their natural state in greens. 

https://sergeiboutenko.com/30-day-green-smoothie-challenge/    

   https://sergeiboutenko.com/learn-how-to-forage-for-25-tasty-wild-edible-plants/

Dr. Michael Greger              You will find below a talk (2003) given by Dr Michael Greger (1 hr 16 min) which corroborates much of what is promoted by the Boutenko's. Dr Michael Greger is quite entertaining in an idiosyncratic kind of way, and here are his essential points. This man is an MD and quotes mounds of serious scientific studies in the Harvard Medical Library or presented to the US government; so his findings are based on serious medical research. He is like a detective on the trail of a puzzle. Like most vegetarians and vegans (vegetarians who also avoid eggs and dairy products) he assumed that these two groups should be far healthier and live longer than meat eaters. He was shocked in going to the latest research to discover that vegetarians and vegans are dying just as much from fatal diseases – or even more so – such as coronary and vascular diseases as meat eaters and suffer more from brain disorders and osteoporosis as diagnosed in hip fractures.

I do not reproduce here the medical details, so you will need to listen to his talk to see what nutritional risks to health causing coronary and other fatal diseases are not being avoided by vegetarians and vegans and which are putting them at the same risk of early death as meat eaters. The advantages vegetarians and vegans obtain by their diets are lost because of additional risks due to their diets that don't affect meat eaters. Still shocked, he set out to go deeper into published scientific research to discover the underlying causes of those fatal diseases. Here is what he found and here are the nutritional recommendation emerging from these findings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7KeRwdIH04

1.  One important health threat is when the ratio in our body of Omega 6 to Omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids is higher than 4 to 1 (both are polyunsaturated fats but Omega 3 is great for us while Omega 6 is not so good) : when the ratio is 4 to 1 or less our metabolism favours Omega 3 and stalls Omega 6, but when the ratio is higher than 4 to 1 our metabolism favours Omega 6 and ignores Omega 3 in us and causes or exacerbates coronary and vascular inflammation, which leads to a host of fatal coronary, vascular, and neurological diseases. Vegetarians and vegans can be just as prone to these risks as meat eaters or under certain conditions at greater risk.

Omega 3's are great for us but the Omega 6's are not so good. When we take in sufficient Omega 3 fatty acid an enzyme metabolizes it and produces EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) which prevent coronary inflammation, vascular plaque, and blood clots. For this reason, the most important thing we can do for our health and the most beneficial single change we can make to our diet is to take 1 to 2 tbsp of ground flax seeds a day (better source than fish and fish oils) on cereal, in a smoothie, or other ways. 

This is the best way to increase Omega 3 fatty acid and avoid being overwhelmed by too much Omega 6 fatty acid. So we need to decrease using Omega 6 oils in favour of Olive or Canola oil (both mono-unsaturated which are good) and increase our consumption of Omega 3's, hence the ground flax seeds (ungrounded seeds are so tough they pass right through the bowel with no benefit to us at all.). Ground flax is very flexible: 1 tbsp mixed in 3 tbsp water = equivalent to one egg for baking. Heating does no damage to Omega 3 in ground flax seeds.

2.  The other big threat to health and even more serious is homocystine (a very dangerous neuro and vascular toxin causing any number of health disorders such as arterial and coronary inflammation, oxidized arterial cholesterol or plaque, blood clots, arrhythmia, fatal heart disease, Alzheimer and other neurological diseases). Homocystine is a natural by-product of metabolizing amino acids. 

Our body normally eliminates it through the metabolic action of Vitamin B6 and Choline (from animals and plants), Folic Acid (Folate from plants), and Vitamin B12 (from animals and insects). 

A balanced diet of plants and meat probably gives us enough of these but vegetarians and vegans don't get any B12 from meats so they need to take supplements of Vitamin B12 (produced artificially). We can never get too much, so 100+ mcg per day or 2000+ mcg per week (liver stores it for a while) are recommended. Diets containing dark leafy greens, vegetables and fruits provide sufficient Vitamin B6, Choline, and Folic Acid (Folate) such that no supplements are needed to provide them. 

Taking sufficient daily or weekly doses of Vitamin B12 prevents the entire process of injury to the heart, arteries, brain, and nervous system before the naturally occurring homocystine produced by the metabolism of amino acids causes injury which leads to inflammation which leads to oxidized cholesterol or plaque which leads to the formation of blood clots and finally to near fatal and fatal heart damage and arrhythmia and premature death.

3.  Eating 3 cups of dark leafy greens and broccoli a day (the stem of kale and other heavy leafy greens should be removed as they are quite bitter and the benefit is in the leaves not in the stem) provides enough calcium, iron, zinc and other minerals. Daily consumption of greens, beans, whole grains, and nuts also provides iron and zinc. Brazil nuts provide selenium, so it's good to include them in our diet at least once a month. He said that beans are best sprouted or fermented, and nuts and seeds are best dry roasted or sprouted.

4.  Saturated fats are to be avoided because they are injurious to our health (animal fats, coconut oil, palm kernel oil). Palm oil is used in a lot of processed foods as well as coconut oil. The benefits of vegetarian diet is avoiding transfats in the meat... all animal fats contain transfats and the ideal is to avoid them all.

5.  Five large glasses of water a day reduce by half a number of serious even fatal diseases, since so much of the human body is composed of water and requires water for all the organs to function optimally. The consumption of 9 or more portions of fresh fruit and fresh vegetables a day reduces these risks by half again.

6.  Chlorinated water destroys the iodine we might otherwise get from our drinking water, but we can prevent iodine deficiency by eating sea vegetables or living by the sea and breathing in iodized oxygen all day long, or by taking iodine supplements. Years ago I had a co-worker from Normandy in France who spent all her life living by the sea and when she came to Canada to live in Montreal her health quickly deteriorated and she was diagnosed with iodine deficiency and had to begin taking supplements which restored her to her former healthy condition. She admitted though to not feeling quite as vital and vibrant as when she had lived by the sea.

BRIEF DIETARY SUMMARY

Have daily: 5 large glasses of water, Supplemental Vitamin B6 & B12, 2 tbsp ground flax seeds, 3 cups or bunches of dark leafy greens & broccoli, 9 or more portions of fresh fruit & vegetables, olive oil & canola oil, whole grains, nuts, & seeds (including walnuts, chia and / or hemp seeds), avocados, beans & lentils, and sea vegetables for iodine.

Full Summary of Nutritional recommendations coming from Dr. Michael Greger's conference

AVOID Saturated Fats (animal trans fats & commercial hydrogenated oils: coconut* or palm kernel oil*)     Omega 6 Poly unsaturated fatty acids (cotton seed oil*, corn oil*, safflower oil*, sunflower oil*)                             *hydrogenated cooking oils produced by the chemical industry

The only nuts to avoid are coconut and chestnuts.  

FAVOUR Mono-unsaturated oils (nuts, avocados, olive oil, and canola oil) 
Omega 3 fatty acids as in (dark leafy greens, fatty fish, walnuts, seeds: hemp, flax, chia)

Omega 3 is in fish, but with the added risks of heavy metals and other pollutants. 

CONSUME 3 cups or bunches of dark leafy greens (Kale, Bok Choi, Collard) & broccoli daily (for calcium, Vitamin K, boron), beans, whole grains, nuts, & seeds (as meat substitute and for iron combined with Vitamin C rich foods to enhance iron absorption)

DRINK 5 large glasses of water per day

HAVE 9 or more portions of fresh fruit and vegetables per day

GET iodine from sea vegetables

ADD 1 to 2 tablespoons of ground flax seeds per day – flax is the best and most abundant source  

ADD 1 to 2 tablespoons of ground flax seeds per day – flax is the best and most abundant source
            Supplemental Vitamin B6 daily (50 to 100 mg per day)

            Supplemental Vitamin B12 daily (100+ mcg per day) or weekly (2000+ mcg per week)

            Supplemental Vitamin D daily (1,000 I.U. per day)

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The Boutenko Family           This is a family of Russian émigrés to the USA who embraced the American way and all became sick. They saw many Americans were unwell like them while others seemed very healthy; so they asked them what they did to enjoy such good health. They came to put aside fast foods and the typical diet of cooked meats and vegetables in favor of raw fruits and vegetables, only to discover they were suffering from certain mineral and other nutritional deficiencies. They found that much of the nutrition they were still lacking is to be found in edible greens, which contain minerals and all the essential amino acids. Now they occasionally enjoy some cooked grains as well but favour a diet that combines dark leafy greens – preferably organic ones and those to be found in the wild, including plants we considered mere weeds – with fruits in a "green smoothie". They also add Chia and Flax seeds which provide Omega 3 fatty acids essential to good health.

Victoria Boutenko gives the nutritional content of edible greens compared to vegetables

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9TvJLIxs8s

Valya Boutenko gives a green smoothies workshop on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-uskrC9wm0

Sergei Boutenko’s family story, raw edible greens & fruits   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJa0ZeyyBe8

Sergei Boutenko gives a wild edible nature walk   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pm57coskzw

Conclusion                 Well, dear friend, I have sent you these reports of my findings out of my own concern for healthy nutrition and living. Physical activity, daily exercise, proper rest, a lively faith and a healthy spirituality have not entered into these reports but are just as essential to living a healthy, holy, and vibrantly fruitful human life. It is my hope and prayer that you and your family with the Lord's guidance and grace will incorporate all of these elements into your lives, one step at a time. It is our Creator's design that we live in harmony with all the creatures with which He has surrounded us, that we care for them all, and of course for each other.

Originally composed May 24, 2015. Edited and modified December 14, 2017 & January 27, 2021.

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On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring to humanity the Good News of the Father's love manifested and given in Jesus, the Divine Mercy. G.S.

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© 2006-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2006-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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Energy Budget - How to Manage Yours Each Day

On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring to humanity the Good News of the Father's love manifested and given in Jesus, the Divine Mercy. G.S.

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How to Manage Your Energy Budget Every Day

First, I’d like to invite you to explore the theory and formation principles of the Institut de Formation Humaine Intégrale de Montréal, which was first known as the Institut de Formation et de Rééducation de Montréal when it was founded in 1976 by Dr. Jeannine Guindon.  In the course of her very fruitful career, this amazing woman trained educators and helping professionals and worked with them, explored how the application of contemporary psychological and moral development principles in education and therapy might help people actually develop, and discovered ways to help people participate deliberately in their own development, wherever they left off when they became adults and left the formative years behind.[1]  It is generally accepted now that we human beings live out our lives in four realms of human powers: body, mind, psyche or heart, and spirit or soul. In this light, I would see the six levels of human identity mapped out by the IFHIM correlating this way. 

(Please consider these terms copyrighted to the IFHIM).  The body identity and identity of the doer are rooted in the body.  The individual identity and psychosexual identity are rooted in what we have been calling the heart, or psyche.  The psychosocial identity is rooted in the mind and its host of composite abilities: intellect, understanding, imagination, memory, intuition, and consciousness.  These five levels of identity come together finally in the sixth and composite identity, the identity of the self, which I believe to be rooted in the soul.[2]  It seems so reasonable to believe that our highest human power, our will, be rooted here, in the soul; since there remains persistent evidence of will in human beings who suffer the debilitation or loss of just about every other human faculty, ability, or power. 

In another time and place, may I suggest that you visit the stages of moral human development, which are an important parameter for assessing the degree of our development as human persons.  It would also be good to consider what benefit there may be for each person to have their own “rule of life” to enshrine all the disciplines they consider essential to their ongoing human development and assure the time and energy needed to practice these disciplines, for a greater health and stability in life.

Let’s examine how the IFHIM suggests we manage our “energy budget.”

(© Dr. Jeannine Guindon, IFHIM, 55 Gouin Ouest, Montréal, Québec, H3L 1H9 Canada - 514-331-6861).

An innovative and very practical way to look at the management of our overall vitality, that is, the energy built up and expended by our body/mind/psyche/soul self is what the Institut de Formation Humaine Intégrale de Montréal calls the “energy budget.”  The paradigm distinguishes three types of energy and ways of being: 

Ø   Mobile energy – colorful, emotional and imaginative impulse.

Ø   Bound energy – awareness of moral, religious, work, commitment, and all other common and personal obligations and impressions of expected response.

Ø   Autonomous energy – taking time to filter the other two forms of energy through the awareness of who I am, what is my condition and situation now, including what is my available time and what are my obligations and responsibilities, and the meaning and purpose I freely choose to give to my life – and then freely choosing a course of action and a timing for putting it into motion.

The operating principle here is that, while mobile and bound energy are integral parts of how we function as human beings, when we go directly from the mobile impulse we can lose sight of the reality at hand or the meaning and purpose of our life, and cause us to disturb others, forget responsibilities, or cause other kinds of troubles. 

Similarly, bound energy can tie us up into knots if we act immediately upon it as an impulse, because then we become driven by obligation or duty, laws and rules, or other fixed motives that of themselves sap us of the vital energy that is only generated by freedom, interest, and generosity. 

The goal then is to insert a discipline of awareness and reflection to follow upon the emergence of either and both mobile and bound impulses; in order to take other considerations into account, such as other duties, our available strength, the needs and wishes of others, and so on.  Only then, in a moment of freedom, can we make a truly autonomous decision to act upon the impulse, or delay it, or qualify it with certain conditions. 

The challenge is acquiring the disciplines that can help one resist the impulses generated by mobile and bound energy, by developing an internal “space of freedom” to stop, think, and discern what to do. For this, we need to find ways to recuperate from normal daily expenditures of energy. It is easier to be aware of impulses and resist them when we maintain stores of energy within our organism and psyche. Those energy reserves allow us the freedom to stop, consider, and decide what we want to freely choose to do in accord with the meaning and purpose we want to give to our life. 

The IFHIM clarifies three different ways of expending and recuperating energy:

S   Physical strain, effort, and work.   S   = fatigue         S   è rest, sleep, & sensory stimulation:  

   e.g. shower, music, dance

Ø  Psychological attention.           Ø  = psychic drain         Ø  è change of pace, i.e. mindless 

physical activity: e.g. doing the dishes,
cooking a simple familiar meal

o   Affective charges.                    o   = physical tension         o   è vigorous sustained movement 

of the whole body in direct proportion to 
the intensity of the affective charges:
e.g. swim, run, cycle, aerobics, etc. 

© Dr. Jeannine Guindon, IFHIM, 55 Gouin Ouest, Montréal, Québec, H3L 1H9 Canada - 514-331-6861

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[1] Read Dr. Jeannine Guindon’s own account of those years of discovery and development of her new and quite revolutionary formation, education, and therapeutic approaches and methods in “L’autonomie psychique ne s’acquiert qu’au prix d’une vie engagée.”  (“Psychic autonomy is obtained only at the cost of a committed life.”) Conference of Jeannine Guindon, Foundress of the IFRM and directress of the programs at the Colloquium of 1986, in La Vie sans frontières.  Les Forces Vitales Humaines.  Histoire et développement.  Tome 1.  I.F.R.M.  1991, pages 41-46.  

[2] As Dr. Jeannine Guindon herself writes: “Thus, psychic autonomy is only obtained at the cost of a life committed to a cause, in a profession, towards one or several persons, and further for believers, towards God.  Thus, is acquired faith in oneself, faith in man and faith in God.”  Ibid, page 46.

© Dr. Jeannine Guindon, IFHIM, 55 Gouin Ouest, Montréal, Québec, H3L 1H9 Canada - 514-331-6861

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I received and participated in this formation at the I.F.R.M. from 1986 to 1990 and wrote up notes with my first pc in 2000 from which I've taken the excerpt above, edited for these web pages January 26, 2021.

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On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring to humanity the Good News of the Father's love manifested and given in Jesus, the Divine Mercy. G.S.

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© 2006-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2006-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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C.S. Lewis' Most Important Discovery - Why God Is Not Vain to Seek Praise

On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring to humanity the Good News of the Father's love manifested and given in Jesus, the Divine Mercy. G.S.

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VIRILITER AGE – ACT MANFULLY (Ps 27:14)         http://viriliterage.tumblr.com/

Why God Is Not Vain to Seek Praise       (27) C. S. Lewis’s Most Important Discovery

By Sam Storms           Nov 8, 2006                                                                            Series: Reflections

Since the western world is captivated, at least for now, by C. S. Lewis, and given the fact that tomorrow (December 9, 2005) the film version of “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe” is being released nationwide, I thought it might be good to say something about what I consider to be Lewis’s greatest theological discovery. I can’t say whether Lewis would rank it number one, but I suspect he might.

Lewis was extremely puzzled, even agitated, by the recurring demand by Christians that we all “praise God”. That was bad enough. What made it even worse is that God himself called for praise of God himself. This was almost more than Lewis could stomach. What kind of “God” is it who incessantly demands that his people tell him how great he is?

Lewis describes his struggle and how he worked through it in an extraordinary passage from the essay, “The Problem of Praise in the Psalms” (found in Reflections on the Psalms [New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958], pp. 90-98). Although I’m not widely read in Lewis, of what I have read this is undoubtedly the most important thing he ever wrote. To keep my comments distinct from those of Lewis, mine are in brackets preceded by my name.

"[Lewis] We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and horrible, both of God and His worshippers, threatened to appear in my mind. The Psalms were especially troublesome in this way – ‘Praise the Lord,’ ‘O praise the Lord with me,’ ‘Praise Him.’ … Worse still was the statement put into God’s own mouth, ‘whoso offereth me thanks and praise, he honoureth me’ (50:23). It was hideously like saying, ‘What I most want is to be told that I am good and great.’ … It was extremely distressing. It made one think what one least wanted to think. Gratitude to God, reverence to Him, obedience to Him, I thought I could understand; not this perpetual eulogy… .”

[Storms: I suspect this strikes us as problematic, as it did Lewis, because we want to think that God is pre-eminently concerned with us, not himself. We want a God who is man-centered, not God-centered. Worse still, we can’t fathom how God could possibly love us the way we think he should if he is so unapologetically obsessed with the praise and glory of his own name. How can God love ME if all his infinite energy is expended in the love of HIMSELF? Part of Lewis’s problem, as he himself confesses, was that he did not see that …]

“[Lewis] it is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men. It is not of course the only way. But for many people at many times the ‘fair beauty of the Lord’ is revealed chiefly or only while they worship Him together. Even in Judaism the essence of the sacrifice was not really that men gave bulls and goats to God, but that by their so doing God gave Himself to men; in the central act of our own worship of course this is far clearer – there it is manifestly, even physically, God who gives and we who receive. The miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard him, is implicitly answered by the words, ‘If I be hungry I will not tell thee' (50:12). Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don’t want my dog to bark approval of my books.”

[Storms: Lewis is addressing, somewhat indirectly, the question: How, or better yet, Why do you worship a God who needs nothing? If God is altogether self-sufficient and cannot be served by human hands as if he needed anything (Acts 17:24-25; Romans 11:33-36), least of all glory, why does he command our worship and praise of him? Lewis continues.]

“[Lewis] But the most obvious fact about praise – whether of God or anything – strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless … shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses [Romeo praising Juliet and vice versa], readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars… . Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible… . I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: ‘Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?’ The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value.”

[Storms: What Lewis is touching on here is how the love of God for sinners like you and me is ultimately made manifest. God desires our greatest good. But what greater good is there in the universe than God himself? So, if God is truly to love us, he must give us himself. But merely giving us of himself is only the first step in the expression of his affection for sinners. He must work to elicit from our hearts rapturous praise and superlative delight because, as Lewis said, “all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise.” That’s the way God made us. We can’t help but praise and rejoice in what we most enjoy. The enjoyment itself is stunted and hindered if it is never expressed in joyful celebration. Here’s how Lewis explained it.]

“[Lewis] I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with… .

If it were possible for a created soul fully … to ‘appreciate’, that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude… . To see what the doctrine really means, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God – drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy is no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”

[Storms: If you can, go back and read it again. It’s not the sort of statement one can fully digest at one sitting. Permit me to summarize.

God’s pursuit of my praise of him is not weak self-seeking but the epitome of self-giving love! If my satisfaction in him is incomplete until expressed in praise of him for satisfying me with himself (note well: with HIMSELF, not his gifts or blessings, but the intrinsic beauty and splendor of God as God), then God’s effort to elicit my worship (what Lewis before thought was inexcusable selfishness) is both the most loving thing he could possibly do for me and the most glorifying thing he could possibly do for himself. For in my gladness in him (not his gifts) is his glory in me.

If that was hard to digest, try this.

If God is to love my wife, Ann, optimally, he must bestow or impart the best gift he has, the greatest prize, the most precious treasure, the most exalted and worthy thing within his power to give. That gift, of course, is himself. Nothing in the universe is as beautiful and captivating and satisfying as God!

So, if God loves her he will give himself to her and then work in her soul to awaken her to his beauty and all-sufficiency. In other words, he will strive by all manner and means to intensify and expand and enlarge her joy in him. All of which is to say, and I owe this thought to John Piper, that God’s love for Ann is seen not in him making much of her, but in him graciously enabling her to enjoy making much of him forever.

So, God comes to Ann and says: “Here I am in all my glory: incomparable, infinite, immeasurable, unsurpassed. See me! Be satisfied with me! Enjoy me! Celebrate who I am! Experience the height and depth and width and breadth of savoring and relishing me!”

Does that sound like God pursuing his own glory? Yes. But it also sounds like God loving my wife perfectly and passionately. The only way it is not real love is if there is something for Ann better than God: something more beautiful than God that he can show her, something more pleasing and satisfying than God with which he can fill her heart, something more glorious and majestic than God with which she can occupy herself for eternity. But there is no such thing! Anywhere! Ever!]

AUTHOR      Sam Storms

From:  http://viriliterage.tumblr.com/

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On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring to humanity the Good News of the Father's love manifested and given in Jesus, the Divine Mercy. G.S.

----------------------------------------------------------------

© 2006-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2006-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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