Holiness.

Holiness.
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What is holiness?

When is a man considered to be holy?

Holiness means

being free from sin and being united with God.

When a man is free from sin and is united with God

he is considered to be holy.

Becoming free from sin is the starting point of holiness.

But we should not be satisfied with remaining in the starting point not moving further.

One who cultivates a land first cleans it

by removing the unwanted things like stones and thorny plants from it.

But if he sits down enjoying his clean land

without doing anything further like ploughing, sowing , watering and manuring,

what is the use?

His land may be clean,

but he can get nothing from it.

In the same way, after cleaning our souls from sin,

we must proceed to become holier

by our spiritual activities as per the desire of Our Lord.

These activities come under two heads.

1. Internal.

2. External.

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1. Internal.
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Internal activities are intellectual and emotional.

The former are active in the head, the latter in the heart.

In the head we meditate on God.

Spiritual reading of the Bible and other holy books supply the material for our meditation.

We must concentrate

on what we meditate

giving no place to distraction.

The more we meditate on God the closer will we come to Him.

This will result is union with God.

When we are united with God

we will be with God and God alone.

This union is what we call prayer.

This intellectual activity will automatically be joined with emotional activity,

bringing our heart into our prayer.

Heart is the seat of love.

There can not be a prayer without love.

The more we meditate on the love of God

the broader will our heart become

creating more space

for the love of God to pour in.

God’s love is unlimited.

Of course our heart’s capacity is not unlimited to enjoy the fullness of this love.

But we can broaden our heart more to experience God’s love more.

The more we evict the ‘attractions to sin’

the broader will our heart become.

Meditation is a powerful instrument to broaden our heart.

The more we meditate the holier we will become.

The holy person is one who is able to say to God, 'Not I, You’.

It means, ‘I am not living, it is God who lives in me;

I am cent per cent activated by God and God alone’.

The holy person may live in this world,

but he is not of the world

as he lives for God, not for the world.

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2. External:

External activity of holiness consists

in the expression of our internal love

in external activities.

God has created us to live in a society, not alone.

Man is born in a family, a mini society.

He is also a member of a larger society

of which family is a part.

When we are united with God in love,

we are also united with all the members of the human society,

who are also the children of God

and hence our brothers and sisters,

whom also we must love as we love God.

One who says, ‘I love God, not my neighbours’ is a liar.

Our Lord has said that we must love God above all things

and that we must love our neighbours as we love ourselves.

So love for God and love for our neighbours always go together-

one can not be without the other.

Serving God means serving our neighbours for God.

I say ‘for God’

because whatever we do must be done for the glory of God,

not for self-glory.

Whatever we do for the glory of God is meritorious before God.

Whatever we do merely for self-satisfaction and self-glory

has no merit before God.

Social service done for self glory is waste.

It will not make us holy.

External service for our neighbours done in God’s name makes us holier.

The more we serve

the more we are united with God.

So, a holy person does everything for God.

He breathes for God.

He eats for God.

He feeds others for God.

He grows for God.

He dies for God.

He will live with God for ever.

Lourdu Selvam.