Meditations

1. Do not love the world, or the things in the world. 1 John 2. 15. How far-reaching these words of Jesus are! The world is the blind and corrupt multitude that Jesus Christ condemns in the gospel, and for whom he does not even pray as he is about to die. All of us speak against the world, and yet each of us carries the world in our hearts. The world is nothing other than all the people who love themselves, and who love things without regard to God. Therefore, since all that men have to do to be classified as the world, is to love themselves, and to try to find in created things that which is only found in God. We ourselves are the world. So let us own up to the fact that we belong to the world, and that we do not have the Spirit of Jesus Christ. What a pity it is to give the outward appearance of renouncing the world, but all the while inwardly sustaining the world's thoughts and feelings.