Program for the New World Order

Writings of Herbert Thomas Schwartz, T.O.P.

Our Lady of Guadalupe
The Maternity of Mary

On Living Therese's Little Way

Do not seek to remove only the symptom, the sin itself which God uses to humiliate you, but seek to remove the cause: seek to love God always, and to hate everything in yourself which is not God.
All have turned out of the way, there is none that doth good, there is not so much as one.
My soul doth magnify the Lord.
Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His mouth, for thy breasts are better than wine.

The love of a father is the spiritual womb of the child. O, if fathers only understood their responsibility, and their power in Jesus!

The Meaning of the Cross:
To Overcome the Misgiving about God's Love for us
Which is the Effect of
The Sin of our First Parents

The Message of Lazarus:
Only as Dead and Stinking in our Sins Are we Able to Rise with Jesus

Dead to Our Sins in Christ,
We Can Rise in Him to New Life

+ M

For we have charged both Jews, and Greeks, that they are all under sin. As it is written: "There is not any man just. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. All have turned out of the way; they have become unprofitable together; there is none that doth good, there is not so much as one. Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have dealt deceitfully. The venom of aspids is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet swift to shed blood: destruction and misery in their ways: and the way of peace they have not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes. Rm 3:9-11

These words of St. Paul, mostly gathered from the books of the Old Testament, that is to say, the Old Law, are written, not only for the Jews, but for all who would look for their justification in that Law. What does this mean? That Paul speaks here to all who would look for their happiness and peace in their fulfillment of the Law. And this is what he says: Jews and Greeks, that is to say, whoever may read these words who is not in Christ, is under sin. And not only those who are not in Christ, but even those who are in Christ, are not justified by the works which proceed from them alone. But they are justified by Christ, both as giving them that principle of grace by which they are able to do good works, and as making that principle active so that they actually do the good works of which that first grace made them capable.

But why does Paul make this point, do you think? If you would know the answer, then ask yourself this question: "In what do I take my pride and my delight? Do I rejoice in Jesus Whose Spirit gives testimony in my soul that I do, through that Spirit, the works which please the Father? Or is my peace and my delight in the works which I perform by my own spirit?" And so you say that you are unable to answer this question? Then let me answer it for you. If you work by the Spirit of Jesus, then that same Spirit testifies in you that you are corrupt outside of Jesus, yes, even as you are in Him, even as the body which is alive as it is united to the soul, is a corrupting corpse outside of that soul, and if it could speak this would be its testimony, that it has life only in virtue of the soul to which it is united. So that if you do not see that all the good you do comes from Jesus, then the good you do is your justification under the Law, and it is to you that Paul speaks telling you that in yourself you are under sin. If you think you are just in yourself, then Paul tells you that there is not any man just. If you pride yourself on your understanding, then he tells you that there is none that understands. If you pride yourself on your good will, then Paul's words tell you that your will is not good, because there is none that seeks after God. If you are in peace, as you think because of your good works, then he tells you that all men have gone astray, that their lives are useless and vain, that there is none that does good, there is not so much as one. Then if you would see what you really are in yourself, having seen that what you thought you were you are not, then again, let Paul tell you: Your throat is an open sepulcher because the stench of corruption emerges from your mouth. Why? Because with that mouth the abundance of your heart speaks. (Mt 12:34) And what does it speak? Your heart speaks the stench of self-love, would tell all men of your goodness and the evil of others. The open sepulcher breathes the stench of corruption, and just so the breath that emerges from your throat breathes the stench of self-love, and it is this breath that forms the monstrous words which are formed by your tongue. For the breath is not the word, yet the word is formed from the breath by the tongue. Just so the spirit of stinking self-love which breathes forth from your soul is formed by your tongue into words of deceit, by which you would convince others of your goodness, because you know in the depths of your soul that you are corrupt. And because you are so in love with your own goodness, the goodness of others would be only a threat to your own divinity, and so Paul likens your mouth to that of a poisonous snake which hides the venom of detraction of others. For not loving God Who alone is the universal Good which all may share in peace and joy, you rejoice in your own private good which is therefore threatened by the good of others. And therefore, your mouth is filled with poison to destroy the good name of others which necessarily threaten your own. And because God Who loves you nevertheless continues to pursue you with His Spirit of Truth, to show you your corruption in order that you might turn to Him, you cannot understand His Goodness because you are so blinded that you can only understand your own goodness; and therefore, believing yourself cursed by a God Who is Love, you curse Him in your heart, in the bitterness of your heart, and therefore, this same cursing is on your lips, and not only of God, but of all those who, as God's instruments, teach you wittingly or unwittingly your corruption. And therefore, your feet which are the instruments of your will are quick to shed blood, to murder those whose sacrifice is acceptable, or at least appears so to your eyes. Therefore, yours is the way of murderers who cannot know the way of peace since in their hearts all goodness is ordered to their own goodness. And because the fear of God would perhaps turn you from these evil works, you have turned from the fear of God and have convinced yourself of your innocence. And thus what fear of God may still lurk within you is buried far from your eyes, that you may not see it.

Do you understand the answer to that question? Here it is briefly: if you would know in what you delight, whether in Jesus' justification of you, or in your own justification of yourself, then ask yourself now whether you see yourself as Paul has described those who are under the law. If you see yourself as he describes, then the Spirit of Jesus is your justification. But if you do not see yourself as he describes, then you are blinded by your spirit, and what Paul says is true of you - only because there is no fear of God before your eyes, you cannot see what you are. Because you would save your life, you are losing it.

I cannot change; only creatures change. So if your happiness depends on what can change, it does not depend on Me Who am Unchangeable. Besides, the one thing that you need now, is the thing that you have - that is why you have it, because I always give you just what you need. No, what has to change is your understanding of things, not the things. You have to understand that Divine Providence is Love, the Love of yourself - if only you will accept It! Then your happiness will depend on change, on the changes which I Who cannot change bring to you.

Do you see where I am leading you? Everything that has been happening to you has only one purpose, to teach you your nothingness in yourself so that, like Me, and in Me, you may receive everything from the Father, and this at each moment of your existence, that you may be brought forth with Me and in Me by the Father, your time lost in Our Eternity. I have been teaching you to understand My Heart, so that you may be purified in Me and with Me of everything that is not from the Father. For so long I have seemed to be rejecting you, but it was I Who was sustaining you all the time and drawing you to Myself all the while I was teaching you to believe and trust more and more in My Love for you. And now I want you to understand this truth, which will bring you even closer to My Heart and prepare you for the continuous union of your heart in Mine for which I long so much.

This is what I want you to understand and ponder until it becomes part of your very being, and I want you to teach it to all the souls I have given you. You see, you have not really penetrated the depth of My being in you and how My Love operates so secretly and silently within you, and, because you have not realized that, until now it has seemed to you that you would want Me to love you, and then you wonder whether I will answer your desire your prayer. Do you see? You think this way because you have not understood how everything good comes from Me, that the moment you think of Me and want Me to love, that very desire does not come from yourself alone: You have that desire because it is My desire - it is I Who move you to ask Me for My Love, because I want to give it to you.

It is not as though you are separated from Me and then, if I am moved by your prayer, I will give you My Love. No! You have My Love. I am loving you, and that is why you are asking me to love you, because I want to love you more, and in order to love you more you must be disposed to receive more - as I said, "Ask, and you shall receive." Mt 7:7; Lk ll:9 And that is why I move you to ask. Do you see how I am always with you now? Do you see how I cannot bear to be separated from you a single moment, but that My desire is to give Myself to you more at each moment? Therefore I want you to know that, more and more, in Me and with Me, you are being brought forth to My Likeness by the Father in the Love of Our Spirit; I want you to penetrate more and more that in everything you do to seek My Love, you are being moved by the Father and Myself in Our Love for One another - Which is One Thing with Our Love for you. I want you to understand how impatient We are for you to be totally in Us. And therefore, in asking Me to love you, do not seek for what you do not have, for I am yours, and My Father is yours, and Our Spirit is yours - but ask only for what you know that We, in Our Infallible Love for you want to give to you, an always greater share in Our Happiness and in Our Being, because We love you so much, and because We want to take Our delight in you, always more and more. The only meaning of your faults and the falls We permit, you can see now, is to purify always more and more your realization of your dependence on Us in the knowledge of your misery outside of Us. But it is your temptation, when you see your weakness and inadequacy, to feel rejected, to think We do not love you, and therefore to give up. But now you must understand, so far is that from being the case, that the very joy you desire is the very joy We desire to give you - only you cannot conceive how much greater is the joy that We desire to give you.

Do you want to know what it is to be united with My Son on the Cross? It means to want to see nothing in yourself outside of Me but your sins and your misery - as My Son saw nothing but sin in Himself. That was why He cried out to Me "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34 But for Him there was no need to experience this separation from Me in order to be united with Me - He was always united with Me, but for you there is. For I have shown how much you desire to be united with your own goodness, rather than with Mine, and how you know that it is impossible for you to see any goodness in yourself without loving yourself rather than Me, your Father. Reflecting on yourself, you see the goodness in yourself instead of in Me - your eye is no longer single. It is by this knowledge I have given you that I would move you now to desire one thing only: to be crucified with My Son. For now you are able to understand that you are perfectly united with Me when you are forsaken, forsaken with my Son, My Jesus. For it was when He cried out to me "Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" that He opened My Paternal Heart totally to all your misery.

In The smile of my beloved, O my Jesus,
Whispers Your joy to me -
Because Your beloved
Knows You are she
Loved by me,
Because my beloved
Knows You are she
Loving me.
The smile of my beloved, O my Jesus
Whispers "This is Me
Loving me!"

In the measure that I do not acknowledge my sins I feel rejected by God, and I am rejected to that extent, to the extent that I do not accept Him Who is Truth. And therefore, I hide from Him in fear and anxiety, and, again to that extent, my prayers are to propitiate a God Whom I fear with servile fear, to pay back with my own works for an offense which at bottom I do not acknowledge, and which only Jesus can undo for me as I am united with Him in Mary.

Psalm 137:1-3 To those who see their weaknesses with simplicity, and turn to the Merciful Love of the Father, in the Son, He gives strength to overcome. But those who would live a lie, making their very uncleanness appear clean, to themselves and to others, He chastises even in His Love, that they might begin to see the evil of their ways, and beg for light to see, because the hardness of their hearts has made them blind. "O Lord, that I might see!" Mk 10:46; Lk 18:41 O Lord, let me drink from the springs of the fountain of Your Truth! For what is more terrible than to be torn between You, Jesus, Who are Truth, and the lie of my own being outside of You? O Jesus, deliver me from the wicked man who is myself without You that I may be always, at every moment, in You, in Our Blessed Mother.

Charity sees no evil because charity is in principle the Love proper to God Whose Love does not love a pre-existent beauty, but Whose Love creates the beauty which He loves. And so it is with us - we love a soul in Jesus, not for what it is in itself, but for what He made it to be. And this love is a prayer which moves Jesus to create the beauty of a soul which we see and love in Him. When we have cast out the beam of self-love from our own eye (Mt 7:5; Lk 6:42), we see that Jesus has done this to us, and that He loves us only for the beauty He sees in Himself, and Mary - and then we know how to heal our neighbor, as we were healed, with love, not our love, but His. "Love one another as I have loved you." Jn 13:34

Only the strength, the fortitude of God, enables a soul to do what God wants: It is only in loving Jesus that His fortitude is ours. When we interrupt our act of love, then we drop back into our own understanding, our own strength - which can only bring us to calamity.

"Without Me you can do nothing." Jn 15:5 Therefore, when you have failed, when you have sinned, it was because you were not with Me. That is the meaning of sin, to teach you never to leave Me, never to let go of My Hand. After you have sinned, then, knowing that I permitted that sin only to teach you this, and paid for it with My Blood, come to Me quickly, with total confidence, in the knowledge that I want you infinitely more than you want Me. Now, in the realization of your misery and My Goodness, is the moment to grow in My Love - by allowing Me to comfort you, to give you My Heart.

The act of love is everything because it opens the soul totally to the Love of Jesus. Then the soul does what He wants because it is in contact with Him, thinking as He thinks, willing as He wills - caring about nothing else, a lily among lilies, where Jesus feeds, where He takes His delight. Cf. Cant. 6:3

When we fall, it is true, we have offended Jesus, but more important, He is teaching us through that fall, what happens when we do not abide in Him - even for a very short time. So it is more important to cooperate with this intention of His, to strive to make our act of love unceasing. That unceasing act of love is, therefore, the expression and proof of real poverty of spirit.

It is our love of Jesus that permits Him to work in us, and it is His work in us that makes us humble. And to realize this, not in words, but in an unceasing act of love, is true humility.

"Transform everything disagreeable that you meet with into little roses; gather them with love and offer them to Me with love." Jesus to Consolata Betrone

This is necessary because the disagreeable is always the gift of the Father by which He would open our hearts to His Love in the Son. What hurts, opens our heart, breaks us from some attachment which has kept our heart closed to Jesus, to the Father. Or if we are beyond that state, our suffering is redemptive for those who are not, who resist suffering in this way. +

It is very easy for us to get preoccupied with the perfection of our work, with the perfection of the act or object produced - instead of with the Love of Jesus for Whom we do it. And we frustrate Him in this way, because what He needs is not our works, but our hearts. What He needs is to be permitted to pour Himself into our hearts - which alone can make our works perfect, i.e., pleasing to Him.

I am the Being in Whom you have your being. I am deep within you - so deep that unless you advert to Me you are not aware of My existence. The things you are aware of are only My effects. They are superficial, and yet you measure almost everything by them. You think of your life and of your existence as one thing, and of Me, Jesus, your God, as something apart from you. Thus you do not realize that it is I Who sustain you in your existence, apart from Whom you are absolutely nothing, that it is I, the God Who sustains you in being Who am your Jesus Who am waiting, waiting at each moment to give Myself to you, to give you not only the fulfillment of your natural life, but the supernatural perfection of that life, My Life. But I cannot give you My Life unless you become quiet within Me. Your natural life is given to you without this recollection, but My Life is waiting to pour itself into you as, by your recollection, you become more and more open to Me. Form the habit, therefore, of slipping away from everything else, letting yourself fall, so to speak, into Me. Everything that happens to your is ordered to this end. I am the Truth, and all truth is in Me. When you let yourself fall into Me, deep within you, you leave all the lies with which you are so incessantly preoccupied, lies by which you seek continuously, in one way or another, to justify your existence.

The Spirit of silence is the Voice of the Father Who speaks to me in the Word, each moment a little word for me, out of the Mouth of the Father, a little word made small for me in time, in His Word. (Cf. Mt 4:4; Dt 8:3)

The strength of my soul is the poverty of a single point of time, the point of my contact with my Lord and my Savior, now, in Mary.

The Beatitudes: Mt 5:3-8

"Blessed are the poor in spirit."
In the poverty of this now, O my Jesus, which You have given me, possessing no creature, NOW is the ETERNITY of Your Being Which is all mine, who by Your gift, am all yours.

"Blessed are the meek."
"Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse, thou hast wounded my heart with one of thy eyes, and with one hair of thy neck." Cant 4:9 It is the meekness of the spouse, her weakness trusting only in His Strength, that wounds the Heart of Jesus. It is this simple helplessness in herself, the meekness of the dove's eye, of the soft little wisp of hair curled at the back of a little girl's neck, that opens the Heart of Jesus to protect her who knows not what would it be to protect herself.

"Blessed are they who mourn."

"By the waters of Babylon, there we sat and wept, when we remembered Sion: On the willow in the midst thereof we hung up our instruments. For there they that led us into captivity required of us the words of songs." Ps 137:1-3

By the waters of Babylon, the captives of sin, our sin, we sat and wept, remembering Mary. Dead in the tomb of our corruption, yet weeping for ourselves, "How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?" Our singing is the weeping of tears in our exile. And now, as I lie dead in the tomb, decayed in my sins, "Mary said to Him, ‘Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died.' When, therefore, Jesus saw her weeping ... He cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come forth!'" +

"Blessed are the clean of heart; for they shall see God."
We shall see God as the Father brings forth the Son in the Unity of the Holy Spirit. The clean of heart, turning away from whatever is unclean in carnal generation, desire only to be one with the Son as He is One with the Father, that is to say, in His eternal Generation. The clean of heart, therefore, shall see God, because they desire to see Him, because the only intimacy they desire is the infinitely pure Intimacy of the Son in the Father, in the Love of the Holy Spirit. Therefore to the extent that we do not long for this divine intimacy, our hearts are not clean, and we are drawn towards the intimacy of the flesh. Therefore let us embrace the Spirit of Truth, and acknowledge the impurity in ourselves. Let us long for this cleanness of heart, that we may see God, trusting in His merciful Love.

You cannot bear My sorrow without My joy. You cannot suffer for Me unless you are united with Me. "Rise after you have sat, ye who eat the bread of sorrow!" Rise to suffer after you have learned My Love in contemplation!

Only the realization that I love you now, I, Jesus, Who know all your misery, all your sins, the failure of your whole life, only the knowledge that I Who know how undeserving you are of anyone's love, love, nevertheless, with the Love of God Himself, can take away the pain and anxiety of feeling unloved, perhaps hated, and rejected by so many persons, and not undeservedly.

When you realize My Love for you, then in Me, you love those who despise and reject you, then your love becomes My Love for them, for you and in you. And only then is the frustration of your need to love and to be loved satisfied in My Heart.

Jesus since You have asked me to love my neighbor as myself, I see that You want me to hate my neighbor as myself, as I hate myself. For I love myself in the hatred of everything in me that is not in You. Otherwise, in loving my own soul, I should lose it: Whereas in hating it, I am gaining it.

And therefore, loving my neighbor as I love myself, I hate all in him that is not in You as I hate all in me that is not in You.

And is not this Your meaning when You tell us to cast the beam out of our own eye first? Mt 7:5; Lk 6:42 For so long as I do not see that everything that is in me that is not in You is evil, I am a hypocrite using my self-righteous judgment of my neighbor to whiten the sepulchre of my own corruption. (Mt 23:27f.) But when I have case out this beam, I know how to heal my neighbor, that is, I heal him by charity unfeigned, your charity, a charity which loves only what is in You and which, therefore does not judge. For as I no longer judge myself (1Cor 4:3), so I do not judge my neighbor. Neither do I fear that he may judge me. For since I no longer judge myself, in judging me he is judging Christ, and it is he, therefore, who should fear lest he be judged.


© 2007 All Rights Reserved Laura Jones