There were a number of fathers in the early church (the first four centuries C.E.) who believed in apokatastasis, “universal restoration” (Acts 3:21). They believed that the real meaning of the resurrection of Christ was that God’s love was so perfect and so victorious that it would finally win out in every single person’s life. They were so sure about this that their thought partially gave rise to the mythology of purgatory as a place—in the dying process or shortly after death, God’s infinite love can and will still get at you! They felt that no soul could resist such a love once it was revealed to them. (Most Catholics forgot that the original folk belief in purgatory represented an overwhelming sense of God’s always-victorious love and mercy. Like many great mysteries, it deteriorated into its exact opposite, a place of punishment—which is all a worldview of scarcity can devise.)
.. ‘O good Lord, how can all be well when great harm has come to your creatures through sin?’ And here I wanted, if I dared, to have some clearer explanation to put my mind at rest.” And he said, “Since I have brought good out of the worst-ever evil, I want you to know by this; that I shall bring good out of all lesser evils, too.”
Richard Rohr: Suffering for Love
“Hate is just a bodyguard for grief. When people lose the hate, they are forced to deal with the pain beneath.” [2] I guess we could say that King Herod and the poor soldiers who massacred the Jewish children (Matthew 2:16-18) were just not ready to deal with the pain underneath, which made them incapable of compassion—for that is where compassion comes from—holding the pain of the world.
Until we love and until we suffer, we all try to figure out life and death with our minds. Love, I believe, is the only way to initially and safely open the door of awareness and aliveness, and then suffering for that love keeps the door open and available for ever greater growth. We dare not refuse love or suffering or we close the door to life itself.
Richard Rohr: The Broken Truth
One night, in a far-away land that “is somehow not so far away,” a truth falls from the stars. As it falls, it breaks into two pieces; one piece blazes off through the sky and the other falls straight to the ground. One day, a man stumbles upon the gravity-drawn truth and finds carved on it the words, “You are loved.” It makes him feel good, so he keeps it and shares it with the people in his tribe. The thing sparkles and makes the people who have it feel warm and happy. It becomes their most prized possession, and they call it “The Truth.” Those who have the truth grow afraid of those who don’t have it, who are different. And those who don’t have it covet it. Soon people are fighting wars over the small truth, trying to capture it for themselves.
.. Finally, a raven flies the broken truth to the top of a tower, where the other piece has been ensconced for safety, and the rejoined pieces shine their full message: “You are loved / and so are they.”
Richard Rohr: Unitive Seeing
Mystics like Francis and Clare lived from a place of conscious, chosen, and loving union with God. Such union was realized by surrendering to it, not by achieving it. Surrender to Another, participation with Another, and divine union are finally the same thing. Once we have achieved this union, we look out at reality from a much fuller Reality that now has eyes larger than our own.This is precisely what it means to “live in Christ” (en Christo), to pray “through Christ our Lord, Amen.” Note the important preposition here: we do not pray to Christ; we pray through Christ!
..This utterly transformed sense of self, living in objective union with God, no longer needs to live in shame or denial of its weakness, but rejoices because it does not need to pretend that it is any more than it actually is—which it now realizes is more than it ever hoped for! “When I am weak, I am strong,” Paul says (2 Corinthians 12:10). The loss of our small self, which initially feels like weakness and losing, becomes strength and winning. This is the great paradox enjoyed by every true believer.