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Principle and Foundation A Contemporary Version (updated 22 January 2008)
As Christians we believe we come from a loving God who freely creates each one to seek and find God’s life forever, as one humanity, one planet and one universe. As Christians we believe God creates all other things that we may discover in them God’s presence and action and begin now to share God’s own life, by learning to love one another and to care for our kinship with all the other creatures that so wonderfully share, sustain and support our lives. It follows that we will find our true selves in a freedom to choose what helps to share our lives with others, not what hinders this. To come to this freedom we need at all times, where it is left to our own choice, to hold ourselves open and ready for all things, wealth or poverty, fame or disgrace, health or sickness, a long life or a short one, and with everything else. So we want to be graced by God into a spiritual freedom that is both deeply interior and gratefully responsive to God’s prior love in creating us, to desire and choose in all things what better helps each of us to share the life for which God has made us all.
For priests making the Spiritual Exercises in Daily Life. John Reilly sj, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
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