December
7

“Thus Has the Lord Dealt with Me”

And after those days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and hid herself five months, saying, Thus has the Lord done to me in the days wherein He looked on me to take away my reproach among men. (Luke 1:24‒25)

All true worship consists in adoration of the Lord, adoration of the Lord in humility, and humility in one’s acknowledgment that in himself there is nothing living, and nothing good, but that all within him is dead, yea, cadaverous; and in the acknowledgment that everything living and everything good is from the Lord. The more a man acknowledges these things, not with the mouth, but with the heart, the more he is in humility; and consequently the more he is in adoration, that is, in true worship, and the more he is in love and charity, and the more in happiness. (Arcana Coelestia 1153.2)

An own that is innocent is to know, acknowledge, and believe, not with the mouth but with the heart, that nothing but evil is from one’s self, and that all good is from the Lord; and therefore that what is man’s own is nothing but blackness; that is to say, not only the own of his will, which is evil, but also the own of his understanding, which is falsity. When man is in this confession and belief from the heart, the Lord flows in with good and truth, and insinuates into him a heavenly own, which is white and lustrous. No one can ever be in true humility unless he is in this acknowledgment and belief from the heart. (Arcana Coelestia 3994.1)

Man cannot be in humility, nor consequently can he receive the Lord’s mercy (for this flows in only in humility or into a humble heart), unless he acknowledges that there is nothing but evil from himself, and that all good is from the Lord. (Arcana Coelestia 5758.2)

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