The Christian must die in order to be re-born; and the death is the death of the self that sets itself up to be independent; to be a God, and to use all things as its creatures, for profit or pleasure: you will use all things, and be quite prepared incidentally to be fond of them, just so long as they fit in with your scheme and minister to your comfort. But that is not the Christian attitude. It is on LOVE that the “whole law depends”; and this condescending affection which will use things on condition is not love. In LOVE every getting is a form of giving; this other attitude is a sort of lust, where every giving is only a form of, or a means to, getting. The center is yourself; in LOVE the center is always the other, and yourself only identified as with the other. The pleasure-seeker in this sense is enslaved to the original sin: he has yet to die, to make the long journey and slay the serpent, and find himself anew and truly in the Other (GOD). There is no LOVE without reverence; but reverence consists in saying, “It is you who are important”.

…Passion cannot be worship of God unless it is reverence towards its immediate earthly object; and just as piety towards creatures is the test of piety towards God, so with reverence. If you want to be among those who mourn, you must start by making sure that you are temperate in your attitude toward creatures: that you are reverent towards men, women, animals, and inanimate things. You must not be sentimental: you must not make reverence synonymous with fear or softness or blindness. –Father Gerald Vann ‘The Divine Pity’

Reverence: They that mourn…