Part 3 of 3 on what Fr. Allen is calling "the centre of the centre," Romans 8, St. Paul's extraordinary, soaring text to God's Love in Christ and Spirit towards and in the New Community of God and in and through persons who dare to commit to those communities. In the last part of the chapter, Paul reveals, as he has earlier in the letter, the beating heart of this "centre," that which makes this extraordinary bidirectional participation possible: God's Love. Fr. Allen unpacks this Love as God's embrace: The Holy Spirit's embrace of our incomplete condition and Christ's embrace as the complete identification with our condition. And all of it so that we can, not escape the lives we have, but actively embrace them!
