Moral improvement of all, this is the goal that matters

What it strikes me most in the spirit content is recorded in The Mediums’ Book, chapter XXVII, item 303, that “the OBJECTIVE of Spiritism is the moral improvement of humanity." (Paulo Sérgio dos Reis, our interviewee in this edition.)

This is the goal of Spiritism and also of Christian doctrine.

Jesus has a desire: to make us people who love. It all comes down to love. But love has an inflexible enemy, materialistic selfishness. It seems that only pain can destroy materialism and selfishness, or, instead of pain, the influence of those who love us and infect their own love. Materialism is the passion with which we indulge ourselves in material things, and selfishness is the cult of our own personality and the submission of selfless interest.

Christian doctrine was embodied in the figure of the Master and in the self-denial, courage and witness of his disciples.

The first Christian code was the doctrine contained in the letters of the apostle Paul. The first to spell out the traditions of what it would later become the gospel of Matthew, though Emmanuel claims that there was a preliminary edition of Levi before the conversion of Saul. But, notwithstanding this fact, the whole Pauline tradition and the other apostles can be summed up in the law of love.

In the anointing of Naim, according to Humberto de Campos, in the book Good News, Mary of Magdala, after washing Jesus' feet with her tears and drying them with her hair, she heard the Lord say: "The sins of this woman are forgiven, because she loved much", and, turning to her, said to her: "Your faith has saved you, go in peace."

Magdalene's transformation was notorious. After being freed from seven obsessors, she knew the love of Jesus and her life was never the same. She dedicated herself to the children of Calvary, especially who had leprosy. She distributed mother's love to those who waited for her to gather the words of the Good News. And she remained faithful to the end.

Emmanuel tells us that no one has done more violence to itself to follow Jesus, and, by her example, we recognize that the doctrine of Jesus "will be for all apprentices and followers the golden code of lives transformed to the glory of good. And no one, like Mary of Magdala, had transformed her own, in the light of the redeeming Gospel." (Path, Truth and Life, Chapter 92)

Everything in life, as it turns out, it is summed up in love. Jesus not only taught what it is to love; He showed how to behave according to love.

"Most of all, keep a burning love among yourselves, for love covers a multitude of sins." (1 Peter 4: 8)

As it is deduced from the book Good News, by Humberto de Campos, these words, though recorded by Peter, are actually from Jesus.

The love of Jesus sustains the life of the planet. It holds on to all of us. He loves us all, with the same intensity and quantity. His love dedicated to all of us is not perceived in the same way. Only the love we have in us can realize the Master's love. Thus, the good man feels blessed, while the man given to the vices feels forgotten by Jesus. But love is the same. And no one is forgotten by the Master.