It's always interesting encountering people with whom one disagrees on fundamental things in everyday life.
On the one hand, there's the option of simply ignoring the differences, focusing on the things held in common, and moving on.
On the other hand, there's more and more an insistence that everyone else be in accord on certain fundamentals, whether those be the priorities of the left or of the right, before a person may be accorded any kind of respect or treated with any dignity.
It's a tricky thing--of course, human dignity is intrinsic and inalienable. Fundamental respect and love for our neighbor is essential, in the full, philosophical sense.
And yet that doesn't mean every opinion can be allowed to pass unremarked, can it?
Certainly people in power need to be challenged on matters of fact, on areas where they jeopardize other peoples' well being. Certainly we now look back and wish for a world in which Hitler had been greeted by an outraged uprising of the whole world, an utter refusal to countenance his racial and nationalistic insanity, and a swift and certain challenge that could have headed off Holocaust and the slaughter of war.
So there are certain opinions, certain attitudes, that ought bring out a resolute opposition from us, reflecting perhaps the example of Dietrich von Hildebrand, recognizing certain evils as fully incompatible with Christianity or civilization.
And yet in an era where the errors of Russia influence almost all of us; when our first premises are so often out of whack in ways of which we are completely unconscious, what gives us the right to decide that we have accurately discerned whose opinions we must repudiate utterly? Left and right justify dehumanizing policies, governing choices that do actively lead to the deaths of innocents. We are faced with a world looking more and more like the milieu of the Caesars than the city of God.
How are we to oppose when we are so often, unconsciously, part of the problem?
Hell. How can you still be Catholic when you have to believe in hell?
How can you believe that a good and loving God could condemn anyone, no matter how bad, to an eternity of torment? How does that make sense?
It's a good question, and a long-standing one. I think the answer comes from the nature of humans and the nature of God.
You see, human beings are more than just animals, more than just haunted meatsacks, or whatever the dismissive term for us is these days. We're greater than we seem, greater than we often act. In fact, as C.S. Lewis pointed out masterfully in The Weight of Glory, human beings are potential gods or monsters, potential heavenly beings or potential monsters. We are matter and spirit, body and soul. We are persons who will live forever, no matter what, no matter who we are. Once created, always existing--why?
What makes human beings immortal?
Well, there have been a number of theories down through the ages, a number of different ways of addressing what happens to us after we die. I'm going to dismiss the atheist contention that it's night and silence for us upon death, the argument that once the biological machinery ceases ticking over, then it's curtains for the strange combination of electric impulses and chemical reactions that make me who I am. I'm going to dismiss that because it's such a minority view in terms of human history that it barely warrants a mention by the numbers. Across the ages and cultures, you have some notion of an afterlife, some notion of a part of us that endures beyond the grave--even if we may face dissolution and destruction at the hands of gods or devils past that point--that we really ought to be able to take the existence of some sort of soul as well established,
But what is it that makes us immortal?
Well, we are made in the image and likeness of God, originally. God breathed life into us, and with that breath of earthly life also came divine life, at the outset. Since that time, Adam and Eve took a bite out of a forbidden fruit, and so we lost that original inspiration, that original inbreathing of divine life, only to be regained through Baptism, Holy Communion, and retained through Confession and Anointing of the Sick. But we've never lost the image of God.
We are persons. And all persons are immortal.
All persons, divine, human, or angelic (including fallen angels) have spiritual souls. All persons, once created, will never pass out of existence again, though some will experience the "second death," whatever that will entail. The Last Judgment seems a dismal prospect for the goats; but as best we know, people who have once come into existence will never pass away fully and finally.
That means that beatitude for the blessed will last forever, and damnation for the damned will last forever.
But why must it be so?
Fundamentally, it comes down to the fact that God is not Harvey Weinstein. That is, God respects human free will. He is a gentleman, and will take no as the refusal for a relationship that it is. He comes to us, sacred Scripture tells us repeatedly, like a bridegroom seeking His bride; like a lover seeking His beloved. He comes to us, in other words, pursuing a love affair with the created order, a union that marriage only resembles in a shadowy, distant sort of way.
Marriage is the union of two lovers; the union God is pursuing with us is the union between Love Itself and--well, us.
But of course, true love seeks freely willed, freely chosen love. Love Itself must be met with love, or else it will go away. God created us free in order to allow our love to be free. So there is the option to say no to Him.
Now, during our lifetimes, we may be saying yes and no to Him at different points along the way; just as in an ordinary relationship, sometimes things can get rocky. Couples break up, get back together, and go through all sorts of ups and downs together. But with God, there comes the time of a definite choice, where all the lesser choices of a lifetime culminate, or are overcome by grace.
That is to say, one day we die.
There are a few options for last minute interventions, of course--Our Lady can step in, as St. Alphonsus Liguori details in story after story in The Glories of Mary. Jesus comes to the soul in its final moments three times, as St. Faustina details in her Diary (1496; see also 1698). But at a certain point, our destiny is fixed--for spirits, such choices are all or nothing affairs. Human spiritual souls will experience this, just as it was for the angels and the demons at the time of their testing.
And then--well, we remain in our choices forever after. We choose either the company of God, His angels and His saints, or we choose the company of those who cannot stand company, those for whom the existence of others is a burden and a bore, whose egos reign supreme, whose vices have overtaken them and swallowed any goodness in them. We choose God and an afterlife of radical self-giving and receiving love, or we choose ourselves and an afterlife of radical selfishness, of closed mindedness, closed heartedness, closed soul.
If we choose ourselves rather than loving ourselves and opening ourselves up to God and His beloved creation, we choose to become the Dead Sea, salt, stagnant, and blocked off, rather than the Sea of Galilee, receiving new water and giving out water. We choose to become misers, neither spending nor receiving, neither welcoming others nor seeking out the true good for ourselves. We choose hell--as C.S. Lewis pointed out, the gates of hell would of course be locked from the inside, would be furiously closed off against anything outside of hell's control, blocking out light, life, and the unwanted, intolerable intrusion of other people, other ways of being, other ways of living.
But must it be forever?
Yes--because God is love, and God is eternal. God creates and sustains all that is through His love. You exist right now because of God's love, because God knows and loves you, remembers you and pours out His heart to you, shares His being with you, and calls you good.
You exist from moment to moment because God chooses you. God loves you. God calls you worthy.
And God can never stop loving His creation. It's not in His nature. He is love, not hate; wisdom, not forgetfullness. God is eternal life and love, and so He holds His beloved fellow people in existence for all eternity.
As Diane Duane puts it so well in the Young Wizards Series, nothing that is loved is ever lost.
So even the devils in hell are loved by God. He must, or else they would cease to exist. He loves us so much that He sustains us even in our furious rejection of Him, even in our sins. He loves us and remembers us even as we lash out against Him, even as we doubt His existence, forget our obligations to Him, fail to show Him gratitude, and do evil against God and neighbor. God loves us so much that He lets us choose freely what to do. He loves us so much that there are consequences to our choices, even eternal consequences.
And He can never stop loving us, because that would demand that God ceases to be God.
That is to say, He can never stop sustaining us; He can never stop holding us in existence, even if we have rejected Him, even if we have chosen life without Love, Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Being--life without God.
He can never stop loving us into existence, even if we have chosen hell.
That is how eternal damnation and divine love make sense in my head, at least.
... During the entire process of producing a book, the writer becomes a swirling vortex of neediness. First you’re begging for time to write, then you’re asking people to read and edit, then you’re querying agents, then you’re asking (oh god) for blurbs, then you’re contacting reviewers, then you’re emailing everyone you’ve ever met, then you’re posting on Facebook (again and again), and then you’re asking people to show up to some bookstore on a Wednesday night to listen to you read words at them. Later, you’ll ask them to write reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Every day, you are making demands on people’s time and money. It’s terrible. ...
People will read your book. Almost certainly not as many people as you wish. But sometimes a friend from high school or a former teacher will surprise you by showing up to a reading, or posting a review online. Sometimes a stranger will email you out of the blue and say they loved it, and in those moments it will feel like you’ve accomplished something impossible. It will feel better than you ever thought it could. ...
As a writer, you need to approach every project with the understanding that you’re doing this work for yourself, and everything that happens once it’s in the world is out of your control. Whatever project you’re working on now doesn’t derive value from your friends’ approval, but rather from the love and energy you pour into it. You can do the work, and you can keep showing up, and that’s all you’ve got. Most of the time, it’s all you need.
I'd nuance that last bit by saying--if God is calling you to write, that doesn't include a guarantee that it'll be good; that it'll be published; or that it'll be read by anyone on earth. God may well be asking for fidelity, not success, as Mother Teresa pointed out. God has called you to write. He may want you to do it for an audience of One/Three/the Communion of Saints.
Or He may make you the next J.K. Rowling.
Whichever it is, it needs to be enough for you that He has called and you have obeyed.
If you feel a further call to publish/see your work on stage or the screen, then you also have a further call to work very hard on your craft.
But simply the call to write? One thing I needed to come to grips with was that a call to write is not necessarily the same thing as a call to have it go anywhere.
I've been blessed further. I've been published, and have screen credits for Franciscan University Presents. But none of that would have happened without the simple acceptance that I needed to write and just keep writing with no guarantee that I'd have any other audience than God. And I needed to find that enough.
One of the things you often hear from people is that the news is so sad. Doesn't matter their political persuasion; doesn't matter their taste in music or movies; doesn't matter where they're from.
The news is enough to depress the hardiest soul.
Now, some of that is the nature of the medium itself. People in entertainment know that in order to keep eyes on screens, what's on the screen needs to compel your attention. It needs to be hard to look away from. So actors tend to either be awe-inspiringly beautiful, or eye-catchingly otherwise. Spectacle is important, and often used to the exclusion of story or anything else.
So some of the daily darkness of the news is the result of commercial calculation.
But some is simply the result of living at the end of an age, a hinge moment in history, the prelude to the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart.
So what do we do, we who believe, in the face of darkness, death, and destruction? What do we do in the face of tragedy and loss?
Well, we pray, or at least we ought to. When we see the dead on the screen, the celebrities and the unnamed victims of war, disease, and disaster; when we see the body bags and the body counts from the latest school shooting; when we're confronted once again with a disaster, we should be praying.
And we should be praying for everyone involved. We don't get the easy way out of saying, "Oh, those poor victims! I'll pray for them. But I can't possibly pray for those monsters who did this to them!"
Nor do we have the luxury of praying for "our" politicians, for "our" side to win, and never offering a prayer for our enemies. Oh, our prayers may be for their conversion, for them to change their minds, but we must always be wishing them well, praying for their good. We must always be loving them, because they are our brethren, our family. The whole of humanity are brethren to us, are family to us. Some are closer than others, true; some must be opposed in order to defend the defenseless, true; but all are one in Adam, if not in Christ. And all are to be loved, according to the Gospel (see Mt 5:44; Lk 6:27-36).
And so we should pray, especially the Divine Mercy Chaplet, "for mercy on us, and on the whole world." We should adore the Eucharistic Lord on behalf of all, especially on behalf of those who "do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love" Him. We should live Fatima and Divine Mercy, praying for those most in need of God's mercy, and so seeking to save as many (or all) from hell, if our prayers and God's grace will make it so.
Pray for everyone. Pray for all the situations. We're given infinite power in the Mass, in the Rosary, in the Divine Mercy Chaplet. If we don't use it, many people will be the poorer.
In his prayer video for the month of July, Pope Francis has asked Christians to join him in praying for those who have strayed from the faith, providing hope to them through the witness of our joy and actions.
Yes, please pray with the Holy Father, especially through the daily Rosary for peace in the world and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, for those who have left the faith, that they might return and become holy, great saints, and soon.
Pray for all of us who are in the Church, but who have grown old and weary in our sins, who need the grace and transformation of the Holy Spirit in order to bring life and light back into our lives and practice of the faith.
And pray for the living saints, that they may persevere to the end, not falling along the way, not beginning well and ending badly. For the battle rages around us here below, and we Christians are all too often wounded and fall, taking others down with us.
Pray, and study the sources of our faith, and prepare yourselves to spread the Good News to all the world. Choose to answer the Holy Father's call to live a "missionary option" today, and enter into the Evangelical Catholicism described by George Weigel in his book of the same name, helping heal the wounds caused by the Bad Religion identified by Ross Douthat.
We have work to do. Now is not the time to give up in the face of the world's apparent indifference, or the sins and crimes of the clergy, or the apostasy of so many in the West. Now is the acceptable time to do again what St. Paul, and St. Peter, and so many great fathers and mothers in the faith have done across the ages, what we are all called to do, sometimes by words, but always by love--we are to share the Holy Spirit that is within us with the world, to speak the Word and be the face of the Father's mercy to all those in need, all those of us burning and dying in our sins. We are to work mercy and have faith, to live love and give ourselves generously for the salvation of all the world.
We are to love like Christ, and live like Mary, and serve like Joseph.
He can be terrifying to more traditionally minded Christians, frustrating to left-leaning Christians who want him to change the Church at the root, and often bewildering and exhilarating to the world. A lot of that is because he's a Jesuit, the very first Jesuit pope in the history of the Catholic Church.
What does that mean? Check out The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything by Fr. James Martin, SJ, for a fair overview, and the talk by Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ, delivered at Franciscan University of Steubenville, if you really want to understand.
But at the very root of it, to be Jesuit is to be a companion of Jesus. That's where the name comes from, after all--the name of the order was originally the Society (or the Company) of Jesus, modeled off of St. Ignatius of Loyola's experience of military companies, as well as the comradery and brotherly love of soldiers.
Now that doesn't just mean that a Jesuit or those formed by the Jesuits are supposed to be Christians. That's part of it.
No. See, here's the thing: If we do it properly, to love God is to love neighbor, and to love neighbor is to love God. Why? Because whatever we do to the least of our brethren, we do to Jesus. Jesus is present in those on the margins, those outside of respectable society and inside respectable society, the lonely rich and the desperately poor, the ordinary and the extraordinary, all. Why? Because He's the New Adam, the Man through whom divinity comes to share in humanity, and humanity in divinity. Through Him, the doorway to Heaven is open, and through Him, Heaven finds a path into the created order.
So to be Jesuit is to accompany Jesus in all His presences, all His ways of communicating His life and love, of showing His face of mercy to the world. To be Jesuit is to go out to the furthest reaches of the earth, to bring Jesus out to others and to meet Jesus in them, to discover the seeds of the Word in all cultures, all religions, and to know that we are meant to find Jesus shining through the created order, through every tree and river, every rock and star. We are to see the Logos' touch on every scrap of matter, see the image of Jesus in every human being, see God in all things.
Part of all that is the sort of self discipline, self mastery that you would expect of a soldier, because you can only practice absolute love if you can make an absolute gift, and an absolute gift is only possible if you have mastered yourself, if you are able to give everything to God.
That's what's going on with Pope Francis. He's calling the Church to leave the sheepfold to go after the one lost sheep, summoning the 99 sheep to follow the Good Shepherd on His quest for the wandering, the lost. Indeed, any number of the 99 may be far more lost than they think, even though they're in the sheepfold. The goal of the Christian life is to be with the God Shepherd, after all, not to live safely without Him, nor to sit smugly at home, secure in our own rightness, while there are lost sheep wandering far from home, exposed to the wolves and the weather.
So Pope Francis calls us to go out, to prioritize being with people, to prioritize loving people before preaching to them, to know them. He calls us to seek Jesus where He's at, whether that be in the confessional and the Eucharist, the Word of God and the Church, or that be in the poor, in the people outside the visible bounds of the Church, those far from home and those who know Jesus far better than we do, Catholic though we may be, church-going Christians though we may be. He calls on us to se the Creator in His creation, to find the seeds of the Word in the cultures and religions across the globe, to serve Jesus in those around us, in our neighbors and our enemies, in our respectable neighbors and disreputable neighbors alike.
Nowhere in all of that is the slightest suggestion of surrendering the teachings of the faith; rather, it's a call to trust that it's not up to us to make converts, or to make sure the Church maintains her teaching. Rather, it's a call to trust, a call to surrender to the Holy Spirit, the One who makes converts and is the life of the Church, the safeguard of her teaching. Oh, yes, we are to defend the Church, to explain her teaching, to discern truth and be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, yes. We are to fight the world, the flesh, and the devil, but we are to do it like Jesus did. We are to so love the world that we give ourselves for love of God and neighbor. We are to feast and to fast, to be all things to all people like Jesus did (hey, the Incarnation was the greatest example of inculturation we'll ever see!), and to so love our neighbors that they can see it and feel it, to walk beside them so that they come to know us, and to be so deeply steeped in the Holy Spirit that, coming to know us, they'll come to know Jesus, and find their way to share in eternal life.
... I had a hard time getting to the Holy Hour and Benediction. All day the day before I experienced the most dreadful spiritual crisis I have been through since I converted to the Catholic Church. My mind was deluged with negative thoughts, to the point that I began to wonder if I even was Catholic or had a right to enter any Church.
Then, at mass that evening, I prayed and prayed and it let up.
Later that night, I got hit with a sudden and rather violent gastrointestinal thing.
It was at that point that I finally recognized old scratch.
The next day, I thought about skipping the whole Benediction. I felt so terrible, and now I was tormented with thoughts that I might meet a particular person there who had hurt me in the past and who I dread ever seeing again.
I prayed, and knew that I needed to go.
I told a friend of mine that all this made me feel as if the devil thought that if Rebecca Hamilton showed up at this Benediction he would be cast back into hell. I told her that if other people were getting a dose of what I was getting, I feared that the church might be empty.
But, despite all this, I went.
And what I experienced was the Presence and Love of Christ...
For those who have no idea what I'm referring to, behold a bit of awesome.
"We wish to confirm once more that the task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church." It is a task and mission which the vast and profound changes of present-day society make all the more urgent. Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of His death and glorious resurrection."--Evangelii Nuntiandi, 14
"When I am reading the Diary of St. Faustina, I find great comfort and consolation in all that Sr. Faustina writes about the compassionate Heart of Jesus and His merciful love for us. But when she starts talking about the Holy Trinity, my mind goes kind of 'blank,' and I really do not know what she is talking about."
If that has been your experience too, then know that you are not alone. In fact, many millions of Catholics have never really been brought "up to speed" on what the Church teaches about the Holy Trinity, and why it is so important — indeed, why, in many ways, it is the central doctrine of our faith. When St. Faustina writes about the Trinity, she assumes knowledge of Trinitarian doctrine that few of us possess, and this can make those passages in her Diary seem somewhat foreign and opaque to us. But fear not: With the help of the Holy Spirit, over the next few weeks, we shall ponder the mystery of the Trinity together, and thereby draw a little closer to St. Faustina in mind and heart.
...One time, after receiving Holy Communion, she [St. Faustina) began to understand that the entire Holy Trinity came to dwell within her soul:
Once after Holy Communion, I heard these words: You are our dwelling place. At that moment I felt in my soul the presence of the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I felt that I was the Temple of God. I felt that I was a child of the Father. I cannot explain all this, but the Spirit understands this well (451).
Now, you might be thinking to yourself, "That is all very beautiful, but I still don't get it! What does the Trinity really mean? How can God be One in being and essence, but Three Persons at the same time? And what difference does it really make if we believe all this or not?"
Well, Sr. Faustina wanted to know more, too! Listen to what she wrote near the very start of her Diary:
On one occasion I was reflecting on the Holy Trinity, on the essence of God. I absolutely wanted to know and fathom who God is. ... In an instant my spirit was caught up into what seemed to be the next world. I saw an inaccessible light, and in this light what appeared like three sources of light that I could not understand. And out of this light came words in the form of lightning which encircled heaven and earth. Not understanding anything, I was very sad. Suddenly, from this sea of inaccessible light came our dearly beloved Savior, unutterably beautiful with His shining Wounds. And from this light there came a voice which said, Who God is in His Essence, no one will fathom, neither the mind of angels nor of man. Jesus said to me, Get to know God by contemplating His attributes. A moment later, He traced the sign of the cross with His hand and vanished (30).
So, right from the start, Jesus was telling her that no one can ever completely fathom the mystery of the Trinitarian Being of God, but that if we contemplate God's attributes, we can at least begin to understand it. And as we have seen, that is precisely what Sr. Faustina did: The more she contemplated the compassionate love in the Heart of Jesus, and the more she appreciated the "glowing center of love" in God and the "burning center of God's love," especially manifested in the Holy Eucharist, the more she began to appreciate what it means to say that God is Three Persons in One Being or Essence...
Early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalen went to the tomb, and found the stone moved away from the tomb door. So she came running to Simon Peter, and that other disciple, whom Jesus loved; They have carried the Lord away from the tomb, she said to them, and we cannot tell where they have taken him.
Upon this, Peter and the other disciple both set out, and made their way to the tomb; they began running side by side, but the other disciple outran Peter, and reached the tomb first. He looked in and saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Simon Peter, coming up after him, went into the tomb and saw the linen cloths lying there, and also the veil which had been put over Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths, but still wrapped round and round in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and saw this, and learned to believe. They had not yet mastered what was written of him, that he was to rise from the dead.
The disciples went back home; but Mary stood without before the tomb, weeping. And she bent down, still weeping, and looked into the tomb; and saw two angels clothed in white sitting there, one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. They said to her, Woman, why art thou weeping? Because they have carried away my Lord, she said, and I cannot tell where they have taken him.
Saying this, she turned round, and saw Jesus standing there, without knowing that it was Jesus. Woman, Jesus said to her, why art thou weeping? For whom art thou searching? She supposed that it must be the gardener, and said to him, If it is thou, Sir, that hast carried him off, tell me where thou hast put him, and I will take him away. Jesus said to her, Mary.
And she turned and said to him, Rabboni (which is the Hebrew for Master). Then Jesus said, Do not cling to me thus; I have not yet gone up to my Father’s side. Return to my brethren, and tell them this; I am going up to him who is my Father and your Father, who is my God and your God.
So Mary Magdalen brought news to the disciples, of how she had seen the Lord, and he had spoken thus to her. And now it was evening on the same day, the first day of the week; for fear of the Jews, the disciples had locked the doors of the room in which they had assembled; and Jesus came, and stood there in their midst; Peace be upon you, he said. And with that, he shewed them his hands and his side. Thus the disciples saw the Lord, and were glad. Once more Jesus said to them, Peace be upon you; I came upon an errand from my Father, and now I am sending you out in my turn. With that, he breathed on them, and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit; when you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven, when you hold them bound, they are held bound.
There was one of the twelve, Thomas, who is also called Didymus, who was not with them when Jesus came. And when the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord, he said to them, Until I have seen the mark of the nails on his hands, until I have put my finger into the mark of the nails, and put my hand into his side, you will never make me believe.
So, eight days afterwards, once more the disciples were within, and Thomas was with them; and the doors were locked. Jesus came and stood there in their midst; Peace be upon you, he said. Then he said to Thomas, Let me have thy finger; see, here are my hands. Let me have thy hand; put it into my side. Cease thy doubting, and believe. Thomas answered, Thou art my Lord and my God. And Jesus said to him, Thou hast learned to believe, Thomas, because thou hast seen me. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have learned to believe.
There are many other miracles Jesus did in the presence of his disciples, which are not written down in this book; so much has been written down, that you may learn to believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and so believing find life through his name.--John 20
On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.--G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
One is very often asked at present whether we could not have a Christianity stripped, or, as people who asked it say, ‘freed’ from its miraculous elements, a Christianity with the miraculous elements suppressed. Now, it seems to me that precisely the one religion in the world, or, at least the only one I know, with which you could not do that is Christianity. In a religion like Buddhism, if you took away the miracles attributed to Gautama Buddha in some very late sources, there would be no loss; in fact, the religion would get on very much better without them because in that case the miracles largely contradict the teaching. Or even in the case of a religion like Mohammedanism, nothing essential would be altered if you took away the miracles. You could have a great prophet preaching his dogmas without bringing in any miracles; they are only in the nature of a digression, or illuminated capitals. But you cannot possibly do that with Christianity, because the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left. There may be many admirable human things which Christianity shares with all other systems in the world, but there would be nothing specifically Christian. Conversely, once you have accepted that, then you will see that all other well-established Christian miracles—because, of course, there are ill-established Christian miracles; there are Christian legends just as much as there are heathen legends, or modern journalistic legends—you will see that all the well-established Christian miracles are part of it, that they all either prepare for, or exhibit, or result from the Incarnation. Just as every natural event exhibits the total character of the natural universe at a particular point and space of time; so every miracle exhibits the character of the Incarnation.--C. S. Lewis, "The Grand Miracle" in God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 1970), pp. 80–81
What credence for such news as ours? Whom reaches it, this new revelation of the Lord’s strength? He will watch this servant of his appear among us, unregarded as a brushwood shoot, as a plant in waterless soil; no stateliness here, no majesty, no beauty, as we gaze upon him, to win our hearts. Nay, here is one despised, left out of all human reckoning; bowed with misery, and no stranger to weakness; how should we recognize that face? How should we take any account of him, a man so despised? Our weakness, and it was he who carried the weight of it, our miseries, and it was he who bore them. A leper, so we thought of him, a man God had smitten and brought low; and all the while it was for our sins he was wounded, it was guilt of ours crushed him down; on him the punishment fell that brought us peace, by his bruises we were healed. Strayed sheep all of us, each following his own path; and God laid on his shoulders our guilt, the guilt of us all.
A victim? Yet he himself bows to the stroke; no word comes from him. Sheep led away to the slaughter-house, lamb that stands dumb while it is shorn; no word from him. Imprisoned, brought to judgement, and carried off, he, whose birth is beyond our knowing; numbered among the living no more! Be sure it is for my people’s guilt I have smitten him. Takes he leave of the rich, the godless, to win but a grave, to win but the gift of death; he, that wrong did never, nor had treason on his lips! Ay, the Lord’s will it was, overwhelmed he should be with trouble. His life laid down for guilt’s atoning, he shall yet be rewarded; father of a long posterity, instrument of the divine purpose; for all his heart’s anguish, rewarded in full. The Just One, my servant; many shall he claim for his own, win their acquittal, on his shoulders bearing their guilt. So many lives ransomed, foes so violent baulked of their spoil! Such is his due, that gave himself up to death, and would be counted among the wrong-doers; bore those many sins, and made intercession for the guilty.--Isaiah 53
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Loudly I call, but my prayer cannot reach thee. Thou dost not answer, my God, when I cry out to thee day and night, thou dost not heed. Thou art there none the less, dwelling in the holy place; Israel’s ancient boast. It was in thee that our fathers trusted, and thou didst reward their trust by delivering them; they cried to thee, and rescue came; no need to be ashamed of such trust as theirs. But I, poor worm, have no manhood left; I am a by-word to all, the laughing-stock of the rabble. All those who catch sight of me fall to mocking; mouthing out insults, while they toss their heads in scorn, He committed himself to the Lord, why does not the Lord come to his rescue, and set his favourite free?
What hand but thine drew me out from my mother’s womb? Who else was my refuge when I hung at the breast? From the hour of my birth, thou art my guardian; since I left my mother’s womb, thou art my God! Do not leave me now, when trouble is close at hand; stand near, when I have none to help me. My enemies ring me round, packed close as a herd of oxen, strong as bulls from Basan; so might a lion threaten me with its jaws, roaring for its prey. I am spent as spilt water, all my bones out of joint, my heart turned to molten wax within me; parched is my throat, like clay in the baking, and my tongue sticks fast in my mouth; thou hast laid me in the dust, to die. Prowling about me like a pack of dogs, their wicked conspiracy hedges me in; they have torn holes in my hands and feet; I can count my bones one by one; and they stand there watching me, gazing at me in triumph. They divide my spoils among them, cast lots for my garments. Then, Lord, do not stand at a distance; if thou wouldst aid me, come speedily to my side. Only life is left me; save that from the sword, from the power of these dogs; rescue me from the very mouth of the lion, the very horns of the wild oxen that have brought me thus low.
Then I will proclaim thy renown to my brethren; where thy people gather, I will join in singing thy praise, Praise the Lord, all you that are his worshippers; honour to him from the sons of Jacob, reverence to him from Israel’s race! He has not scorned or slighted the appeal of the friendless, nor turned his face away from me; my cry for help did not go unheeded. Take what I owe thee, my song of praise before a great assembly. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the sight of his worshippers; the poor shall eat now, and have their fill, those who look for the Lord will cry out in praise of him, Refreshed be your hearts eternally! The furthest dwellers on earth will bethink themselves of the Lord, and come back to him; all the races of the heathen will worship before him; to the Lord royalty belongs, the whole world’s homage is his due. Him shall they worship, him only, that are laid to rest in the earth, even from their dust they shall adore. I, too, shall live on in his presence, and beget children to serve him; these to a later age shall speak of the Lord’s name; these to a race that must yet be born shall tell the story of his faithfulness, Hear what the Lord did.--Psalm 21:2-32, emphasis added.
After this, the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the palace, and gathered the whole of their company about him. First they stripped him, and arrayed him in a scarlet cloak; then they put on his head a crown which they had woven out of thorns, and a rod in his right hand, and mocked him by kneeling down before him, and saying, Hail, king of the Jews. And they spat upon him, and took the rod from him and beat him over the head with it. At last they had done with mockery; stripping him of the scarlet cloak, they put his own garments on him, and led him away to be crucified. As for his cross, they forced a man of Cyrene, Simon by name, whom they met on their way out, to carry it; and so they reached a place called Golgotha, that is, the place named after a skull. Here they offered him a draught of wine, mixed with gall, which he tasted, but would not drink, and then crucified him, dividing his garments among them by casting lots. The prophecy must be fulfilled, They divide my spoils among them, cast lots for my garments.
There, then, they sat, keeping guard over him. Over his head they set a written proclamation of his offence, This is Jesus, the king of the Jews; and with him they crucified two thieves, one on his right and one on his left. The passers-by blasphemed against him, tossing their heads; Come now, they said, thou who wouldst destroy the temple and build it up in three days, rescue thyself; come down from that cross, if thou art the Son of God. The chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him in the same way. He saved others, they said, he cannot save himself. If he is the king of Israel, he has but to come down from the cross, here and now, and we will believe in him. He trusted in God; let God, if he favours him, succour him now; he told us, I am the Son of God. Even the thieves who were crucified with him uttered the same taunts.
From the sixth hour onwards there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour; and about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lamma sabachthani? that is, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Hearing this, some of those who stood by said, He is calling upon Elias: and thereupon one of them ran to fetch a sponge, which he filled with vinegar and fixed upon a rod, and offered to let him drink; the rest said, Wait, let us see whether Elias is to come and save him. Then Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit. And all at once, the veil of the temple was torn this way and that from the top to the bottom, and the earth shook, and the rocks parted asunder; and the graves were opened, and many bodies arose out of them, bodies of holy men gone to their rest: who, after his rising again, left their graves and went into the holy city, where they were seen by many. So that the centurion and those who kept guard over Jesus with him, when they perceived the earthquake and all that befell, were overcome with fear; No doubt, they said, but this was the Son of God.--Matthew 27:27-54, emphasis added.
Then the soldiers led him away into the court of the palace, and gathered there the whole of their company. They arrayed him in a scarlet cloak, and put round his head a crown which they had woven out of thorns, and fell to greeting him with, Hail, king of the Jews. And they beat him over the head with a rod, and spat upon him, and bowed their knees in worship of him. At last they had done with mockery; stripping him of the scarlet cloak, they put his own garments on him, and led him away to be crucified. As for his cross, they forced a passer-by who was coming in from the country to carry it, one Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. And so they took him to a place called Golgotha, which means, The place of a skull. Here they offered him a draught of wine mixed with myrrh, which he would not take; and then crucified him, dividing his garments among them by casting lots, to decide which should fall to each.
It was the third hour when they crucified him. A proclamation of his offence was written up over him, The king of the Jews; and with him they crucified two thieves, one on the right and the other on his left, so fulfilling the words of scripture, And he was counted among the wrong-doers. The passers-by blasphemed against him, shaking their heads; Come now, they said, thou who wouldst destroy the temple and build it up in three days, come down from that cross, and rescue thyself. In the same way, the chief priests and scribes said mockingly to one another, He saved others, he cannot save himself. Let Christ, the king of Israel, come down from the cross, here and now, so that we can see it and believe in him. And the men who were crucified with him uttered taunts against him.
When the sixth hour came, there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour; and at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabachthani? which means, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Hearing this, some of those who stood by said, Why, he is calling upon Elias. And thereupon one of them ran off to fill a sponge with vinegar, and fixed it on a rod, and offered to let him drink; Wait, he said, Let us see whether Elias is to come and save him. Then Jesus gave a loud cry, and yielded up his spirit. And the veil of the temple was torn this way and that, from the top to the bottom. The centurion who stood in front of him, perceiving that he so yielded up his spirit with a cry, said, No doubt but this was the Son of God.--Mark 15:16-39, emphasis added.
To thee, O Lord, I look for refuge, never let me be ashamed of my trust; in thy faithful care, deliver me. Grant me audience, and make haste to rescue me; my hill-fastness, my stronghold of defence, to save me from peril. Thou dost strengthen and defend me; thou, for thy own honour, dost guide and escort me; by thee protected, I shall escape from the snare that lies hidden in my path. Into thy hands I commend my spirit; thou, God ever faithful, wilt claim me for thyself. Let fools provoke thee by the worship of false gods; for me, no refuge but the Lord. I will triumph and exult in thy mercy; it was thou didst pity my weakness, and save me when I was hard bestead; before the enemy’s toils could close around me, the open plain lay at my feet.
And now, Lord, have compassion on my distress; vexation has dimmed my eyes, frets me away, soul and body. My life is all grief, my years are but sighs; for very misery, my strength ebbs away, my frame is wasted. Openly my foes deride me; even to my neighbours I am a thing of utter scorn; my friends are adread, and the passer-by shuns my contact; I am lost to memory, like a dead man, discarded like a broken pitcher. On every side their busy whispering comes to my ears; peril all around, so powerful the conspiracy that threatens my life. And still, Lord, my trust in thee is not shaken; still I cry, Thou art my God, my fate is in thy hand; save me from the enemy’s power, save me from my pursuers! Smile on thy servant once more, and deliver me in thy mercy; Lord, do not let me plead in vain. Disappoint the wicked of their hopes, hurl them down thwarted into the abyss; let silence fall on those treacherous lips, that spoke maliciously of the innocent in the days of their pride and scorn!
What treasures of loving-kindness, Lord, dost thou store up for the men who fear thee, rewarding their confidence for all the world to see! Thy presence is a sanctuary, to hide them away from the world’s malice; thy tabernacle a refuge from its noisy debate. Blessed be the Lord; so wondrous is his mercy, so strong the wall of his protection. I thought, bewildered, that thy watchful care had lost sight of me; but I cried out to thee, and thou thereupon didst listen to my plea. Love the Lord well, you who worship him; the Lord keeps faith with his servants, and repays the actions of the proud above measure. Take heart, keep high your courage, all you that wait patiently for the Lord.--Psalm 30:2-25; emphasis added.
As they led him off, they caught hold of a man called Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and loaded him with the cross, so that he should carry it after Jesus. Jesus was followed by a great multitude of the people, and also of women, who beat their breasts and mourned over him; but he turned to them, and said, It is not for me that you should weep, daughters of Jerusalem; you should weep for yourselves and your children. Behold, a time is coming when men will say, It is well for the barren, for the wombs that never bore children, and the breasts that never suckled them. It is then that they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us. If it goes so hard with the tree that is still green, what will become of the tree that is already dried up? Two others, who were criminals, were led off with him to be put to death. And when they reached the place which is named after a skull, they crucified him there; and also the two criminals, one on his right and the other on his left. Jesus meanwhile was saying, Father, forgive them; they do not know what it is they are doing. And they divided his garments among themselves by lot.
The people stood by, watching; and the rulers joined them in pouring scorn on him; He saved others, they said; if he is the Christ, God’s chosen, let him save himself. The soldiers, too, mocked him, when they came and offered him vinegar, by saying, If thou art the king of the Jews, save thyself. (A proclamation had been written up over him in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, This is the king of the Jews.) And one of the two thieves who hung there fell to blaspheming against him; Save thyself, he said, and us too, if thou art the Christ. But the other rebuked him; What, he said, hast thou no fear of God, when thou art undergoing the same sentence? And we justly enough; we receive no more than the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing amiss. Then he said to Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him, I promise thee, this day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.
It was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. The sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn in the midst: and Jesus said, crying with a loud voice, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit; and yielded up his spirit as he said it. And the centurion, when he saw what befell, gave glory to God; This, he said, was indeed a just man--Luke 23:26-47, emphasis added.
That is the best explanation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception I've ever read. Why?
Because that's the point on which Protestant friends and interlocutors always get hung up--how could Mary need the salvation offered by Jesus if she never sinned?
And the answer, of course, is that she was conceived immaculate and never sinned by the grace which came through her Son and Savior.
We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.
The order of events is unusual, yes, and yet Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, is eternal, and so all events in his personal experience are similarly eternal--standing outside of time.
All grace comes through Jesus Christ. No grace enters time and history except through Jesus Christ, including all grace in the lives of the Old Testament folk, all grace in the lives of people who've never heard the Gospel, and all grace which enters the lives of Christians--even though Jesus comes later in time than the folk of the Old Testament.
All grace comes to Mary through Jesus, just as much and more than the grace which comes into the lives of anyone else.
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my savior.
For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness;
behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.
The Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is from age to age
to those who fear him.
He has shown might with his arm,
dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart.
He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones
but lifted up the lowly.
The hungry he has filled with good things;
the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped Israel his servant,
remembering his mercy,
according to his promise to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.
Gloria in Profundis
There has fallen on earth for a token
A god too great for the sky.
He has burst out of all things and broken
The bounds of eternity:
Into time and the terminal land
He has strayed like a thief or a lover,
For the wine of the world brims over,
Its splendour is spilt on the sand.
Who is proud when the heavens are humble,
Who mounts if the mountains fall,
If the fixed stars topple and tumble
And a deluge of love drowns all—
Who rears up his head for a crown,
Who holds up his will for a warrant,
Who strives with the starry torrent,
When all that is good goes down?
For in dread of such falling and failing
The fallen angels fell
Inverted in insolence, scaling
The hanging mountain of hell:
But unmeasured of plummet and rod
Too deep for their sight to scan,
Outrushing the fall of man
Is the height of the fall of God.
Glory to God in the Lowest
The spout of the stars in spate-
Where thunderbolt thinks to be slowest
And the lightning fears to be late:
As men dive for sunken gem
Pursuing, we hunt and hound it,
The fallen star has found it
In the cavern of Bethlehem.
The essence of Christianity is that God was one of us, and is, and will be forever. And that he can be encountered in every human being, as the Anchoress shows so well. Excerpts:
My mood being what it was, I wasn’t interested in finding out. I kept my head down, and my eyes lowered, and as I approached the steps I could hear him asking, “which one? This one? This one? Which door?”
Finally looking up, I realized the man was talking to me. “Which door?” he repeated, moving quickly from one to the other. “This one? I’m going to open the door for you! I’m the doorman! I’m waiting to open the door for you, if you’ll let me.”
“If you’ll let me…” those words struck something inside me, and made me feel guilty. I was too ungenerous to allow someone else to be generous. I know this about myself; it is an old flaw, and a deep one.
I let him open the door, and thanked him, but not warmly. I felt intruded upon, in exactly the way that shy, introverted people can feel burdened by simple exchanges of pleasantry that come so naturally for others. Why, oh why did people have to put themselves in my way, and inflict themselves upon my consciousness — forcing me to engage when I am so intent on only doing so on my own terms! Grouse, grouse.
Settling into my pew, still disturbed by the doorman in a way I couldn’t quite understand, I breathed deeply and asked God’s forgiveness for my unpardonable me-ness. I began to catalogue for him the prayer intentions I had brought with me — for a young woman and a young man, both battling breast cancer; for my family members sick in body, or mind and spirit; for a missing jetliner and grieving families; for the priest I could see preparing in the sacristy — a shy fellow, himself, who always inspires me to pray for him. Opening my Magnificat, I happened on a quote from the Servant of God Catherine deHueck Doherty:
The mercy that we must give to others includes that of standing up for the poor, the lonely, those who have no education and cannot stand up for themselves. It means to engage in what we call social justice on behalf of our brother. That involves opening ourselves to being pushed around and crucified. This always happens to those who stand up for others…
Lent is here to remind us that the mercy of God is ours provided we embrace his law of love; provided we realize that it’s going to hurt, and hurt plenty, but that the very hurting will be a healing. That’s the paradox of God, that while you hurt, you heal. That’s true healing.
The sea of his mercy is open before us. Lent definitely and inexorably leads us to it and makes us think about what it takes to swim in it.
I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, 3striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.--Ephesians 4:1-6
John Paul II (soon to be canonized a saint) reiterated the Gospel call for the unity of Christians in his encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint. Excerpts:
Ut unum sint! (May they be one)...The courageous witness of so many martyrs of our century, including members of Churches and Ecclesial Communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church, gives new vigour to the Council's call and reminds us of our duty to listen to and put into practice its exhortation. These brothers and sisters of ours, united in the selfless offering of their lives for the Kingdom of God, are the most powerful proof that every factor of division can be transcended and overcome in the total gift of self for the sake of the Gospel.
Christ calls all his disciples to unity. My earnest desire is to renew this call today, to propose it once more with determination, repeating what I said at the Roman Colosseum on Good Friday 1994, at the end of the meditation on the Via Crucis prepared by my Venerable Brother Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. There I stated that believers in Christ, united in following in the footsteps of the martyrs, cannot remain divided. If they wish truly and effectively to oppose the world's tendency to reduce to powerlessness the Mystery of Redemption, they must profess together the same truth about the Cross.1 The Cross! An anti-Christian outlook seeks to minimize the Cross, to empty it of its meaning, and to deny that in it man has the source of his new life. It claims that the Cross is unable to provide either vision or hope. Man, it says, is nothing but an earthly being, who must live as if God did not exist.
Pope Francis: Yes, for me ecumenism is a priority. Today there is an ecumenism of blood. In some countries they kill Christians for wearing a cross or having a Bible and before they kill them they do not ask them whether they are Anglican, Lutheran, Catholic or Orthodox. Their blood is mixed. To those who kill we are Christians. We are united in blood, even though we have not yet managed to take necessary steps towards unity between us and perhaps the time has not yet come. Unity is a gift that we need to ask for.
I knew a parish priest in Hamburg who was dealing with the beatification cause of a Catholic priest guillotined by the Nazis for teaching children the catechism. After him, in the list of condemned individuals, was a Lutheran pastor who was killed for the same reason. Their blood was mixed. The parish priest told me he had gone to the bishop and said to him: "I will continue to deal with the cause, but both of their causes, not just the Catholic priest's." This is what ecumenism of blood is. It still exists today; you just need to read the newspapers. Those who kill Christians don't ask for your identity card to see which Church you were baptized in. We need to take these facts into consideration...
The martyrs, the greatest Christian witnesses to the faith and the truth of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, challenge their brethren, separated and divided in the face of tremendous challenges from the world, the flesh, and the devil these days. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, as Tertullian wrote, and perhaps also the bond of charity which holds the whole together, mediating the Holy Spirit, opening a door through their sacrifice as Jesus did.
Faithfulness to small, ordinary duties can sometimes move mountains and change the world. Grace, joined to our labor and love, renews all things; suffuses all things; holds the cosmos together. Let your life mediate love. Excerpts:
...Somehow I am mindful that the Lord also had “other duties as assigned.” One of the most touching and moving scenes in the Gospels is on a certain resurrection morning, at the lakeside in Galilee. Peter is eagerly swimming ashore to see the Risen Lord. And there is Jesus, the very Son of God and Lord of all, cooking breakfast for them (Jn 21:7). Yes, Jesus Christ, Eternal Son of the Father, Divine Logos, Universal King, Savior of the Nations, and breakfast chef….”Other duties as assigned.”...
Mother Aparecida,
today I feel like you once did
before your God and mine,
who proposes for our lives a mission
whose contours and limits we ignore,
whose demands we only glimpse.
Yet in your faith that "nothing is impossible with God,"
O Mother,
you did not hesitate,
and so I cannot hesitate.
"Behold the handmaid of the Lord! Let it be done unto me according to your word!"
In this way, O Mother, like you,
I embrace my mission.
Into your hands I put my life
and we will
– you-mother and me-son –
we will walk together,
believe together,
fight together,
win together as your Son and you always walked together.
"Woman, behold your son! Son, behold your mother!"
Mother Aparecida,
You once took your Son to the Temple
to consecrate him to the Father,
that he might be fully available for the mission which awaited him.
Lift me up today to the same Father,
consecrate me to him,
all that I am and all that I have.
"Here I am! Send me!"
Mother Aparecida,
I put in your hands,
and so take to the Father, our and your youth, and World Youth Day:
so much strength, so much life,
so much dynamism sprouting and bursting,
which can be at service of life, of mankind.
"Father, welcome and sanctify your youth!"
Finally, O Mother, we ask you:
stay here,
always welcoming your son and daughter pilgrims,
but also come with us, be always by our side
and go along with us,
the great family of your devotees, in our own missions:
especially when the cross weighs heavy,
sustain our hope and our faith.
"Keep faithful, and I will give you the crown of life. Amen!"
The Holy Father continues to speak with a sharp sense of urgency:
“Yes, you have to come to know Jesus in the Catechism – but it is not enough to know Him with the mind: it is a step. However, it is necessary to get to know Jesus in dialogue with Him, talking with Him in prayer, kneeling. If you do not pray, if you do not talk with Jesus, you do not know Him. You know things about Jesus, but you do not go with that knowledge, which He gives your heart in prayer. Know Jesus with the mind – the study of the Catechism: know Jesus with the heart – in prayer, in dialogue with Him. This helps us a good bit, but it is not enough. There is a third way to know Jesus: it is by following Him. Go with Him, walk with Him.”
It is necessary, “to go, to walk along the streets, journeying.” It is necessary, said Pope Francis, “to know Jesus in the language of action.” Here, then, is how you can really know Jesus: with these “three languages - of the mind, heart and action.” If, then, “I know Jesus in these ways,” he said in conclusion, “I involve myself with Him”:
“One cannot know Jesus without getting oneself involved with Him, without betting your life [on] Him. When so many people – including us – pose this question: ‘But, who is He?’, The Word of God responds, ‘You want to know who He is? Read what the Church tells you about Him, talk to Him in prayer and walk the street with him. Thus, will you know who this man is.’ This is the way! Everyone must make his choice.”
...The prayer is the key. Without it, we can know the Catechism back and forth, and we can seek to serve others and look for Christ in each other, but the root of all of that — the root that feeds our understanding of the books and helps us to see Christ in others, and to recognize the promptings of the Holy Spirit — is prayer. Daily prayer is what nourishes all of the rest: feeds it, supports it, connects it, grounds it, as Mary grounded Martha...
And if I may, here are some books to get you started (scroll down). Or if that's too much, just say, "Jesus, my Lord and my God! Help! Thanks! Love you!" Rinse, repeat...
Or "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner."
Or the Our Father. Or the Sign of the Cross. It's not hard to get started. Make it a habit. Do it as needed, and do it daily even when you don't think you need to.
--goodness me, what do they teach in schools these days?
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