Isaiah 11:1-10
Then Isaiah tells us that the Messianic Petting Zoo shall unfold, "the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, the calf and the young lion, with a child to guide them, the cow and the bear, the lion and the ox, the baby and the cobra."
What a beautiful picture and image what can be when we all are penetrated with knowledge of the Lord.
WHo are the bears and lions and cobras and leopards in your life? WHo are the predators, those that are aggressive that seek to dominate and control, those that need to be stood up to?
Who are the cows, the lambs, the kids, the ox those that are passive, those that get lost amongst the crowd, those who need to be defended and aided along the way?
How can this Advent bring you to that point of allowing the knowledge of the Lord to lead you to a new place of forgiveness, a new place of loving, a new place of relating?
*******************************************
A stump is the remains of a once healthy tree that has succumbed to the elements either by nature or by force and is now only a shadow of what it used to be.
God begins to build this messianic promise in the unlikeliest places. From that place that looks dead and barren, from that place that appears done and over, from that place where life seems fade and hopeless, from that place new life shall begin, hope shall arise.
Look around in your life and see if you can identify that place or those places. Maybe there is where God is waiting for you.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Monday, December 3, 2012
St Francis Xavier
Isaiah 2:1-5; PS 122 Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord; Mt 8:5-11
Today on this first Monday of Advent two quotes.
First we hear from St. Francis of Xavier whose memorial the Church celebrates on this December 3rd. In his missionary endeavor he was in constant correspondence with St. Ignatius. In one of his letters he speaks of the dire need for assistance as he looks out over the new converts to Christianity. He states the following in summation: "The native Christians have no priest; there is no body to say mass; no body to teach them the Creed, the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the commandments." And finally he states and "there is no body to make them Christians."
He speaks of the need for others to get involved in spreading the message of Christ. Too many sit idly by believe in Christ but not wanting to get there hands dirty. How he wished he go go to the places of learning, the universities to those people who have more "learning than charity" to tell them they should work as hard on being Christian as they do at their books and to settle their account with God for their learning and the talents he entrusted them."
Basically he was demanding people to be present to God's call. In advent we wait for the coming of Christ and yet we forget that Christ waits for our coming as well.
Just as we beg for Christ he begs for us to be present. As we pray 'come, Lord Jesus' so Jesus cries out come young and old, wise and foolish, men and women, come and be my voice, be my hands, be my heart to the world. This is what Francis Xavier the saintly man who spent his life spreading the message desired for us as well.
As we wait in Advent may we also be busy and active in living our Christian values to the full.
Secondly, we hear for Christ in today's gospel: JEsus said to the centurion, "I will come and cure him."
In deed this is the summation of the incarnation. Jesus comes to cure us. By his coming, by his taking on our flesh, by his entering the human state, he has bound our wounds and brought forth the healing remedy for all of humanity.
He has come; he has cured us; and yet like the man on the mat we are reluctant to rise. We are reluctant to receive the healing hand that stretches forth to meet us in Christ.
Advent is also about the realization that the answer to woes in our life as already come. We do not have to wait any longer. Our waiting has ended even as it begins. He has come. We must go out to meet him.
Today on this first Monday of Advent two quotes.
First we hear from St. Francis of Xavier whose memorial the Church celebrates on this December 3rd. In his missionary endeavor he was in constant correspondence with St. Ignatius. In one of his letters he speaks of the dire need for assistance as he looks out over the new converts to Christianity. He states the following in summation: "The native Christians have no priest; there is no body to say mass; no body to teach them the Creed, the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the commandments." And finally he states and "there is no body to make them Christians."
He speaks of the need for others to get involved in spreading the message of Christ. Too many sit idly by believe in Christ but not wanting to get there hands dirty. How he wished he go go to the places of learning, the universities to those people who have more "learning than charity" to tell them they should work as hard on being Christian as they do at their books and to settle their account with God for their learning and the talents he entrusted them."
Basically he was demanding people to be present to God's call. In advent we wait for the coming of Christ and yet we forget that Christ waits for our coming as well.
Just as we beg for Christ he begs for us to be present. As we pray 'come, Lord Jesus' so Jesus cries out come young and old, wise and foolish, men and women, come and be my voice, be my hands, be my heart to the world. This is what Francis Xavier the saintly man who spent his life spreading the message desired for us as well.
As we wait in Advent may we also be busy and active in living our Christian values to the full.
Secondly, we hear for Christ in today's gospel: JEsus said to the centurion, "I will come and cure him."
In deed this is the summation of the incarnation. Jesus comes to cure us. By his coming, by his taking on our flesh, by his entering the human state, he has bound our wounds and brought forth the healing remedy for all of humanity.
He has come; he has cured us; and yet like the man on the mat we are reluctant to rise. We are reluctant to receive the healing hand that stretches forth to meet us in Christ.
Advent is also about the realization that the answer to woes in our life as already come. We do not have to wait any longer. Our waiting has ended even as it begins. He has come. We must go out to meet him.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Adventure in waiting
Jeremiah 33:14-16; Ps 25 To you, O lord, I lift my soul; 1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2; Luke 21:25-28,34-36
We have entered into Advent, this time of waiting and longing.
Just a word: The one who expects nothing can no longer live. Man is alive in so far as he waits and his willing to continually wait.
what do we wait for in life that makes us alive?
A few weeks ago, I decided to bite the bullet and go to the allergy specialist in order to figure out what exactly was causing all of my sinus infections and itchy and watery eyes and all the rest of the symptoms.
I sat in the office as they poked me 96 times on my back with a variety of allergens to see how I would react. The doctor wasn't satisfied so they poked me 66 times more down each of my arms, just to make sure.
I waited in the office for three hours!
Why was I waiting? Deep down in side I had hope that I could get answers; I waited because i hoped i could get better, that my life would get better. Isn't this why we wait in the first place!
It turns out that i am allergic to Mesquite, live oak, Pecan, and Cedar trees and their pollen along with ragweed, Johnson grass, Bahia grass, every mold you could imagine along with, my personal favorite, Cock Roaches.
I had a decision to make: do i continue with antibiotics and steroids or do I try something different and go with the allergy shots.
The allergy shots are a 5 year commitment.
So I decide what the heck, go with the shots and by the time I am 41 I'll be better...at least that is the plan.
This past friday I went back to the doctor to start the process of getting shots. I went in to the little room and received two shots, one in each arm, of a diluted version of what i am allergic to: trees and grass in one arm and mold and other stuff in the other arm.
After receiving the shots, I was informed of the possible side effects from getting the shots, it was long list.
At first i thought, shouldn't this have been told to me first, but too late i was already committed.
The possible side effects were the following: dizziness, hives, swelling, itching, tightness in chest, tightness in throat, and inability to breath and my personal favorite, and I quote the "on rare occasions death."
I thought it odd that Death was considered a "rare side effect."
But isn't that how we operate in our current mindset as far as living is concerned.
We do treat death as a rare side effect. Yet, we know Death is no side effect at all. we must all experience it.
We can ignore it, we can refuse to accept it, we can try to avoid it, but in the end Death comes either swiftly or slowly, but it comes. The end will arrive.
As we enter this season of Advent, the readings for the first couple of weeks point us toward the end, the grand finality.
This season often makes me think of fireworks. Usually in fireworks display there is a push toward the end; there is a crescendo where the best is yet to come.
This is what the end times is about, the Parousia.
Here is a fancy sounding word we should store in our memory bank: Parousia.
It simply means, the second coming of Christ. all of creation crescendos to the grand finality when Christ will come again. The best is yet to come.
As JEsus describes for us so well in the Gospel.
JEsus describes the unraveling of creation as the powers of heavens are shaken.
The sun, the moon, the stars all shall be peeled back. God undoes what he did int he beginning.
And why not, they are there not for themselves but for us. All of creation has meaning in so far as it serves the final purpose of God which is to prepare us and encourage us on the journey.
They are not eternal; they have meaning in s far as they belong to God and serve his purpose.
As the creation is unraveling what is our position. JEsus tells us we are stand erect, raise our heads for our redemption is at hand.
Standing erect and raising our head is a sign of hope. We stand with hopefulness. We have hope not that everything will turn out well for us but rather that everything will have meaning in so far as it fits in the plan of GOd. This somehow will all make sense.
All moments, all places, all times are pregnant with this expectation.
This is why we wait. Our lives are pregnant with expectation.
Man is alive in so far as he waits. The one who expects nothing can no longer live; but we who have hope wait with expectation and thus in our waiting we discover the true adventure for life is worth living.
What we do while we are waiting is just as important as what we are waiting for. This is where we discover true meaning and purpose in life.
THus begins the season of Advent where we discover anew that the best is yet to come and we bring it forth by the love we bare in the lives we live, "May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all so as to strengthen your hearts to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord JEsus with all his holy ones."
Here is little Frank to get the Advent season moving in the right direction: The BEst is yet to come
We have entered into Advent, this time of waiting and longing.
Just a word: The one who expects nothing can no longer live. Man is alive in so far as he waits and his willing to continually wait.
what do we wait for in life that makes us alive?
A few weeks ago, I decided to bite the bullet and go to the allergy specialist in order to figure out what exactly was causing all of my sinus infections and itchy and watery eyes and all the rest of the symptoms.
I sat in the office as they poked me 96 times on my back with a variety of allergens to see how I would react. The doctor wasn't satisfied so they poked me 66 times more down each of my arms, just to make sure.
I waited in the office for three hours!
Why was I waiting? Deep down in side I had hope that I could get answers; I waited because i hoped i could get better, that my life would get better. Isn't this why we wait in the first place!
It turns out that i am allergic to Mesquite, live oak, Pecan, and Cedar trees and their pollen along with ragweed, Johnson grass, Bahia grass, every mold you could imagine along with, my personal favorite, Cock Roaches.
I had a decision to make: do i continue with antibiotics and steroids or do I try something different and go with the allergy shots.
The allergy shots are a 5 year commitment.
So I decide what the heck, go with the shots and by the time I am 41 I'll be better...at least that is the plan.
This past friday I went back to the doctor to start the process of getting shots. I went in to the little room and received two shots, one in each arm, of a diluted version of what i am allergic to: trees and grass in one arm and mold and other stuff in the other arm.
After receiving the shots, I was informed of the possible side effects from getting the shots, it was long list.
At first i thought, shouldn't this have been told to me first, but too late i was already committed.
The possible side effects were the following: dizziness, hives, swelling, itching, tightness in chest, tightness in throat, and inability to breath and my personal favorite, and I quote the "on rare occasions death."
I thought it odd that Death was considered a "rare side effect."
But isn't that how we operate in our current mindset as far as living is concerned.
We do treat death as a rare side effect. Yet, we know Death is no side effect at all. we must all experience it.
We can ignore it, we can refuse to accept it, we can try to avoid it, but in the end Death comes either swiftly or slowly, but it comes. The end will arrive.
As we enter this season of Advent, the readings for the first couple of weeks point us toward the end, the grand finality.
This season often makes me think of fireworks. Usually in fireworks display there is a push toward the end; there is a crescendo where the best is yet to come.
This is what the end times is about, the Parousia.
Here is a fancy sounding word we should store in our memory bank: Parousia.
It simply means, the second coming of Christ. all of creation crescendos to the grand finality when Christ will come again. The best is yet to come.
As JEsus describes for us so well in the Gospel.
JEsus describes the unraveling of creation as the powers of heavens are shaken.
The sun, the moon, the stars all shall be peeled back. God undoes what he did int he beginning.
And why not, they are there not for themselves but for us. All of creation has meaning in so far as it serves the final purpose of God which is to prepare us and encourage us on the journey.
They are not eternal; they have meaning in s far as they belong to God and serve his purpose.
As the creation is unraveling what is our position. JEsus tells us we are stand erect, raise our heads for our redemption is at hand.
Standing erect and raising our head is a sign of hope. We stand with hopefulness. We have hope not that everything will turn out well for us but rather that everything will have meaning in so far as it fits in the plan of GOd. This somehow will all make sense.
All moments, all places, all times are pregnant with this expectation.
This is why we wait. Our lives are pregnant with expectation.
Man is alive in so far as he waits. The one who expects nothing can no longer live; but we who have hope wait with expectation and thus in our waiting we discover the true adventure for life is worth living.
What we do while we are waiting is just as important as what we are waiting for. This is where we discover true meaning and purpose in life.
THus begins the season of Advent where we discover anew that the best is yet to come and we bring it forth by the love we bare in the lives we live, "May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all so as to strengthen your hearts to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord JEsus with all his holy ones."
Here is little Frank to get the Advent season moving in the right direction: The BEst is yet to come
Friday, November 30, 2012
red rover red rover let Andy come over
Romans 8 10:9-18; Ps 19 The Judgments of the Lord are true and all of them just; Mt 4:18-22
Today is the Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle. He was the first one called to follow Jesus.
Think about being called to follow Jesus.
When did yo first experience a calling, an invitation to surrender your life and entrust it to Christ?
How do you live that calling, that invitation out in your life?
As St. Paul reminds us in the first reading, "And how can they hear without someone to preach? And how can can people preach unless they are sent? as it is written, 'how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!'"
How are your feet? What news do you bring to your family, your job, your gatherings, your friends, your life?
As St. Paul reminds us, "not every has heeded the good news."
Indeed this is true. But who is responsible for making the news available to others?
Surely not just the clergy! We all have a part to play. The problem currently it only a few play the part given them by the call of Christ.
Many of us stand idly by with our hands in our pockets watching it all unravel before us. At some point we have to jump in and get with it. IT is our witness, each of us, that is lacking in the program of proclaiming the faith.
Our silence is deafening. Our voice needs to be rediscovered. Our witness needs to sharpen.
Remember when we are all young and on the playground. Remember how loud we could be.
Remember playing "Red Rover" and yelling at the top of our lungs, "RED ROVER, RED ROVER, LET, (insert name here) COME OVER!"
How exciting; how exhilarating! We need to rediscover that energy and redistribute it in our witness, our lives.
RED ROVER! RED ROVER! LET ANDY COME OVER! St. ANDY that is.
We need his intercession so that we can get on with fulfilling our duty.
St. Andrew upon hearing the call went to get his brother. HE spread the message. HE made it known.
"at once they left their nets and followed him." Fishers of men they became.
Fishers of men its who we are called to be!
Like a game of tag, it is our time to reach forth no longer sparingly and touch someone with our witness of faith. Imagine being on the play ground. Imaging that exhilaration and energy. Pray for strength to be that witness. Do not get discouraged, no, rather GET LOUD!
Today is the Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle. He was the first one called to follow Jesus.
Think about being called to follow Jesus.
When did yo first experience a calling, an invitation to surrender your life and entrust it to Christ?
How do you live that calling, that invitation out in your life?
As St. Paul reminds us in the first reading, "And how can they hear without someone to preach? And how can can people preach unless they are sent? as it is written, 'how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!'"
How are your feet? What news do you bring to your family, your job, your gatherings, your friends, your life?
As St. Paul reminds us, "not every has heeded the good news."
Indeed this is true. But who is responsible for making the news available to others?
Surely not just the clergy! We all have a part to play. The problem currently it only a few play the part given them by the call of Christ.
Many of us stand idly by with our hands in our pockets watching it all unravel before us. At some point we have to jump in and get with it. IT is our witness, each of us, that is lacking in the program of proclaiming the faith.
Our silence is deafening. Our voice needs to be rediscovered. Our witness needs to sharpen.
Remember when we are all young and on the playground. Remember how loud we could be.
Remember playing "Red Rover" and yelling at the top of our lungs, "RED ROVER, RED ROVER, LET, (insert name here) COME OVER!"
How exciting; how exhilarating! We need to rediscover that energy and redistribute it in our witness, our lives.
RED ROVER! RED ROVER! LET ANDY COME OVER! St. ANDY that is.
We need his intercession so that we can get on with fulfilling our duty.
St. Andrew upon hearing the call went to get his brother. HE spread the message. HE made it known.
"at once they left their nets and followed him." Fishers of men they became.
Fishers of men its who we are called to be!
Like a game of tag, it is our time to reach forth no longer sparingly and touch someone with our witness of faith. Imagine being on the play ground. Imaging that exhilaration and energy. Pray for strength to be that witness. Do not get discouraged, no, rather GET LOUD!
A word from Archbishop Chaput
RENEWING THE CHURCH
AND HER MISSION IN A YEAR OF FAITH
Catholic Life Congress, Philadelphia, 11.17.12 +Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
My comments today will be simple. I want to focus on just three points. The first point is where we are as a Church and as individual Catholics, given the current environment of our country. The second point is what we need to do about it. And the third point is who we need to be – or become – to live the kind of witness God wants from us. Before we get to that though, I want to offer a few preliminary thoughts.
Language matters. It both expresses and shapes our thinking. Vulgar language suggests a vulgar soul. Obviously lots of exceptions exist. A peasant can have a rough vocabulary and still lead a saintly life. And a political leader can have a golden tongue and still be a complete liar. But in general, words are revealing. They have power because they have meaning. So we should take care to understand and use them properly.
The words of the Nicene Creed are the defining statement of Christian identity. They’re the glue of the Catholic community. Jews are Jews by virtue of being born of a Jewish mother. But being a Christian has nothing to do with blood or tribe or ethnicity or national origin. Christian identity comes from the sacraments, Sacred Scripture and the Creed. What we believe and profess together to be true as Catholics is the foundation and the cement of our unity.
Every word in the Creed was prayed over, argued over and clarified by decades of struggle in the Early Church. The words are precious and uncompromising. They direct us toward God and set us apart from the world. When people sometimes claim that Islam and Christianity have so much in common, they need to read – or reread – the Creed. Catholics pray the Creed every Sunday at Mass as the framework and fundamental profession of our faith. Devout Muslims reject nearly every line of it.
Over a lifetime, a Catholic will recite the Nicene Creed, or the Apostles’ Creed, thousands of times. But if we’re honest, we need to admit that we often mumble the words without even thinking. That has consequences. The less we understand the words of the Creed and revere the meaning behind them, the farther away we drift from our Catholic identity -- and the more confused we become about who we really are as Christians. We need to give our hearts to what we hear and what we say in our public worship. Otherwise, little by little, we become dishonest.
Here’s my purpose in saying all this. The theme we’re here to talk about today is “Renewing the Church and Her Mission in a Year of Faith.” Four of those words warrant some attention: renewing; Church; mission; and faith.
Let’s start with that first word: renewing. Over time even the strongest marriage can wear down with hardship or fatigue. Couples renew their vows to remember and reinforce their love for each other. The story of the Church is much the same. History has shown again and again that over time, the life of the Church can become routine; then an afterthought; and then stagnant and
AND HER MISSION IN A YEAR OF FAITH
Catholic Life Congress, Philadelphia, 11.17.12 +Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
My comments today will be simple. I want to focus on just three points. The first point is where we are as a Church and as individual Catholics, given the current environment of our country. The second point is what we need to do about it. And the third point is who we need to be – or become – to live the kind of witness God wants from us. Before we get to that though, I want to offer a few preliminary thoughts.
Language matters. It both expresses and shapes our thinking. Vulgar language suggests a vulgar soul. Obviously lots of exceptions exist. A peasant can have a rough vocabulary and still lead a saintly life. And a political leader can have a golden tongue and still be a complete liar. But in general, words are revealing. They have power because they have meaning. So we should take care to understand and use them properly.
The words of the Nicene Creed are the defining statement of Christian identity. They’re the glue of the Catholic community. Jews are Jews by virtue of being born of a Jewish mother. But being a Christian has nothing to do with blood or tribe or ethnicity or national origin. Christian identity comes from the sacraments, Sacred Scripture and the Creed. What we believe and profess together to be true as Catholics is the foundation and the cement of our unity.
Every word in the Creed was prayed over, argued over and clarified by decades of struggle in the Early Church. The words are precious and uncompromising. They direct us toward God and set us apart from the world. When people sometimes claim that Islam and Christianity have so much in common, they need to read – or reread – the Creed. Catholics pray the Creed every Sunday at Mass as the framework and fundamental profession of our faith. Devout Muslims reject nearly every line of it.
Over a lifetime, a Catholic will recite the Nicene Creed, or the Apostles’ Creed, thousands of times. But if we’re honest, we need to admit that we often mumble the words without even thinking. That has consequences. The less we understand the words of the Creed and revere the meaning behind them, the farther away we drift from our Catholic identity -- and the more confused we become about who we really are as Christians. We need to give our hearts to what we hear and what we say in our public worship. Otherwise, little by little, we become dishonest.
Here’s my purpose in saying all this. The theme we’re here to talk about today is “Renewing the Church and Her Mission in a Year of Faith.” Four of those words warrant some attention: renewing; Church; mission; and faith.
Let’s start with that first word: renewing. Over time even the strongest marriage can wear down with hardship or fatigue. Couples renew their vows to remember and reinforce their love for each other. The story of the Church is much the same. History has shown again and again that over time, the life of the Church can become routine; then an afterthought; and then stagnant and
1
cynical, or worse. God sends us saints like Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of
Avila and Catherine of Siena to change that; to scrub the heart of the Church clean – in other
words, to make her young again. They rekindle the “fire upon the earth” (Lk 12:49) that Jesus
intended all of his disciples to be.
In our own day we can see the same work of the Holy Spirit in the Neo-Catechumenal Way, the Christian Life Movement, Walking with Purpose, ENDOW, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, and so many other new apostolic efforts. The new ecclesial movements are a very important moment of grace for the Church, including the Church in Philadelphia. We shouldn’t fear them, because this is exactly how the Franciscans and other religious communities once began. We should welcome the zeal behind these new charisms wholeheartedly, even as we test them. The Church is always in need of change and reform – but change and reform that remain faithful to Jesus Christ and the soul of Catholic teaching. Real renewal is organic, not destructive.
Let’s turn to the second word: Church. The Church is not a “what” but a “who;” not an “it” but a “she.” Nobody can love the Church as an institution, any more than they can love General Motors or the IRS. The Church has institutional forms because she needs to work in the legal and material structures of the world. But the essence of the Church is mother and teacher; guide and comforter; family and community of faith. That’s how we need to think of her. And the Church is “his” Church -- the bride of Jesus Christ -- not “our” Church in any sense that we own her or have authority to rewrite her teachings.
The great Third Century bishop, St. Cyprian, once said that "You cannot have God for your Father if you do not have the Church for your mother.” We should belong to the Church as her sons and daughters. The Church should live in our hearts like our family does, and we should come together on Sunday to love and reinforce each other as a family, to praise our Father and to share the food he gives us in his Son. Our Sunday worship should be alive and full of faith, and celebrated with conviction and joy. Bricks and mortar are a dead shell without a zeal for God and for the salvation of each other burning inside the parish walls.
The third word is mission. Our mission – our purpose and task as Christian disciples -- is simple: “Make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19). Jesus meant exactly what he said, and he meant those words of the Gospel for all of us, including you and me. We need to bring Jesus Christ to the whole world, and the whole world to Jesus Christ. Our mission flows straight from the inner life of the Trinity. God sent his Son. The Son sends his Church. And the Church sends us.
Obviously we can’t convert the world on our own. We’re not called to succeed. Success is God’s business. Our business is trying, working together and supporting each other as believers, and always asking God’s help. God does listen. He’ll handle the rest. But we do need to try. We need to be more than just maintainers of old structures. We need to be missionaries.
Fourth and finally there’s that word faith. Faith is not an emotion. It’s not a set of doctrines or ideas, though all these things play an important part in the life of faith. Faith is confidence in things unseen based on the word of someone we know and love – in this case, God. Faith is a gift of God. He chooses us. We can certainly ask for the gift of faith, and when it’s offered, we
In our own day we can see the same work of the Holy Spirit in the Neo-Catechumenal Way, the Christian Life Movement, Walking with Purpose, ENDOW, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, and so many other new apostolic efforts. The new ecclesial movements are a very important moment of grace for the Church, including the Church in Philadelphia. We shouldn’t fear them, because this is exactly how the Franciscans and other religious communities once began. We should welcome the zeal behind these new charisms wholeheartedly, even as we test them. The Church is always in need of change and reform – but change and reform that remain faithful to Jesus Christ and the soul of Catholic teaching. Real renewal is organic, not destructive.
Let’s turn to the second word: Church. The Church is not a “what” but a “who;” not an “it” but a “she.” Nobody can love the Church as an institution, any more than they can love General Motors or the IRS. The Church has institutional forms because she needs to work in the legal and material structures of the world. But the essence of the Church is mother and teacher; guide and comforter; family and community of faith. That’s how we need to think of her. And the Church is “his” Church -- the bride of Jesus Christ -- not “our” Church in any sense that we own her or have authority to rewrite her teachings.
The great Third Century bishop, St. Cyprian, once said that "You cannot have God for your Father if you do not have the Church for your mother.” We should belong to the Church as her sons and daughters. The Church should live in our hearts like our family does, and we should come together on Sunday to love and reinforce each other as a family, to praise our Father and to share the food he gives us in his Son. Our Sunday worship should be alive and full of faith, and celebrated with conviction and joy. Bricks and mortar are a dead shell without a zeal for God and for the salvation of each other burning inside the parish walls.
The third word is mission. Our mission – our purpose and task as Christian disciples -- is simple: “Make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19). Jesus meant exactly what he said, and he meant those words of the Gospel for all of us, including you and me. We need to bring Jesus Christ to the whole world, and the whole world to Jesus Christ. Our mission flows straight from the inner life of the Trinity. God sent his Son. The Son sends his Church. And the Church sends us.
Obviously we can’t convert the world on our own. We’re not called to succeed. Success is God’s business. Our business is trying, working together and supporting each other as believers, and always asking God’s help. God does listen. He’ll handle the rest. But we do need to try. We need to be more than just maintainers of old structures. We need to be missionaries.
Fourth and finally there’s that word faith. Faith is not an emotion. It’s not a set of doctrines or ideas, though all these things play an important part in the life of faith. Faith is confidence in things unseen based on the word of someone we know and love – in this case, God. Faith is a gift of God. He chooses us. We can certainly ask for the gift of faith, and when it’s offered, we
can freely choose to accept it or not. But the initiative is God’s, and only a living encounter and
a living relationship with Jesus Christ make faith sustainable.
Faith opens our eyes to God’s real reality. Because we see with new eyes, we have reason to
hope. And hope enables charity by allowing us to put aside fear and to look beyond ourselves to
the suffering and needs of other people. History is shaped and life is advanced by people who
believe in something more important than themselves. So faith is the cornerstone of Christian
life because it enlarges us; it animates us; it’s restless. It must be shared or it dies. It takes us
outside ourselves and allows us to risk.
Now let’s go back to the three points I mentioned at the start of this talk. The first point I want to talk about is where we are as a Church and as individual Catholics, given the current environment of our country. We need to know the facts of our pastoral terrain before we can renew or achieve anything.
Some of you here today probably saw the movie from a few years ago called Cinderella Man. It’s based on a true story – the story of Jimmy Braddock, the Irish Catholic boxer who came from nowhere to win the 1935 world heavyweight championship. Out of work, injured and poor in the middle of the Great Depression, Braddock never betrays his wife. He never gives up on his duties as a father. He’s honest, humble, grateful, hard-working, faithful to his friends, and he pays back every dime he receives in unemployment assistance from the state. Most of all, Braddock accepts the pounding that life gives him both in and out of the ring. He endures it without bitterness. He never quits. And in the end, he does something almost miraculous. He wins the title from the great champion Max Baer.
People who love this film love it for a reason, despite its violence: In many ways, the character of Jimmy Braddock embodies the very best of American virtue. The trouble is, less and less of that virtue now seems to survive in American life, except as a form of nostalgia. And nostalgia is just another thread in the same cocoon of unreality that surrounds us 24 hours a day on our TVs, in our theaters, in our mass-marketing and on the web.
In a sense, our political and economic power, our addictions to comfort, consumption and entertainment, have made us stupid. David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, said recently that we’ve become “historically illiterate” as a nation. He told the story of a student at a prestigious university who attended one of his lectures and thanked him afterward. Until she heard him speak, she said, she had not known that all 13 of the original American colonies were located on the east coast.i
The illiteracy goes beyond history and other academic subjects. Notre Dame social researcher Christian Smith and his colleagues have tracked in great detail the spiritual lives of today’s young adults and teen-agers.ii The results are sobering. So are the implications. The real religion of vast numbers of American young people is a kind of fuzzy moral niceness, with a generic, undemanding God on duty to make us happy whenever we need him. It’s what Smith calls “moralistic therapeutic deism.” Or to put it in the words of a young woman from Maryland, “It’s just whatever makes you feel good about you.”iii As Smith observes: “It’s not so much that Christianity in the United States is being secularized. Rather more subtly, either Christianity is [degenerating] into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, [it’s] actively being colonized and displaced” by a very different religious faith.
Now let’s go back to the three points I mentioned at the start of this talk. The first point I want to talk about is where we are as a Church and as individual Catholics, given the current environment of our country. We need to know the facts of our pastoral terrain before we can renew or achieve anything.
Some of you here today probably saw the movie from a few years ago called Cinderella Man. It’s based on a true story – the story of Jimmy Braddock, the Irish Catholic boxer who came from nowhere to win the 1935 world heavyweight championship. Out of work, injured and poor in the middle of the Great Depression, Braddock never betrays his wife. He never gives up on his duties as a father. He’s honest, humble, grateful, hard-working, faithful to his friends, and he pays back every dime he receives in unemployment assistance from the state. Most of all, Braddock accepts the pounding that life gives him both in and out of the ring. He endures it without bitterness. He never quits. And in the end, he does something almost miraculous. He wins the title from the great champion Max Baer.
People who love this film love it for a reason, despite its violence: In many ways, the character of Jimmy Braddock embodies the very best of American virtue. The trouble is, less and less of that virtue now seems to survive in American life, except as a form of nostalgia. And nostalgia is just another thread in the same cocoon of unreality that surrounds us 24 hours a day on our TVs, in our theaters, in our mass-marketing and on the web.
In a sense, our political and economic power, our addictions to comfort, consumption and entertainment, have made us stupid. David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, said recently that we’ve become “historically illiterate” as a nation. He told the story of a student at a prestigious university who attended one of his lectures and thanked him afterward. Until she heard him speak, she said, she had not known that all 13 of the original American colonies were located on the east coast.i
The illiteracy goes beyond history and other academic subjects. Notre Dame social researcher Christian Smith and his colleagues have tracked in great detail the spiritual lives of today’s young adults and teen-agers.ii The results are sobering. So are the implications. The real religion of vast numbers of American young people is a kind of fuzzy moral niceness, with a generic, undemanding God on duty to make us happy whenever we need him. It’s what Smith calls “moralistic therapeutic deism.” Or to put it in the words of a young woman from Maryland, “It’s just whatever makes you feel good about you.”iii As Smith observes: “It’s not so much that Christianity in the United States is being secularized. Rather more subtly, either Christianity is [degenerating] into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, [it’s] actively being colonized and displaced” by a very different religious faith.
This is the legacy – not the only part of it, but the saddest part of it -- that my generation, the
boomer generation, has left to the Church in the United States. More than 70 million Americans
describe themselves as Catholics. But for all practical purposes, they’re no different from
everybody else in their views, their appetites and their behaviors. This isn’t what the Second
Vatican Council had in mind when it began its work 50 years ago. It’s not what Vatican II meant
by reform. And left to itself, our life as a Church is not going to get better. It’s going to get
worse. So if we want a real renewal of the Catholic faith in Philadelphia, in the United States
and worldwide, it needs to begin with us, right here and right now.
That leads me to my second point: what we need to do about the pastoral realities we face. In calling for a Year of Faith, Pope Benedict said that “the renewal of the Church is . . . achieved through the witness offered by the lives of believers.”v That means all of us – clergy, religious and lay. We all need repentance, and we all need conversion.
The clergy abuse crisis of the past decade has been a terrible tragedy. It’s caused great suffering. It’s wounded many innocent victims. It’s turned thousands of good people away from the Church. As a bishop, I regret these things bitterly, and I apologize for them – especially to the victims, but also to our people and priests. God will hold all of us who are bishops to a hard accounting for the pain that has resulted. And I accept that as a right judgment.
But if we’re honest – and there can be no real reform, no real renewal, without honesty – we need to admit that the problems in American Catholic life today are much wider and much deeper than any clergy scandal. And they’ve been growing in our own hearts for decades. If young people are morally and religiously ignorant by the millions, they didn’t get that way on their own. We taught them. They learned from our indifference, our complacency, our moral compromises, our self-absorption, our eagerness to succeed, our vanity, our greed, our lack of Catholic conviction and zeal.
We made this moment together – clergy, religious and lay. And God will only help us unmake the failures of the past, and remake them into a moment of renewal, if we choose now to serve God’s purposes together.
If we really want new life in the archdiocese, some of what we need to do is obvious.
We need to protect and educate our young people. We need to impress on their hearts that salvation is not just a pious fiction, but a matter of eternal consequence; a gift that cost God the life of his own son. Our Catholic schools are vital in this work. St. John Neumann founded our schools 150 years ago to protect the faith of our young people from Protestant pressure in the classroom. But our same Catholic schools are even more important today in a time of aggressive secularism, moral confusion and bitter criticism of the Church.
We need to do much more to support the priests, deacons and religious who minister so generously to our minority communities. Minorities bring a huge transfusion of new life into the
That leads me to my second point: what we need to do about the pastoral realities we face. In calling for a Year of Faith, Pope Benedict said that “the renewal of the Church is . . . achieved through the witness offered by the lives of believers.”v That means all of us – clergy, religious and lay. We all need repentance, and we all need conversion.
The clergy abuse crisis of the past decade has been a terrible tragedy. It’s caused great suffering. It’s wounded many innocent victims. It’s turned thousands of good people away from the Church. As a bishop, I regret these things bitterly, and I apologize for them – especially to the victims, but also to our people and priests. God will hold all of us who are bishops to a hard accounting for the pain that has resulted. And I accept that as a right judgment.
But if we’re honest – and there can be no real reform, no real renewal, without honesty – we need to admit that the problems in American Catholic life today are much wider and much deeper than any clergy scandal. And they’ve been growing in our own hearts for decades. If young people are morally and religiously ignorant by the millions, they didn’t get that way on their own. We taught them. They learned from our indifference, our complacency, our moral compromises, our self-absorption, our eagerness to succeed, our vanity, our greed, our lack of Catholic conviction and zeal.
We made this moment together – clergy, religious and lay. And God will only help us unmake the failures of the past, and remake them into a moment of renewal, if we choose now to serve God’s purposes together.
If we really want new life in the archdiocese, some of what we need to do is obvious.
We need to protect and educate our young people. We need to impress on their hearts that salvation is not just a pious fiction, but a matter of eternal consequence; a gift that cost God the life of his own son. Our Catholic schools are vital in this work. St. John Neumann founded our schools 150 years ago to protect the faith of our young people from Protestant pressure in the classroom. But our same Catholic schools are even more important today in a time of aggressive secularism, moral confusion and bitter criticism of the Church.
We need to do much more to support the priests, deacons and religious who minister so generously to our minority communities. Minorities bring a huge transfusion of new life into the
Church. We also need to help our minority communities see that they too share God’s call to be
missionaries.
We need to use our material resources far more wisely – and then we need to be accountable for
them.
We need to be eager again to invite young men to the priesthood, starting with parents who encourage their sons in the home. Nothing is more heroic as a way of life than a priesthood lived with purity and zeal. And we need to form our young priests to be more than just maintainers and managers, but real missionaries; new men for a new kind of mission field, with a hunger to bring the whole world to Jesus Christ.
Finally, we need to build a new spirit of equality, candor and friendship that weaves together every vocation in our Church. Priesthood, the diaconate, religious life and the lay vocation: Each has a distinct and irreplaceable importance. There are no “second class” Catholics; and no “second class” vocations. We need each other.
In a way, being together today in mid-November to talk about the future of the Church is exactly the right time for our theme. November is the month of All Saints and All Souls. It’s a time when the Church invites us to reflect on our own mortality and the universal call to holiness we all share. Life is short. Time is the one resource we can never replenish. Therefore time matters. So does what we do with it.
In the end, renewal in the Church is the work of God. But he works through us. The privilege and the challenge belong to us. So we need to ask ourselves: What do I want my life to mean? If I claim to be a Catholic, can I prove it with the patterns of my life? When do I pray? How often do I seek out the Sacrament of Penance? What am I doing for the poor? How am I serving the needy? Do I really know Jesus Christ? Who am I leading to the Church? How many young people have I asked to consider a vocation? How much time do I spend sharing about God with my spouse, my children and my friends? How well and how often do I listen for God’s will in my own life?
The Church has many good reasons why people should believe in God, believe in Jesus Christ and believe in the beauty and urgency of her own mission. But she has only one irrefutable argument for the truth of what she teaches – the personal example of her saints.
And that brings me to my third and final point: who we need to be, and who we need to become.
When we end our time together today, I have a homework assignment for you. Sometime over the Thanksgiving weekend, I want you to rent or buy or borrow a copy of the 1966 film about Sir Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons. I want you to watch it with your family. Here’s why. More was one of the most distinguished scholars of his time, a brilliant lawyer, a gifted diplomat and a skilled political leader. Jonathan Swift, the great Anglo-Irish writer, once described him as “a person of the greatest virtue this kingdom [of England] ever produced.”vi
We need to be eager again to invite young men to the priesthood, starting with parents who encourage their sons in the home. Nothing is more heroic as a way of life than a priesthood lived with purity and zeal. And we need to form our young priests to be more than just maintainers and managers, but real missionaries; new men for a new kind of mission field, with a hunger to bring the whole world to Jesus Christ.
Finally, we need to build a new spirit of equality, candor and friendship that weaves together every vocation in our Church. Priesthood, the diaconate, religious life and the lay vocation: Each has a distinct and irreplaceable importance. There are no “second class” Catholics; and no “second class” vocations. We need each other.
In a way, being together today in mid-November to talk about the future of the Church is exactly the right time for our theme. November is the month of All Saints and All Souls. It’s a time when the Church invites us to reflect on our own mortality and the universal call to holiness we all share. Life is short. Time is the one resource we can never replenish. Therefore time matters. So does what we do with it.
In the end, renewal in the Church is the work of God. But he works through us. The privilege and the challenge belong to us. So we need to ask ourselves: What do I want my life to mean? If I claim to be a Catholic, can I prove it with the patterns of my life? When do I pray? How often do I seek out the Sacrament of Penance? What am I doing for the poor? How am I serving the needy? Do I really know Jesus Christ? Who am I leading to the Church? How many young people have I asked to consider a vocation? How much time do I spend sharing about God with my spouse, my children and my friends? How well and how often do I listen for God’s will in my own life?
The Church has many good reasons why people should believe in God, believe in Jesus Christ and believe in the beauty and urgency of her own mission. But she has only one irrefutable argument for the truth of what she teaches – the personal example of her saints.
And that brings me to my third and final point: who we need to be, and who we need to become.
When we end our time together today, I have a homework assignment for you. Sometime over the Thanksgiving weekend, I want you to rent or buy or borrow a copy of the 1966 film about Sir Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons. I want you to watch it with your family. Here’s why. More was one of the most distinguished scholars of his time, a brilliant lawyer, a gifted diplomat and a skilled political leader. Jonathan Swift, the great Anglo-Irish writer, once described him as “a person of the greatest virtue this kingdom [of England] ever produced.”vi
Above all, More was a man of profound Catholic faith and practice. He lived what he claimed to
believe. He had his priorities in right order. He was a husband and a father first; a man who – in
the words of Robert Bolt, the author of the original play and the 1966 film – “adored, and was
adored, by his own large family.”vii
A Man for All Seasons won Oscars for both Best Picture and Best Actor, and it’s clearly one of the great stories ever brought to the screen. But it captures only a small fraction of the real man. In his daily life, Thomas More loved to laugh. He enjoyed life and every one of its gifts. Erasmus, the great Dutch humanist scholar and a friend of More and his family, described More as a man of “amiable joyousness [and] simple dress . . . born and framed for friendship . . . easy of access to all,” uninterested in ceremony and riches, humble, indifferent to food, unimpressed by opinions of the crowd, and never departing from common sense.viii
Despite the integrity of More’s character, and despite his faithful service, Henry VIII martyred him in 1535. More refused to accept the Tudor king’s illicit marriage to Anne Boleyn, and he refused to repudiate his fidelity to the Holy See. In 1935, the Church declared Thomas More a saint. Today – half a millennium after he died and a continent away -- this one man’s faith still moves us. That’s the power of sainthood. That’s the power of holiness.
Here’s the lesson I want to leave you with. We’re all called to martyrdom. That’s what the word martyr means: It’s the Greek word for “witness.” We may or may not ever suffer personally for our love of Jesus Christ. But we’re all called to be witnesses. In proclaiming the Year of Faith, Benedict XVI wrote that:
“By faith, across the centuries, men and women of all ages, whose names are written in the Book of Life . . .have confessed the beauty of following the Lord Jesus wherever they were called to bear witness to the fact that they were Christian: in the family, in the workplace, in public life, in the exercise of the charisms and ministries to which they were called.”ix
The only thing that matters is to be a saint. That’s what we need to be. That’s what we need to become. And if we can serve God through the witness of our lives by kindling that fire of holiness again in the heart of Philadelphia, then God will make all things new – in our Church, in our families and in our nation.
i McCullough to Morley Safer on Sixty Minutes; aired November 11, 2012
ii See Christian Smith and colleagues, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011; and Soul Searching; The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Oxford University Press, New York, 2005
iii From the Smith lecture, “On Moralistic Therapeutic Deism as U.S. Teenagers’ Actual, Tacit, De Facto Religious Faith,” Princeton Theological Seminary, 2005; adapted from his book Soul Searching
iv Ibid.
v Benedict XVI, Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei, No. 6, October 11, 2001
vi Note that the Swift quotation is sometimes attributed to Samuel Johnson
vii Robert Bolt, A Man for Seasons: A Play in Two Acts, Vintage Books, New York, 1962; p. xv
viii Desiderius Erasmus, from a 1519 letter; as quoted by T.E. Bridgett in his Life and Writings of Blessed Thomas More, 1913
ix Porta Dei, No. 13
A Man for All Seasons won Oscars for both Best Picture and Best Actor, and it’s clearly one of the great stories ever brought to the screen. But it captures only a small fraction of the real man. In his daily life, Thomas More loved to laugh. He enjoyed life and every one of its gifts. Erasmus, the great Dutch humanist scholar and a friend of More and his family, described More as a man of “amiable joyousness [and] simple dress . . . born and framed for friendship . . . easy of access to all,” uninterested in ceremony and riches, humble, indifferent to food, unimpressed by opinions of the crowd, and never departing from common sense.viii
Despite the integrity of More’s character, and despite his faithful service, Henry VIII martyred him in 1535. More refused to accept the Tudor king’s illicit marriage to Anne Boleyn, and he refused to repudiate his fidelity to the Holy See. In 1935, the Church declared Thomas More a saint. Today – half a millennium after he died and a continent away -- this one man’s faith still moves us. That’s the power of sainthood. That’s the power of holiness.
Here’s the lesson I want to leave you with. We’re all called to martyrdom. That’s what the word martyr means: It’s the Greek word for “witness.” We may or may not ever suffer personally for our love of Jesus Christ. But we’re all called to be witnesses. In proclaiming the Year of Faith, Benedict XVI wrote that:
“By faith, across the centuries, men and women of all ages, whose names are written in the Book of Life . . .have confessed the beauty of following the Lord Jesus wherever they were called to bear witness to the fact that they were Christian: in the family, in the workplace, in public life, in the exercise of the charisms and ministries to which they were called.”ix
The only thing that matters is to be a saint. That’s what we need to be. That’s what we need to become. And if we can serve God through the witness of our lives by kindling that fire of holiness again in the heart of Philadelphia, then God will make all things new – in our Church, in our families and in our nation.
i McCullough to Morley Safer on Sixty Minutes; aired November 11, 2012
ii See Christian Smith and colleagues, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011; and Soul Searching; The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Oxford University Press, New York, 2005
iii From the Smith lecture, “On Moralistic Therapeutic Deism as U.S. Teenagers’ Actual, Tacit, De Facto Religious Faith,” Princeton Theological Seminary, 2005; adapted from his book Soul Searching
iv Ibid.
v Benedict XVI, Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei, No. 6, October 11, 2001
vi Note that the Swift quotation is sometimes attributed to Samuel Johnson
vii Robert Bolt, A Man for Seasons: A Play in Two Acts, Vintage Books, New York, 1962; p. xv
viii Desiderius Erasmus, from a 1519 letter; as quoted by T.E. Bridgett in his Life and Writings of Blessed Thomas More, 1913
ix Porta Dei, No. 13
Thursday, November 29, 2012
CS Lewis Birthday
Today is the birth of C.S. Lewis one of the most convincing converts to Christianity from atheism.
Here are few of his insightful thoughts:
Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did.As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone you will presently come to love him.
The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
Here are few of his insightful thoughts:
Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did.As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone you will presently come to love him.
The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
God's fury
Revelation 15:1-4; Ps 98 Great and wonderful are all your works, Lord, mighty God; Luke 21:12-19
"for through them God's fury is accomplished"
These are the last words of the first lines of yesterday's reading from the book of Revelation.
When it comes down to the Brass tax of things, as they say, as Christians and believers alike, we delight in pondering the goodness of God, his mercy, his love, his care, his kindness, his generosity and so on and so forth.
We usually can't get enough of that sort of thing.
We like to think of God as this cuddly bear that keeps us warm at night and gives us those good "feelings", yo know the "warm and fuzzes."
Of course this is part of God's goodness that Jesus comes to invite us to receive.
But we can't take part of God without receiving all of God.
I think our society would benefit form a little more time pondering the "furry" of God a little more often.
Think about God's fury!
To say that God is furious is not the same as saying God is hateful; it is also not the same as saying God hates.
God's fury is directed toward all that which is opposed to his goodness.
As followers, we must carefully discern what is opposed to God's goodness; we too must learn to be infuriated. We know where God's fury is, but the real question id where is our fury.
This whole modern sense or rather perverted sense of tolerance as removed our backbone.
We have no bite nor bark. We have forgotten what we to be opposing.
This is why it is good for us to ponder and meditate on the fury of God. It will do us some good to get in touch with that side of things. We need to get our blood boiling every now and them. Lest we just accept everything and in accepting all things then we lose everything.
Tolerance is not a virtue. It is a sham if the truth of things is forsaken.
"for through them God's fury is accomplished"
These are the last words of the first lines of yesterday's reading from the book of Revelation.
When it comes down to the Brass tax of things, as they say, as Christians and believers alike, we delight in pondering the goodness of God, his mercy, his love, his care, his kindness, his generosity and so on and so forth.
We usually can't get enough of that sort of thing.
We like to think of God as this cuddly bear that keeps us warm at night and gives us those good "feelings", yo know the "warm and fuzzes."
Of course this is part of God's goodness that Jesus comes to invite us to receive.
But we can't take part of God without receiving all of God.
I think our society would benefit form a little more time pondering the "furry" of God a little more often.
Think about God's fury!
To say that God is furious is not the same as saying God is hateful; it is also not the same as saying God hates.
God's fury is directed toward all that which is opposed to his goodness.
As followers, we must carefully discern what is opposed to God's goodness; we too must learn to be infuriated. We know where God's fury is, but the real question id where is our fury.
This whole modern sense or rather perverted sense of tolerance as removed our backbone.
We have no bite nor bark. We have forgotten what we to be opposing.
This is why it is good for us to ponder and meditate on the fury of God. It will do us some good to get in touch with that side of things. We need to get our blood boiling every now and them. Lest we just accept everything and in accepting all things then we lose everything.
Tolerance is not a virtue. It is a sham if the truth of things is forsaken.
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