Be generous, please.
Saturday, 15 December 2012
For all our children in America....
More on hell: a superb article by Fr. Longenecker
To help with the current discussion on line on hell, Father Dwight Longenecker has this excellent article on hell. Read it and ponder. Here is a section.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2012/12/is-anybody-there-in-hell-that-is.html
Does that mean God would cast someone down into hell to be tortured forever? Perhaps this too, can be seen the other way around. Is God too good to send someone to hell? It could be that God is so good that he actually gives everyone exactly what he or she wants. If we have spent our whole lives pursuing love, goodness, beauty and truth, then after death we may get exactly what we always wanted and find ourselves in a land where love, goodness, beauty and truth are as natural and abundant as light. On the other hand, if our whole lives are spent in an insane flight from all that is good, beautiful and true, then perhaps God in his goodness will also give us exactly what we always wanted; and that would be existence in a madhouse with no exit where love, beauty, goodness and truth were unknown: an existence in the outer darkness with gibbering maniacs like ourselves.
Life pans out, and despite our greatest efforts, we almost always end up getting what we really want. In fact, this sort of justice is built into the system. We will get what we want just as naturally and certainly as an acorn becomes an oak tree. Giving people what they really want is natural justice. To do otherwise would be cruel. We think everyone ought to go to heaven, but can we imagine that a person who hated God, goodness, truth and beauty all his life would actually enjoy heaven? If they could visit that place of eternal beauty and laughter they would howl with serious terror and run with all their might in the other direction. We know this is true because there are people in this life who hate truth, beauty, and goodness and do everything in their power to flee from the light.
Hope for that which is still wanting.........
More from St. John of the Cross this weekend...
19. The words, “And left me to my sorrow,” tell us that the absence of the Beloved is the cause of continual sadness in him who loves; for as such a one loves none else, so, in the absence of the object beloved, nothing can console or relieve him. This is, therefore, a test to discern the true lover of God. Is he satisfied with anything less than God? Do I say satisfied? Yes, if a man possess all things, he cannot be satisfied; the greater his possessions the less will be his satisfaction, for the satisfaction of the heart is not found in possessions, but in detachment from all things and in poverty of spirit. This being so, the perfection of love in which we possess God, by a grace most intimate and special, lives in the soul in this life when it has reached it, with a certain satisfaction, which however is not full, for David, notwithstanding all his perfection, hoped for that in heaven saying, “I shall be satisfied when Your glory shall appear.”39
20. Thus, then, the peace and tranquillity and satisfaction of heart to which the soul may attain in this life are not sufficient to relieve it from its groaning, peaceful and painless though it be, while it hopes for that which is still wanting. Groaning belongs to hope, as the Apostle says of himself and others, though perfect, “Ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God.”40 The soul groans when the heart is enamored, for where love wounds there is heard the groaning of the wounded one, complaining feelingly of the absence of the Beloved, especially when, after tasting of the sweet conversation of the Bridegroom, it finds itself suddenly alone, and in aridity, because He has gone away. That is why it cries,
“You have fled like the hart.”
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On the difference between doctrines, dogmas and visions for teaching truth
There is a huge confusion among even traditional Catholics concerning doctrine, dogma and private revelations.
I have seen this on recent comments concerning the question of hell.
Private visions and revelations are for the faithful. These may or may not be approved by the Church.
Those writings which are considered worthy to be read are not infallible.
The doctrine and dogmas of the Church are infallible statements and beliefs.
To build our house of faith and knowledge on private revelations is not only dangerous, but a wrong.
When the Church honours a saint on the calendar, that does not mean that the writings of that saint are infallible. Most saints, writings have been approved as without errors. However, visions from God, as excellent as these are, do not take the place of the teachings of the Catholic Church as taught from Scripture and Tradition.
To base an argument on visions is not apologetics. And the missionary activity we are all involved in as baptised Catholics demands that we know the teaching of the Church from the Creed, the Fathers of the Church and the long 2,000 year history of Catholicism.
To not study the faith has dire consequences for the adult Catholic.
It is anti-intellectualism to base arguments on visions and revelations. To be anti-intellectual is laziness and possibly sinful.
The great apparitions of Mary, Our Mother, which are approved, gave us nothing new in the way of Revelation. Mary merely emphasized what was already the teachings of the Catholic Church.
This is important.
Catholicism is based on reason and revelation, and that revelation ended with the last book of the Bible.
If, as an adult, you are using visions in order to convert, stop.
If you are arguing from a basis of visions, stop.
Learn to argue your faith from the CCC and other sources. Challenge yourself and others to think.
God made us to think. Read, learn, act, pray.
One Year Anniversary of a Death
It is a year ago that Christopher Hitchens, arch-atheist, died of brain cancer, which came from oesophageal cancer. So many of us were praying for him despite his long career of God and Church bashing. I think we liked Christopher's brother, Peter, so much that we wanted Christopher to convert. He did not. If you have not read Peter Hitchen's The Abolition of Britain, you should.
God gave mercy on the soul of Christopher Hitchens and on us all.
Palestrina, the Slovak Chorus, and John of the Cross-like eating three kinds of chocolate all at once....
If you say, you cannot find God, keep praying and keep looking. Again, from St. John and the same source.
God is, as I said before,35 inaccessible and hidden, and though it may seem that you have found Him, felt Him, and comprehended Him, yet you must ever regard Him as hidden, serve Him as hidden, in secret. Do not be like many unwise, who, with low views of God, think that when they cannot comprehend Him, or be conscious of His presence, that He is then farther away and more hidden, when the contrary is true, namely, that He is nearer to them when they are least aware of it; as the prophet David says, “He put darkness His covert,”36 Thus, when you are near to Him, the very infirmity of your vision makes the darkness palpable; you do well, therefore, at all times, in prosperity as well as in adversity, spiritual or temporal, to look upon God as hidden, and to say to Him, “Where have You hidden Yourself?
18. The soul calls Him “my Beloved,” the more to move Him to listen to its cry, for God, when loved, most readily listens to the prayer of him who loves Him. Thus He speaks Himself: “If you abide in Me . . . you shall ask whatever thing you will, and it shall be done to you.”37 The soul may then with truth call Him Beloved, when it is wholly His, when the heart has no attachments but Him, and when all the thoughts are continually directed to Him. It was the absence of this that made Delilah say to Samson, “How do you say you love me when your mind is not with me?”38 The mind comprises the thoughts and the feelings. Some there are who call the Bridegroom their Beloved, but He is not really beloved, because their heart is not wholly with Him. Their prayers are, therefore, not so effectual before God, and they shall not obtain their petitions until, persevering in prayer, they fix their minds more constantly upon God and their hearts more wholly in loving affection upon Him, for nothing can be obtained from God but by love.
Find a quiet place..
Though in this mortal life the soul will never reach to the interior secrets as it will in the next, however much it may hide itself, still, if it will hide itself with Moses, “in the hole of the rock” — which is a real imitation of the perfect life of the Bridegroom, the Son of God — protected by the right hand of God, it will merit the vision of the “back parts”;33 that is, it will reach to such perfection here, as to be united, and transformed by love, in the Son of God, its Bridegroom. So effectually will this be wrought that the soul will feel itself so united to Him, so learned and so instructed in His secrets, that, so far as the knowledge of Him in this life is concerned, it will be no longer necessary for it to say: “Where have You hidden Yourself?”
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