Mahsheed's Corner

7 Quick Takes

2009-07-24T18:04:00.000-07:00

Here's my attempt at 7 Quick Takes, in honor of Jennifer F.

1. I used to read books one at a time but now I’m finding it better to read several books in parallel. A perfect day is one where I’ve read a few pages from each book.

2. Speaking of which, I wonder if I’m not too obsessed about finishing books and prayers. If I pray a novena and miss a day, do I forget about the missed prayer and say the next day’s prayer or do I double up for that day? Being an ex-Muslim, anxiety about “prayer debt” (in Islam one is obliged to make up for missed days) is something I’ve had all my life.

3. Miseria, Misericordia, Magnificat--is the secret of Pope Paul the VI’s spirituality, according to his secretary (now Bishop of Cloyne), Father John Magee.

4. Iran and Honduras, pray for the people of these countries!

5. Saint Superman makes a good point, that freedom is interior and external rights are no good while interior freedom is lacking. But I also think we are obliged to fight to stay free. Totalitarianism crushes souls.

6. On the other hand, Professor Peter Kreeft says civilizations will come and go, but our eternal souls are precious.

7. Coming soon, my conversion testimony...

Silence is the Greatest Lesson

2009-07-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

Silence is the Greatest Lesson Ever Preached
How wonderful is the silence of Christ in the Tabernacle.

Silence is the greatest lesson ever preached.

- Silence under irritation
- Silence under criticism
- Silence under disappointment
- Silence when rebuffed
- Silence under ingratitude
- Silence under jealousy in oneself
- Silence under the jealousy of others
- Silence under disloyalty
- Silence when self-pleased
- Silence in sorrows of all kinds

No practice seems of more value than silence.

It gives the impression of latent force.
It wins confidence.
It secures deference.

A judicious reserve clothes a person with an air of mystery,
often the most interesting aspect of personality.

Silence has also a positive quality in forebearance.

There are forbearances of speech that constitute most effective replies;
which work persuasion that a torrent of eloquence cannot accomplish.

Via The Cukiersky Family Apostolate, found here.

The Resurrection of the Dead and Justice

2009-05-29T04:49:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting quote from Pope Benedict in Spes Salvi:

In the modern era, the idea of the Last Judgement has faded into the background: Christian faith has been individualized and primarily oriented towards the salvation of the believer's own soul, while reflection on world history is largely dominated by the idea of progress. The fundamental content of awaiting a final Judgement, however, has not disappeared: it has simply taken on a totally different form. The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is—in its origins and aims—a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world's suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. No one and nothing can answer for centuries of suffering. No one and nothing can guarantee that the cynicism of power—whatever beguiling ideological mask it adopts—will cease to dominate the world. This is why the great thinkers of the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, were equally critical of atheism and theism. Horkheimer radically excluded the possibility of ever finding a this-worldly substitute for God, while at the same time he rejected the image of a good and just God. In an extreme radicalization of the Old Testament prohibition of images, he speaks of a “longing for the totally Other” that remains inaccessible—a cry of yearning directed at world history. Adorno also firmly upheld this total rejection of images, which naturally meant the exclusion of any “image” of a loving God. On the other hand, he also constantly emphasized this “negative” dialectic and asserted that justice —true justice—would require a world “where not only present suffering would be wiped out, but also that which is irrevocably past would be undone”[30]. This, would mean, however—to express it with positive and hence, for him, inadequate symbols—that there can be no justice without a resurrection of the dead. Yet this would have to involve “the resurrection of the flesh, something that is totally foreign to idealism and the realm of Absolute spirit”[31].

via Mark Shea

Roman Catholic Fashion Show

2009-02-03T00:00:00.000-08:00

I can't resist sharing this clip from an old movie called "Roma". I think it is fascinating!!!

What Does God Do When We Fail?

2009-01-20T00:02:00.000-08:00

A great post by Exultet:

An excerpt:

But what, in fact, does God do when we fail spectacularly? Let's look at Scripture.

The pattern is set early in the very first "daytime drama" ever written: the story of Adam and Eve. They are created for blissful and eternal union with God. There are hundreds of thousands of things they can spend their days doing that will bring joy to themselves and pleasure to their heavenly Father. But like bees to the flower, they zero in on the one thing that will make the whole arrangement nosedive into misery.

There are many ways the story could have proceeded afterwards. If God hadn't revealed the determined mercy of his nature, all of Scripture would have been very short and read only by the angels: "God created the whole world. He made Adam and then a suitable helpmeet for him for their mutual benefit and delight. They screwed it up. God withdrew his hand and they died instantly. The End." But, in fact, the serpent failed to keep God from pursuing his plan -- creating for himself a people who would love him in return and live with him in wonderful joy forever. It just took longer.

So that's one example. What else do we find?

* At one of the most important and solemn moments in God's formation of a people for his own, after the clearest and most powerful exhortations to faithfulness and purity by the living God, the very people he has delivered from bondage get a bit impatient that he is taking so long to give his law to Moses. They grumble to Aaron who gets the bright idea to melt down all the gold into a pretty idol so they won't feel so lonely. To add to the disaster, Moses is so angered by this travesty that he smashes the tablets to smithereens on which the finger of God himself has written the law of the ages.

And God? Does God blast them all with lightning and rain meteors upon their heads? Why, no. God calmly asks for a fresh set of stone tablets and takes it upon himself to inscribe the law again. Angered but not dismayed, the sovereign Master of the Universe continues faithfully and steadily honing, hammering and purifying this crew into a fit people to receive the Messiah and be the means of God's redemption of the world.

* God singles out David as one "after his own heart", to belong to Him in a special way and play an important role in salvation history. Sometime later, though, David's eyes light on a babe (inconveniently married) with whom he becomes obsessed. Unused to frustration, he exploits the faithfulness and loyalty of her soldier husband by arranging to have him killed on the field of battle, and proceeds to take possession of the object of his desire.

What does God do in the face of this baseness? He perseveres in his purposes, calling David to deep repentance (the record of which continues to inspire and bless the people of God), fulfilling his covenant, and arranging for David to be an ancestor of the Redeemer through the child eventually born to him (wait for it) by the woman who he so venally seduced. (Matt 1:6) Not does God forgive the sin, he glorifies himself even in those circumstances.

* There was always something a little special about Simon Peter. The minute Jesus meets him and issues a call to be a disciple, he gives him the name Cephas ("the rock") [Jn 1:42]. Clearly not an accident, the deeper meaning becomes clear later: "You are Peter [rock] and upon this Rock I shall build my church." (Matt 16:15-19) Who was it whose grandiose "I will never deny you!" made him look like a knave and a fool when he turned tail as the going got rough? Yes, indeed, that was Peter. And who, after his betrayal, preached the first sermon after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, going on to lead the churches of Jerusalem and Rome? Right again.

Read the whole thing here.

Via Happy Catholic

Why Believers Can Sound Obnoxious to Non-Believers

2008-09-27T06:58:00.000-07:00

Say you're at a good point in life where everything is going well. What do you say to your friend, who is not as fortunate?

A) I'm happy because I worked hard and made all the right decisions. I deserve it.

B) I'm happy even though I don't deserve it, I've been blessed.

Both answers can be obnoxious to the friend, because it sounds like in A: You are not deserving of happiness and B: You are not blessed by God.

What about C?
C) I'm happy due to a combination of my decisions and dumb luck.
Note that C is a variant of A couched in more diplomatic terms. But to an unhappy person even C can be obnoxious, simply because to a certain type of unhappy person any evidence of happiness in others is an affront (read psychic injury).

Just keep in mind that when a believer annoys you with a B-type comment that the alternative is no better.

I'll write something about Divine Providence in another post.

Dawn Eden Finds Truth

2008-09-27T00:05:00.000-07:00

Remember in my last post when I spoke of Dr. House meeting Truth?

Here is Dawn Eden writing of her encounter with Truth, and of course she is the much better writer so please visit her site, if you like my writings you'll love her. Plus she's much more prolific (there's an interesting pun for you!).

By the way, she makes an interesting observation when she talks about higher education:

As the course progressed, I became uneasy with the professors' teaching methods. Colwell and Clements used what I have since discovered is the common propaganda method used by liberals seeking to discredit Judeo-Christianity: When they wanted to demonstrate a "good" religion's views on the environment, they would have us read original source material, such as the Tao Te Ching, or texts from Native American mythologies. When they wanted to demonstrate the "bad" views of Judaism and Christianity, they had us read chapters from a book whose author cherry-picked Bible quotes and framed them within the author's critical commentary.

So read the whole thing here.

Gotta Finda Woman!!

2008-09-18T20:48:00.000-07:00

I just came across this hilarious song and video from 1972 (Jimmy Castor Troglodyte song):

Via a hilarious and edifying article by RR Reno.

The Beatific Vision

2008-09-13T00:15:00.000-07:00

Monty Python has a famous skit, The World's Funniest Joke, that everyone who hears it dies laughing:

It's silly, of course, but don't we sometimes have similar ideas of the The World's Most Persuasive Argument, or The World's Most Lovable Person? But reality is that there is no such thing as an argument that convinces everyone who hears it, or a man or woman whom everyone loves who knows them. And that's proof of our free will.

However, I say there is one exception, and that is the Beatific Vision, such that anyone who beholds Him will want for nothing, because there is no competing joy that a person can prefer over Him.

Lame Thought of the Day

2008-09-12T00:05:00.000-07:00

There's only one thing worse than having one's idols shown to be false and that is not having one's idols shown to be false.

Sexual Modesty from a Jewish Perspective

2008-08-26T00:09:00.000-07:00

This tantalizing excerpt is from a fantastic article by Wendy Shalit, author of "A Return to Modesty":

In truth, the real reason for sexual modesty is not shame, but an awareness of how precious we are. Smirk at that statement if you will, but the fact remains: It is a rare dog that desires a candlelit dinner before mating. On the other hand, it is a rare human who can have a one-night stand without feeling at least a twinge of guilt afterward. And, howls of protest from vested interests notwithstanding, most men know that their most intimate relationships should not be with their computer browsers.

Where does our modesty confusion come from? Maybe we had the wrong idea about covering up from the beginning. Most people think that Adam and Eve knew more after they ate from that infamous Tree, and only then realized that they were – yikes! – naked. But early rabbinic commentators on the Bible explain that after the sin, with evil internalized, Adam and Eve actually understood less about the world (Rashi on Genesis 2:25). Eating the Tree’s fruit really introduced subjectivity, so that things that were formerly True or False now seemed merely good or bad.

Whereas before, Adam and Eve’s bodies and faces shone with a light that made it evident that they were spiritual beings, the moral uncertainty created by eating the Tree’s fruit changed their physical appearance. Now only their faces retained a glimmering of the soul’s light. Needless to say, this posed a problem: Bodies could be seen as mere animal bodies, instead of servants of the soul. To make sure they were perceived accurately – to retain their human dignity – Adam and Eve immediately covered up. The world may be superficial, but the right clothing keeps the focus where it should be.

...After all, “the greatness of the daughter of the king is on the inside” (Psalms 45:14). A recurrent biblical theme is protecting the inner self, which is a metaphor for the spiritual realm. Only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies, and only on Yom Kippur. The holiest of all Jewish prayers is said in a whisper. It was Hanna, the mother of Samuel, who prayed for a child by barely moving her lips. Initially, Eli the High Priest thought she was drunk, but later realized she was onto something. From then on, the Jews mouthed their most important prayers quietly. The most significant moments are always cloaked in hiddenness.

Even God Himself uses the veil of nature to give us the opportunity to find Him (emphasis mine). No wonder, then, that public displays of affection are seen as cheapening. If you want to show everyone, how special can it be?

Read the whole article here.

God's Boundless Love for Us

2008-08-25T23:58:00.000-07:00

This striking essay is actually part of a book review from Ignatius Insight:

From unrequited love, it is said, we learn how God must feel. The truth in that remark is that God is not abstract love, but a Lover, whose love is astonishingly singular; He offers it not only corporately, to His people, but individually, to each heart, as ardently as if He had never created another in the entire universe to love. All the stories in this book are recollections of His courtship.

In times when the Catholic world is healthy, God woos most of us through the institutional channels of family, Church and culture. But even today, when the family is fractured and the Church in turmoil, when little survives of traditional Catholic culture and the object of His love is apt to spurn Him for worldly pleasures, still His quest continues, until either He wins the heart of His beloved or death intervenes. When His courtship is successful and His love returned, He forgives past neglect and pours out His grace unstintingly; repentant sinners are as likely as anyone else to become saints. Blessed Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, urging His followers to welcome a penitent, once advised "Remember that he may yet become an Augustine, while you remain mere mediocrities."

The Second Person of the Triune God demonstrated the depth of His love for us when He became incarnate as the man Jesus. The Church's Morning Prayer for Christmas Day says of His origin: "Your eternal Word leaped down from heaven in the silent watches of the night." [1] Almighty though He was, He did not come as an imperious king, or as some kind of angelic sorcerer, to stun the world with His power. Instead, He came as an ordinary mortal, subject to the pains and risks of the human condition. Surrendering all majesty and sovereignty, He entrusted His vulnerable infant body to human compassion, appealing for love first with His helplessness.

It was not only to teach us by example how to live that Jesus became man. He came as the Messiah, the long-promised Savior, to suffer and die in order that the scales of ontological order could perfectly balance mercy and justice in judging men. No merely human person could reconcile God's justice with His mercy, only Christ the Son, because He both embraces and surpasses all mankind. [2]

Some people are troubled to learn that God's perfection demands justice. They want to enjoy His mercy while denying His justice, because they think justice is cruel. But in fact, as Caryll Houselander wrote, justice is compassion:
... justice is a supreme example of His love ... Justice is the defense of the defenseless. It protects the weak, and restores to little ones those things of which they have been robbed by force. [3]
In so giving His life, Jesus revealed what kind of being God is: a Creator of perfect compassion, whose perfection requires justice but who so loves the persons He made that He sent His only Son to ransom them from the insuperable penalties due in justice for their sins. And He offers us this salvation by inviting each unique soul, individually, to live with Him forever in Heaven.

Christ's Resurrection is both a sign of fulfillment and a promise that even the repentant may attain it, a sign that His love has brought humanity into God's glory, [4] and a promise that all who live in faithfulness to His covenant can one day share in that glory. [5]

Jesus describes the purpose of His life in three related parables about the relationship between God and sinners. In the first, He compares God to a devoted shepherd who leaves the main body of His flock to search out a single lost sheep. In the second, He compares Him to a tenacious housewife who stops all other activities to search for one lost coin. Finally, in the third, He compares Him to a desolate father who watches without ceasing for the return of a wastrel son. [6]

This story of the Prodigal Son is the most fully developed of the parables. In it, he incorporates three familiar models of human behavior: the needy remorse of the bankrupt spendthrift, the jealous, unforgiving rectitude of the elder brother, and the endlessly faithful love of the father, solicitous not for himself but for his beloved lost child. Despite the title, the central character in the story is neither the prodigal son nor his sanctimonious brother, but the father with God's heart, who watches and yearns for the absent sinner with selfless love. When the son, hungry and degraded, turns homeward at last, his father rejoices without recrimination.

So poignantly does Jesus portray him that this father is universally recognized as an icon of God's tenderness toward the sinner. Even people whose perspective is otherwise entirely secular respond to the theme of pure mercy and forgiveness in this parable. If we live our faith well, we hope eventually to come to reflect the Father. In the meantime, whether sons or daughters, most of us can see ourselves in one or another of the characters from this parable at different times in our lives.

Read the rest here.

Series on Spiritual Warfare

2008-08-22T00:00:00.000-07:00

This is an excellent series on spiritual warfare from Mark Shea, currently in three parts:

Part One.

Part Two.

Part Three.

And a related article, Satan's Ecumenism.

Another related article, my personal favorite, conspiracy theories.

Has the Bible been Corrupted?

2008-08-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting article on the topic, found here.

A Catholic Views Nine Inch Nail's CLOSER Video

2008-08-16T15:39:00.000-07:00

I recently came across the NIN Closer video*, now uncut since I first saw it years ago and I was struck by its Catholic overtones**. For example, images of fertility are presented alongside images of decay. Interestingly, Catholic theology says it wasn't meant to be that way: God intended a world of fertility without death, but Adam brought death into the world through his sin.

The song is about using sex to escape from one's self, and finding temporary perfection through the conjugal bond. Interspersed in the video is the theme of Darwinism and Eugenics from the late 19th and early 20th century. Non-white races, misfits, freaks, and mental defectives are paraded for the inspection of the European scientists (although I don't know what the little girl signified--the poor?). So two views of sex are presented, the "scientific" view which is distrustful of sexuality and seeks to control and confine it to the "fit", and the singer's view, which is distorted but somehow recognizes the transcendental nature of the act, a demonic view of sex.

*Sorry, no link because it is extremely graphic and disturbing.
**It may be more a matter of reading Catholic overtones into it (I don't know what the makers intended), although there is some Catholic imagery that would support it.

More Secrets of the Heavenly Kingdom

2008-08-12T00:17:00.000-07:00

The gospel reading for today's mass reveal more secrets of the Heavenly Kingdom:

Gospel
Mt 18:1-5, 10, 12-14

The disciples approached Jesus and said,
“Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?”
He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said,
“Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.
Whoever becomes humble like this child
is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.
And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.

Meaning to enter the Kingdom of Heaven you don't have to be the smartest, or the most gifted, or from the best family, or the strongest, or the richest, or the luckiest, or even the nicest, you just have to be what you once were, a child. Anyone can do it if they want to. Can you think of a more even playing field?

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones,
for I say to you that their angels in heaven
always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.
What is your opinion?
If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,
will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills
and go in search of the stray?
And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it
than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.
In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father
that one of these little ones be lost.”

Meaning that God did not create any soul for Hell, and the loss of any soul to Hell is a catastrophe. Therefore, take heart, no matter what you've done or how much you've fallen, you can return to God. He is waiting for you.

What's Wrong With Pornography?

2008-08-11T22:47:00.000-07:00

I once read a book called "Descent Into Hell", by Charles Williams. Though it was a long time ago, I still think about from time to time, especially when the topic of pornography comes up. (Links via Jennifer)

I don't have the book with me to thumb through, so this is what I remember. As I recall, it was a difficult read with an unusual writing style. As best as I can explain, the style of the book is somewhat Twilight Zonish, where the spiritual dimension is concrete, kind of like "One Hundred Years of Solitude". (Is this genre called magical realism? I dunno.) The conversations were also weird and stilted, with characters responding to each other's unspoken thoughts rather than the topic at hand.

The book is, like the title says, about a professor's spiritual descent into Hell. What's disturbing is that he is an ordinary person and not particularly evil, and his slide is very gradual and happens in a way that I can't dissociate myself from. Would I want to be the nicest guy in Hell? (shudder...)

This professor likes a girl very much who is a college student, but when a rival boyfriend shows up, rather than have the typical love triangle is when the book takes a horrifyingly weird turn. He creates in his mind his image of her, which then becomes real. He then carries on his affair with her image-in-the-flesh, a succubus if you will. And I found myself wondering, well why not? (And how many people wouldn't buy or "marry" a robot who looked and acted human enough) After all, it looks and feels exactly like her, but is adoring and warm and uncomplaining and has no personal needs that would conflict with his. She is perfect (except oddly, much lighter than her real counterpart when he picks her up, symbolizing I think the superficialness of the "relationship" that does not require heavy lifting). So he holes up with her and spends all his time with her, and finally when he encounters the real girl one day he realizes he doesn't like her and he's no longer attracted to her. And this leads to the weakening of his intellect and his inevitable spiral into Hell.

Basically the question the book poses is, would you rather be happy living a lie or unhappy with the truth? The professor knowingly takes on an image of his own making, but at the cost of his intellect and capacity to love. This is my image for pornography, deliberately choosing to be happy with a lie. But it could be applied to other addictions. Using drugs as a way to experience "happiness" at the expense of truth, for example. Or the way women delve into romance novels and fantasy. And ultimately, all sin is living a lie, because it is a turning away from God who is Truth personified.

A Christian Love Poem

2008-08-11T22:37:00.000-07:00

I came across this poem recently (spelling has been edited):

Love Bade Me Welcome

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.

"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

-- George Herbert

More Bells, Please!

2008-08-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

I'm no opera buff but here is a selection of recordings from famous opera singers of the last century all singing the Lakme Bell Song.

via The Anchoress

The Meaning of Life

2008-08-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a great post on the meaning of life, via Jennifer.

In the beginning, there was God. He existed in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and they enjoyed perfect communion, perfect intimacy, perfect delight. There was no lack and no need. God did not create out of his loneliness or out of any insufficiency, but out of fullness. In the same way that when a cup is full to its brim it overflows, the joy of God overflowed in creation.

God created the world and man and woman, the apex of His creation, to experience the joy of perfect intimacy with Him and to bring Him glory. Sometimes the notion of God creating something to bring Him glory can sound selfish or arrogant to our ears. After all, if we created something with the ultimate purpose to do nothing more than worship us, it would be arrogant or selfish. But here’s the difference: God is perfect, we are not. He deserves all the praise and glory and honor that this world and we could give; we do not. So when He creates a world and mankind to bring Him glory it is perfectly fitting. And when He creates us to enjoy Him, there is nothing higher or better that we can enjoy. He creates us to know the highest pleasure: perfect intimacy with the source of wisdom, goodness, love, justice, etc.

Read the rest here...

The Messiah and Phases of Christian Life

2008-08-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting post on the Messiah and also the phases of the Christian Life. Be sure to check out the links.

Pigs

2008-07-02T07:18:00.000-07:00

The mass readings for today:

Reading 1
Am 5:14-15, 21-24

Seek good and not evil,
that you may live;
Then truly will the LORD, the God of hosts,
be with you as you claim!
Hate evil and love good,
and let justice prevail at the gate;
Then it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts,
will have pity on the remnant of Joseph.

I hate, I spurn your feasts, says the LORD,
I take no pleasure in your solemnities;
Your cereal offerings I will not accept,
nor consider your stall-fed peace offerings.
Away with your noisy songs!
I will not listen to the melodies of your harps.
But if you would offer me burnt offerings,
then let justice surge like water,
and goodness like an unfailing stream.

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 50:7, 8-9, 10-11, 12-13, 16bc-17

R. (23b) To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
“Hear, my people, and I will speak;
Israel, I will testify against you;
God, your God, am I.”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
“Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you,
for your burnt offerings are before me always.
I take from your house no bullock,
no goats out of your fold.”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
“For mine are all the animals of the forests,
beasts by the thousand on my mountains.
I know all the birds of the air,
and whatever stirs in the plains, belongs to me.”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
“If I were hungry, I should not tell you,
for mine are the world and its fullness.
Do I eat the flesh of strong bulls,
or is the blood of goats my drink?”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
“Why do you recite my statutes,
and profess my covenant with your mouth,
Though you hate discipline
and cast my words behind you?”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.

The first two readings answer an objection I always heard: why does God need our sacrifices? It wasn't until I became Christian that I learned that God wants us to holy and perfect like Him. The sacrifices and rituals are meant to be the means to this goal. But in themselves they are futile and ineffective and it wasn't until Jesus' sacrifice on the cross that the way to holiness became opened and available to all.

Gospel
Mt 8:28-34

When Jesus came to the territory of the Gadarenes,
two demoniacs who were coming from the tombs met him.
They were so savage that no one could travel by that road.
They cried out, “What have you to do with us, Son of God?
Have you come here to torment us before the appointed time?”
Some distance away a herd of many swine was feeding.
The demons pleaded with him,
“If you drive us out, send us into the herd of swine.”
And he said to them, “Go then!”
They came out and entered the swine,
and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea
where they drowned.
The swineherds ran away,
and when they came to the town they reported everything,
including what had happened to the demoniacs.
Thereupon the whole town came out to meet Jesus,
and when they saw him they begged him to leave their district.

Thereupon the whole town came out to meet Jesus,
and when they saw him they begged him to leave their district. Sadly, a common reaction to Jesus, even and especially in the presence of His miracles.

This poem was in the Magnificat:

Matthew VIII,28 ff.

Rabbi, we Gadarenes
Are not ascetics; we are fond of wealth and possessions.
Love, as You call it, we obviate by means
Of the planned release of aggressions.

We have deep faith in prosperity.
Soon, it is hoped, we will reach our full potential.
In the light of our gross product, the practice of charity
Is palpably non-essential.

It is true that we go insane;
That for no good reason we are possessed by devils;
That we suffer, despite the amenities which obtain
At all but the lowest levels.

We shall not, however, resign
Our trust in the high-heaped table and the full trough.
If You cannot cure us without destroying our swine,
We had rather You shoved off.

Richard Wilbur

Here is an excellent homily (khotbeh) by an Orthodox pastor, Father Patrick Riordan, on this passage. He discusses the meaning of normality and also mentions the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".

God took His own medicine

2008-06-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

I used to get mad at God sometimes, thinking it's not fair that God doesn't know what it's like to suffer and be human.

So this is a great quote from Dorothy Sayers:

For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is--limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death--He had the honesty and courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.

Via Happy Catholic

A Christian Tom and Jerry

2008-06-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a very Christian story that illustrates the transforming power of love and self-sacrifice, and the work of grace. The baby duck is a little Christ, who died for us while we were still sinners.

Conversion Story of an Atheist

2007-08-25T12:15:00.000-07:00

Speaking of atheists in the previous post brought to mind the conversion story of science fiction author John C. Wright that I read in Jennifer's blog (also an ex-atheist).

So here it is.

All religions are the same--not!

2007-08-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

GK Chesterton on religions:

There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: “the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach.” It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach. It is as if a man were to say, “Do not be misled by the fact that the Church Times and the Freethinker look utterly different, that one is painted on vellum and the other carved on marble, that one is triangular and the other hectagonal; read them and you will see that they say the same thing.” The truth is, of course, that they are alike in everything except in the fact that they don’t say the same thing. An atheist stockbroker in Surbiton looks exactly like a Swedenborgian stockbroker in Wimbledon. You may walk round and round them and subject them to the most personal and offensive study without seeing anything Swedenborgian in the hat or anything particularly godless in the umbrella. It is exactly in their souls that they are divided. So the truth is that the difficulty of all the creeds of the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim: that they agree in meaning, but differ in machinery. It is exactly the opposite. They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught. Pagan optimists and Eastern pessimists would both have temples, just as Liberals and Tories would both have newspapers. Creeds that exist to destroy each other both have scriptures, just as armies that exist to destroy each other both have guns.

via First Things, found here

The Dynamics of Belief and Unbelief

2007-08-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

I read a book by CS Lewis, "Till We Have Faces" that is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche as an exploration of the dynamics of faith. Every type of believer and non-believer is presented in this story.

I'm not good at reviewing so I'll just present a few excerpts here.

It is basically about an ugly princess (Orual) who is devastated when her beautiful step-sister (Psyche) is sacrificed to the shadowgod (aka Cupid) in order to bring an end to the plague. Orual grieves for her step-sister because she loved her very much, but her grief turns to anger when she finds out that Psyche didn't die. Psyche is living in the wilderness with her new husband that she cannot see (because he visits at night) and claims to live in a castle. Orual sees no evidence that the story is true, and Psyche's bliss enrages her more. So she blackmails Psyche to take a peak at Cupid and thus sends her into exile.

This is Orual's defense, which is the anguished cry of the atheist:

Now, you who read, judge between the gods and me. They gave me nothing in the world to love but Psyche and then took her from me. But that was not enough. They then brought me to her at such a place and time that it hung on my word whether she should continue in bliss or be cast out into misery. They would not tell me whether she was the bride of a god, or mad, or a brute's or villain's spoil. They would give me no clear sign, though I begged for it. I had to guess. And because I guessed wrong they punished me--what's worse, punished me through her. And even that was not enough; they have now sent out a lying story in which I was given no riddle to guess, but knew and saw that she was the god's bride, and of my own will I destroyed her, and that for jealousy...

I say the gods deal very unrightly with us. For they will neither (which would be best of all) go away and leave us to live our own short days to ourselves, nor will they show themselves openly and tell us what they would have us do. For that too would be endurable. But to hint and hover, to draw near us in dreams and oracles, or in a waking vision that vanishes as soon as seen, to be dead silent when we question them and then glide back and whisper (words we cannot understand) in our ears when we most wish to be free of them, and to show to one what they hide from another; what is all this but cat-and-mouse play, blindman's buff, and mere jugglery? Why must holy places be dark places?

I say, therefore, that there is no creature (toad, scorpion, or serpent) so noxious to man as the gods. Let them answer my charge if they can. It may well be that, instead of answering, they'll strike me mad or leprous or turn me into beast, bird, or tree. But will not all the world then know (and the gods will know it knows) that this is because they have no answer?

*************************************************************

Later ugly Orual has a horrifying thought:

A terrible sheer thought, huge as a cliff, towered up before me, infinitely likely to be true. No man will love you, though you gave your life for him, unless you have a pretty face. So (might it not be?), the gods will not love you (however you try to pleasure them, and whatever you suffer) unless you have that beauty of soul. In either race, for the love of men or the love of a god, the winners and losers are marked out from birth. We bring our ugliness, in both kinds, with us into the world, with it our destiny. How bitter this was, every ill-favoured woman will know. We have all had our dream of some other land, some other world, some other way of giving the prizes which would bring us in as the conquerors; leave the smooth, rounded limbs, and the little pink and white faces, and the hair like burnished gold, far behind; their day ended, and ours come. But how if it's not so at all? how if we were made to be dregs and refuse everwhere and everyway?

What does Orual learn? Read the book and find out.

Cinderella and Our Works

2007-08-20T18:02:00.000-07:00

Christians believe that salvation is through faith and not through "works", but faith without works is dead. Jesus had much to say about faith that does not bear fruit. So I was thinking over my own "works" and realized with a shudder the following:

Another name for Satan is the Accuser, and another name for the Holy Spirit is the Advocate, sort of like a courtroom scene where Satan is the prosecutor and the Holy Spirit the defense lawyer.

There is a scene in Disney's classic, Cinderella, where Cinderella's little mice friends sew her a dress for the ball using bits and pieces saved from here and there. When the evil step-sisters see her dress, they gleefully tear off the beads and ribbons that originally belonged to them, leaving her in tatters.

This is where my shudder comes in. I was thinking of my "works" as that dress that the mice made. In comes Satan and he recognizes what's his, all the little impurities in my motives, since I never did anything good with 100% pure unselfish motives. After he's done taking out whatever is his, I'm left in tatters.

But wait, the fairy godmother can make me a new dress, lovelier than before and beyond the reach of Satan. The godmother is Jesus, of course, acting through the Holy Spirit.

Reading the Psalms in the Light of Christ

2007-08-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

One of the last things that Jesus did after His Resurrection and before His Ascension into Heaven was to open His disciples' minds to Scripture. Now they were able to see how Jesus is hidden in the Scriptures, meaning the Old Testament. The great secret of the Old Testament is that it has Jesus's footprints all over it, and this is an additional meaning that Christians perceive in the Old Testament that is not evident to Jews.

I found the following in the comments section of Mere Comments, written by Wonders for Oyarsa and reproduced below.

Let's take Psalm 1, and I'll show you what I think it means to read it "in the light of Christ."

Psalm 1
Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
for the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

Original Reading

Now, the plain original meaning of this psalm is rather obvious. A righteous man is one who chooses to spend his time away from bad men - wicked men, sinners, and scoffers. Instead of desiring their company and approval, he delights in contemplating the Torah of God - which includes the story of God's creation and redemption as well as God's outline of how his people are to live.
Holding fast to the Torah keeps this man firmly planted in God, and makes him successful in all that he does. This is in contrast to wicked men, who come to ruin. God "knows" the way of the righteous - in that deep Biblical sense of the word - walking in this way unites the righteous man to God in a way not wholly unlike Adam "knowing" his wife Eve. As they walk apart from God, the wicked simply wither away.

This is how an Old Testament (and presumably a modern) Jew would read this psalm. And this should be the first sense in which we read it as well. However, I believe that we Christians should go beyond just this reading, and read it in the light of Christ.

Reading in the Light of Christ

So, we should immediately think of the Son of Man who did not walk in the counsel of the wicked. He did nothing of his own accord, but only from the word he heard from the Father. Day and night, he was immersed in prayer, listening to his Father's will. In all that he did, he prospered. All things were put under his feet - all his enemies were conquered - including that last enemy, Death itself. Yet we must keep in mind that this victory was done, paradoxically, through his apparent defeat on the tree of the cross. His body seemed to be destroyed, but did not see corruption or decay. He did not wither. And those powers that saw fit to put him to death were indeed destroyed (both the Priestly establishment and the Roman imperial powers), withering away, while his name is exalted over all other names.

The Lord knows the way of Christ - to know him is eternal life itself. To see him is to see the Father. Those who place their believing allegiance in him are united to him in love - love which is born of God and knows God. Whoever rejects the Son will not see life - for he cuts himself off from the knowledge of God. Such branches wither, and are fit only to be thrown into the fire.

The Relationship Between the Two

I don't think, after looking at Christ, we should ever look at anything the same again - even the Old Testament scriptures. We should obviously not be blinded to the Old Testament as it was read by the original authors, but we should see far more.

So, for instance, we would no longer be content to bask in the glory of how much a man visibly prospers by his adherence to the Torah of God, without speaking of Christ. For Christ redefines the very notion of Torah - being himself the Word and Law of God in person. Christ redefines the very nature of prosperity - it is not to be found in self-aggrandizement but in self-sacrificial service. To prosper means to share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain the resurrection of the dead.

We also cannot look down our noses at those formerly deemed as "wicked", "sinners", and "scoffers" - for the Lord of Life has invited those formerly cut off from the knowledge of God to his table. To exalt in one's own adherence to Torah, against these outsiders is to play the part of the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son. Do not call common what God has made clean.
So who are the wicked that wither away? Those who persist in rejecting the gospel, of course, but ultimately, if this be read in the light of Christ, we should see that corruption and decay and death itself ironically now corrodes, decays, and dies. This is done by means of the cross of the aforementioned blessed man.

So it is the same God who inspired those original psalms who also sent us his son. But that does not mean we are to read these in the same way, from where we stand. When that which is perfect has come, that interpretation that was in part must go away. When you've beheld the glory of the Only Begotten Son, you should never look at the Law and the Prophets the same again - or rather, when you look upon them, they only continue to point you back again towards what they were ultimately meant to reveal all along.

********************************************************************

To show you that this is how the Church interprets Scripture, I give you another example, a small commentary on Psalm 1 by a respected Bible scholar and Orthodox, Father Patrick Henry Reardon, (go here and scroll down to Monday, August 28). It's so short I've reproduced it here below:

Psalms 1 & 2: The first two psalms in the Psalter describe the same "Man," who is the perfect Man, Christ our Lord.

In Psalm 1 Christ is presented as the Man who fears the Lord and walks in His ways, and He is contrasted with the wicked, who are the enemies of God. In Psalm 2 He is described as the King, against whom the enemies of God make war.

Both of these psalms speak, not only of Christ, but also of Christ's enemies. The enemies of Christ are seldom absent from the Book of Psalms, because this is a prayer book for warriors. No one else need try to pray them.

These first two psalms are likewise the key to the understanding of the whole Psalter, because they identify the "Man" whose presence dominates each of the psalms. This is why the Book of Psalms is the Old Testament work most cited and quoted in the New Testament. This is also why the Book of Psalms has been, from the beginning, the major prayer book of the Christian Church, which is the company of Christian warriors.

To pray the psalms outside of this Christological center is to render one's prayer less than Christian. (cf. Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms, Conciliar Press 2000 -- www.conciliarpress.com)

GK Chesterton Essay: Why I Believe in Christianity

2007-08-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

I just came across a collection of GK Chesterton essays via Dawn Eden upon which I shall be gorging.

Here is his essay, found here.

Why I Believe in Christianity

By G.K. Chesterton

Reprinted in The Religious Doubts of Democracy (1904)

And "The Blatchford Controversies" (in The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. 1)

I mean no disrespect to Mr. Blatchford in saying that our difficulty very largely lies in the fact that he, like masses of clever people nowadays, does not understand what theology is. To make mistakes in a science is one thing, to mistake its nature another. And as I read "God and My Neighbour", the conviction gradually dawns on me that he thinks theology is the study of whether a lot of tales about God told in the Bible are historically demonstrable. This is as if he were trying to prove to a man that Socialism was sound Political Economy, and began to realise half-way through that the man thought that Political Economy meant the study of whether politicians were economical.

It is very hard to explain briefly the nature of a whole living study; it would be just as hard to explain politics or ethics. For the more a thing is huge and obvious and stares one in the face, the harder it is to define. Anybody can define conchology. Nobody can define morals.

Nevertheless it falls to us to make some attempt to explain this religious philosophy which was, and will be again, the study of the highest intellects and the foundation of the strongest nations, but which our little civilisation has for a while forgotten, just as it has forgotten how to dance and how to dress itself decently. I will try and - explain why I think a religious philosophy necessary and why I think Christianity the best religious philosophy. But before I do so I want you to bear in mind two historical facts. I do not ask you to draw my deduction from them or any deduction from them. I ask you to remember them as mere facts throughout the discussion.

1. Christianity arose and spread in a very cultured and very cynical world -in a very modern world. Lucretius was as much a materialist as Haeckel, and a much more persuasive writer. The Roman world had read "God and My Neighbour", and in a weary sort of way thought it quite true. It is worth noting that religions almost always do arise out of these sceptical civilisations. A recent book on the PreMohammedan literature of Arabia describes a life entirely polished and luxurious. It was so with Buddha, born in the purple of an ancient civilisation. It was so with Puritanism in England and the Catholic Revival in France and Italy, both of which were born out of the rationalism of the Renaissance. It is so to-day; it is always so. Go to the two most modern and free-thinking centres, Paris and America, and you will find them full of devils and angels, of old mysteries and new prophets. Rationalism is fighting for its life against the young and vigorous superstitions.

2. Christianity, which is a very mystical religion, has nevertheless been the religion of the most practical section of mankind. It has far more paradoxes than the Eastern philosophies, but it also builds far better roads.

The Moslem has a pure and logical conception of God, the one Monistic Allah. But he remains a barbarian in Europe, and the grass will not grow where he sets his foot. The Christian has a Triune God, "a tangled trinity," which seems a mere capricious contradiction in terms. But in action he bestrides the earth, and even the cleverest
Eastern can only fight him by imitating him first. The East has logic and lives on rice. Christendom has mysteries-and motor cars. Never mind, as I say, about the inference, let us register the fact.

Now with these two things in mind let me try and explain what Christian theology is.

Complete Agnosticism is the obvious attitude for man. We are all Agnostics until we discover that Agnosticism will not work. Then we adopt some philosophy, Mr. Blatchford's or mine or some others, for of course Mr. Blatchford is no more an Agnostic than I am. The Agnostic would say that he did not know whether man was responsible for his sins. Mr. Blatchford says that he knows that man is not.

Here we have the seed of the whole huge tree of dogma. Why does Mr. Blatchford go beyond Agnosticism and assert that there is certainly no free will? Because he cannot run his scheme of morals without asserting that there is no free will. He wishes no man to be blamed for sin. Therefore he has to make his disciples quite certain that God did not make them free and therefore blamable. No wild Christian doubt must flit through the mind of the Determinist. No demon must whisper to him in some hour of anger that perhaps the company promoter was responsible for swindling him into the workhouse. No sudden scepticism must suggest to him that perhaps the schoolmaster was blamable for flogging a little boy to death. The Determinist faith must be held firmly, or else certainly the weakness of human nature will lead men to be angered when they are slandered and kick back when they are kicked. In short, free will seems at first sight to belong to the Unknowable. Yet Mr. Blatchford cannot preach what seems to him common charity without asserting one dogma about it. And I cannot preach what seems to me common honesty without asserting another.

Here is the failure of Agnosticism. That our every-day view of the things we do (in the common sense) know, actually depends upon our view of the things we do not (in the common sense) know. It is all very well to tell a man, as the Agnostics do, to "cultivate his garden." But suppose a man ignores everything outside his garden, and among them ignores the sun and the rain?

This is the real fact. You cannot live without dogmas about these things. You cannot act for twenty-four hours without deciding either to hold people responsible or not to hold them responsible. Theology is a product far more practical than chemistry.

Some Determinists fancy that Christianity invented a dogma like free will for fun --a mere contradiction. This is absurd. You have the contradiction whatever you are. Determinists tell me, with a degree of truth, that Determinism makes no difference to daily life. That means -- that although the Determinist knows men have no free will, yet he goes on treating them as if they had.

The difference then is very simple. The Christian puts the contradiction into his philosophy. The Determinist puts it into his daily habits. The Christian states as an avowed mystery what the Determinist calls nonsense. The Determinist has the same nonsense for breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper every day of his life.

The Christian, I repeat, puts the mystery into his philosophy. That mystery by its darkness enlightens all things. Once grant him that, and life is life, and bread is
bread, and cheese is cheese: he can laugh and fight. The Determinist makes the matter of the will logical and lucid: and in the light of that lucidity all things are darkened, words have no meaning, actions no aim. He has made his philosophy a syllogism and himself a gibbering lunatic.

It is not a question between mysticism and rationality. It is a question between mysticism and madness. For mysticism, and mysticism alone, has kept men sane from the beginning of the world. All the straight roads of logic lead to some Bedlam, to Anarchism or to passive obedience, to treating the universe as a clockwork of matter or else as a delusion of mind. It is only the Mystic, the man who accepts the contradictions, who can laugh and walk easily through the world.

Are you surprised that the same civilisation which believed in the Trinity discovered steam? All the great Christian doctrines are of this kind. Look at them carefully and fairly for yourselves. I have only space for two examples. The first is the Christian idea of God. Just as we have all been Agnostics so we have all been Pantheists. In the godhood of youth it seems so easy to say, "Why cannot a man see God in a bird flying and be content?" But then comes a time when we go on and say, "If God is in the birds, let us be not only as beautiful as the birds; let us be as cruel as the birds; let us live the mad, red life of nature." And something that is wholesome in us resists and says, "My friend, you are going mad."

Then comes the other side and we say: "The birds are hateful, the flowers are shameful. I will give no praise to so base an universe." And the wholesome thing in us says: "My friend, you are going mad."

Then comes a fantastic thing and says to us: "You are right to enjoy the birds, but wicked to copy them. There is a good thing behind all these things, yet all these things are lower than you. The Universe is right: but the World is wicked. The thing behind all is not cruel, like a bird: but good, like a man." And the wholesome thing in us says. "I have found the high road."

Now when Christianity came, the ancient world had just reached this dilemma. It heard the Voice of Nature-Worship crying, "All natural things are good. War is as healthy as he flowers. Lust is as clean as the stars." And it heard also the cry of the hopeless Stoics and Idealists: "The flowers are at war: the stars are unclean: nothing but man's conscience is right and that is utterly defeated."

Both views were consistent, philosophical and exalted: their only disadvantage was that the first leads logically to murder and the second to suicide. After an agony of thought the world saw the sane path between the two. It was the Christian God. He made Nature but He was Man.

Lastly, there is a word to be said about the Fall. It can only be a word, and it is this. Without the doctrine of the Fall all idea of progress is unmeaning. Mr. Blatchford says that there was not a Fall but a gradual rise. But the very word "rise" implies that you know toward what you are rising. Unless there is a standard you cannot tell whether you are rising or falling. But the main point is that the Fall like every other large path of Christianity is embodied in the common language talked on the top of an omnibus. Anybody might say, "Very few men are really Manly." Nobody would say, "Very few whales are really whaley."

If you wanted to dissuade a man from drinking his tenth whisky you would slap him on the back and say, "Be a man." No one who wished to dissuade a crocodile from eating his tenth explorer would slap it on the back and say, "Be a crocodile." For we have no notion of a perfect crocodile; no allegory of a whale expelled from his whaley Eden. If a whale came up to us and said: "I am a new kind of whale; I have abandoned whalebone," we should not trouble. But if a man came up to us (as many will soon come up to us) to say, "I am a new kind of man. I am the super-man. I have abandoned mercy and justice"; we should answer, "Doubtless you are new, but you are not nearer to the perfect man, for he has been already in the mind of God. We have fallen with Adam and we shall rise with Christ; but we would rather fall with Satan than rise with you."

You can find more essays from GK Chesterton here.

Truth and Beauty

2007-08-04T08:51:00.001-07:00

What do the movies "The Illusionist" and "Life of David Gale" have in common?

They both, when the truth is revealed, cast the heroes in an ugly light, against the intent of the producers.

In contrast, all heresies about Jesus cast Jesus in an ugly light, while only the truth casts Him in a beautiful light. Indeed, He is the Light.

Indeed, of all the religions and philosophies, none can rival the Christianity in terms of beauty of the story.

It is almost as if we were designed to find no other story as beautiful and satisfying as the true story of God taking on flesh to redeem us from our sins and draw us to Himself.

On Hope

2007-08-03T03:14:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting article on hope, relating to my previous post, by Jen.

She says,

I don't think I realized until today how difficult it was to live without hope. When I was an atheist, I had hope in a certain sense -- I was optimistic about how certain events might play out in my life or in the world in general -- but there was no greater hope with a source higher than this world, no opportunity for happy endings outside of humanity and the material universe.

But go read it all.

"There is Only One Real Sadness: Not to be Saints"

2007-08-03T03:01:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting article on suffering and the problem of evil, via Mark Shea.

An excerpt:

Greek tragedies all address this thorny question: the best answer they could give is that the meaning of suffering is to teach foolish men wisdom. Ajax, driven by hubris declared boldly that "to succeed with the help of the gods is no great accomplishment." He wanted to succeed on his own without any aid. The gods punished him by madness.

In the Old Testament evil and suffering are clearly linked to sin: man's revolt against God. Throughout the Old Testament, the "chosen people" rebel against God's laws. He sent them prophets; many of them were murdered because man's rebellious heart did not savor their message. God punished them severely. Then they bowed their "stiff neck" for a while. But soon afterward the same scenario was repeated.

My claim is that it is through the supernatural, and through the supernatural alone that the excruciating question of evil and suffering can be satisfactorily enlightened. For it reveals to us a dimension of suffering inaccessible to natural man: suffering as expression of ultimate love. Indeed, "there is no greater love than to give one's life for one's friends."
********
The supernatural can only come from above. The song it sings cannot be perceived by man's fallen nature. It can only be received on one's knees--as an unmerited gift that man could never conquer by his own strength. Both my husband and Edith Stein discovered the supernatural by reading the lives of saints: Saint Francis of Assisi for him; Teresa of Avila for her. This discovery, which can be called a "Damascus experience," radically changed their lives: they discovered a world the beauty of which they had never suspected. They discovered the madness of divine love that leads God to sacrifice his only Son for our salvation. The supernatural unveils a new morality which does not cancel the natural moral law, but transcends and fulfills it. "Love your enemies"; "do good to those who persecute you"--a morality which combines justice and mercy; strength and weakness--features which cannot be reconciled in purely natural morality.

The message of Christ is a message of joy and peace: but the promise of Mount Tabor is preceded by Golgotha: "let him who wishes to be my disciple carry his cross and follow me." Even though it is the supernatural and the supernatural alone which can heal man's soul, the medicine is not to the taste of man's fallen nature. Humility is bitter to those who "preen" themselves with their accomplishments. When one craves for praise, it is bitter to discover that one is nothing but dust and ashes. It is bitter to acknowledge oneself to be a sinner desperately in need of redemption when one feels oneself to be "a just man" who is not in need of help.
********
He who, through God's grace, has adopted a supernatural stance will victoriously fight against these "illegitimate sufferings," i.e., the sufferings which are consequences of our false and sinful attitudes. God does not give his grace for such self-inflicted sufferings--this is why they are unbearable--but in his goodness--he does come to the help of those who carry a real cross--a cross that he has chosen for them for their sanctification, and for which they can count on his grace. This is why St. Paul writes that "God does not try us beyond our strength"--something that the natural man contests violently.

(Dr. Alice von Hildebrand)

Implications of the Triune God

2007-07-24T00:32:00.000-07:00

After posting quite clumsily my thoughts on the Trinity here. I came across this:

From the April 2007 edition of First Things, Letters to the Editor:

...the nature and possibility of love is inextricably grounded in the Trinitarian nature of the God whom Christians profess. What I mean is the following: If it is true, as Christians and various other monotheists maintain, that God is a loving God, then somehow or other, love must be a characteristic of the essence of God apart from his relationship to anything outside himself defined as "creation." But if God is the purely monotheistic god of Jews, Muslims, deists, or monotheists of whatever stripe, then the only kind of love that could characterise the essence of such a god would be narcissism raised to the power of infinity.

In contrast, in the essence or internal life of the revealed Triune God, consisting of three distinct persons, fully sharing one nature, there are others for each to love and be loved by!

--Thomas J. Kleist
Wauwatosa, Wisconsin

via Abu Daoud.

Which further reminds me of a passage from one of my favorite books:

If we take any other doctrine that has been called old-fashioned we shall find the case the same. It is the same, for instance in the deep matter of the Trinity. Unitarians (a sect never to be mentioned without a special respect for their distinguished intellectual dignity and high intellectual honour) are often reformers by the accident that throws so many small sects into such an attitude. But there is nothing in the least liberal or akin to reform in the substitution of pure monotheism for the Trinity. The complex God of the Athanasian Creed may be an enigma for the intellect; but He is far less likely to gather the mystery and cruelty of a Sultan than the lonely god of Omar or Mahomet. The god who is a mere awful unity is not only a king but an Eastern king. The heart of humanity especially of European humanity, is certainly much more satisfied by the strange hints and symbols that gather round the Trinitarian idea the image of a council at which mercy pleads as well as justice the conception of a sort of liberty and variety existing even in the inmost chamber of the world. For Western religion has always felt keenly the idea "it is not well for man to be alone."

The social instinct asserted itself everywhere as when the Eastern idea of hermits was practically expelled by the Western idea of monks.

So even asceticism became brotherly; and the Trappists were sociable even when they were silent. If this love of a living complexity be our test, it is certainly healthier to have the Trinitarian religion than the Unitarian. For to us Trinitarians (if I may say it with reverence)—to us God Himself is a society. It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology, and even if I were theologian enough to deal with it directly, it would not be relevant to do so here.

Suffice it to say here that this triple enigma is as comforting as wine and open as an English fireside; that this thing that bewilders the intellect utterly quiets the heart: but out of the desert from the dry places and the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for God to be alone.

(GK Chesterton)

What to Say to Your Children

2007-07-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

Twenty questions parents said were unanswerable.

1.Does God exist?
2.Has God got a beard?
3.Is there life after death?
4.If God made us who made God?
5.What does God look like?
6.Why is the world here?
7.Who created God?
8.Why are people bad to each other?
9.Why are we here? Am I real or is this just a dream?
10.If God is everywhere why do we have to go to church to see him?
11.Why can't we ring God up?
12.Why does Easter change its dates each year?
13.Why is God all around us?
14.Why is there a world?
15.Why is there so much war in the world?
16.Why do we have wars?
17.Why do I believe in one God while my Hindu friend believes in lots and is my God the same as my Jewish friends?
18.Do you know why Jesus wept?
19.Who made the universe?
20.Does God have a mum?

Here's how a Catholic would answer them.

1.Yes.

2.Yes, God the Son has a beard. God the Father has no body.

3.Yes. Jesus Christ rose from the dead and promised that we would be with him in his Father's house to live eternally.

4.No one made God. He is self-existent from all eternity.

5.God looks like Jesus Christ. If you have seen him, you have seen the Father, says Jesus.

6.The world is here because it was God's good pleasure to make it. Most of all it was his good pleasure to make *you*, whom he has had in his heart since before the beginning of the world. You were invited into existence so that you and he and all his saints could be happy forever with him in heaven.

7.No one created God. God is the Creator. Everything you see around you is made of "creature stuff", so it's natural to think that everything that is (including God) is also made of "creature stuff". But God is not "made" of anything. God is "eternal stuff". Creatures "have" being that they borrow temporarily from God. God *is* Being.

8.People are bad to each other because they love themselves more than they love God or other people. When you do that, and other people or God get in the way of something you want, you hurt the other people and God to get it. It's called "sin".

9.You are here (and you are very real) because God loves you so much he made you especially for himself (and for us who also love you no matter what, forever and ever). You are here to get to know God, to learn to love him and live out his life in this world so that you can get ready for the perfect happiness of heaven. Jesus is your teacher and helper through his Church, the sacraments, and through the people you love and are loved by.

10.Mom and I always love you no matter where you are, but it's better when we can give you a hug and a kiss and enjoy talking with you. Church is where God talks to us through the Bible. Sacraments are the kisses of God. And the liturgy is the way we learn how to exercise our bodies and souls so that we can go out stronger to meet God in the world and serve him in people.

11.You can. It's called "prayer".

12.Jesus was crucified on the eve of the Passover, a Jewish feast that falls on the first full moon after the beginning of Spring. Easter just follows that same calendar.

13.Because God is infinite. You can't put him in a box.

14.There is a world because God loves beauty and he loves to create, like an artist. He is so full of creativity that no one creature can express everything about him. So he created zillions of things.

15.Because people are hungry for the happiness of God, but they don't want to put themselves after God. So they try to steal that happiness by beating up their neighbors. If that sounds crazy, it's because it is. Sin is basically crazy.

16.See above.

17.You believe in one God because you are blessed to live in a place where the Good News was accepted and took root. The Good News was that God everybody has been looking for had become the man Jesus Christ, died for our sins, and rose from the dead so that we could defeat sin and death. Everybody in the world is seeking him (which is why you are asking these questions). But because we are also limited and (especially because our thinking gets gummed up by sin) people have lost track of him and sometimes tried to make up stories about "gods" who are more like Big People with Magic Powers. Storytelling is a great thing, and even some of the stories reflect some real truths about the real God. But if people start believing the stories to be true, it can cause a lot of problems. That's why God said not to believe in any God but him.

He said that to the Jewish people, who were the first people that he revealed himself to. They are still his special people today. Most Jews don't believe that Jesus (who is himself a Jew) is also God. But though they don't believe in him (often because Christians have been very mean to them), God is still faithful to the covenant (that means "agreement") he made with them and he promises that one day they will realize that Jesus is who he says he is. Till then, we are to love our Jewish friends because they are sort of like our Older Brothers and Sisters since they were the first to hear the word of God.

18.He wept because he was angry at death. He was so angry that he fought it and beat it so that we could live forever.

19.God.

20.Yes. Her name is Mary.

via Mark Shea

The Way to Hell is Hell

2007-07-17T00:18:00.000-07:00

Given that the way to Hell is Hell, as can be evidenced by spending time in atheistic chat-rooms, here is a simple way to avoid eternal damnation. Love, love, love.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

(CS Lewis, The Four Loves)

Three Pastors Life Death and Religion in Muslim Iran

2007-07-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting article from Crisis Magazine about Christianity in Iran.

An excerpt:

In November 1993, not far from ancient Babylon, where Daniel was thrown into the lions’ den and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were pitched into Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace, the Rev. Mehdi Dibaj huddled in a Mazandaran Province prison cell praying about how he could defend himself from capital charges. A compactly built 60-year-old man, his short, salt-and-pepper hair bristled above dark, deep-set eyes and bunchy cheeks. His cell contained a cot, a hole-in-the-floor toilet, a line of small snapshots of his four children, and, under the high window that afforded light, a cross fashioned from twisted palm fronds.

Dibaj was accused of being a Christian—more particularly an “apostate,” one who has given up Islam to accept Christianity. Two years earlier Dibaj wrote to his 17-year-old son Yousef, “If we want to walk close with God, we must go into the fire.”

Since Dibaj was imprisoned the first time in 1983 for 68 days, and beginning with his re-arrest in 1984, the Assemblies of God minister had spent almost ten years behind bars. The few visitors he had been allowed, usually at six-month intervals, always came ready to offer encouragement.

The authorities tried their best to break him. Their first approach was to cajole him back into conformity, telling him they knew him to be a good Muslim at heart. He need only sign a paper to that effect and he could go home.

Read the rest of it here.

The Rarity of the God Fearing Man

2007-06-25T01:17:00.001-07:00

There is a perceived dichotomy between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. The OT God is wrathful and dangerous, while the NT God is loving and harmless. This is a schizophrenic understanding that seems to say oh those silly Jews where did they get the idea that God is scary and demands sacrifice?

The way to think about it is to realize that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Notice it says the beginning, not the end. And love is the end. To have a properly developed faith we must start with the fear of the Lord to get to love of the Lord.

The problem with us today is that we have lost our fear of God and think He is our buddy. But if we don't fear God, then what do we fear but everything else. This article in Touchstone by Russell Kirk says it well.

An excerpt:

Such is the post-Christian man, contemptuous of God but fearful of everything else, for whom Shaw would have invented a new sort of faith. Politically, the man who does not fear God is prey to the squalid oligarchs; and this is no paradox. What raises up heroes and martyrs is the fear of God. Beside the terror of God’s judgment, the atrocities of the totalist tyrant are pinpricks. A God-intoxicated man, knowing that divine love and divine wrath are but different aspects of a unity, is sustained against the worst this world can do to him; while the goodnatured unambitious man, lacking religion, fearing no ultimate judgment, denying that he is made for eternity, has in him no iron to maintain order and justice and freedom.

Musing on the Trinity

2007-06-23T10:30:00.000-07:00

My earliest conception of the Trinity when I was first learning about it was in terms of accessibility. The Holy Spirit is the most accessible as He works throughout the world and on all people. He is diffuse and nonverbal like perfume. He points the way to Christ. The Son is not as accessible but ordinary people can expect to encounter Him at least once or twice in their lifetimes. Others who actively walk the walk with Him will encounter Him more often. He prepares us to see the Father after we depart this life. The Father is to be encountered on Heaven and is thus only accessible to the saints who finished the race. This is of course flawed and deeply inadequate understanding but for me it was a starting point.

My conception developed further after reading Frank Sheed. The rational soul has two faculties, knowing and loving. We know with the intellect and we love with our heart. In God knowing and loving is carried out to perfection. His knowing is so perfect it is yet a separate Person, the Son, also called the Word or Logos. His loving is also perfect, the perfect love that is shared between the Father and the Son, which is yet another Person, the Holy Spirit.

Man, having been made in the image of God, has this analogous morphology of the brain: The verbal left hemisphere of the brain--which roughly corresponds to knowing--and the non-verbal emotional right hemisphere of the brain—which roughly corresponds to loving.

I used these analogies to help me get a handle on the mystery of the Trinity that cannot be comprehended by created beings. The God that we understand is not God.

So now the question is how does a Trinitarian God affect our understanding of the world?

Obviously I’m not qualified to give an authoritative opinion. But here are my thoughts for what they’re worth.

For one thing, our concept of personhood is now to be understood as relational. We understand the Father in terms of His relationship with the Son, etc. We are no longer to think we can know ourselves or be known properly as atomic individuals. We can’t just say I’m a good person who generally does the right thing or who has a good heart. Our identity is inextricably bound up in our relationships, first as created beings in relationship to God, then in terms of our relationships of knowing and loving other people:
son/daughter
brother/sister
husband/wife
father/mother
other kin relatives
friend
employee/employer
neighbor
citizen of the state
member of the tribe or nation
steward of the earth

How have we known and loved in each of these relationships?

So here is a good spiritual exercise: think about how you would define yourself through your relationships. What do your relationships say about you?

The first time I tried to evaluate myself in this way was so frightening and humbling that it led to another conversion experience. As I went through my list of relationships with others I saw how deluded I had been in thinking I am a generally good person when not one—NOT ONE—of these relationships bore witness to it the way I wanted. My relationship with God of course was spotty and let’s not get into it. But there was NOT ONE relationship where I could say I’d given my all, that I’d truly loved and truly tried to know the other person and truly given of myself, that I hadn’t let lapse or flounder through hurts and misunderstandings. I could easily believe I was unlucky and misunderstood for any given relationship, but taking all my relationships together as a whole, can I still honestly believe that EVERYBODY MISUNDERSTANDS ME? Am I that unlucky?

And more frightening still to me is the prospect of being judged by my relationships on Judgment Day and not just on a series of actions or works, pitiful as they are. How will I be able to maintain I was a good person if I can’t produce a single relationship that proves it? Woman, you’d better get your house in order while there is still time.

Jesus Jesus Everywhere

2007-06-17T22:41:00.001-07:00

I used to be annoyed with a particular Christian I knew who thought every single movie was about Jesus. But that was back then, now I get it.

Once you fall in love with Jesus, you see Him everywhere. In nature, in movies, on TV, in songs, books... He is everywhere. Even in people (but that is hardest for me and is something I have to work on--but the key to love anyone is to see Christ within them).

A particular prayer by Saint Patrick really speaks to me:

Christ beside me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me King of my heart;
Christ within me,
Christ below me,
Christ above me never to part.
Christ on my right hand,
Christ on my left hand,
Christ all around me shield in strife;
Christ in my sleeping,
Christ in my sitting,
Christ in my rising light of my life.
Christ beside me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me King of my heart;
Christ within me,
Christ below me,
Christ above me never to part.

Lest you think it's just all in my head, here is an interesting series by Rod Bennett of Tremendous Trifles that explores just how and why we can see Jesus in the movies.

It starts here with King Kong Died for Your Sins:
King Kong Died for Your Sins, Part I
King Kong Died for Your Sins, Part II
King Kong Died for Your Sins, Part III
King Kong Died for Your Sins, Part IV
King Kong Died for Your Sins, Part V
King Kong Died for Your Sins, Part VI
King Kong Died for Your Sins, Part VII
King Kong Died for Your Sins, Part VIII

And picks up again here in What if God were One of Us? Adventurs in Pop Typology:
Pop Typology, Part I
Pop Typology, Part II
Pop Typology, Part III
Pop Typology, Part IV
Pop Typology, Part V
Pop Typology, Part VI
Pop Typology, Part VII
Pop Typology, Part VIII
Pop Typology, Part IX
Pop Typology, Part X

I guarantee you'll love it and learn a lot and gain a new insight into movies.

Egocentric vs Theocentric Spirituality

2007-06-07T01:06:00.000-07:00

Broadly speaking spirituality is either egocentric or theocentric:

Egocentric spirituality emphasizes what God can do for us, and specifically the promises of Christ. Since God is the source of all happiness, it is only natural that we turn to Him to obtain it or our own perfection. No one approaches God with entirely pure motives. (Imagine a narcissist who finally realizes that he can become perfect through God and so turns to Him, basically using God as a means to become perfect) But God understands, He will use anything to draw us toward Him.

But this is only the early stage of spirituality. To fully mature we are expected to grow out of it and become theocentric, or God-oriented. This means forgetting ourselves and delighting in God for God's sake. It means being able to pray,

God, make me perfect or make me weak,
Build me up or tear me down,
Whatever pleases You,
It is all the same to me.

Opened for Comments

2007-06-07T00:23:00.001-07:00

Comments are opened temporarily although I prefer direct emails.

Aya Dard beh Dard Mikhoreh ya Na?

2007-02-05T00:14:00.000-08:00

Aya dard beh dard mikhoreh ya na? Manzooreh man az dard haman ranj o sakhti o azab ast keh beh Inglisi migan "suffering".

Albateh as aval gharar nabood aslan marg o dard o ranji vojood dashteh basheh, een cheezha varedeh donya shodand baad az eenkeh Adam o Hava gonaheshan ra kardand.

Kheiliha fekr mikonand keh dard o ranj neshanieh khashmeh Khodast, ya neshanieh ahmaghiat khodeh adameh keh docharesh misheh, va kholaseh heech naghsheh mosbati dar dard nemibeenand.

Amma javabeh Maseeh eeneh keh--baleh, dard beh dardi mikhoreh o dard khodesh davast.

Midooni keh deegeh az dard nemisheh farar kard. Har cheh beeshtar farar koni beeshtar yagheat ra migireh va ba bahreyeh hesabi khedmatet mireseh. Javabeh dard farar neest, bayad dard ra ghabool koni. Chon khodeh Maseeh keh bigonah bood az dard farar nakard. Dard ra ghabool kard va "saleebash ra dar aghoosh gereft". To bedeen vaseeleh, dardeh digaran ra bar shooneh begireh. Va ba een karesh beh ma neshan dad keh cheh deedi nesbat be sakhtihayeh zendegy bayad dashteh basheem va chegooneh bayad dard bekeesheem.

Zamani keh dard mikesheem, fargh nemikoneh, har noash, cheh badani cheh roohi, cheh ba taghseer cheh bi taghseer, bayad Khoda ra shokr koneem va az Oo bekhaheem keh bedeen vaseeleh gonahanem ra bebakhshad. Bayad dardaman ra beh Khoda bedeem beh onvaneh ghorbani, va beh Khoda begeem keh hamantor keh khoshi va barakat zendegi ra az To pazeerofteem een dard ra neez az To mipazeereem ba kamaleh mael, barayeh gonahaneh khodeman va barayeh gonahaneh digaran.

Presentation of Our Lord to the Temple

2007-02-04T23:51:00.000-08:00

Forty days after Jesus was born, Jesus was presented to the Temple* by his mother Mary and Joseph as part of the customary purification rite of the mother and offering of the first born to the Temple. In their poverty they were only able to sacrifice two turtle-doves for Him. Mysterious because God was offered to God's House.

Rather than say more about this wonderous event myself, here is an interesting sermon on the event. Quote:

Remember the words of St. Paul:

“For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich (II Cor. 8:9).”

The implications of this are very deep, and very profound. It is a picture of the mystery of the Incarnation itself, that the One Who did not grasp onto His own equality with God, but became a man, Who humbled Himself in obedience as a servant unto the death of the cross, is the One to Whom every knee shall rightly bow, and Who shall be called Lord on every tongue, at the mention of His human name, the name of Jesus. Here He was, noble and the heir to the throne of David, yet poor. Here He was, true man yet very God. Here He was, the Lord Who had suddenly come to His temple, yet a new born babe, without power, and without wealth.

...

The wisdom of God contradicts everything that a fallen and sinful world holds dear. It contradicts the wisdom of the wise, the might of the powerful, the haughtiness of kings, the wealth of riches. “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek; He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich He hath sent empty away.”

...

Gods has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are powerful, and the foolish things of the world to confound the things which are wise; so wrote St. Paul. The true victory that banishes oppression from the world, and overturns all of the power of evil, was accomplished by a naked and wounded, beaten and humiliated man, breathing His last breath nailed to cross, as a spectacle of all that appears to be weak and powerless. In His humility and obedience to the Father, His submission to the will of God in giving His life, he is the One true hero Who breaks all of the power of Satan, and liberates the whole world from sin and death.

Via Mere Comments.

*Temple with a capital T because there was only one, different from the local synagogue. God was present there in a special way, in the Holy of Holies.

You Want to be a Saint? Watch out for this!

2007-01-22T22:57:00.000-08:00

The devil has snares for everyone. A common snare for believers who actively seek God day by day is what I call avoiding God with God. It consists of avoiding the inspirations of grace by substituting religious activities of one's own choice. Only God can judge this sin since only He knows what inspirations were given, but a person who knows a person really well can also suspect it. An example is a person who is always starting new spiritual books or projects without finishing them (because just when it takes real committment she loses interest), or anther person who is praying or watching a spiritual program on tv while there is a crying child in the other room. To the outsider the person is constantly involved in spiritual activities and looking very busy. (But then the outsider will wonder why there is so little apparent fruit of all this devotion?) Or another example is the priest who always bases his homily on the easier of the 2 or 3 Scripture passages assigned to the mass of the day. Over time you will notice that controversial topics such as abortion or our sinfulness and need for repentance are never mentioned. This type of error is what divides the saint from the saint-like.

The essence of following God lies in obedience to His Will and not our works by themselves.

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.(Hosea 6:6)

Thus the spiritual life has to be a continual dying of our will in submission to His. The root of this error lies in continually choosing how we will follow God instead of what He has chosen for us, which is why I call it avoiding God with God. The activities in themselves are good, but they are out of place.

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
(Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8)

The way to avoid this is to develop our own rule of life. That is we set up a schedule for all our spiritual devotions, but be ready to respond to God's inspirations at the drop of a hat like a soldier awaiting deployment. Then we have to organize our priorities for any given moment. Basically the priorities are putting others ahead of ourselves, and asking God to help us to know when we are avoiding Him. A big help is to remember that usually the right thing to do is the thing we would rather avoid doing. Then if we remember to offer everything to God throughout the day we'll find we won't go too far wrong.

Repent Now and Forgive!

2007-01-11T03:39:00.000-08:00

The first step to get to God is to repent. That is why John the Baptist was sent as a forerunner, to prepare people for the coming of Jesus by telling them to repent. In all Biblical accounts of a person encountering God, the person's immediate reaction is to feel sinful and unworthy.

When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!" For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, (See Luke 5: 7-9)

It is kind of like finally meeting someone you greatly admired for the first time, maybe even a rock star or a celebrity. You are completely aware of your nothingness. You want to throw yourself at their feet. Or being called to your boss's office. You walk in and suddenly you feel 2 inches smaller and all you can think of is how bad your work has been lately.

In fact, it is said that encounters with God start out bitter and end sweetly in peace, and encounters with the devil start out sweetly but end in agitation. The devil can create feelings of agitation and fear and manic elation but cannot create the feeling of peace and true joy.

A person who rejects God cannot stand long in His presence. That is why he can not be in Heaven, because it would be unbearable torment. He sends himself to Hell because there is no other place to avoid God after death.

I had my first major repentance experience many years ago when I was still Muslim (years before 911 in fact). I was lying in bed and couldn't sleep. I suddenly saw the truth of my whole life and what tied my sins together and what animal I most resembled. In cold tears I got out of bed and fell to the floor in a prolonged sejdeh. I stayed in that position for I don't know how long perhaps half an hour thanking God for showing me the truth and begging His forgiveness and resolving to change my ways.

It was a terrible experience but afterwards I had a feeling of lightness and peace that is hard to describe. Now in looking back I know it was the work of the Holy Spirit.

Now a great way to start this is to tell God you're sorry for all your sins and ask for the grace of repentance. Then a great next step is to forgive everyone who's ever hurt you. Recall the parable of the unmerciful servant.

The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"
Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
"Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talentswas brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
"The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
"But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me!' he demanded.
"His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'
"But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.
"Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."

So lying in your bed one night (after you have repented), make a list of all the people you know, go down your list and mentally forgive everyone for anything and everything. Do this every night no matter how difficult for several nights. And pray. Ask God to reveal the truth to you.

These actions will make you open to the Holy Spirit, and will bring you closer to God.

Theological Speculation

2007-01-11T02:45:00.000-08:00

The following is theological speculation on my part and stricly reflects my own limited understanding of theology. Wherever it deviates from the magesterium, it is wrong and the magesterium is right:

In Heaven the primary reward is entering the eternal Beatitude, which means contemplating the Face of our Father (said in anthropomorphic terms). To use a human parallel, it is like a mother watching her sleeping child's beautiful face or a lover contemplating his beloved. The lover never gets tired of gazing at his beloved. He is forever finding new perspectives and delights in his beloved's face. A new angle of how the light hits his beloved's nose, how adorable that wrinkle is, etc. In the same way but on a deeper level in Heaven all the saints and angels are contemplating the Father. And each is getting different insights and unique joys. And none ever get tired or bored because an eternity is not enough to exhaust the mysteries of the Face of our Father who Art in Heaven. And in addition, since human history is still being played out here and there is such a thing as the communion of saints, our Father is communicating to His saints and angels individually what they need to know about what's happening on Earth. The saints in their blissful contemplation are made aware through our Father about news of their loved ones on Earth (called the Church Militant), prayers involving them, and our Father's Divine Will concerning them. (Thinking this part through finally put to rest for me the fear of being spied upon by angels and saints when I am in awkward situations and also explains to me how a saint in Heaven can hear all our prayers without being omniscient. They're not looking directly at us, they only see what our Father reveals to them about us.)

So I have a mental image of our Father--unfortunately the best I can do is picture the crystal ball the witch used in The Wizard of Oz made large and beautiful--being surrounded by and gazed at by hordes of saints and angels in their different ranks. All the saints and angels have a look of bliss, but with different degrees of joy and sorrow, which is to emphasize that they are getting individualized impressions and messages from the our Father's beautiful Face.

If I could draw this I would not depict our Father both because of my restricted mental conception and also for it to symbolize that only the saints and angels in Heaven get to see Him, I'd place something in front of Him to obstruct our view and just show the ranks of saints and angels. I'd place this image in the top half of my painting separated by clouds to symbolize Heaven. Then I'd also include in the drawing the Figure of Jesus Christ standing a little bit apart to symbolize that He is seated at the right Hand of the Father. I might protray Jesus looking kind of like Janus, to symbolize His dual nature so His Divine Nature can contemplate our Father while His Human Nature is looking down at us through a break in the clouds. Or I might cleverly contrive to place Jesus at an angle so that it looks like He is both contemplating our Father and looking down at us at the same time. Then Jesus's gaze downward could lead to a group of Christians standing in a circle contemplating Christ on a giant crucifix. The scene on Earth would directly parallel the scene in Heaven. The expressions on the faces of these Christians would then--like the faces of the saints and angels in Heaven--all show bliss, but with differing degrees of sorrow and joy and understanding. I'd depict the Holy Spirit as a dove hovering above the crucifix and the Christians and below Jesus at the halfway point.

I can think of many things to make this picture interesting, such as showing non-Christians going about their business in a bazaar and depicting Hell further down where people are morosely looking at their feet and or looking with hate and snarling at each other or something. They would not be standing in a circle but in disarray.

My theological insight conveyed by this image?

That Christians are uniquely privileged to have the ability to receive a foretaste of our true joy in Heaven, entering our eternal Beatitude, by contemplating Jesus Christ. While we have yet to attain to Heaven, but even now we can contemplate Jesus, whether on the cross, in the gospel, in prayer, in the Holy Sacrifice of Mass, in the faces of other people, etc. And since Jesus is our Mediator to God the Father, our contemplation goes both ways. While we are contemplating Jesus, He is contemplating us! (we are His beloveds), and through the inspirations of the Holy Spirit is thereby communicating the Divine Will of the Father to us. We are not worthy to know the Father right now, but we may get to know His Will for us through our Mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Reason for the Crucifixion of Our Lord

2007-01-02T17:17:00.000-08:00

If you liked the story that illustrated the reason for the incarnation here, then you might also like this story that illustrates the reason for the crucifixion, taken from here:

When Marvin was a young teenager (around the 1930s or early ‘40s, I imagine), he asked his father if he could go with the other kids to some entertainment event (he didn’t say what kind). His father said it wouldn’t be appropriate and told him no. Marvin said he was going anyway, and headed out.

“If you go out without my approval,” his father told him as he reached the door, “this house will be locked when you get home, and you’ll have to sleep somewhere else.”

Marvin refused to back down. He left. He enjoyed the event.

That, he said, was the short part of the night.

When he got home he found the house dark, the doors locked. Even that window in the basement that the kids could sometimes work loose was locked tight.

Marvin stood in the dark, thinking about his options. It wasn’t winter, but it was fall and the night was getting cold.

He remembered a sort of loft in the chicken coop which his brother and he had appropriated as a “secret place.” It had a sort of a mattress and a ratty quilt.

He went into the chicken coop and climbed up. The “mattress” was there, but the quilt was gone.

Lacking other options, he lay down on the mattress and curled up in a fetal position. The cold wind blew in through the cracks. The coop stank of chicken droppings. There was no way to sleep. He lay there in the darkness hugging himself, shivering. The hours passed slowly. He wondered if he could make it through the night.

Then, at last, he heard a door open. He heard a creaking sound as someone climbed the board ladder to the loft. Someone put a pillow under his head, lay down and held him close, and pulled a quilt over both of them.

In the darkness, he heard his father say, “Marvin, when I said that if you disobeyed me you’d have to find another place to sleep tonight, I didn’t say that I would sleep inside.”

And so that pastor taught his son the true meaning of the Incarnation.

Wish I’d had a dad like that.

Wait. I do.

The Judas Dilemna and Human Nature

2006-12-31T11:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a dilemna that I made up* that I think illustrates our sinful fallen nature.

You have 12** good trusted friends, but one day you discover that one of them has betrayed you. You don't know which one it is.

This is a horrific and painful dilemna made worse by the uncertainty. The devil loves to use this situation to destroy the friendships because the devil hates fellowship. Most people because of our fallen nature will naturally end up losing or seriously straining all 12 friendships. The knowledge creates a cloud of suspicion that taints all 12 friends. Even though mathematically the probability of innocence of each friend is 11/12, the suspicion will make all appear to be guilty.

An evil person (I'm thinking of someone like Saddam) resolves it easily by crushing all 12 friends. To this person, it is more important for the traitor to be punished so he doesn't lose any sleep over sacrificing 11 innocent people.

A weak-minded person will quickly succumb to paranoia and in his mind the cloud of suspicion will turn it into a conspiracy theory where all 12 friends are conspiring against him. The conspiracy will become so real to him that if, later, he were to learn the truth about the identity of the betrayer, he will choose not to believe it. In any case, the taint of suspicion will forever ruin his feelings toward his former friends. Finding out they were innocent will not restore his feelings toward them. He will never admit even to himself his culpability in his response.

Our fallen natures makes this type of dilemna especially difficult for us. Because our intellects are clouded, we will find ourselves suspecting person A on Mondays and Wednesdays, and persons B and C on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Our conflicting thoughts and contradictory assumptions will spin around in our head like a roulette wheel; now the ball will land on this theory, now on another theory. If our emotions weren't so busy screaming betrayal! betrayal! all the time then maybe we'd have a chance to think things through clearly. Maybe.

A person who strives to be righteous will take his problems to God and use his faith to get through it. Faith in God is necessary to help keep his faith in his friends, and God knows the truth (He is Truth) so relying on Him will bring us closer to the truth. He would rather forgive the judas than lose a single friend. Because in the end our friendships demand the same kind of faith that we have in God, but it is our faith in God that orders and guides our faith in our friends.

Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light for my path. (Psalm 119: 105)

*I don't know if someone's thought of it before, but it seems too basic and obvious for me to be the first to think of it.
**I picked the number 12 so I could call it the Judas*** Dilemna, but also it has to be a large number of friends so that you can see that mathematically speaking most of the friends are innocent (1/12 chance that a friend has betrayed you), which shows how destructive that the cloud of suspicion is.
***Of course Jesus didn't have this dilemna with His apostles. Being God, He knew everything that was going on.

Mary vs Eve

2006-12-27T01:39:00.000-08:00

Just as Jesus is the New Adam, Mary is the New Eve. But all I'll say on this for now is this poem that I love, by the Sisters of the Mississippi Valley (via First Things).

To set it up for you, it is about an imagined encounter between The Blessed Virgin Mary, pregnant with Child, and a sorrowful Eve, who has just been kicked out of Eden with her husband Adam. Mary says to her:

My mother, my daughter, life-giving Eve,
Do not be ashamed, do not grieve.
The former things have passed away,
Our God has brought us to a New Day.
See, I am with Child,
Through whom all will be reconciled.

O Eve! My sister, my friend,
We will rejoice together
Forever
Life without end.

Christianity and Truth

2006-12-27T01:18:00.000-08:00

Christianity is based on claims that are very hard to believe. That Jesus was a man and also God. The Trinity. That He died for our sins. That He rose from the dead after three days. That He ascended to Heaven after forty days and will come again in glory at the end of time to judge the living and the dead. That He is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament.

At the end of the day these are all just beliefs, right? And it's good to believe in something because it helps a person be good and have a nice life.

Well no, any Christian will tell you the only reason to be Christian is because you believe it's true. If it's not true then to hell with it, no matter what the side benefits.

Then you may wonder how Christians can really believe all these strange things? I'll tell you the secret.

Actually, people convert to Christianity after encountering Jesus. The object of faith is not a belief or belief system; the object of faith is Jesus Christ Himself. People then accept all the other teachings on the basis of their faith in Jesus.

Because when they encountered Jesus, He wasn't a ghost or phantom--He was (is) more real than anything, even themselves! That one encounter left them gasping and longing to be with Him forever to the point where they would give up everything in their life to go after Him.

Then the rest of their Christian lives consist of fleeting glimpses of Him interspersed throughout endless days, some of them quite terrible, looking forward to death, the day of their reunion with the Lord.

Sounds horrible? Oh but it's wonderful.

Interesting Lecture on Divine Truth

2006-12-18T15:48:00.000-08:00

Here is a terrific lecture on Divine Truth: the Heart's Deepest Longing (lecture #2) by Peter Kreeft. His writings are here.

A Christian Reviews Napoleon Dynamite

2006-12-13T02:56:00.000-08:00

The whole article reproduced here:

Napoleon Blown Apart

Michael E. Bailey on the Pauline Aliens of Preston, Idaho

Napoleon Dynamite entered American movie theaters in 2004, having earlier garnered unexpected buzz at the Cannes Film Festival, and within a short time became a cultural phenomenon. Two years after its release, the comedy remains a perennial student film favorite as measured by the all-authoritative standard for college campus life, FaceBook, as well as by the ubiquity of “Vote for Pedro” t-shirts.

It follows the struggles of young Napoleon Dynamite, a Preston, Idaho teenager whose social ineptness at high school compounds the misery and loneliness of his wretched home life. An orphan, his family consists of his guardian grandmother, a short-tempered woman who lives a mysterious double life of fun on the sand dunes, and Kip, his unemployed 32-year-old stay-at-home brother, whose chief activity is chatting for hours “with babes” on-line.

Napoleon’s Hope

Hope enters Napoleon’s life when he befriends new classmate Pedro, an immigrant from Juarez, Mexico, and Deb, a girl who meets him while selling glamour shots door-to-door. The plot, insofar as the movie can be said to have a plot, revolves around their awkward but developing friendship as they campaign for Pedro’s improbable candidacy for school president.

Complicating matters is the overbearing Uncle Rico, who serves as guardian to Napoleon and Kip(!) when their grandmother is injured in a bizarre dune buggy accident. Uncle Rico and Napoleon clash immediately and continuously, and Uncle Rico does not hesitate to humiliate Napoleon in front of his new friends. Home is no refuge for Napoleon, and Uncle Rico’s actions threaten to undermine his friendships and only source of dignity.

At first glance, the movie’s appeal to young people is no surprise; after all, it’s a teen movie with lots of physical humor and distinctly defined characters with highly imitable voices. Yet it stays remarkably clear of most teen-movie props and clichés: It is virtually free of profanity—Napoleon says “Gosh!” and “Dang it”—and it features neither female nudity nor a randy male trying to lose it or have sex with pies.

Napoleon Dynamite is a funny teen movie, but its refusal to play by the rules of most teen movies indicates that it is not, well, just another teen movie. Certainly the bookends of the movie, which show Napoleon on two forms of transportation, suggest that something important has happened to him in between.

In the movie’s opening scene, a sullen and sighing Napoleon, wearing a wild stallion t-shirt, boards a school bus with children half his age and works his way to the back. In the movie’s closing sequence, Napoleon rides a “wild honeymoon stallion” to his brother’s wedding, looking half-like another famous Napoleon.

At the risk of elaborately describing the clothes of a perfectly naked emperor, I think that the underlying theme of Napoleon Dynamite is (though the movie was made by Mormons) consistent with the moral anthro-pology of Christianity: to show us how we become genuinely human.

The point of the movie seems to be this: “Flying solo,” that is, the individualistic pursuit of one’s own happiness apart from the good of others, culminates in misery, and the only way to grow as a human, or even to become human, is through a thick community of support, responsibility, and love. Playing by oneself, as Napoleon is wont to do at the tetherball pole, is unrewarding and pitiful.

The “Decroded” Heart

Since Napoleon Dynamite may well be the most quoted movie in recent years, it seems fitting to elaborate upon three key lines that compactly reveal its meaning. Napoleon utters the first to buoy up his friend Pedro before he gives a campaign speech to the student body. He says: “Pedro, just listen to your heart. That’s what I do.”

Napoleon’s life is such a study in frustration and stunted hopes that it is difficult to believe that he actually follows his heart. But follow his heart he does. Consider the opening lines of the movie. Napoleon plops down on the last seat of the school bus and a boy less than half his age asks him, “What are you going to do today, Napoleon?” To which he responds peevishly, “Whatever I feel like I want to do. Gosh!” And then he proceeds to do exactly what he wants—though he rarely gets what he wants—for the rest of the movie.

But Napoleon is still miserable. What does it matter to follow one’s own heart when one’s heart is small and petty or, to use a favorite word of Napoleon’s, “decroded” (i.e., decayed and corroded)? Thus the film reveals a radical deficiency of individualism: Following your heart does not bring you happiness.

What if our pursuit of our heart’s every desire causes our hearts, like the Grinch’s, to become two sizes too small? What if our feverish pursuit of individual happiness causes us to neglect the communities that, in reality, make us happy? What if, like Napoleon, in our isolation or in our broken communities we have little chance of ever realizing our potential even when we follow our hearts?

Napoleon throws out of the bus window a doll-sized action hero attached to a string. I do not think it much of a stretch to conclude that this doll represents Napoleon. For the greater part of his life, he has been strung and bounced along the road of life face down in the dirt. Life is largely something that happens to Napoleon.

Napoleon is, in effect, the anti-Ferris Bueller. He doesn’t want to have fun so much as simply to survive. He has no friends (at least at first), he gets bullied at school, and he is scared of chickens. In his fantasy life, in contrast, he is a superhero who shoots wolverines, joins gangs who want him for his skills, and forges alliances with wizards and our “underwater ally,” the Loch Ness Monster.

Seek happiness all you want, the movie seems to suggest, but if your heart is decroded, you will still be miserable, a man in body, perhaps, but still just an unhappy boy on the school bus.

No Man Should Be an Island

The absence of Napoleon’s parents is the key to unlocking the underlying serious message of the movie. The threat of social isolation, of loneliness—of being left behind—looms constantly in the film. Virtually every time the filmmakers show a house, it stands by itself, isolated.

Apart from a few school sequences, there are perhaps ninety seconds in the film that show what could be described as a neighborhood or community. This is a movie of vast empty fields, lonely playgrounds, and isolated houses. In one of the film’s few visually arresting scenes, Napoleon, who has been abandoned by his Uncle Rico and is late for the school dance, is shown running to town on an open road that cuts through an immense and remote valley. The scenery mirrors Napoleon’s life.

Certainly the filmmakers go out of their way to show how Napoleon is a misfit. Another way of saying this—a Pauline way of saying this—is that Napoleon is an alien, that is, he is alienated from the world in which he lives. He is not at home in Preston, Idaho. To make sure we don’t miss the point, in the credits sequence the first item taken out of Napoleon’s wallet is a card with his name on it and a picture of—what else?—an alien.

The film’s other characters are also ill at ease in the world. Napoleon’s friend Deb is a very sweet but notably plain girl who runs a glamour studio. Pedro is literally an alien, an immigrant, living in a puzzling new land. But at least he is comfortable in the world of reality, unlike Napoleon’s brother Kip, who lives in the Internet world of chat-rooms and on-line dating.

Uncle Rico is hilariously unerotic about the present yet hopelessly romantic about the past. One of the more subtle jokes in the film is that Uncle Rico attempts to time-travel back to 1982, when the town is still stuck in 1982, judging by the music and fashion styles of the place. His attitude about the present is revealed in this line: “We can’t afford the fun pack.”

True Dreams

The film follows Thomas Hobbes in suggesting that life without community is isolated, nasty, brutish, and possibly even short. But it also suggests that life in community is possible, if difficult. Even in light of alienation, the film ends hopefully, even cheerfully. Just as Pedro predicts. In his campaign speech for school president, Pedro had concluded by saying, “If you vote for me, all of your wildest dreams will come true.”

This is the second key line of the film. The moviemakers seem to be saying through Pedro that if this kid can become class president, then anyone’s wildest dreams really can come true. But here’s the rub: Pedro’s dreams cannot come true without the support of the community. Through Pedro, the filmmakers call on the community to support him and, indirectly, one another.

The movie teaches us that friendship and community, like God’s grace, can come when least expected and in the least expected manner. Several times in the movie, we see Napoleon, like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, being rescued by the kindness of strangers. Recall Napoleon on that isolated road, running back to town to meet his date for the dance. Abandoned by his uncle, Napoleon is given a lift and thereby saved from his predicament by strangers, Pedro’s tough-cut cousins.

Pedro himself is an outsider to the community, whose friendship emboldens Napoleon and gives him new direction and purpose. Deb offers him an unexpected source of friendship and caring that is otherwise missing in his life. The individuals who should have been his bulwark and support—his brother, his Uncle Rico, and his grandmother—fail him completely, so Napoleon builds a kind of family with Pedro and Deb.

Not by Bread Alone

Food plays a weirdly prominent role in this movie. Scarcely five minutes roll by without some reference to or shot of food or drink. In the cafeteria, Napoleon stores up tater tots like a squirrel. Nachos, hot dogs, eggs, cake, “danged kesadillas” (pronounced by Napoleon’s grandmother “case-a-dill-a”), steak, fruit, bleached milk, “chimini changas,” and delicious bass all make appearances.

The characters are clearly starving. But what are they hungry for? Security? Respect? Love? Or just food? The movie credits begin by identifying characters through plates of food, a visual metaphor playing off the phrase, “You are what you eat.”

But is that true, are we just the stuff we eat? Or do we live by something more than bread alone? Is life nothing more than keeping the body free from pain and death for as long as possible?

Scripture says that he who wishes to save his life will lose it, and he who is willing to lose it for God’s sake will find it. The movie confirms this view. Napoleon subjects himself to near-certain humiliation by performing an elaborate (and comical) dance in front of the student body for the sake of Pedro’s election campaign. That the students go wild for his performance should not cause us to overlook his incredible daring.

Napoleon’s dance is an act of love. That the movie wraps up in a lovely package of warmth and hope immediately following Napoleon’s dance reveals the central message of the story: We are made complete only by first becoming vulnerable for the sake of love. No one is beyond love’s redemptive power.

Kip utters the third important line of the movie, when he says of his now in-the-flesh love: “Lafawnduh is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m a hundred percent positive she’s my soul mate.” Lafawnduh, met on-line, is a woman who arrives in Kip’s life from Detroit, sight unseen, of unknown history and of questionable profession. She is black. After meeting her, Kip, who is unquestionably the single whitest character in the history of film, wears bling and works on his street moves for her.

From initial appearances, the relationship is ill-fitted if not just plain nuts. But who doesn’t believe that he is better off with Lafawnduh? Any real human lover for Kip is better for his soul—that is, makes for a better soul mate—than the relationship he had with his beloved technology. Kip’s virtual life was pathetic. His new life is weird and unorthodox but, by comparison, a ride into the sunset.

Love Triumphant

Napoleon Dynamite is a humorous but touching critique of the inevitable loneliness and meaninglessness of individualism when it is stripped of the context of genuine community. Its message is consistent with a Christian moral anthropology, that human beings are not intended to “fly solo,” but made to live in a community marked by the vulnerability and sacrifice of love.

The movie ends in a quietly triumphant celebration of love and friendship. Pedro has won the presidency. Kip marries Lafawnduh. Uncle Rico is possibly united with his girlfriend. And Napoleon is no longer playing tetherball by himself, but is now playing with Deb, who is looking lovely and womanly. One can imagine them growing up to live happily together.

As Napoleon would say, “ Lucky!”

What is Hypocrisy

2006-12-13T02:15:00.000-08:00

Hypocrisy needs to be better defined, I think, as people tend to have different definitions of it.

As a Muslim my definition was more political. Based on the Qur'an I thought a hypocrite was a Muslim with a subversive agenda, meaning a Muslim who hoped to cause divisions or make changes in the religion, especially innovation (bed-aat) which is always a bad thing. Sometimes I thought it meant anyone who is against Islam, whether or not they are Muslim. This concept was a scary one for me, because it seemed it could be any group or another (even me and the thought came up every time I had a question about Islam), and only Allah knowing for sure. This is because the word for hypocrite is monafegh, which is a person who causes dissent or fitneh. Its definition is based on the consequences. So if two Muslims have a disagreement, one is probably a monafegh, but which one? If the disagreement is between groups, the larger group (the "status quo") would be the correct one and the smaller group would be monafeghs. At least more for Sunni Muslims, whereas Shiite Muslims are better used to the idea of being a minority group that's in the right, but for them the right group is defined by syed blood line, similar to apostolic succession, but in most conflicts (where that is not relevant) they go by the status quo too. Or the group that loses or is less popular are the monafeghs. This always sets the odds against reformers as being suspected monafeghs.

The American concept is simply that a hypocrite is someone who doesn't practice what they preach. This sounds easy but this leads to a common problem in practice. For example, a father who drinks and smokes doesn't want his children to do the same but he feels like a hypocrite to say anything to them. Or a mother who had a bad past doesn't want her daughter to follow her footsteps but she feels she no longer has the right to say anything. That is why religious people are commonly accused of hypocrisy. So this definition is wrong because then nobody can preach the ideal of perfect conduct and virtue because no one is perfect.

A better definition of hypocrisy is a hypocrite is a person who preaches what they don't believe. It means pretending to believe that lying is wrong, but not believing it personally. To read more on this concept, read this (a great article called The Truth About Hypocrisy).

Now I submit to you that religious people can be hypocrites, including myself, but in a different way than we are accused. Most of the time our hypocrisy comes when we are afraid to state our convictions because of what people will think. Because faith talk is uncool at best and offensive at worst, we modify our language in the presence of unbelievers. So Christians tend to be hypocritical by downplaying their beliefs, and this is because our message is so radical that no one can bear to hear it.

The Reason for the Incarnation

2006-12-04T12:36:00.000-08:00

The Incarnation refers to the most central event in human history, when God entered our history and became Man around 2000 years ago. This event of course is so central to our history, that we have arranged our calendar around it, BC means Before Christ, and AD means Anno Domini. Because of the Incarnation history now means HIS-story, everything before Christ is seen in the light of Christ's coming; everything after Christ is seen in the light of Christ having come, and in anticipation of His future Second Coming. Marana tha!

(Indeed, the Christ is the key to understanding the Bible, where Christ is concealed in the Old Testament and revealed in the New Testament. More on this in a separate post.)

Many people have trouble believing this concept, either in understanding how it happened or why it happened.

As to the why of it, here is a nice little story that might be helpful to explain it, that I found here:

The Reason for the Incarnation

There was once a man who didn't believe in God, and He didn't hesitate to let others know how he felt about religious holidays, like Christmas. His wife, however, did believe, and she raised their children to also have faith in God and Jesus, despite his disparaging comments.

One snowy Christmas Eve, his wife was taking their children to a Christmas Eve service in the farm community in which they lived. She asked him to come but he refused. "That story is nonsense!" he said "Why would God lower himself to come to earth as a man? That's ridiculous!" So she and the children left, and he stayed home.

A while later, the winds grew stronger and the snow turned into a blizzard. As the man looked out the window, all her saw was a blinding snowstorm. He sat down to relax before the fire for the evening. Then he heard a loud thump. Something had hit the window. Then another thump. He looked our, but couldn't see more than a few feet.

When the snow let up a little, he ventured outside to see what could have been beating on his window. In the field near his house he saw a flock of wild geese. Apparently they had been flying south for the winter when they got caught in the snowstorm and couldn't go on.

They were lost and stranded on his farm, with no food or shelter. They just flapped their wings and flew around the field in low circles, blindly and aimlessly. A couple of them had flown into his window, it seemed.

The man felt sorry for the geese and wanted to help them. The barn would be a great place for them to stay, he thought. It's warm and safe, surely they could spend the night and wait out the storm. So he walked over to the barn and opened the doors wide, then watched and waited, hoping they would notice the open barn and go inside. But the geese just fluttered around aimlessly and didn't seem to notice the barn or realize what it could mean for them.

The man tried to get their attention, but that just seemed to scare them and they moved further away. He went into the house and came out with some bread, broke it up, and made a bread crumb trail leading to the barn. They still didn't catch on.

Now he was getting frustrated. He got behind them and tried to shoo them toward the barn, but they got more scared and scattered in every direction except toward the barn. Nothing he did could get them to go into the barn where they would be warm and safe.

"Why don't you follow me!" he exclaimed. "Can't they see this is the only place where they can survive the storm?" He though for a moment and realized that they wouldn't follow a human. "If only I were a goose, then I could save them," he said out loud.

Then he had an idea. He went into the barn, got one of his own geese, and carried it in his arms as he circled around behind the flock of wild geese. He then released it. His goose flew through the flock and straight into the barn--and one by one, the other geese followed it to safety.

He stood silently for a moment as the words he had spoken a few minutes earlier replayed in his mind: "If only I were a goose then I could save them!" Then he thought about what he had said to his wife earlier: "Why would God want to be like us? That's ridiculous!"

Suddenly it all made sense. That is what God had done. We were like the geese--blind, lost, perishing. God had His son become like us so He could show us the way and save us. That was the meaning of Christmas, he realized.

As the wind and the blinding snow died down, his soul became quiet and pondered this wonderful thought. Suddenly he understood what Christmas was all about, why Christ had come. Years of doubt and disbelief vanished like the passing storm. He fell to his knees in the snow, and prayed his first prayer: "Thank you, God, for coming in human form to get me out of the storm!"

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of peace." (Isaiah 9:6)

10 Rules for Handling Disagreements Like a Christian

2006-11-30T01:26:00.000-08:00

I found this to be very helpful:

10 Rules for Handling Disagreements Like a Christian

1. The Rule of Charity: “Charity is primary.”
This has to be the place to start whenever we disagree with one another: with love. St. Paul said: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1). No matter how wise my insights or astute my plans, they count for nothing if I do not offer them with love.

Now, that charity is the first and fundamental requirement for all authentic Christian speech does not mean that such speaking can only be weak, but it does mean that whatever is said ought always to be offered respectfully and for the genuine service of others, especially my hearers. In fact, all of St. Paul’s sage advice in the “Hymn to Charity” in 1 Cor. 13 spells out eloquently this “Rule.”

2. The Rule of Publicity: “Think with the mind of the Church.”
This rule is simply a translation of the Latin axiom “Sentire cum Ecclesia.” This means that, when we disagree, the final measure for judging what’s on target and what’s off the mark is what the Church thinks, not, ultimately, what you think or what I think – not private opinion, but what the Church has said to all to know.

This is the reason I call this the “The Rule of Publicity.” The criterion for our deciding our disagreements is not one’s own private opinions, but the mind of the People of God, what the Church thinks.
In order to apply this rule effectively, we need to use a corollary: “Measure everything against the authoritative documents of the Magisterium.”

The logical question to follow any call for us to “think with the mind of the Church” is: How do I know what that is?

The answer is: “Look in the places where the Church has expressed her mind with authority.” Look in the writings of the Councils and the popes, in the Church’s laws, and in the teachings of her Fathers and Doctors. Any survey or poll, no matter how extensive or accurate, if it contradicts the Magisterium, is not the Church’s mind.

3. The Rule of Legitimate Freedom: “What the Church allows is not to be disallowed.”
This rule means that in situations where the Church says that a variety of views or opinions is legitimate, I should not impose my option as a mandate on others. For example: we can receive Holy Communion in the hand or on the tongue. Either one is acceptable.

4. The Rule of Catholic Freedom: “There’s something for everybody, but not everything is for everybody.”
This fourth rule is an extension of the one above. It applies the same sort of respect for diversity to the wider spheres of our common life. This rule is based on the recognition that “It’s a big Church.” God has given gifts of grace in an almost dizzying variety. Some folks are attracted to the Carmelite Third Order, others gather for charismatic prayer. Nobody has to live the Christian life exactly the way I do.

Remember: “Think (and act) with the mind of the Church.” We need to respect every practice or approach that has a legitimate place in the life of the Church, and we cannot make our favorite practice or approach mandatory for others if the Church has not.

5. The Rule of Modesty: “Not all of my causes are God’s causes.”
Yes, it’s true that in many cases we invest our heart’s devotion because that’s what God commands for all his people. But that’s not necessarily so in every instance. Some of my agendas are mine. It’s right to embark on projects with a zealous desire to give God glory, but I have to remember that while it may be his will for me to take this on, there are cases when it’s not his will for everyone else to join me.

6. The Rule of Integrity: “To do evil in order to accomplish good is really to do evil.”
Breaking one of God’s commandments is not the way to advance his Kingdom, ever. If, in the service of Christ, I act in an un-Christian way, I become a highly effective ally of the very forces I set out to combat. (Among those who are big “Star War” fans, this rule is sometimes referred to as the “Darth Vader Axiom.”)

7. The Rule of Realism: “Remember that Satan is eager to corrupt my efforts to build up the Kingdom, and he’s smart enough to figure out a way to do it.
This rule is strong statement about the need for each of us in our disagreements to practice that form of realism, for which the more common name is “humility.” My cause may be right or my view may be true, but I have to watch that their goodness is not corrupted by my infidelity.

8. The Rule of Mystery: “Not all the habits and attitudes which belong to a society governed by a representative democracy are appropriate in the Church.”
In every age there is a tendency – often unconscious – to shape the life of the Church after the pattern of the secular order of the day. In the Middle Ages, the governance of the Church was often configured to the feudal system of the times, sometimes with very harmful consequences. For example, bishops and abbots were identified with the barons of the nobility.

In our own day, we could make a similar sort of mistake: thinking that the responsibility and authority of the Church’s pastors are of the same sort as that of our elected officials. In such mistaken identifications, what is at work is a forgetting that while the Church is, yes, a human reality, she is also a divine reality, a mystery, unlike any other community every known in the history of the world.

The Church is neither a democracy nor a monarchy. She is the Church, the Lord’s own creation, constituted according to his will and plan.

9. The Petrine Rule: “Nobody ever built up the Church by tearing down the pope.”
This rule follows quite logically from the one immediately above. The Holy Father’s leadership is part of the Church’s constitution from Christ. Because the pope is not the sort of democratic leader we are accustomed to in civil society, there is a tendency by some observers to characterize his office as a “throwback” to times that we have surpassed, a “burden” for the Catholic people that we would well be freed from. Not so.

The pastoral care we receive from the Holy Father is a great grace, St. Peter’s own service of his fellow disciples continuing to this very day. A great pope makes us a better Church.

10. The Eschatological Rule: “The victory is assured; my job is to run out the clock with style.”
Christ is risen – truly, body and soul risen and in glory at the Father’s right. He has conquered sin and death and all the forces that threaten us. Whatever is at stake in our trials or conflicts, the certainty of Christ’s victory is not in doubt.

And he promised he would be with us always, until the end of time (cf. Mat. 28:20). He will never leave his Church, and his victory will be ours as long as we abide with him in his Mystical Body.

This rule, of course, is not an excuse for giving less than our full effort to spread the Kingdom; that would be a kind of presumption. However, this rule is a call to remember that there is one Savior, and it’s not you or me. Our mission is to serve the Lord in fidelity and hope, and be ready for him to act, for he surely will.

Spiritual Warfare

2006-11-28T23:53:00.000-08:00

Ma chon faghat donyayeh madi mibinim haghayegheh manavi ra motavajeh nemisheem ziad. Fekr mikoneem keh een sharri keh donya ra gerefteh toteast (conspiracy theory), ya donya dasteh englisihast, ya dasteh jehoodhast, ya dasteh emrikast, va gheireh. Masalan fardeh A miad yeh ghalati mikoneh, va fardeh B miad yeh ghalati mikoneh, va fardeh C, va chenan sharri be pa misheh, va cheh sharreh jahat dari keh beh aghleman joor dar nemiad keh fardeh A ba B va C totaeh nadashteh. Amma haghighat eeneh keh faghat o faghat yek totaeh hast keh dar tamameh tareekheh ensani haghighat dareh va khahad dasht ta akhareh zaman. Va oon totaeyeh shayateen ast, keh mikhahand ta mitoonand ensanha ra az khoda joda konand va beh jahannam beferestand. Va az tarafi Khoda fereshtehash ra ferestadeh ta ma ra komak konand. Dar vagheh man o shoma mohreem dar jang fereshteha va shayateen, va ageh ma eeno ba cheshmamoon meedeedeem az tars ghash mikardeem. Chon shayateen rooheh khales hastand, az ma ham ghavi tar va ham besiar bahoosh tarand. Dar vagheh barayeh mesal ba yek shaytan (demon) sar o kaleh zadan mesleh een mimooneh keh ba kampiooter bazieh shatranj bazi konim, fooran mibazim. Har cheh adam mokheh shatranj basheh, heechkas nemitooneh ba kampiooter shatranj bazi koneh zood mibazeh (hata behtareen shatranj baz foghesh mitooneh bazieh avvalo bebareh, oonam zood khasteh misheh vali kampiooter khasteh nemisheh). Ma ham dar moghabeleh hatta zaeeftareen shayateen eenghadr zaeef o natavan hasteem. Va tanha daleeli keh latteh par nemisheem eeneh keh Khoda beh har kodoomema yek fereshteh nejat dadeh (guardian angel), keh ooh mara dar beeshtareh ooghat komak mikoneh. Pas hala fekr kon va tajasom kon keh mah mesleh mohr shatranj mimooneem, va fereshteha (va albateh Khoda va saintha) va shayateen doorema mijangand va fereshteha mikhand ma ra nejat bedand va shayateen mikhan mara be jahanam beferestand. Baziha mohreh shayateenand beeshtar va baziha maleh khoda hastand.

Eeneh keh Saint Paul dar yeki az namehash migeh:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Yani eenkeh fekr nakon keh een doshmaneh ma masalan dolateh romeh (keh oon zaman maseeheeha ro mikoshtand) ya emperatooreh. Va masalan ageh dolateh rome az been bereh moshkelateman hal misheh, ya bereem folan keshvar hal misheh, na kheir. Doshmaneh ma spiritual hast, dar donya gahi beh shekl yeh hokoomateh, gahi beh shekleh yeh ideology ast, gahi yeh fardeh (anti-christ behesh migim), va gheireh. Vali ageh emrooz eeneh, farda cheezeh deegar ast, chon kingdom ma dar een donya neest. Dar vagheh moshkalat ma ba Utopia hal nemisheh, chon utopia dar een donya emkan nadareh.

Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world...my kingdom is from another place."

Eeneh keh maseehiha midoonand keh donbaleh panacea (masalan eediology rooz) naravand. Midoonand keh manbaeh evil dar donya dar vojood khodema ensanhast va ham az shayateene.
Va neez midooneem keh Maseeh ba margesh bar sheytoon pirooz shod va komak ma dar een spiritual warfare Jesus Christ ast. Faghat chon Jesus barayeh ma joonesh ra fada kard mara az chang sheytoon nejat dad, va ma az tareegheh oon mitooneem dar moghabel sheytoon vaysteem. Chon Jesus Maseeh is " 'the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone. Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."

Yek spiritual battle mohem barayeh maseeheeha alaheh "culture of death" mibasheh. Culture of death keh shameleh men jomleh abortion, euthanasia, va embrionic stem cell research. Va barayeh hameeneh keh maseeheeha kheili be ghodrateh doa (power of prayer) agheedeh daran. Va barayeh masael donya ba ghodrateh doa mijangand. Barayeh mesal yek doayeh kheili ghavi keh sai mikonam hafteii aghalan yek bar bekhoonam, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy nam darad.

Pas ma chetoori mitooneem khodaman va azeezanemoon ra mohafezat koneem? Bah eeman va ehteka beh khoda, bah doa va niayesh ziad, az tareegheh Maseeh keh raheman ra baz kard. Ba komakeh taghva va gonah nakardan (ta haddeh emkan) va ziad va fooran tobeh kardan. Bah estefadeh kardan az suffering in expiation of sins, "offering it up". Bah komak az fereshteh nejateman, khoobeh keh ba oon ziad harf bezaneem (aya midoonesti keh mitooneh esmesh ra beporsi? Baleh bahash harf bezan, esmesho bepors behet migeh). Va mitooneem az fereshtehayeh digeh ham komak bigireem, masalan Saint Michael.

Saint Michael the Archangel,

defend us in battle.

Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;

and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host —

by the Divine Power of God —

cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits

who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Amen.

12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

A Short Road to Perfection

2006-11-24T14:04:00.000-08:00

It is the saying of holy men that, if we wish to be perfect, we have nothing more to do than to perform the ordinary duties of the day well. A short road to perfection—short, not because it easy, but because pertinent and intelligible. There are no short ways to perfection, but there are sure ones.

I think this is an instruction which may be of great practical use to persons like ourselves. It is easy to have vague ideas what perfection is, which serve well enough to talk about, when we do not intend to aim at it; but as soon as a person really desires and sets about seeking it himself, he is dissatisfied with anything but what is tangible and clear, and constitutes some sort of direction towards the practice of it.

We must bear in mind what is meant by perfection. It does not mean any extraordinary service, anything out of the way, or especially heroic—not all have the opportunity of heroic acts, of sufferings—but it means what the word perfection ordinarily means. By perfect we mean that which has no flaw in it, that which is complete, that which is consistent, that which is sound—we mean the opposite to imperfect. As we know well what imperfection in religious service means, we know by the contrast what is meant by perfection.

He, then, is perfect who does the work of the day perfectly, and we need not go beyond this to seek for perfection. You need not go out of the round of the day.

I insist on this because I think it will simplify our views,’ and fix our exertions on a definite aim. If you ask me what you are to do in order to be perfect, I say, first—Do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising; give your first thoughts to God; make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament; say the Angelus devoutly; eat and drink to God’s glory; say the Rosary well; be recollected; keep out bad thoughts; make your evening meditation well; examine yourself daily; go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect.

John Henry Newman

Credit Pontifications

A Christian Reviews Groundhog Day

2006-11-23T16:28:00.000-08:00

Here is an extract of a Christian review of that wonder-filled movie, Groundhog Day.

From Touchstone Magazine:

Michael P. Foley on the Lessons of Groundhog Day

Typical Modern

Groundhog Day is the story of Phil Connors, an obnoxious weatherman at a Pittsburgh TV station who must cover the celebration of Groundhog Day in rural Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Phil (masterfully played by Bill Murray) is egotistical, career-driven, and contemptuous of his fellow man. “People are morons,” he tells his producer Rita, played by an adorable Andie MacDowell. “People like blood sausage.” Phil, in other words, is the typical product of modernity, the bourgeois man who lives for himself in the midst of others. Rita describes him—and us—well by quoting Sir Walter Scott’s “There Breathes the Man”:

The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

By refusing to die to himself, Phil and those like him are doomed to die doubly, triply, innumerably.

The Punxsutawney celebration of Groundhog Day culminates with the town elders consulting a real woodchuck, also named Phil, about the next six weeks. The groundhog sees his shadow, an omen that more winter is to come.

Connors cannot wait to return to Pittsburgh, but trapped by a blizzard (which he failed to predict), he and the crew must stay another night in Punxsutawney. When he awakes the next morning, Phil discovers to his dismay that it is February 2nd—again. The same thing happens the next day, and the next. For reasons that are never made clear, Phil is condemned to live Groundhog Day over and over.

Phil’s situation is unique, yet the movie hints that it is not unrelated to our own quotidian lives. Commiserating with two locals over beers, Phil asks, “What would you do if every day was the same, and nothing you did ever mattered?” The men’s faces grow solemn, and one of them finally belches, “That about sums it up for me.” Phil’s preternatural plight bears a twin resemblance to ours: first, as a symbol for the Fall, with its “doubly dying” estrangement from God and return to the vile dust from whence we sprang; and second, as a symbol for life in the wake of postmodern philosophy.

For the great father of this philosophy is Nietzsche, and the idea that frightened him most was the “the eternal recurrence of the same,” i.e., that even the superior human being must bear the same dreary existence an infinite number of times. Like us, Phil is the modern man who must now confront the hardship of postlapsarian life on the one hand and the metaphysical meaninglessness of postmodern thought on the other.

Read the whole thing here.

What is a Christian? From the Early Church Fathers

2006-11-21T15:14:00.000-08:00

From the Epistle to Diognetus

"Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or custom. For nowhere do they live in cities of their own, nor do they speak some unusual dialect, nor do they practice an eccentric lifestyle....While they live in both Greek and barbarian cities, as each one's lot was cast, and follow the local customs in dress and food and other aspects of life, at the same time they demonstrate the remarkable and admittedly unusual character of their own citizenship.

"They live in their own countries, but only as aliens; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign. They marry like everyone else, and have children, but they do not expose their offspring. They share their food but not their wives. They are `in the flesh,' but do not live `according to the flesh.' They live on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey the established laws; indeed in their private lives they transcend the laws.

"They love everyone, and by everyone they are persecuted. They are unknown, yet they are condemned; they are put to death, yet they are brought to life. They are poor, yet they make many rich; they are in need of everything, yet they abound in everything. They are dishonored, yet they are glorified in their dishonor; they are slandered, yet they are vindicated. They are cursed, yet they bless; they are insulted, yet they offer respect. When they do good, they are punished as evildoers; when they are punished, they rejoice as though brought to life....Those who hate them are unable to give a reason for their hostility" (5.1-17).

The Epistle to Diognetus then compares the relationship of the church to the world with that of the soul to the body.

"In a word, what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians throughout the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but is not of the body; likewise Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world. The soul, which is invisible, is confined in the body, which is visible, in the same way, Christians are recognized as being in the world, and yet their religion remains invisible.

"The flesh hates the soul and wages war against it, even though it has suffered no wrong, because it is hindered from indulging in its pleasures, so also the world hates the Christians, even though it has suffered no wrong, because they set themselves against its pleasures. The soul loves the flesh that hates it, and its members, and Christians love those who hate them.

"The soul is enclosed in the body, but it holds the body together; and though Christians are detained, in the world as if in a prison, they in fact hold the world together. The soul, which is immortal, lives in a mortal dwelling; similarly Christians live as strangers amidst perishable things, while waiting for the imperishable in heaven....Such is the important position to which God has appointed them" (6.1-9).

Sign of Contradiction

2006-11-21T14:55:00.000-08:00

What is a sign of contradiction?

From A true Christian is a sign of contradiction ~ a living symbol of the Cross. He or she is a person who believes the unbelievable, bears the unbearable, forgives the unforgiveable, loves the unloveable, is perfectly happy not to be perfect, is willing to give up one's will, becomes weak to be strong, sees some good in every bad, and finds love by giving it away. A Christian transcends the natural with the immeasurable power of love and becomes a supernatural person. Joseph Roy

"Jesus came to bring salvation to all men, yet he will be a sign of contradiction because some people will obstinately reject him -- for this reason he will be their ruin. But for those who accept him with faith Jesus will be their salvation, freeing them from sin in this life and raising them up to eternal life."

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."

Credit post to The Dawn Patrol

Hate the Sin Love the Sinner

2006-11-21T14:54:00.001-08:00

Hate the Sin Love the Sinner

Do you know what that means? There are only three possibilities:
1) hate the sin, love the sinner
2) love the sin, hate the sinner
3) hate the sin, hate the sinner
The fourth one--love the sin love the sinner--is impossible.

Take the easy case, the third one--hate the sin hate the sinner--Islam for example.

Christianity says #1, hate the sin love the sinner; who says the second one, love the sin hate the sinner?--secularism. Here's the difference. When I hate the sin love the sinner think of how you love yourself and how you feel when you do something wrong. It's easy to understand if you take how you love yourself as an example. Another example is of a loving father to his child. I keep both examples in mind because they both help me.

I often struggle to know how to love in every situation (for example, in a particular situation, do I love by keeping my mouth shut or do I say something?) So first I have to know what is love. To love is to will the ultimate good for a person, meaning whatever would get that person closer to God, and it involves self-sacrifice and requires purity of intention. Back to my two examples, a father loves his child and desires his good; I love myself and desire my good. These usually help me to figure out how best to love in every situation, but the third example that I didn't mention is Jesus Christ.

The second Person of the Holy Trinity came down to earth and took on flesh, He was not born in a castle but in a manger and placed in a feeding trough. He came to a poor family and labored in obscurity for 30 years and after three difficult years of healing and performing wonders laid down His life in a most horrific and gruesome death. He said Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. Read the gospels. Every instance of Jesus's life is an example of how to love. And you may notice that he never says sweet and syrrupy things to anyone. There is no ghorboon sadegheh, no del o jegar, no gol goftan o gol shenoftan. He shows His love to His Father and to people in His actions.

So if you ever wonder like me how to love in any situation, ponder the three examples I gave you and then pray on it.

And what does loving the sin hating the sinner mean? Now this is really interesting. It means not disapproving of zena (premarital sex), but instantly calling any woman we don't like a "ho" (even though she behaves exactly like me). It means hating people for the narcisstic and arbitrary reasons:
I HATE HER BECAUSE SHE:
stole my boyfriend, (personal injury)
is popular, (envy)
makes me uncomfortable about my own choices, (narcisstic injury)
is a geek, (is unfashionable)
is a liberal or republican, (has different political beliefs than mine)
is a frickan franistinian, (is from a different race or nationality or religion).
is a taghooti, (an ideological reason)
...

When we don't have a sense of sin, then our hatereds are going to be confused and arbitrary and narcisstic. That is the nature of things. Because sin is real, suffering is real, there is real evil in the world. When we have lost our capacity to recognize the source of evil (ourselves and evil spirits), then the world becomes a hodge-podge of post-modernist nihilistic imaginings.

Option #1, hating the sin and loving the sinner, actually frees us because now we can love people and grieve for them for their sins all the while remembering that we share in their fallen nature.
It brings us closer to God because now we are seeing things the way God sees them, and this is the whole reason God became man--to help man become like God!

Monajat

2006-11-21T14:54:00.000-08:00

Ay Khoda ay Masseeheh mehrabooneh man. Baz dashtam be kamboodiham fekr mikardam o ghosseh mikhordam keh man keh eenhameh be to alagheh daram va mikham har ja keh beri donbalet biam, va mani keh hamisheh beh fekreh to hastam, amma motasefaneh mibinam keh ziad ba sabegham fargh nakardam. Hameentor khodkhah o bozdel o bi-orzeh hastam keh boodam keh albateh to hameyeh gonahamo midooni rahm kon. Man keh be dardeh kesi nemikhoram beh khosoos to va dastam beh jayee nemireseh va hamash mibeenam keh digaran hosnhayeh ziadi darand va man angoshteh koochakeshoon nemisham. Yeki eemanesh bishtareh yeki kar kheiresh bishtareh yeki ba-orzeh tareh yeki bishtar zajr keshideh yeki ghalbesh pak tareh hatta oon adameh fasedeh motaadeh khoshgozarooneh zaheran az Khoda bikhabar beh to nazdeektareh ta man. Pas to chera az too een hameh adam mara fara khandi? Man keh kari az dastam bar nemiyad beh dardet nemikhoram. Beh cheh daleel mageh eenke khasti bozorgiat ra dar koochiki man zaher koni? Hameentor dar hayranam keh cheh ghadr beh man lotf kardi o mano nejat dadi o deli nou dadi. Mersi Khoda kheili mamnoon keh een hame beh man reseedi chon hala mifahmam ageh az yeh adam haghiri mesleh man nagzashti, daleelesh faghat mitooneh een basheh keh to sarapa mehr o mohabati. Pas hala keh vaz eentoreh man deegeh say mikonam digeh be natavani o mahdoodiatham fekr nakonam va menbad faghat beh khoobi o rahmeh to fekr mikonam o say mikonam bejayeh hasoodi barayeh digaran bishtar doa konam keh oonha ham shayad yek roozi be to pay bebarand va lotfat ra becheshand. Vaghti beh khodam fekr mikonam narahatam o azab mikesham amma vaghti keh chehreyeh zibat dar nazarameh digeh hameh chi o faramoosh mikonam.

Ah Maseeh be man beres mano faramoosh nakon. Ay Maryameh moghaaddas, madareh Khoda, keh barayeh adamhaee beelighat mesleh man khodeh ra fada kard, bia to ghalbam o mesleh ayneh pakesh kon keh chehreye Pesaret dar man namayan besheh. Ameen.

Hungry Souls (Een rooh ghaza mikhad!)

2006-11-17T18:27:00.000-08:00

These days there seem to be more and more people who don't live according to any religious creed or are religious in name only. I've heard of CINO (Christian IN Name Only) and now MINO (Muslim In Name Only). This is very sad because it means that many people are unaware that they are neglecting their souls. But it is not a problem when things are going well. We don't need religion when things are going well but when they're going terribly wrong.

But true happiness can only come to the soul, when we are not feeding our soul we must then chase pleasures and endlessly distract ourselves.

But something is missing from all of this. Our relationship with God. Because in the end the only thing that is important is our relationship with God. As St Augustine said, "Our hearts our restless until they rest in Thee"

The Story of Job or how Suffering can be Good

2006-11-15T17:15:00.000-08:00

Even notice how when there's a really bad earthquake or natural disaster people start wondering if it was a punishment from God? Or how about when you notice a seemingly good family where a lot of bad things keep happening to them, don't you secretly wonder about them?

The story of Job (Ayoob), the innocent righteous man who lost everything, gives an answer to that. Here's an insightful meditation by Drusilla of Heirs in Hope:

“God was unjust to Job. His faithfulness and piety deserved better treatment,” proclaimed the professor of a course I was taking in literary depictions of justice. I was shocked and totally disagreed but at seventeen I had no words to help me express my dissent only the absolute conviction that God is never unjust and that the professor was missing something of vital importance. Of course most people would agree with my professor. Job suffered terribly. God gives Satan permission to harm Job and even admits that Satan "moved [God] against him, to destroy him without cause." So it should all be very simple. On this occasion, God must be unjust.

I first read the book of Job when I was five and was chiefly struck by the image of a dirty old man, clothed in rags, smelly, probably drunk (I’d already read about Noah), perched atop a pile of ashes scraping giant boils. A gruesome image. Over the next ten or twelve years, I read Job again, two or three times, and while the gruesome image remained, by nine, I realized his ‘friends’ were blaming him and wondered fearfully if they were right. By fourteen I was impressed but puzzled by God’s response – he never answers Job’s demands and accusations. Then there was the course when I was a sophomore in college which signaled the start of another eight years of pondering Job, of trying to understand God’s justice. On perhaps the twelfth reading I noticed for the first time a phrase I’d missed in the past. Sitting on his ashes after a seven day silent watch, Job curses his very existence in frustration and rage ending, “…the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.” But what had Job feared? He had had everything. I went back to the beginning and paid very close attention. As I walked alongside Job in my imagination, I saw him making continual sacrifices just in case. His was the behaviour of a frightened man, of appeasement – Job seeks to avoid God. In his speeches, Job expresses his feelings about God in language that is at first reminiscent of Psalm 8 but quickly moves to a place of terror and darkness: “What is man, that thou dost make so much of him, and that thou dost set thy mind upon him, dost visit him every morning, and test him every moment? How long wilt thou not look away from me …thou watcher of men?”

For Job, God is cruel and exacting, lying in wait for him to err, lying in wait to punish him with His terrible glance. This had not been discussed in that course on justice. ... They focused on Job’s sufferings but failed to look at his actual relationship with God, a relationship in which he seeks to remain safely in one corner and to keep God safely in another. They did not see that Job’s sufferings begin long before Satan “move[s] [God] …to destroy him without cause." To worship God in an attempt to keep him far away is to suffer horribly.

Do you want to know how Job gets his answer and is satisfied? It may not be what you think. So read the whole meditation here. What I like about this is that it illustrates the redemptive value of suffering, overturning our preconceived notions that suffering is a sign of God's wrath or indifference (the latter being worse, imo) or else what happens to losers.

Why I can't speak, Beloved

2006-11-07T23:51:00.000-08:00

Not because I don't have anything to say--far from it!--but because I don't know where to start. I feel like I'm trying to discuss calculus to an elementary math class. By now there's a chasm between my world-view and yours, Beloved, and it is up to me to bridge that chasm brick by brick.

The fallacy is that many people assume they know Christianity because they know the plot. I was one of them. They think the plot is Christianity.

That's not true, Christianity is the missing piece of the puzzle that explains everything. It was the centerpiece that you didn't even suspect was missing. Now that you've found it you see everything differently. It's like before you didn't even know that you needed glasses. It is a lightbulb turning on. It is Ah-hah! Eureka! It is "Oh sweet mystery of life at last I've found you!". It is all these things and more because Jesus is the Way the Truth and the Life.

The Most Beautiful Story

2006-05-15T17:26:00.000-07:00

While there are many who claim to know the true story of Jesus Christ, no one can say that the story presented by the Church is not the most beautiful story. None--none! of the alternative theories of Christianity are as beautiful, mysterious, and spiritually satisfying as that God came down to earth and laid down His life for our sins, while we were still sinners.

Think of it. To borrow GKChesterton’s thought experiment:

Imagine you are traveling in the remotest villages of China, where you’ve heard of a strange religion being practiced. You open an ancient scroll to read of an event, whereby a god, who’s people not even failed but obstinately refused to offer a worthy sacrifice to him, rather than punish them, sent his son down to earth, and allowed his people to sacrifice him instead. A god who sacrificed himself for his people. Who took on the suffering of his people. Who bore their insults. Does that not strike a cord in your heart?

So you can’t believe it, but don’t you wish you could? How does such a god compare to yours? Surely, your reaction isn’t, “alas! if only it were true”! Think about that and pray on it, I bid thee.

Christianity is based on mystery

2006-05-12T04:42:00.000-07:00

Every religion has stuff in it that doesn't quite make sense, or causes discomfort or doubt. Stuff that must be taken on faith. Stuff that is sometimes best left unexplored. For example on faith practices, the life of the founder, or on faith positions.

What I love about Christianity is that all the hard stuff are in the realm of faith, not morals.

At the heart of Christianity lies mystery.

They are called mysteries of the faith: Trinity, Incarnation, Jesus as both true God and true Man, Suffering, the scandal of the cross.

Then there are the Both/And positions to faith questions: both faith and works, God's omnipotence and our free will...

The Catholic Church resists easy answers to eternal questions. All doctrines and beliefs are compiled in books called the catechism. Teaching the faith is a long process and it starts early in a child's life and takes years when done correctly.

More proof that Jesus is God: God Talk

2006-05-12T04:37:00.000-07:00

A couple of cryptic passages in the gospel:

I tell you, that Satan was a murderer from the very beginning (murderer of who?).

Be mindful of the little ones, because their angels even now behold the face of my Father who is in heaven (that explains guardian angels, but why the non-sequitor?). Matthew 18:10

Perhaps they are examples of God’s shoptalk. You know, stuff that doesn’t really pertain to anything, just lifting a veil a little on all the behind-the-scenes happenings.

Boy that Satan, now he was an sob from the very beginning! He of course, was the very first to fall but he didn’t waste any time--you should have seen the way he talked up the other angels and the ruckus he caused…and when Michael finally threw him and his ilk out of heaven, he streaked through the sky and fell to earth with a loud thud, you should have been there it was a sight to see, and all the angels cheered and cheered...

I wish you’d go easy on the little ones, if only for their angels’ sake! If you only knew the shrieking and moaning my Father has to bear from the angels (not to mention His sorrow) because of the way you treat your children. Every time we assign a new charge to an angel, those first few years are the worst and the angels all know to dread it. If not for contemplating the eternal face of my Father, they say it is enough to drive them insane.

Good Friday Lecture

2006-04-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

Today is Good Friday, the day our beloved Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. When God died on the cross. God was dead for three days.

Impossible! you say? How can God die? How can He not exist?

Beloved, you asked me that and I tried to explain it but my words wouldn't come.

I'll try again. What is death? To us death means gone forever, no longer existing. Actually death is for humans separation of the body from our soul. When we say God died, we mean that Jesus's human body was separated from His human soul, and His human body ceased to function. He didn't cease to exist, just as we won't cease to exist when we die. Now this part is tough, but Jesus is both fully man and fully God. He is the God-man. Jesus is one Person--the Second Person of the Trinity--who acts according to His God nature and His human nature. Thus He is ONE person with TWO natures. A person is an agent of action, a "WHO", who acts according to his nature, a "WHAT". For us humans, we are always used to a 1:1 correspondence, all our experience points to one nature for every person. I (the person) acts according to my human nature, and so it is for everyone. But, it is not always 1:1, the two notable exceptions are:
God, who is three Persons sharing one nature (3:1), and Jesus who is the Second Person taken human flesh, who is one Person with two natures (1:2). So in the gospels at times He is acting according to His human nature, and at other times according to His divine nature. Two natures means that He has a human soul, which means he has a human will.

Now let me backtrack and explain what a person is again. A person is an agent of action, especially moral action, so humans, angels, demons, and God are persons, animals and plants are not.

Now let's explain the difference between spirit and soul, since there is a difference between the two that most people don't know about. First a spirit, called "rooh", is the non-material part of us that knows and loves. Knowing and loving are the two main faculties of the spirit. A spirit has no shape, no size, no color, no weight, and does not occupy space. Now a soul is the life principle of a body. Thus humans, animals, and plants, (and even bacteria probably) have souls--all living things have souls. But only Persons have spirits or are spirits. God and angels and demons are pure spirit. But human beings have bodies and spirits, where their spirits are also their souls. In other words, only in humans are spirits=souls, so our souls are also spirits, and vice versa. Because human spirits are also souls and we don't have direct control over them, in the hierarchy of spirits, human spirits are the weakest. Angels, having no bodies, are orders of magnitude above us in terms of their spirits.

Now here is the kicker. The Second Person of the Trinity in God's infinite mercy took on flesh some 2000 years ago and entered our time. He chose to be born into poverty and squalor, to work hard in obscurity, and then die a horrific and shameful death. All this to redeem us and to love us. He experienced human death for three days, but even while He was dead He opened the doors to Heaven so that all the righteous souls from Adam, to Moses, to the prophets could enter Heaven. And then He rose from the dead. The Father resurrected Him to show that He had accepted His sacrifice. Now his resurrected body was not the same as when he rose Lazarus from the grave. Lazarus rose from the dead only to die again later. Jesus's resurrection is the same resurrection that you Beloveds already believe in, when we get our final, immortal bodies. Therefore, Jesus is still and always will be in His resurrected body. He will be forever God-man. He is the first one who got his resurrected body, and Mary is the second. And on Judgement Day, the rest of us will get our bodies back, some to go to Heaven and others to go to Hell.

Ok that's enough of that. You can read about it fully in "Theology for Beginners" by Frank Sheed.

Beloveds, pray pray pray for God to make things clear to you. IF you knew Jesus is the Son of God, would you follow Him?

Who do we worship if not God?

2006-04-14T09:51:00.000-07:00

Who do we worship if not God?

If God exists, then how should we worship Him?

Maybe before we make up our own rules and rituals we should check with Him first?

For if we go by our own rules and rituals, aren’t we really just worshipping ourselves?

Isn’t it ultimately either THY WILL BE DONE or MY WILL BE DONE?

As it turns out, God did give a blueprint of His worship

To Moses on the Mountain

That day so long ago

That mirrors how the Father is worshipped in Heaven

Is but a dim shadow, actually

Just think, in all the masses all over the world (Church Militant)

Joined to the Eternal Mass in Heaven,

With Jesus as both the High Priest (on the order of Melchizedek)

And Sacrificial Victim (behold the Lamb!)

And our King

The Eternal Heavenly Chorus of Praise

Of Angels and the Saints (Church Triumphant)

And even the suffering souls in Purgatory (Church Suffering)

Singing “Glory to God in the highest…”

Joined to our often feeble hymns of praise

So when we worship Him on Earth

It’s really a dress rehearsal for how we’re going to spend Eternity

If we’re lucky!

So let’s get down to business

And learn to worship His way

Both/And

2006-04-14T09:50:00.000-07:00

Reason #54 of Why I Love the Catholic Church: Both/And

Sola Fides

Salvation is by Faith Alone, Some Say

True, BUT…

The Catholic Church recognizes false dichotomies and steers clear

Both/And

…True, BUT

Faith without works is dead

Faith Saves

And Bears Fruit in Works

Jesus cursed the Barren Fig Tree

Both/And

Simple!

All Paths Lead to God

2006-04-14T09:48:00.000-07:00

All Paths Lead to God

That MAY be True

BUT…

One path is rocky and windy

With Ravenous Beasts prowling, howling

Looking to devour unwary passersby

Another meanders and meanders until near the end

Where it suddenly veers off course and turns back on itself

Another one lies thru a desert

Where only the ones equipped with the most provisions can dare to pass through

Another is seemingly easy to travel, well-paved, safe, and broad

Yet strewn about with gold pieces and fancy trinkets and great shops and restaurants

First-class entertainment

all along the way, few want to leave it

Then there’s the narrow way,

Seemingly hard and lonely…

Hard to find,

Until one discovers Jesus

Then a great secret,

***Keep your eyes on the prize—Jesus

And keep walking towards Him

Then you will no longer notice that it’s cold

And you haven’t eaten

And there are sheer cliffs and snarling beasts on every side***

Lonely,

Until one notices the company

Fellow travelers one meets in unlikely places

Saints

Angels

Mary

And surprise! Mary has an elevator that goes straight up

She’ll take anyone who asks

Which path will you take?

St Joseph's Fiat

2005-12-20T13:03:00.000-08:00

One of the questions in my mind is about the recounting of the lineage of Jesus via Joseph, his adoptive father. This creates difficulties for me because it seems to contradict St. Matthew's point that Jesus is the Son of God. Or suggests a difficulty reconciling the prophecy of Jesus being of the House of David with His Sonship. Because surely God could have arranged to have Jesus's lineage to the House of David go through Mary, right? And nevermind that I always thought that judeaism is passed on through the mother (which causes me other incidental questions about how the Jewish Kings were able to have gentile wives).

But I believe that this question could be cleared up for me simply once I read the proper exegis commentary. I wouldn't be surprised to learn of some fact about Jewish history or culture that puts everything into place for me. Perhaps some simple fact about a tradition of adoption that I don't know about, much as I didn't know about temple sacrifices in ancient Jerusalem or the "fourth cup" viz a viz Scott Hahn. Because the gospel writers knew their audience and their assumptions well, and apparently it made sense to them. You, dear Beloved, might share my difficulty as we don't have a tradition of adoption in Islam to refer to, plus that Mohammad's descendants are via his daughter, Fatima (although Syedship passes from the father).

But meditating on this recently brought me a startling realization and a greater appreciation for St. Joseph. For in the same way that Mary's fiat was necessary to bring Salvation to the world, Joseph's fiat was necessary too. Joseph's fiat was necessary that he would consent to marry Mary in a celibate marriage in order to make the prophecies concerning the Son of Man to come true.

I suppose if there is a Feast of St. Joseph's Fiat or something like that then I can congratulate myself on having reinvented the wheel.

The Only Question

2005-11-09T16:02:00.000-08:00

Beloveds,

You have faith and I have faith. I however, switched faith in one religion that explains everything to another religion that explains everything, and I'm staking my life on this switch.

Yes I had a faith journey that you didn't know about. I kept it to myself, and you (a few of you) only found out at the tail end of it. You found out what I was up to when I'd already made my decision.

And you asked me questions to prove to you why I think I am right now and was wrong then. Because only an insane person would radically alter the course of their happy life, when the religions have so much in common and there is so much at stake, and when they're both faiths that ultimately can't be proven.

Beloved, I'm not going to change your mind by debating Islamic history, or philosophical points, or politics, or churches, etc. That is impossible. So I don't bother with things like that.

I only ask one thing of you. Consider that IF Jesus is who He said He was, according to the Bible, can you at least agree with me that that changes everything? IF God did come down to earth and sacrifice Himself for our sake, then can anything ever be the same again?

So what do you care how the Scriptures came about, what's going on in the churches, what about the crusades, what about your family when you haven't even once considered in your mind the monstrous mind-boggling possibility that Jesus WAS before Abraham.

Think about that first, and make up your mind about that. Then we can have a discussion.

In Christ,

A Meditation: Values

2005-11-09T15:55:00.000-08:00

Values

Consider the following two cases:

You can say that person A was a man of deep faith, because he stuck to his beliefs in the face of every adversity. He withstood dreadful trials and pressures from multiple quarters but he never strayed from his heart.

And person B, well you can say she was a treacherous woman. When the enemy had surrounded her country and sent spies to reconnoiter the land, this disloyal woman immediately took them in and hid them from the king’s men. In exchange she asked only that the invaders spare her and her kin. Thus, only she and her kin were able to survive, as her city fell around her.

Well what do you think of these two people? We should admire person A and hate person B, right?

If that seems too easy and you suspect a trick you’d be right. Because Person A is none other than the Pharoah, and person B is Rahab. When we admire someone for holding fast to their beliefs, how easy to forget that it is only faith when the beliefs are correct. Holding fast to incorrect beliefs is a sign of hard-heartedness or delusion. And when we hate someone for being disloyal, that is an affirmation of family values assuming that one’s kin/tribe/country are, if not better, then at least equivalent to the “other”.

What these two cases have in common is that we should look outside of our values and boundaries to seek the Lord. Because our faith is meant towards God, it’s not “our belief” that must be protected, but only insofar as our beliefs are true. And if we consider Rahab to be treacherous, then are we not putting love of country above the Lord as well? Do we worship the Lord or do we worship our family stability, our country? That’s the difference between Lord-centric values and ego-centric values. How easily the values of the world conflicts with the values of the light.

God grant that we may have not the faith of Pharoah, but the disloyalty of Rahab.

Amen.

Disclaimer

2005-05-31T02:21:00.000-07:00

About what I wrote previously, that was not to imply that I believe myself worthy of Heaven or better than you in any way, Beloved. It's just that we're talking more than just opinions, these are beliefs that have already impacted me and you, Beloved, and more is still to come. So yes, I do believe I've found the way to Heaven, what you'd call serateh mostagheem, but what is Biblically referred to as the narrow gate, and I want to share it with you, Beloved. I make no apology for that, and I won't conceal my motives. And I'm not saying who's going where and why, I don't know that, just that the best way is the way I've found. While all things are possible with the Lord, it is not for us to impede Him by sugar-coating truths to make each other feel better. And in the end it's the Holy Spirit that leads each of us to the Truth. But as St Theresa of Avila said (in so many words) that the goal of a person seeking holiness should be to drag other souls to Heaven with him.

The last thing I want is God forbid! my actions to impact you, my Beloved, by pushing you into error as a reaction against me. I can't forgive myself for that so I'm praying to God not to let that happen. Dearest Beloved, this fear is a big reason why I find myself unable to speak about these things to you.

I have so much to tell you, I hardly know where to start.

Dear God, forgive my errors and presumptions, and let me be corrected where I'm wrong. And please guide me and my loved ones to the right path.

In Christ,

Heaven

2005-05-29T02:11:00.000-07:00

THE APOSTLE'S CREED: I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, He descended into hell; the third day He arose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty, from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.

Once I was daydreaming about Heaven trying to imagine what it would be like to be in my glorified body.

Catholics believe that our bodies as well as our souls will be in Heaven. Our bodies will be reunited to our souls after Judgement Day, but prior to that some souls will already be in Heaven. A saint is any person who went to Heaven. Jesus Christ, having been resurrected three days after his crusifiction, is already in His glorified body; He is also called the New Adam, and the First Fruit.

So I was wondering if our glorified bodies will have the same properties as Jesus's, since it seems he can take on any form, appear and disappear either in His glorified body or without, etc. Or is that special to Him being who He is?

Obviously, our glorifed bodies will be very different from our Earthly bodies, for one thing, not prone to aging or diseases. Basically our bodies will be physical. The curse of Adam and Eve will have been lifted, that's why no aging, death, or diseases. But will there be hunger? Food?

The more I think about it, the more mysterious it is. Of course as Muslim there were all those physical descriptions of Heaven with its sensuous delights (and Hell with its physical punishments), but there I was free to think it was a metaphore or something. I wasn't explicitly told that our physical bodies would be present. I mean while putting two and two together makes it seem obvious that Islam believes in the resurrection of the body at Judgement Day and then in physical Heaven and Hell, it is not explicitly specified as an article of belief. Not the physicality of it. (I bet if I polled a lot of Muslims, many would state similar opinions of the one I had).

Anyways, my attempts to imagine Heaven ended up in my imagining that I'm in a park sitting at a table. No that's not right, so I imagined a banquet on the table (there's are banquet images in the Bible), then one by one I put people on the benches. Still not right, so I looked across the table and there you were, Beloved, then you Beloved, and you and you and you..., soon it became everyone I ever knew. Now I was happy.

Beloved

2005-05-27T01:25:00.000-07:00

To my earthly beloveds, both those who know my secret and those who don't. There are things I so long to tell you but I can't. My beloveds who know my secret, sometimes I see myself through your eyes and I understand your incomprehension and bafflement. You see me as insane, a complete and total loser. But it's ok, I understand. I'd feel the exact same way if these things had happened to someone else. And even if I could tell you I wouldn't know how. And to my beloveds who don't know, you don't know how I long to speak of these things and tell you what I'm going through.

Lord, how long?

I intend to fill this space with my witness, sort it out here, perhaps until the day the Lord lifts my veil of silence, so that I may find myself better prepared for that day.

Lord, forgive my presumptions and errors in anything I write here. Grant that I may learn of my errors and grant the humility that I correct them.

In Christ