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Yesterday was fun. Whew! Since I got accused yesterday of only ever talking about HELL AND DAMNATION on here, I thought I'd show me tip-toeing through the...uh...Black-eyed Susans to make sure you all can see that I'm a nice person. 😉 Okay, enough of me being snarky. 😎 It's always interesting to me the reactions I get whenever I write about something mildly convicting. Some people only want me to write about how "Jesus loves us this I know, for the Bible tells me so." Never mind that Jesus doesn't always talk about warm, fuzzy things. Like in our Gospel reading from yesterday where Jesus was pretty harsh to the people of some cities in the north Galilee region. "Woe to you!" Others see what I have written and do the whole, "Oh, yeah, well what about this!?" Okay, but I want to talk about what I wrote about. A few who have never said a word before and just happen to show up one day proceed to sling all kinds of accusations at me. They want me to only talk about love, but they feel the need to be ugly to me. Like, hey, maybe stick around and see what else I've written over the many years. It is so important, Catholic Pilgrims, so important that we understand that we can't just talk about good-feeling things all the time when it comes to our faith life. Sin is real, evil is real, eternal punishment is real, and justice is real. God does love us more than we can possibly comprehend and He has called us to live a holy life and that simply can't be done if we ignore those things that endanger our souls. The good news is that God pours out grace and mercy to us all the time, we just have to cooperate with it. He provides us with Sacraments that help cleanse us and restore our souls to health--Confession and the Eucharist. We just have to frequent them with a humble, contrite, obedient heart. We all can have hope that God will give us everything we need to join Him in Heaven, Catholic Pilgrims. This is your one nice post of the year, tomorrow I'm back to FIRE AND BRIMSTONE!!!! Just kidding. Have a good day and live the faith boldly and travel well.
Continue ReadingOne of the greatest dangers for the soul is the belief that God would never send anyone to Hell. This is to ignore the many warnings in the Bible of Hell. And, I'm not sure what would be the point of Jesus coming and stressing over and over again the need for repentance if Hell wasn't real. I mean, what would be the point? What would be the point in an active belief in God at all? Usually, people who believe this way point to God being compassionate and, therefore, that means, He will just let us all into Heaven. If that is true, then why did Jesus have to come, die as the sacrificial lamb, resurrect, and open the gates of Heaven? Why close the gates in the first place? If you are just gonna let everyone in, what is the point of any of this? The danger is in this thinking is monumental to a degree I can't stress enough. God is perfect mercy AND perfect justice. I get why people would want to think this way. It essentially means that you can live however you want and God will still let you in. You can just be a "good" person because that's what civilized people do and you can ignore the parts of Christ's teaching and His Church that put you at odds with secular culture, thereby leaving you free to roam with little-to-no friction. This way of thinking will always leave you standing outside the edge of Sainthood and fully realizing who God made you to be. Saints will actual seem stuffy, and rigid, and overboard to you and, instead, you'll be more in awe of modernists who progress with the times. Hell is a place that we choose and God respects our wishes. If we have lived a life where we have chosen to ignore God and His teachings, if we choose mortal sin over repentance, we have told God that we don't really want Him. The Church and Jesus teach about the last four things: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. If Heaven is the only option because God is just so nice, then there would be no point in all the judgement talk in the Bible. For love of God, may we always strive to show Him that we want to be with Him and not just presume we can live however and He'll just be nice to us in the end. Live the faith boldly and travel well, Catholic Pilgrims.
Continue ReadingToday we hear the parable of the sower and seed. For me, it's the rocky ground that best represents what I experienced in my life. "Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, and when the sun rose it was scorched, and it withered for lack of roots." Christ goes on to explain exactly what this means. This is the person "who hears the word and receives it at once with joy. but he has no root and lasts only for a a time. When some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, he immediately falls away." In my younger days, I believed that Christianity was insurance that nothing bad would ever happen to you. I was under the assumption that being a Christian meant you'd live a perfectly happy life. There's a couple of reasons I thought this. 1. I was not given any history of what the early Christians went through and how so many died for the faith. 2. I never heard one sermon on suffering. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about why Catholics have, for the most part, crucifixes instead of bare crosses. A lot of Protestants commented that "Jesus isn't on the cross anymore" and "we need to think of the Resurrection not the Crucifixion." I agree with St. John Paul II when he said, "We are an Easter people!" However, we still need to understand suffering and persecution. When we strip the cross of Our Suffering Lord, we can easily forget that Jesus gave meaning to suffering. Not that we should go looking for it, but when it comes our way, if we unite it with Christ's suffering, it becomes more than just dumb suffering. It can be redemptive. I didn't know any of this. So, when tragedy came my way and I suffered greatly, those shallow roots of mine in the rocky soil were scorched. I was livid at God for allowing evil to happen to me. How could He? I was a Christian and didn't that mean nothing but sunshine and happiness all the day long? Thankfully, I found my way back and upon my conversion to Catholicism, seeds were planted in better soil because I got a better understanding of what it means to be a follower of Christ. I pray you have a blessed Sunday, Catholic Pilgrims.
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