Dear Readers,
Today is Super Tuesday!
"This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!"
This is the day that Rick Santorum's GOP Presidentional candidacy will prove the most crucial in our nation since Abraham Lincoln's bid for the Presidency in the spring of 1861.
Why? Because only Rick Santorum can defeat Obama in November.
1) Never in our nation's history has there ever been a more anti-God, anti-life Presidency in the White House. President Obama is responsible for killing 1.3 million babies a year in the US. He is truly an ant-God the Father figure in the USA. He boldly says that "We must preserved women's right to abortion" when Cora King, neice of Martin Luther King, Jr. says: "We must defund Planned Parenthood. How can we follow the dream if we are killing our children?" But President Obama gives $350,000,000 to Planned Parenthood this year - the largest abortion-killing-machine provider in the Nation - when is is made aware that Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood to stop the births of "weeds of society" - a woman who said to not let it be known that she means Black children...when she does mean Black children are the weeds of society. Here you have a Black President killing his own people. For the women of choice political votes, President Obama is willing to promulgate infanticide of his own people -- which are really not his people but God's people -- and spend billions of dollars in campaign monies when children are starving around the world so that he can sit on the throne in Washington for another four years. Well, we must de-throne him!!
2) Only Rick Santorum -- sweaky clean on the issue of pro-life versus pro-abortion -- can defeat Obama in November!
3) President Obama in not just merely desirous of "separation of church and state" he wants "the church out of the state." Obama -- and all his obaminations - wants God out of the public square in politics and goverment. But Rick Santorum wants God and Faith to be the driving Divine Wind of the Spirit in the public square as did our founding fathers who said that separation of church and state meant that goverment should keep its nose out of religion and not establish a religion. But Obama HAS established a religion of "666" secular Commandments:
(1) "We shalt not speak of rights as "endowed by the Creator".
(2) "We shalt not have God in the public square or in women's wombs or in women's choice to abort their babies."
(3) "We shalt not have 'in God we trust" in the heart of the Nation but rather "in Obama we trust" who will provide all the monies Abortion Clinic chains need to maintain killing of the innocent unborn."
(4) "We shalt have a secular religion that establishes the rights of US citizens as coming from the State NOT coming from the founding father's God-centered religious Faith that believes God has endowed those rights on Adam and Eve and all of us - especialy since recent DNA geneticists have proven that all of six billion people of the earth come from one single woman."
(5) "We shalt let present Administration Policy -- the government's conscience -- BE the legal and law enforcing conscience of the Nation to supplant and suppress all religious consciences out of the public square to thus ignored those religious consciences and effective legislated them out of existence."
(6) "That the concept that true 'conscience is the voice of God in us' be detroyed and replaced by his new maxum that says: 'conscience is the voice of the state in us - thus our new secular religion is called "Govenment-without-God: Church-of-Pope Obama I.'"
Those above are Obama "666" dogmas that have driven and will drive his secular religion imposed ON the public square that if not obeyed will bring down sanctions that are near $ 1,000,000 a year - thus effectively removing those religious institutions. Let is not be watered down: President Obama is an evil president - the most insidious president in our history. He is a man behind his times: he should have been Hitler's propoganda minister. He should have been the Gestabo's consultant in killing Jews to show the German Courts how to deny the "right ot life" of Jews.
Therefore we Christians have this choice to make today for whom to vote for. I voted for Rick Santorum because:
4) RICK SANTORUM is the direct answer to Obama's Abaminations. Rick is the stone in the sling of David (the American people) that will kill the arrogant "giant of evil jesters" (Obama).
5) RICK "SANTORUM" has a last name that is the mandate for a return to the "Holy Word of God" in the public square. ["sanctus" is the Latin word for "holy".]
6) RICK SANTORUM is the answer to the maxum: "Vox populi - Vox Dei" - "the voice of the people is the voice of God."
7) RICK SANTORUM is the model of the 'Sanctity of human life" and the "Sanctity of family life" and the sanctity of marriage as only between man and woman as God showed to us in the Garden of Edan. God did not make Adam and his mate Evans. He made Adam and his mate Eve. Genesis says: "Male and female He created them." and Adam says: "This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. For this cause a man shall leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife." Adam was not looking at Evans when he said those words. He was looking a Eve - a woman not a man! Same sex legislation is a secular denial of Genesis; and that denial is a "secular religion"! Our constitution says that the "government shall not establish a religion!" But our "govenment" does under the Prophet Obama's commandments that support abortion of babies and traditional marriage by legislation that gives monies to Planned Parenthood and support of same sex unions - just so that he can get votes to stay in office! WE MUST VOTE HIM OUT OF OFFICE in November; and only Rick Santorum can do that!
8) RICK SANTORUM IS THE CHAMPION OF FAMILY RIGHTS, MARRIAGE RIGHTS, RELIGIOUS RIGHTS AND YOUR PERSONAL RIGHTS TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS BASED ON GOD'S ENDOWMENT OF THOSE RIGHTS!
Let us pray:
Dearest Father, Creator of us all, please send your Arch-Angels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael to watch ove today's elections Nationally to protect the unborn and family life.
Let all the Nation be protected under the loving protection of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas who stopped weekly human sacrifice of children to the "sun god" by her miraculous intercession in 1520 in now known Mexico. Please grant that she herself will overturn Roe v Wade by the "Life at Conception Act that declares all fetuses in the womb to be human persons.
Let Rick Santorum make a victorious sweep in today's election to show the Nation that he is Your Choice to supplant those who would use "choice" as a right and liberty to kill babies.
Thank You, Father, for this glorious sunny day here in Michigan...let Your sunshine not only be on the land; but let it, too, shine Your love and grace in our hearts so that we can bring your sevant, Rick Santorum, into the White House to really make it clean of all evil-secular-murderous pursuits against the unborn. Let the present administrationunderstand that giving money to planned parenthood is paying others to kill your children and damaging the frail and frightened your women with unplanned pregnancies. Love and support these women today with Your love and Project Rachel and Rachel's Vinyard of the Archdiocese of Detroit..and nationwide.
"Father - thank you for today - because "all good gifts and all perfect gifts come down from heaven - from the You, Father of Lights!" Give us Your Light from the Holy Spirit to choose wisely the candidate You wish to be President of these United States in November so that Your servant, Rick Santorum, willl be Your Prophet of Life to the Nations and Your "good example" and witness to the world that Abortion is wrong and that all human life and marriage are Sacred - just as You are "Holy". Send "Santorum" to be a light to the Nations just as Abraham, Moses and David were. ..and even as Jesus is now!
Let Rick Santorum be the cause of millions of babies to be born each year, to be the leader of the people to the promise land, and the warrior against the evils of abortion and secularism...and like Jesus ..be a sacrificial innocent lamb in today's world -- having Jesus inside him --to lead our Naion in holiness and love for one another!
All this we ask in Jesus' Name through our Lady of Guadalupe. Amen."
Peace and love to all the unborn in the womb thoughtout the world...especially those who are scheduled to be aborted today so that God will be with them in their martyrdom and even take them home before any surgical instrument can touch them. Let all babies in the womb know in their little hearts that a new pro-life leader - Rick Santorum - is on the way to overturn all legal abortion in this Nation and be the model of pro-life advocacy for the entire world because the world does look to us to see how the USA treats the unborn child as sacred or not. We have since 1973 told the world that the unborn child has no rights. But now we will show the world the true Constitutional rights "endowed by the Creator" for all unborn children to have "LIFE, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as guranteed by the 1st and 14th Amendments.
Pio Peter Zammit, pio.zammit@comcast.net, of http://piowordstotheheart.blogspot.com/ of 50739 Holt, New Baltimore, Michigan 48047, USA, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy, East Universe, Cosmos III.
(cell: 248-991-5593)
Monday, February 27, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Pio's Proverb 162: IMAGINATION: How ours mirrors God's!
IMAGINATION: from the Latin: "imago, imaginis, a likeness or a copy" and "imaginatio, imaginationis" and from "imaginari" to imagine"..and "to reflect as a mirror does" "the clouds were imaged in the still waters of the lake." or "to picture in one's mind, to imagine; conceive."
That we - each one of us as unrepeatable human beings - are the result of God's Imagination is beyond our imagination because we cannot fully understand how God could have imagined us from all eternity. God always had a thought of us. And further, we are made in His own "Image" - that is we have the power to imagine, reason, will and love. We image God most of all in our "personhood". God is One God in three Divine Persons. We are persons who can love one another just as the Three Divine Persons love one another. It is this "Divine Communion of Persons" that gives us to power to commune with God and each others. Therefore, every family is an image of God. He imagined all of this in creating male and female and saw that it "was very good."
How our imagination mirrors God's imagination is the result of our imagination. We are imagining and mirroring as we think...in the way that God images in His own Divine Imagination and Being: as the "Word of God", as the "Logos of God". Our very trying to do this is in itself imagination imagining itself. We are self-reflexive beings imagining ourself. Our thoughts are our little "word" - our little "logos".
Let us see where this leads us. Let us talk about God's Imagination first:
1) God's imagination is Divine Improvisation (Latin: "in (not) pro (forth, ahead) videre (to see or visualize)". Please notice that the word "visualize" is contained in the word "improvisation: which is the power to visualize the possible instantly into the actual. We know from musical improvisation, the composer makes up his music spontaneously as he goes along without preparation. But what is most interesting is that what is in the composer's mind is instantly ontologically out there in the world for our ears to hear. Actually all our speaking is the same thing. But in God's Divine Improvisation, there is an Infinitely Powerful componet to his Infinite Imagination.
2) Was not the Big Bang one of God's instant improvisations which even now ever continues as space (traveling faster than the speed of light) is ever excellerating as if the "light barrier" was similar to our sound barrier that we managed to break. God breaks the "light barrier" with ease. You would think that gravity would slow down the expanding universe which is ever increasing in speed and expansion of space. Does not this acceleration mean that God's Divine Imagination is at work and that God is actively directing the expansion of the universe? If we ask: "Why does space excellerate when gravity would naturally slow down the intial power of the Big Bang?" I believe that the universe keeps excellerating not because of a intrinsic cosmological law such as the constants of gravity and speed of light. I think the cause is on a continuum of the First Cause. Thus, I believe the excelleration of space is not natural but supernatural. The Big Bang was not natural; it was supernatural even if after the Big Bang, the natural was part of the Creator's plan; but this excelleration now of space is in my mind and heart the very improvisation and imagination of God ever creating: on the continuum of the First Cause. God din't just create the Big Band and then go to sleep. God ever directs improvisationally the cosmological expansion according to His own plan and design. God is creating the conditions perfect for life on galaxies yet to be born.
3) Thus God is the Director of His own Creation; and His Divine Imagination is infinite both in the physical relm as well as the spiritual relm - just as God is at this very moment creating new worlds and new saints - great worlds and great saints. For example, God planned Blessed John Paul II before Genesis eve took place. Gis is planning similar great human beings not yet conceived. Likewise, out of the 400 million abortions in China and 53 million abortion in this country over the last 39 years, there have been great, great human beings that have not been able to be born because of the "choice" of doctors and mothers against the plan of God. But God's great counter Creativity will even bring good out of this as these martyrs of life - just as the Holy Innocents - will be great in heaven. When human free will decides contrary to God's perfect plan then God has to be infinitely creative to make a great good come out of it. Jesus Christ, the Word of God, made flesh was God's Creative and Loving response to original sin and death, both of which were never God's plan. Jesus' Justice and Mercy and Resurrection is God response. This response was formulated even before the Creation of the world because God's Loving Response is ever excellerating even faster than physical space. God's Heart is Present to every corner of the universe...and in every corner yet to come and on every world yet to come. God's Imagination is instantly potential to actual - Divine Improvisation beyond our imagination. Even St. Paul knew this by experience when he said: "Eye has not seen; nor ear has heard, nor has it even entered the imagination of man what God has in store for those who love Him."
4) What St. Paul has said pertains to the heavenly world of the Beatific Vision. Yet, in this Universe, God could be planning and even in the process of creating new civilzations, billions of new galaxies, trillions of new stars - all known by name - and all of this billions of years in the future. God's imagination is so vast...and so immediately from potential to actual that a millisecond seems like a long time to wait to satisfy God's love to Create! "Bonum est diffusivum sui" ("Goodness tends to go out of itself." means more in light of the Big Bang and ever-excelling expanding universe...God is a Great Artist; and the universe is His canvas! What He wants to paint is in His imagination...which can never enter fully into our imagination..as St. Paul attests regarding heaven.
5) Thus God's imagination is beyond our minds's comprehension. He did respond to Job when Job asked God why was Job suffering by telling Job: "Where were you when I created the world and is seas and the heaven?" Of course that issue was regarding suffering, but the implication is that we were not there: that we cannot comprehend God. God's answer to Job was trying to expand Jobn's mind to try and understand the Big Picture. God thinks Big! How Big? There may be billions of worlds like ours in several mutltiple dimensions that do not intereact with each other at all. We could search the heaven for centuries and will not ever see these worlds. We won't find them with intergalactic probes and telescopes because these worlds may not be in our dimension. We don't see God; but that does not mean He is not there. He is the Creator of all. We can see what He does...see the entire Universe. He reaches out to contact us and even gives us His Son and Holy Spirit to dwell in us by His Holy Spirit. "Know ye not that ye are temples of the Holy Spirit?"
God is not so aloof.....Jesus is "Emmanuel: God with us."
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Let us talk about man's imagination because God's Imagination is mirrored in many ways by our own imagination. Let us look at a few examples how we humans mirror God's Imgaination:
1) Movies we like to see often are very good use of our imagination and mirrors the goodness of God's creative Imagination. For example, have you seen Steven Speilberg's "Super 8"? There is a lot of creative imagination at play in this movie: The ten to 12 year olds in this movie are actually making their own movie within the move by using a Super 8 camera. These kids write the script, do the casting, play in the movie, direct and produce it. While filming their movie, these kids happen to catch an incredible train crash..that when the film is developed shows that an alien was on this train and was being transported by the special forces of the Air Force to a holding station to kill it. The kids get very involved in this bigger story and actually find a way to communicate with the alien who happens to be very advanced, scared for its life, and actually a good being. At the end of the movie, the film that the kids were making is shown while the credits of the main film are being shown. People were leaving the theartre when the kids film started at the margin of the credits. It was a marvelously funny movie..(meant ot be serious) that just seem to be such a wonderful use of man's imagination. Just showing the kids' movie during the credits was a marvelous idea. Someone had to imagin this ending. The whole movie is about goodness triumphing over evil: unjust and unwarrented goverment control over alien life.
7) Have you seen Best Picture: "Man for All Seasons" - the life of St. Thomas More? I saw the movie more than once and also the stage play at the Fisher Theatre here in Detroit. This is a marvelous use of the imagination. It is a historical movie/play that is very accurate. The screen play is moving and would cause even St. Thomas in heaven to watch it with interest. This movie won Best Picture because it was perhaps the best picture ever produced by Hollywood in the 20th century. To be able to imagine such scenes in the life of St. Thomas is truly God-like in creativity and goodness.
8) There is another Spielberg movie, "E.T." that is wonderful because E.T.. a benevolent and childlike alien..seems to have come from a world that has not fallen from grace and seems to be immortal. This being may be an example of what our world would have been like if we had not sinned. This E.T. is good to the core...childlike and innocent. His last scenes of "resurrection" seems very much a type of Christ's Resurrection with Christ's Heart being the Heart-Light. There are only three kinds of world: 1) fallen and redeemed like ours; 2) fallen and not redeemed; and 3) not fallen and in a state of original justice. E.T. comes from the last kind of world. So, man's imagination does mirror God's immagination in presenting goodness in a human story as is the whole redemptive human story of humankind is unfolding.
9) George Lucas' "Star Wars" goes deep into the fight of good against evil. The evil emporer with Darth Vader as his apostle for the dark side of the force are no ultimate match of the good side of the force. Luke converts his father, Darth Vader, to the good side. Darth Vader then picks up the Emperor and throws the Emperor of all evil down (as lightning flashing from the Emperor juar like Satan was cast out of heaven by St. Michael) the great shaft where the satan-Emporer explodes at the bottom in a great burst of flame.
This is a type of Biblical account of what happened in heaven but set in the great distant future. Truly this film is a wonderful use of imagination that mirrors God's.
10) "War Horse" just came out and is a story of how a mother can influence her son to be the best that he can be. This is a mother-son movie at its best. The horse story is wonderful and the scenery is spactacular. But what is great is that in all very authentic war scenes - many - you never see any one really get killed - and if so, it is at a distance. The movie is as squaeky clean as you can get these days.
It is a creative and imaginative story of Courage: the boy's, the mother's, the dad's and even the enemy's and of course, the horse, Joey, is the hero of hero..and "a good soldier" in his own right.
11) Media: Great imagination is evident in EWTN's programming: Marcus Brodi who interviews Protestant ministers who have found their way home in his seriest: "Journey Home." Also, Fr. Mitch Pacwa's teachings. Also, the vibrant series: "Saints Alive" where great Saints are re-inacted and interact with the audience and answer contempory questions on today's greatest issues of our day. This whole series comes from a very imaginitive and historical mind. New Director and anchor man, Raymond Arroyo's "The World Over" series is better than any newcasting in the world. Daily Mass and Scripture readings with homilies is a wonderful imaginative idea that nourishes me daily - never miss it. All of these series and programming is the best use of Media and does very much mirror the Imgination of God as God teaches us about the Faith on EWTN. Marshall McCluen was so right when he said: "The media is the message!"
12) In Literature:
"Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkein is a Catholic base epic that is a marvelous expression of how our imagination mirrors God's. The epic is really a allegorical history of our salvation. Notice how Frodo has the Bread of Life in his pouch. Evil is seen as totally vanquished by a courageous man who suffers for the good of "halflings" who come from a very wonderful Shire based on brotherly love and sharing.
St. Teresa of Avila's autobiography as well as St. Therese of Lisieux's autobiography: both are truthful accounts of a holy life but in an imaginative way that is open to the Holy Spirit's promptings: full of metaphors and mystical experiences.
Jesus' story of the "Prodigal Son" is the most beautiful story ever written. There is not a single word too much or a single word too little. It is Perfect. This story was perhaps the greatest use of human and Divine imagination ever. This story perfectly mirrors the Father's own Imagination because what Jesus imagins he spontaniously brings into being in the hearts of His hearers.
13) In Art and Architecture:
All of Michaelangelo's works, Leonardo De Vinci's works and the like; St.Peter's in Rome and the great Cathedrals of the world.
14) Plays:
"Man for All Seasons" and "The Jeweler Shop" by Blessed John Paul II and the like.
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But very Bad uses of human imagination that in NO WAY mirror God's Imagination are as follows:
1) All horror films and novels that degrade human beings and that try to destroy the "image and likeness of God" in human beings. For examples: the dark works of Steven King; series called "The Walking Dead and the like.
2) All premeditated crimes: murder, rape, burgularies, abortion, assault, infanticide, suicide, assinations, and acts of terror.
3) All pornography that degrade women and reduce women to objects. Pornography is bad not because it shows too much; since the human body is a beautiful creation of God. But it is bad because it shows too little. I does not show the woman's whole personality, soul, goodness but rather reduces her to an identity of mere body parts. Pornography also reinforces sexuality as "getting-something-for-me" mentality when human sexuality is a power that urges us to give ourselves to another as a gift of love. Lust is a "me" sexuality: getting pleasure for me. It is the very opposite of getting "ready for marriage." Marriage is what our hearts really long for: a holy union that is permanent, exclusive and faithful.
4) Evil use of Media: when it tells teens to "have sex, get drunk and get even". It is very evil when it marginalizes, vilifies and persecutes Christian, Molems and Jews because of their Faith. The Media in China - also the media being the message but a bad message - slanders and detracts the Catholic martyred Saints of China. Point in case: Fr. Crescitelli was an Italian who went to China to ministers to the Chinese faithful. He loved the Chinese people and dressed and looked just like them. As St. Paul, he was "all things to all people to win them to Christ." Two men eventually killed him for the Faith by cutting his head off slowly with a large farm implement. Eventually, his murderes in 1902 were themselves excuted by the government for killing a perfectly innocent man. But when Blessed John Paul II canonized Fr. Crescitelli, this new Saint Crescitelli was so incredibly detracted by the goverment that I cannot even write in this blog what fabricated lies they broacasted on their newcasts. All their allegations had no truth in fact or in historical accounts. Fabricated stories had no back-up and were totally made up so the Saint Crescitelli would not be honored by the Chinese people. But his memory is revered and honored by the Chinese people anyway. But here is a case where the Chinese Media is using an evil immagination to persecute the Church and martyr St. Crescitelli twice: once when he died for the Faith and again now by trying to kill his goodness. But God makes great good to come from all this evil because God is Very IMAGINATIVE.
5) All exaggerated and false advertizing: especially polictical advertizing.
6) More subtle misuse of imagination in the media: Most advertizing encourages narcissism: the love of one's own image. Nearly all advertizing is based on narcissism. Just look at American Idol. There are many would be stars who have absolutely no talent for stardom in the entertainment world. Then why do they feel entitled to this. False Entitlement is the result of narcissism in full bloom. Our kids -- from watching too much TV, become little beings who feel that they are entitled to things they are not. Entitlement in this extreme is manifested in the "I can do what I want with my body" mindset. Some men feel they are entitled to have sex with anyone who is willing and sometimes with someone who in not willing. Abortion is narcissism because the woman feels she is entitled to her happiness even if that means getting rid of the child within her.
7) Even good shows like "Sesame Street" did something that it was not intended to do. Remember this show was spearheaded by Psychiatrist to touch children. But what did it really do? It was the very spearhead of causing children to become adicted to TV..and not read. Only one children's show was truly good for kids..in every way...that was "Mr. Rogers" who was a Prysbeterian minister..whose basis for his show was Christian love. I saw my five year old kiss the screen when he came on the screen. Now that is good interaction and good use of the imagination. But most children shows today are adictive, nacissistic and the "spoilation" of children's minds.
But in all these above bad uses of the imagination. you can be sure that they are indeed inspired. Yet, by whom? What spirit inspires them? They are all encouraged by the spirit of Satan himself. They come from hell and are designed to bring souls to hell. Satan tries in all bad uses of imagination to lower human beings to a worst and lowest animal nature. AMC's "The Walking Dead" tries to erase that human's are made in the image and likeness of God. Satan cannot touch our wills; but he can and does touch our imagination.
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Let us pray:
Father, please grant Your Holy Spirit to help us to use our imaginations to mirror Yours in all we do and think and create. Protect us from the evil one who tries to stimulate our imagination to sin. Grant that St. Micahel will use his power and imagination to fill our minds with what is good, holy, pure, joyful, loving and beautiful. Help us to think on these good and holy things and express them creatively and BEAUTIFULLY.
All this we ask in Jesus' Name through Mary who imagined Jesus to make perfect wine for the wedding pardy and creatively asked Jesus to do so. Her Magnificat is her loveliest creation of prayerful expression. She is Mother of Beauty and grateful Love.
Love,
Pio...and thank You, Father, for giving me the imagination to write about imagination. :)
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[Comments from Benjamin Bourlier]
Pio, I think this may be your best blog entry! Certainly my favorite so far! I'm very fond, as an improvising musician, of your notion of the big bang as an improvisational spontaneity, and your notion of an accelerating universe as creative anticipation. While our lists of great imaginative works are wildly different, and of course while our reasoning is fundamentally different, we share many of them and, I feel, essentially agree (without exception) when it comes to the negative examples.
But, I must say, there are some examples of what might be called "horror" and even "pornography" films that are surprisingly, even redeemingly imaginative or profound. Of course these are far and away the exceptions, films made by consummate artists, auteurs, and in no way reducible to those vulgar genre labels (so in this sense I still entirely agree with you).
Some examples of these films: German director Michael Hanaecke's film Funny Games, which is a scathing attack on the dehumanizing vulgarity of American horror films, and, while being itself a profoundly violent and disturbing film, is still working imagination for the purpose of RE-humanizing its viewers, reminding them of the reality and depth of human suffering and the enormous power of human love in the face of vacuous, senseless malice. Also, several 21st century films by the "New Extremism" directors which, again, while involving profound violence and sexuality, are still enormously beautiful and vital films that champion humanity, that work AGAINST the degrading tendency of commercial films. Namely, Lars von Trier's Antichrist, which is one of the most beautiful and profound films I've ever seen, and which explores the grief of the death of children, the ugliness and neuroses of misogyny, and the violence of nature; Gaspar Noe's Irreversible, which is a deeply, deeply moving depiction -- in reverse chronological order -- of a violent rape and assault, forcing viewers to engage directly the reality and humanity and suffering of such events, working towards an astonishing ending where the camera whirls over a peaceful pregnant wife in a beautiful Paris park, children in sprinklers, and Beethoven's 7th Symphony; Bruno Dumont's film Flanders, which explores the horror of war, of a teenage girl's abortion and depression thereafter (something you can certainly understand the reasoning of), and rape, but which ends gorgeously with a bare, infinitely weighted affirmation of love, "I love you", a discovery of the true power of human love against these forces in the world; Carlos Reygadas' film Battle in Heaven, which centers on the existential despair of a man after his wife accidentally kills a child they've kidnapped for ransom, and which involves raw depictions of tender sexuality...and on and on. These films are to my mind astonishing feats of imagination and sensitivity, and in no way degrade the sense of humanity but only HEIGHTEN it, only explore the infinite expanse of human experience (in ways commercial horror and pornography genre films obviously don't do, as you know). And it must be said that all of these films are comparatively far LESS commercial films than the ones you mention (however good), and which were pursued with an artistic spirit less contaminated by capitalistic concerns.
I can list one (still somewhat interestingly) bad use of imagination, which you would certainly agree on if you ever saw it, which like the above films, involves graphic violence and sex, and was in fact intended as an art film -- it even begins with a reading list, including scholarly articles, which the director demands the viewer read before even watching it -- but which is ultimately rather pointless and unredeeming to me. This is the Italian auteur director Pasolini's film Salo, based on the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. For me this film did not deliver any real substance and was, like the Sade, simply an inventory of vacuous perversions. It degraded one's sense of humanity because it was executed with such banality, such sense of tortuous inevitability and vacuity. The Marquis de Sade is a perfect example, more originally than Pasolini, of what we'd probably both agree is a "bad" use of the imagination (or at least an insufficiently inspired use of it). Sade had an enormously powerful imagination. Yet his sense of human psychology is deeply, fundamentally flawed; he has no legitimate sense of the formation of neuroses, of fetishes and paraphilia, of the depth of suffering. Rather, he simply takes the norm, and inverts it. If something's good, he makes it evil, and vice versa. He takes away God from the universe, and, in his mind, to build everything back up on an atheist basis means to invert everything. This is so miserably false. In other words, he pursues his project politically. He has only a political notion of the shock value, the mass appeal, of vacuous perversion. And I've never liked this about his writings.
That said, I have to also say that "good", redemptive, powerful use of the imagination is inevitably involved in moments of genuine Nietzschean doubt, of "honest atheism". Doubt is in many ways the imagination continuing to work out alternatives, the imagination continually re-examining itself and improving. If one paints a decent painting at age ten, say, and has certain faith that this is the greatest one can achieve, without doubting this relaxation, one can never improve to reach sublimity. The best example of this imaginative doubt I can think of is involved in a verse we've discussed now several times:
The Centurion’s “servant” (Luke 7): a remarkable parable, very ironically revealing. The word “servant” in the English Bibles here is translated from the Greek pais, which in its extended meaning meant a male concubine, typically a child, a sex slave. It is interesting hearing both the conventional Catholic interpretation of this story – an illustration of the generosity and tact of Christ’s evangelical method, his open acceptance of a pagan centurion, finding in him an ironic example of great faith, etc – and the gay Christian community’s twist on this, based on the hermeneutical expansion of pais, to suggest it’s also an illustration of Christ’s acceptance of homosexuality. Both of them overlook what is, to me, the obvious irony of this story in either reading but especially in the gay Christian reading, regarding the role of the servant. Both readings are insufficiently imaginative and sympathetic. You know the story, of course: the centurion sends elder Jews on his behalf to ask Christ to heal his servant. He has clout with the Jews because he built them a synagogue – they obey him because he is “deserving of this favor”, they decide, as the authorities themselves, to recognize the wish of a pagan. Before Christ can enter the house, though, Jews come out on the centurion’s behalf, again, saying the centurion claims he’s unfit to have Christ enter his house, and that being a man of authority, he understands that Christ can command the disease to leave his servant from any position, any place, given Christ’s own authority, the same as the centurion’s servants obey his commands. The servant/pais, mind you, is denied freedom in life, lives in servitude, is dying, suffering, and as pais, is even in health being literally fucked in the ass by governmental authority, and here even in his Christian salvation, is denied any direct encounter with Christ, any direct representation or plea, on the grounds of the pagan centurion’s faith, his recognition of Christ’s authority (such that he won’t admit him into the home, even), which is itself grounded on the centurion’s assertion of his own authority, his authority over the servant. Christ celebrates the centurion, not directly to him, mind you, but to the elder Jews, saying “Not even in all of Israel have I witnessed such great faith”. The intended irony is based on the authority of the elder Jews – which is, of course, built on faith – who make this uncommon allowance for a pagan centurion, an enforcer, being ultimately shown up by the pagan’s own faith. Faith is the crux – pun intended – of the intended ironic twist. But of course the ultimate irony is not regarding faith but authority, the situation of the servant – he is saved, but thus only restored to his servitude under the centurion. The irony of the way in which authority feeds faith and vice versa feeding servitude and – arguably – sexual exploitation by a government official, is the deeper and more imaginative reading. One must, that is, imagine and assume the role of the servant also if one's to fully grasp the story, and the underlying paradox and contradiction.
One can see how something like Hitchens’ analysis of Mother Teresa’s dealing with Charles Keating -- wherein Keating was obtaining clout with Mother Teresa and thus the Christian community by donating over a million dollars to her cause, and thus she provided a character witness for him at trial, each recognizing the other's authority, while the Christians overlooked the position of the people Keating stole all the money he donated from (!), people who gained nothing from the trial and were only restored to their previous suffering -- is built on PRECISELY this deeper, more imaginative and more sympathetic reading of the people on the fringe of things, people who are given no direct say in a matter.
I know that as a Catholic you cannot accept this reading -- I will here formally invite you to abandon the shackles of faith and dip into the deep water of doubt, or hermenuetical freedom (ha!) But I hope you can appreciate the consistency of my argument here regarding this parable, if only to adequately confront it:
1) The elder Jews, people of faith, decide that a pagan centurion, someone they consider "faithless", is worthy of the favor of Christ's visit because he's built them a synagogue, he cooperated with their faith. Notice this is no different than any creditor/debtor relationship -- you did this for me, I'll do this for you. The "true Christian" reasoning would be that the centurion is deserving of Christ's visit because everyone is so deserving, and because helping others is simply "the Christian thing to do".
2) Is it THIS point on which Christ corrects (as it were) the elder jews? No. Christ does not say, "What difference is it whether he built a synagogue, if he is asking that I help the sick?" etc.
3) It is not through direct recognition of Christ but through sending Jewish representatives that the centurion calls on Christ. In other words, the centurion does not, say, fall to his knees directly in front of Christ begging for his help. Neither he nor (least of all) the servant has any direct encounter with the person of Christ. Such that one can imagine the centurion in a very different way and the story is effectively the same: perhaps he is calling on Christ not out of genuine faith but in a mocking sense, challenging his authority by comparing it to his own and not admitting Christ into the house on this pretense, only saying what he does to the Jews to goad him? Perhaps the servant wants to die, even, and resents his restoration -- which, Hitchens points out, is in fact the plight of many people who've undergone a healing transformation that returns them anew to suffering.
4) But regardless, one sees Christ's ironic counsel is not TO the centurion, and least of all to the servant. It makes no difference for the purpose of the story. No, he exclaims the centurion's faith to the elder Jews! It comes full circle! He exclaims the faith to illustrate to them the ironic example of the centurion, and his own evangelical method -- as you've said, his generosity of spirit, in accepting even a pagan -- and to provide a model for them of increasing their faith in his authority and recognizing that potential in others. The Jews are nearer Christ, and thus to Christianity, as you've also said; but the centurion -- who has "a greater faith than in all of Israel" -- is still effectively twice removed -- how, why?; and the servant remains throughout thrice removed! How, why? While Christ may be extending generosity to a pagan, he is extending it on the elder Jews' pretense of mere exchange of favors, where the stress is still ultimately not on his generosity toward the servant but toward the centurion (shouldn't it be precisely the opposite? Re: no.1? Shouldn't it be precisely the opposite throughout this whole story, beginning initially with more basic Christian sympathy in the elder Jews with the dying man? Nowhere does it say "this good servant", "we should save this good servant", etc., nowhere does the servant ask his benevolent master to ask Christ to spare him, etc. No, it says "a servant [the centurion] held in very high regard". From entrance to denoument the servant is thrice-removed, his very claim to life premised, thrice-removed, on the mere favor of the centurion.)
5) There are three paradoxes here: first, in the humility of the centurion in not even admitting Christ into his home (that he's unworthy) against the vanity of comparing Christ's authority to his own -- something only this pagan government official would have the arrogance to do; secondly, that it's this very paradox upon which Christ asserts the centurion's faith; lastly, most importantly, that the authority of the centurion assures this dying man's servitude and yet Christ has restored him on the basis of -- or at least partly in recognition of -- that very authority, and back to that very servitude. The servant's role in this story is objectionably perfunctory. Which one must have imagination to see; one must read beyond the intended meaning! One must assume an essentially Marxist critique!
I hope you see my point. I've enjoyed sharing it with you, as always, Pio.
your friend, in doubt and togetherness, as always,
Benjamin
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[Comments by Pio]
I agee with all your comments except one: that you kindly "invite" me "to abandon the shackles of faith and dip into the deep waters of doubt." Now, Benjamin, you know we are not talking about "faith" and "doubt" on the same page, here. Your understanding of the definition of "faith" and "doubt" are profoundly different from mine. Your definition of "faith" and "doubt" are filtered through your matrix of personal experiences that are more philosophical than mine which are intrinsically theological. So, when we dialogue on these two subjects, we are doing so from different base of epistomological and intrinsic nature of what "faith" and "doubt" really are. Your use of "doubt" is clinical, too, in that you se "doubt" as intrinsically good for man. IT IS! How in the world could we do any research microscopically or telescopically without "doubt". Actually, there is a healthy doubt even in theology in that "seeking understanding" of truths is a very good thing. But this "faith seeking understanding is not doubt"; it is an curiosity into holy things. Without this "faith seeking understanding," the world would be wittout the Summa Theologica and all of St. Augustine's writing..and even St. Paul's writings because St. Paul was persecuting "the way" as a blatant contradiction to his Jewish beliefs. So, please understand that "doubt" that is really "faith seeking understanding" is a virtue for me. But "doubt" that is not virtuous is thing: "The kind that does not believe the angel's message to Zachariah that John would be born from his wife. That doubt was immediately punished. Also, Satan saying, "I will not serve" is a doubt in the goodness and plan of God. Satan thought that Jesus should be an angel not a man. Satan had much more arrogance than the centurion who compared his authority to Jesus. But the centurion only did this so as to convince Jesus of the centurion's faith not to degregrate Jesus' authority in anyway. Also, doubt is bad when a person gives up, commits suicide because he doubts the goodness of the world..and because he has given up the virtue of HOPE. Vincent Van Gogh lost hope...if he had lived, he would have been a millionnaire in his own life time and could paint twenty-four seven if he wished. "Faith" is a supernatural gift from God to enable our natural minds to be able to see him. Jesus said: "Blesed are the pure of hart, for they will see God. (NOW not just in heaven). Being able to see God here and now persupposes some conditions: purity of heart. I am not speaking just about sexual purity (although it includes that); but I am talking about the humble posture of the soul that sees all the "good" that God has really placed here in ourselves, nature, our minds, our hearts, our longings, our hopes and dreams - even a man's dreams to have one and beautiful wife in a relationship that is permanent, exclusive and faithful. All that said, please understand that "purity of heart" as a prerequisite for seing God. We can ask God for the gift of purity of heart...even natural purity of heart...so that we can see Him in all things. Atheist's greatest problematic stance is that cannot see God in everything. They are more interested in seeing the bad in Mother Teresa than the good in her. Purity is the piercing of reality with the right microsope or telescope that is clear and not cloudy.
So, I cannot let go of the "shackles of faith and enter into the depth of doubt" because I see Faith as a Theological virtue - a grace from God. I see theological doubt (not scientic doubt which is good) as a volitional denial of the grace of Faith. And this "Faith" is a free gift from God. But just as Beethoven could not compose without some knowlege of music, could not hear the inspirations of God to write these marvelous works, we cannot hear the music of God in our own souls without first having the belief that God is there to give them to us.
Peace and love, Peter
That we - each one of us as unrepeatable human beings - are the result of God's Imagination is beyond our imagination because we cannot fully understand how God could have imagined us from all eternity. God always had a thought of us. And further, we are made in His own "Image" - that is we have the power to imagine, reason, will and love. We image God most of all in our "personhood". God is One God in three Divine Persons. We are persons who can love one another just as the Three Divine Persons love one another. It is this "Divine Communion of Persons" that gives us to power to commune with God and each others. Therefore, every family is an image of God. He imagined all of this in creating male and female and saw that it "was very good."
How our imagination mirrors God's imagination is the result of our imagination. We are imagining and mirroring as we think...in the way that God images in His own Divine Imagination and Being: as the "Word of God", as the "Logos of God". Our very trying to do this is in itself imagination imagining itself. We are self-reflexive beings imagining ourself. Our thoughts are our little "word" - our little "logos".
Let us see where this leads us. Let us talk about God's Imagination first:
1) God's imagination is Divine Improvisation (Latin: "in (not) pro (forth, ahead) videre (to see or visualize)". Please notice that the word "visualize" is contained in the word "improvisation: which is the power to visualize the possible instantly into the actual. We know from musical improvisation, the composer makes up his music spontaneously as he goes along without preparation. But what is most interesting is that what is in the composer's mind is instantly ontologically out there in the world for our ears to hear. Actually all our speaking is the same thing. But in God's Divine Improvisation, there is an Infinitely Powerful componet to his Infinite Imagination.
2) Was not the Big Bang one of God's instant improvisations which even now ever continues as space (traveling faster than the speed of light) is ever excellerating as if the "light barrier" was similar to our sound barrier that we managed to break. God breaks the "light barrier" with ease. You would think that gravity would slow down the expanding universe which is ever increasing in speed and expansion of space. Does not this acceleration mean that God's Divine Imagination is at work and that God is actively directing the expansion of the universe? If we ask: "Why does space excellerate when gravity would naturally slow down the intial power of the Big Bang?" I believe that the universe keeps excellerating not because of a intrinsic cosmological law such as the constants of gravity and speed of light. I think the cause is on a continuum of the First Cause. Thus, I believe the excelleration of space is not natural but supernatural. The Big Bang was not natural; it was supernatural even if after the Big Bang, the natural was part of the Creator's plan; but this excelleration now of space is in my mind and heart the very improvisation and imagination of God ever creating: on the continuum of the First Cause. God din't just create the Big Band and then go to sleep. God ever directs improvisationally the cosmological expansion according to His own plan and design. God is creating the conditions perfect for life on galaxies yet to be born.
3) Thus God is the Director of His own Creation; and His Divine Imagination is infinite both in the physical relm as well as the spiritual relm - just as God is at this very moment creating new worlds and new saints - great worlds and great saints. For example, God planned Blessed John Paul II before Genesis eve took place. Gis is planning similar great human beings not yet conceived. Likewise, out of the 400 million abortions in China and 53 million abortion in this country over the last 39 years, there have been great, great human beings that have not been able to be born because of the "choice" of doctors and mothers against the plan of God. But God's great counter Creativity will even bring good out of this as these martyrs of life - just as the Holy Innocents - will be great in heaven. When human free will decides contrary to God's perfect plan then God has to be infinitely creative to make a great good come out of it. Jesus Christ, the Word of God, made flesh was God's Creative and Loving response to original sin and death, both of which were never God's plan. Jesus' Justice and Mercy and Resurrection is God response. This response was formulated even before the Creation of the world because God's Loving Response is ever excellerating even faster than physical space. God's Heart is Present to every corner of the universe...and in every corner yet to come and on every world yet to come. God's Imagination is instantly potential to actual - Divine Improvisation beyond our imagination. Even St. Paul knew this by experience when he said: "Eye has not seen; nor ear has heard, nor has it even entered the imagination of man what God has in store for those who love Him."
4) What St. Paul has said pertains to the heavenly world of the Beatific Vision. Yet, in this Universe, God could be planning and even in the process of creating new civilzations, billions of new galaxies, trillions of new stars - all known by name - and all of this billions of years in the future. God's imagination is so vast...and so immediately from potential to actual that a millisecond seems like a long time to wait to satisfy God's love to Create! "Bonum est diffusivum sui" ("Goodness tends to go out of itself." means more in light of the Big Bang and ever-excelling expanding universe...God is a Great Artist; and the universe is His canvas! What He wants to paint is in His imagination...which can never enter fully into our imagination..as St. Paul attests regarding heaven.
5) Thus God's imagination is beyond our minds's comprehension. He did respond to Job when Job asked God why was Job suffering by telling Job: "Where were you when I created the world and is seas and the heaven?" Of course that issue was regarding suffering, but the implication is that we were not there: that we cannot comprehend God. God's answer to Job was trying to expand Jobn's mind to try and understand the Big Picture. God thinks Big! How Big? There may be billions of worlds like ours in several mutltiple dimensions that do not intereact with each other at all. We could search the heaven for centuries and will not ever see these worlds. We won't find them with intergalactic probes and telescopes because these worlds may not be in our dimension. We don't see God; but that does not mean He is not there. He is the Creator of all. We can see what He does...see the entire Universe. He reaches out to contact us and even gives us His Son and Holy Spirit to dwell in us by His Holy Spirit. "Know ye not that ye are temples of the Holy Spirit?"
God is not so aloof.....Jesus is "Emmanuel: God with us."
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Let us talk about man's imagination because God's Imagination is mirrored in many ways by our own imagination. Let us look at a few examples how we humans mirror God's Imgaination:
1) Movies we like to see often are very good use of our imagination and mirrors the goodness of God's creative Imagination. For example, have you seen Steven Speilberg's "Super 8"? There is a lot of creative imagination at play in this movie: The ten to 12 year olds in this movie are actually making their own movie within the move by using a Super 8 camera. These kids write the script, do the casting, play in the movie, direct and produce it. While filming their movie, these kids happen to catch an incredible train crash..that when the film is developed shows that an alien was on this train and was being transported by the special forces of the Air Force to a holding station to kill it. The kids get very involved in this bigger story and actually find a way to communicate with the alien who happens to be very advanced, scared for its life, and actually a good being. At the end of the movie, the film that the kids were making is shown while the credits of the main film are being shown. People were leaving the theartre when the kids film started at the margin of the credits. It was a marvelously funny movie..(meant ot be serious) that just seem to be such a wonderful use of man's imagination. Just showing the kids' movie during the credits was a marvelous idea. Someone had to imagin this ending. The whole movie is about goodness triumphing over evil: unjust and unwarrented goverment control over alien life.
7) Have you seen Best Picture: "Man for All Seasons" - the life of St. Thomas More? I saw the movie more than once and also the stage play at the Fisher Theatre here in Detroit. This is a marvelous use of the imagination. It is a historical movie/play that is very accurate. The screen play is moving and would cause even St. Thomas in heaven to watch it with interest. This movie won Best Picture because it was perhaps the best picture ever produced by Hollywood in the 20th century. To be able to imagine such scenes in the life of St. Thomas is truly God-like in creativity and goodness.
8) There is another Spielberg movie, "E.T." that is wonderful because E.T.. a benevolent and childlike alien..seems to have come from a world that has not fallen from grace and seems to be immortal. This being may be an example of what our world would have been like if we had not sinned. This E.T. is good to the core...childlike and innocent. His last scenes of "resurrection" seems very much a type of Christ's Resurrection with Christ's Heart being the Heart-Light. There are only three kinds of world: 1) fallen and redeemed like ours; 2) fallen and not redeemed; and 3) not fallen and in a state of original justice. E.T. comes from the last kind of world. So, man's imagination does mirror God's immagination in presenting goodness in a human story as is the whole redemptive human story of humankind is unfolding.
9) George Lucas' "Star Wars" goes deep into the fight of good against evil. The evil emporer with Darth Vader as his apostle for the dark side of the force are no ultimate match of the good side of the force. Luke converts his father, Darth Vader, to the good side. Darth Vader then picks up the Emperor and throws the Emperor of all evil down (as lightning flashing from the Emperor juar like Satan was cast out of heaven by St. Michael) the great shaft where the satan-Emporer explodes at the bottom in a great burst of flame.
This is a type of Biblical account of what happened in heaven but set in the great distant future. Truly this film is a wonderful use of imagination that mirrors God's.
10) "War Horse" just came out and is a story of how a mother can influence her son to be the best that he can be. This is a mother-son movie at its best. The horse story is wonderful and the scenery is spactacular. But what is great is that in all very authentic war scenes - many - you never see any one really get killed - and if so, it is at a distance. The movie is as squaeky clean as you can get these days.
It is a creative and imaginative story of Courage: the boy's, the mother's, the dad's and even the enemy's and of course, the horse, Joey, is the hero of hero..and "a good soldier" in his own right.
11) Media: Great imagination is evident in EWTN's programming: Marcus Brodi who interviews Protestant ministers who have found their way home in his seriest: "Journey Home." Also, Fr. Mitch Pacwa's teachings. Also, the vibrant series: "Saints Alive" where great Saints are re-inacted and interact with the audience and answer contempory questions on today's greatest issues of our day. This whole series comes from a very imaginitive and historical mind. New Director and anchor man, Raymond Arroyo's "The World Over" series is better than any newcasting in the world. Daily Mass and Scripture readings with homilies is a wonderful imaginative idea that nourishes me daily - never miss it. All of these series and programming is the best use of Media and does very much mirror the Imgination of God as God teaches us about the Faith on EWTN. Marshall McCluen was so right when he said: "The media is the message!"
12) In Literature:
"Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkein is a Catholic base epic that is a marvelous expression of how our imagination mirrors God's. The epic is really a allegorical history of our salvation. Notice how Frodo has the Bread of Life in his pouch. Evil is seen as totally vanquished by a courageous man who suffers for the good of "halflings" who come from a very wonderful Shire based on brotherly love and sharing.
St. Teresa of Avila's autobiography as well as St. Therese of Lisieux's autobiography: both are truthful accounts of a holy life but in an imaginative way that is open to the Holy Spirit's promptings: full of metaphors and mystical experiences.
Jesus' story of the "Prodigal Son" is the most beautiful story ever written. There is not a single word too much or a single word too little. It is Perfect. This story was perhaps the greatest use of human and Divine imagination ever. This story perfectly mirrors the Father's own Imagination because what Jesus imagins he spontaniously brings into being in the hearts of His hearers.
13) In Art and Architecture:
All of Michaelangelo's works, Leonardo De Vinci's works and the like; St.Peter's in Rome and the great Cathedrals of the world.
14) Plays:
"Man for All Seasons" and "The Jeweler Shop" by Blessed John Paul II and the like.
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But very Bad uses of human imagination that in NO WAY mirror God's Imagination are as follows:
1) All horror films and novels that degrade human beings and that try to destroy the "image and likeness of God" in human beings. For examples: the dark works of Steven King; series called "The Walking Dead and the like.
2) All premeditated crimes: murder, rape, burgularies, abortion, assault, infanticide, suicide, assinations, and acts of terror.
3) All pornography that degrade women and reduce women to objects. Pornography is bad not because it shows too much; since the human body is a beautiful creation of God. But it is bad because it shows too little. I does not show the woman's whole personality, soul, goodness but rather reduces her to an identity of mere body parts. Pornography also reinforces sexuality as "getting-something-for-me" mentality when human sexuality is a power that urges us to give ourselves to another as a gift of love. Lust is a "me" sexuality: getting pleasure for me. It is the very opposite of getting "ready for marriage." Marriage is what our hearts really long for: a holy union that is permanent, exclusive and faithful.
4) Evil use of Media: when it tells teens to "have sex, get drunk and get even". It is very evil when it marginalizes, vilifies and persecutes Christian, Molems and Jews because of their Faith. The Media in China - also the media being the message but a bad message - slanders and detracts the Catholic martyred Saints of China. Point in case: Fr. Crescitelli was an Italian who went to China to ministers to the Chinese faithful. He loved the Chinese people and dressed and looked just like them. As St. Paul, he was "all things to all people to win them to Christ." Two men eventually killed him for the Faith by cutting his head off slowly with a large farm implement. Eventually, his murderes in 1902 were themselves excuted by the government for killing a perfectly innocent man. But when Blessed John Paul II canonized Fr. Crescitelli, this new Saint Crescitelli was so incredibly detracted by the goverment that I cannot even write in this blog what fabricated lies they broacasted on their newcasts. All their allegations had no truth in fact or in historical accounts. Fabricated stories had no back-up and were totally made up so the Saint Crescitelli would not be honored by the Chinese people. But his memory is revered and honored by the Chinese people anyway. But here is a case where the Chinese Media is using an evil immagination to persecute the Church and martyr St. Crescitelli twice: once when he died for the Faith and again now by trying to kill his goodness. But God makes great good to come from all this evil because God is Very IMAGINATIVE.
5) All exaggerated and false advertizing: especially polictical advertizing.
6) More subtle misuse of imagination in the media: Most advertizing encourages narcissism: the love of one's own image. Nearly all advertizing is based on narcissism. Just look at American Idol. There are many would be stars who have absolutely no talent for stardom in the entertainment world. Then why do they feel entitled to this. False Entitlement is the result of narcissism in full bloom. Our kids -- from watching too much TV, become little beings who feel that they are entitled to things they are not. Entitlement in this extreme is manifested in the "I can do what I want with my body" mindset. Some men feel they are entitled to have sex with anyone who is willing and sometimes with someone who in not willing. Abortion is narcissism because the woman feels she is entitled to her happiness even if that means getting rid of the child within her.
7) Even good shows like "Sesame Street" did something that it was not intended to do. Remember this show was spearheaded by Psychiatrist to touch children. But what did it really do? It was the very spearhead of causing children to become adicted to TV..and not read. Only one children's show was truly good for kids..in every way...that was "Mr. Rogers" who was a Prysbeterian minister..whose basis for his show was Christian love. I saw my five year old kiss the screen when he came on the screen. Now that is good interaction and good use of the imagination. But most children shows today are adictive, nacissistic and the "spoilation" of children's minds.
But in all these above bad uses of the imagination. you can be sure that they are indeed inspired. Yet, by whom? What spirit inspires them? They are all encouraged by the spirit of Satan himself. They come from hell and are designed to bring souls to hell. Satan tries in all bad uses of imagination to lower human beings to a worst and lowest animal nature. AMC's "The Walking Dead" tries to erase that human's are made in the image and likeness of God. Satan cannot touch our wills; but he can and does touch our imagination.
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Let us pray:
Father, please grant Your Holy Spirit to help us to use our imaginations to mirror Yours in all we do and think and create. Protect us from the evil one who tries to stimulate our imagination to sin. Grant that St. Micahel will use his power and imagination to fill our minds with what is good, holy, pure, joyful, loving and beautiful. Help us to think on these good and holy things and express them creatively and BEAUTIFULLY.
All this we ask in Jesus' Name through Mary who imagined Jesus to make perfect wine for the wedding pardy and creatively asked Jesus to do so. Her Magnificat is her loveliest creation of prayerful expression. She is Mother of Beauty and grateful Love.
Love,
Pio...and thank You, Father, for giving me the imagination to write about imagination. :)
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[Comments from Benjamin Bourlier]
Pio, I think this may be your best blog entry! Certainly my favorite so far! I'm very fond, as an improvising musician, of your notion of the big bang as an improvisational spontaneity, and your notion of an accelerating universe as creative anticipation. While our lists of great imaginative works are wildly different, and of course while our reasoning is fundamentally different, we share many of them and, I feel, essentially agree (without exception) when it comes to the negative examples.
But, I must say, there are some examples of what might be called "horror" and even "pornography" films that are surprisingly, even redeemingly imaginative or profound. Of course these are far and away the exceptions, films made by consummate artists, auteurs, and in no way reducible to those vulgar genre labels (so in this sense I still entirely agree with you).
Some examples of these films: German director Michael Hanaecke's film Funny Games, which is a scathing attack on the dehumanizing vulgarity of American horror films, and, while being itself a profoundly violent and disturbing film, is still working imagination for the purpose of RE-humanizing its viewers, reminding them of the reality and depth of human suffering and the enormous power of human love in the face of vacuous, senseless malice. Also, several 21st century films by the "New Extremism" directors which, again, while involving profound violence and sexuality, are still enormously beautiful and vital films that champion humanity, that work AGAINST the degrading tendency of commercial films. Namely, Lars von Trier's Antichrist, which is one of the most beautiful and profound films I've ever seen, and which explores the grief of the death of children, the ugliness and neuroses of misogyny, and the violence of nature; Gaspar Noe's Irreversible, which is a deeply, deeply moving depiction -- in reverse chronological order -- of a violent rape and assault, forcing viewers to engage directly the reality and humanity and suffering of such events, working towards an astonishing ending where the camera whirls over a peaceful pregnant wife in a beautiful Paris park, children in sprinklers, and Beethoven's 7th Symphony; Bruno Dumont's film Flanders, which explores the horror of war, of a teenage girl's abortion and depression thereafter (something you can certainly understand the reasoning of), and rape, but which ends gorgeously with a bare, infinitely weighted affirmation of love, "I love you", a discovery of the true power of human love against these forces in the world; Carlos Reygadas' film Battle in Heaven, which centers on the existential despair of a man after his wife accidentally kills a child they've kidnapped for ransom, and which involves raw depictions of tender sexuality...and on and on. These films are to my mind astonishing feats of imagination and sensitivity, and in no way degrade the sense of humanity but only HEIGHTEN it, only explore the infinite expanse of human experience (in ways commercial horror and pornography genre films obviously don't do, as you know). And it must be said that all of these films are comparatively far LESS commercial films than the ones you mention (however good), and which were pursued with an artistic spirit less contaminated by capitalistic concerns.
I can list one (still somewhat interestingly) bad use of imagination, which you would certainly agree on if you ever saw it, which like the above films, involves graphic violence and sex, and was in fact intended as an art film -- it even begins with a reading list, including scholarly articles, which the director demands the viewer read before even watching it -- but which is ultimately rather pointless and unredeeming to me. This is the Italian auteur director Pasolini's film Salo, based on the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. For me this film did not deliver any real substance and was, like the Sade, simply an inventory of vacuous perversions. It degraded one's sense of humanity because it was executed with such banality, such sense of tortuous inevitability and vacuity. The Marquis de Sade is a perfect example, more originally than Pasolini, of what we'd probably both agree is a "bad" use of the imagination (or at least an insufficiently inspired use of it). Sade had an enormously powerful imagination. Yet his sense of human psychology is deeply, fundamentally flawed; he has no legitimate sense of the formation of neuroses, of fetishes and paraphilia, of the depth of suffering. Rather, he simply takes the norm, and inverts it. If something's good, he makes it evil, and vice versa. He takes away God from the universe, and, in his mind, to build everything back up on an atheist basis means to invert everything. This is so miserably false. In other words, he pursues his project politically. He has only a political notion of the shock value, the mass appeal, of vacuous perversion. And I've never liked this about his writings.
That said, I have to also say that "good", redemptive, powerful use of the imagination is inevitably involved in moments of genuine Nietzschean doubt, of "honest atheism". Doubt is in many ways the imagination continuing to work out alternatives, the imagination continually re-examining itself and improving. If one paints a decent painting at age ten, say, and has certain faith that this is the greatest one can achieve, without doubting this relaxation, one can never improve to reach sublimity. The best example of this imaginative doubt I can think of is involved in a verse we've discussed now several times:
The Centurion’s “servant” (Luke 7): a remarkable parable, very ironically revealing. The word “servant” in the English Bibles here is translated from the Greek pais, which in its extended meaning meant a male concubine, typically a child, a sex slave. It is interesting hearing both the conventional Catholic interpretation of this story – an illustration of the generosity and tact of Christ’s evangelical method, his open acceptance of a pagan centurion, finding in him an ironic example of great faith, etc – and the gay Christian community’s twist on this, based on the hermeneutical expansion of pais, to suggest it’s also an illustration of Christ’s acceptance of homosexuality. Both of them overlook what is, to me, the obvious irony of this story in either reading but especially in the gay Christian reading, regarding the role of the servant. Both readings are insufficiently imaginative and sympathetic. You know the story, of course: the centurion sends elder Jews on his behalf to ask Christ to heal his servant. He has clout with the Jews because he built them a synagogue – they obey him because he is “deserving of this favor”, they decide, as the authorities themselves, to recognize the wish of a pagan. Before Christ can enter the house, though, Jews come out on the centurion’s behalf, again, saying the centurion claims he’s unfit to have Christ enter his house, and that being a man of authority, he understands that Christ can command the disease to leave his servant from any position, any place, given Christ’s own authority, the same as the centurion’s servants obey his commands. The servant/pais, mind you, is denied freedom in life, lives in servitude, is dying, suffering, and as pais, is even in health being literally fucked in the ass by governmental authority, and here even in his Christian salvation, is denied any direct encounter with Christ, any direct representation or plea, on the grounds of the pagan centurion’s faith, his recognition of Christ’s authority (such that he won’t admit him into the home, even), which is itself grounded on the centurion’s assertion of his own authority, his authority over the servant. Christ celebrates the centurion, not directly to him, mind you, but to the elder Jews, saying “Not even in all of Israel have I witnessed such great faith”. The intended irony is based on the authority of the elder Jews – which is, of course, built on faith – who make this uncommon allowance for a pagan centurion, an enforcer, being ultimately shown up by the pagan’s own faith. Faith is the crux – pun intended – of the intended ironic twist. But of course the ultimate irony is not regarding faith but authority, the situation of the servant – he is saved, but thus only restored to his servitude under the centurion. The irony of the way in which authority feeds faith and vice versa feeding servitude and – arguably – sexual exploitation by a government official, is the deeper and more imaginative reading. One must, that is, imagine and assume the role of the servant also if one's to fully grasp the story, and the underlying paradox and contradiction.
One can see how something like Hitchens’ analysis of Mother Teresa’s dealing with Charles Keating -- wherein Keating was obtaining clout with Mother Teresa and thus the Christian community by donating over a million dollars to her cause, and thus she provided a character witness for him at trial, each recognizing the other's authority, while the Christians overlooked the position of the people Keating stole all the money he donated from (!), people who gained nothing from the trial and were only restored to their previous suffering -- is built on PRECISELY this deeper, more imaginative and more sympathetic reading of the people on the fringe of things, people who are given no direct say in a matter.
I know that as a Catholic you cannot accept this reading -- I will here formally invite you to abandon the shackles of faith and dip into the deep water of doubt, or hermenuetical freedom (ha!) But I hope you can appreciate the consistency of my argument here regarding this parable, if only to adequately confront it:
1) The elder Jews, people of faith, decide that a pagan centurion, someone they consider "faithless", is worthy of the favor of Christ's visit because he's built them a synagogue, he cooperated with their faith. Notice this is no different than any creditor/debtor relationship -- you did this for me, I'll do this for you. The "true Christian" reasoning would be that the centurion is deserving of Christ's visit because everyone is so deserving, and because helping others is simply "the Christian thing to do".
2) Is it THIS point on which Christ corrects (as it were) the elder jews? No. Christ does not say, "What difference is it whether he built a synagogue, if he is asking that I help the sick?" etc.
3) It is not through direct recognition of Christ but through sending Jewish representatives that the centurion calls on Christ. In other words, the centurion does not, say, fall to his knees directly in front of Christ begging for his help. Neither he nor (least of all) the servant has any direct encounter with the person of Christ. Such that one can imagine the centurion in a very different way and the story is effectively the same: perhaps he is calling on Christ not out of genuine faith but in a mocking sense, challenging his authority by comparing it to his own and not admitting Christ into the house on this pretense, only saying what he does to the Jews to goad him? Perhaps the servant wants to die, even, and resents his restoration -- which, Hitchens points out, is in fact the plight of many people who've undergone a healing transformation that returns them anew to suffering.
4) But regardless, one sees Christ's ironic counsel is not TO the centurion, and least of all to the servant. It makes no difference for the purpose of the story. No, he exclaims the centurion's faith to the elder Jews! It comes full circle! He exclaims the faith to illustrate to them the ironic example of the centurion, and his own evangelical method -- as you've said, his generosity of spirit, in accepting even a pagan -- and to provide a model for them of increasing their faith in his authority and recognizing that potential in others. The Jews are nearer Christ, and thus to Christianity, as you've also said; but the centurion -- who has "a greater faith than in all of Israel" -- is still effectively twice removed -- how, why?; and the servant remains throughout thrice removed! How, why? While Christ may be extending generosity to a pagan, he is extending it on the elder Jews' pretense of mere exchange of favors, where the stress is still ultimately not on his generosity toward the servant but toward the centurion (shouldn't it be precisely the opposite? Re: no.1? Shouldn't it be precisely the opposite throughout this whole story, beginning initially with more basic Christian sympathy in the elder Jews with the dying man? Nowhere does it say "this good servant", "we should save this good servant", etc., nowhere does the servant ask his benevolent master to ask Christ to spare him, etc. No, it says "a servant [the centurion] held in very high regard". From entrance to denoument the servant is thrice-removed, his very claim to life premised, thrice-removed, on the mere favor of the centurion.)
5) There are three paradoxes here: first, in the humility of the centurion in not even admitting Christ into his home (that he's unworthy) against the vanity of comparing Christ's authority to his own -- something only this pagan government official would have the arrogance to do; secondly, that it's this very paradox upon which Christ asserts the centurion's faith; lastly, most importantly, that the authority of the centurion assures this dying man's servitude and yet Christ has restored him on the basis of -- or at least partly in recognition of -- that very authority, and back to that very servitude. The servant's role in this story is objectionably perfunctory. Which one must have imagination to see; one must read beyond the intended meaning! One must assume an essentially Marxist critique!
I hope you see my point. I've enjoyed sharing it with you, as always, Pio.
your friend, in doubt and togetherness, as always,
Benjamin
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[Comments by Pio]
I agee with all your comments except one: that you kindly "invite" me "to abandon the shackles of faith and dip into the deep waters of doubt." Now, Benjamin, you know we are not talking about "faith" and "doubt" on the same page, here. Your understanding of the definition of "faith" and "doubt" are profoundly different from mine. Your definition of "faith" and "doubt" are filtered through your matrix of personal experiences that are more philosophical than mine which are intrinsically theological. So, when we dialogue on these two subjects, we are doing so from different base of epistomological and intrinsic nature of what "faith" and "doubt" really are. Your use of "doubt" is clinical, too, in that you se "doubt" as intrinsically good for man. IT IS! How in the world could we do any research microscopically or telescopically without "doubt". Actually, there is a healthy doubt even in theology in that "seeking understanding" of truths is a very good thing. But this "faith seeking understanding is not doubt"; it is an curiosity into holy things. Without this "faith seeking understanding," the world would be wittout the Summa Theologica and all of St. Augustine's writing..and even St. Paul's writings because St. Paul was persecuting "the way" as a blatant contradiction to his Jewish beliefs. So, please understand that "doubt" that is really "faith seeking understanding" is a virtue for me. But "doubt" that is not virtuous is thing: "The kind that does not believe the angel's message to Zachariah that John would be born from his wife. That doubt was immediately punished. Also, Satan saying, "I will not serve" is a doubt in the goodness and plan of God. Satan thought that Jesus should be an angel not a man. Satan had much more arrogance than the centurion who compared his authority to Jesus. But the centurion only did this so as to convince Jesus of the centurion's faith not to degregrate Jesus' authority in anyway. Also, doubt is bad when a person gives up, commits suicide because he doubts the goodness of the world..and because he has given up the virtue of HOPE. Vincent Van Gogh lost hope...if he had lived, he would have been a millionnaire in his own life time and could paint twenty-four seven if he wished. "Faith" is a supernatural gift from God to enable our natural minds to be able to see him. Jesus said: "Blesed are the pure of hart, for they will see God. (NOW not just in heaven). Being able to see God here and now persupposes some conditions: purity of heart. I am not speaking just about sexual purity (although it includes that); but I am talking about the humble posture of the soul that sees all the "good" that God has really placed here in ourselves, nature, our minds, our hearts, our longings, our hopes and dreams - even a man's dreams to have one and beautiful wife in a relationship that is permanent, exclusive and faithful. All that said, please understand that "purity of heart" as a prerequisite for seing God. We can ask God for the gift of purity of heart...even natural purity of heart...so that we can see Him in all things. Atheist's greatest problematic stance is that cannot see God in everything. They are more interested in seeing the bad in Mother Teresa than the good in her. Purity is the piercing of reality with the right microsope or telescope that is clear and not cloudy.
So, I cannot let go of the "shackles of faith and enter into the depth of doubt" because I see Faith as a Theological virtue - a grace from God. I see theological doubt (not scientic doubt which is good) as a volitional denial of the grace of Faith. And this "Faith" is a free gift from God. But just as Beethoven could not compose without some knowlege of music, could not hear the inspirations of God to write these marvelous works, we cannot hear the music of God in our own souls without first having the belief that God is there to give them to us.
Peace and love, Peter
Friday, February 3, 2012
Pio's Proverb 161: EVIL: Why does God allow it?
All brances of Theology are related to or touch on that one question: How can an ALL knowing God, an ALL powerful God, and an ALL loving God allow evil to exist? Only an INFINITELY CREATIVE, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving GOD can bring GOOD out of evil.
St. Thomas Aquinas says that if there are two infinite opposing things, the one will negate the other: philosphically and ontologically. So for sure God and Evil are not in any way equal. Actually they are the very opposite. They are mutually exclusive. Then how does an all knowing, all powerful and all loving God allow evil to exist at all. Did God create evil? God cannot create evil because evil is the absence of good. But Jesus said it all when He said: "Without Me you can do nothing!" Evil is the "nothing" - hole in being. Evil is the lack of being. Evil is the nothing we can do without God. God - the Creator of the cosmos - had absolutely no part in Adam and Eve's sin. He in fact warned them not to sin. Man by having a free will can choose to do the nothing: sin. But Jesus was free and Our Lady was free on this earth. They did NOT choose sin - ever!
So, just because we have free will does not mean we have to choose evil. But the Father warned Adam and Eve NOT to choose evil because evil would cause them to die - spiritually and physically. But Adam and Eve chose to listen to satan and not to God. Satan is the father of lies; and God is the Father of all the goodness in the universe. Why they listened to satan is a mystery. Satan is such an accomplished liar that he believed his own lies that he did not have to serve God but could be totally indepent of God so that saten could be his own god. Being one's own god is breaking of the First Commandment: "Thou shall love the Lord, Thy God and worship Him alone." Satan wanted to be a god and worship himself and wanted to get others to worship him, too. Satan told Jesus, "All these kingdoms of the world are mine and I will give them to you if you would bow down and worship me." Satan is very badly mistaken about who he is. He is merely a creature. The gap between a creature and the Creator is infinite! But, nonetheless, satan had to try to get Adam and Eve to do the same as he did and get them to worship himself by getting Adam and Eve to disobey God by just lying to them and presenting the eating of the fruit as a "good". But evil can never be good. Adam and Eve sinned by by wanting to decide for themselves what is "good" and "evil".
Pro-choice people do that 4,000 times a day when they kill babies in the womb so that women can decide for themselves what is "good" and "evil". That is over half the casualties of 9/11 every day. But there is no national monument to these casualties of the United States Supreme Court. But in fact, women say that they have a "right to abortion" which is not documented anywhere in American History. Roe was only granted the right to privacy not abortion.
President Obama made this statement which I heard with my own ears: "We must protect women's right to abortion1" By saying that he uttered a lie because no women have the right to kill another innocent human being. What refutes the President most powerfully is what he swore on his innaugeration to uphold: the United States Constitution that say in its 14th Amendment - which is very opposite of the evil of abortion:
"...no state shall deprive any person of the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and property without due process of law.."
So, President Obama and all Pro-choice woman say the very opposite of the U.S. Constitution and the 5th Commandment: "Thou shalt not kill!" The rights of the unborn child - little women in the case at least half of the abortions - is not granted to the child by women who say they have the right to abortion. They do not grant "liberty" nor "life" to others - but only to themselves. This inconsistency is the greatest EVIL on the planet because it kills babies in the name of women's free choice. They are free to choose for sure; but that choice is an EVIL one. President Obama commits a "social sin" which means that he makes it difficult for society to practice the virtues of protecting innocent life. Hitler did the very same social sin: he killed Jews because he felt they did not have a right to life.
But President Obama and Hitler should listen to the phrase that the Fathers of this Country put into the Constitution that we "have inalienable rights endowed by the Creator to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." "ENDOWED BY THE CREATOR" was a belief and concept and an utter convinction that came from the very hearts of the framers of the Constitution who also said: "We hold these truths to be self evident!" But these truths are not evident to the President or Pro-choice women because they promulgate and promote the "gospel of death" - that is they deny the right to life that is endowed by the Creator. It is not very interesting that President Obama in 5 different speeches when quoting the Constitution said to the nation that there are "..inalienable rights......to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness." But when he said these words quoting from the Constitution, he consistently and purposely omitted "endowed by the Creator." Evil is the absence of good. Obama with malice omitted the words "endowed by the Creator" because the "right to life" is defined by the Creator as in the very nature of man's being human and in the very Nature of God: to share His very life with us. Thus our lives - especially the littlest of humans in the womb - are SACRED to God because our lives reflect God: "Let us make man in our own image and likeness..male and female He created them." Genesis. God never created death; He never created abortion; He never created "choice" as an evil; but President Obama and Pro-choice (pro-choice to kill) have taken the gift of free will and use it to choose evil for others: 4,000 babies a day killed. The President and these women and pro-choice doctors have made their own interpretation of "right" to mean "right to abortion" - contrary to God's own Word and the words of the US Constitution. Hitler did the same: so how could God allow the President of the United States and the furer of Germany declare some select people to have no rights to life? Hitler used this phrase to kill Jews: "The final soluton!" President Obama and women who feel they have a right to abortion say: "Pro-choice". Please notice that both of these phrases sound like a "good" - satan is still at work.
And why does God allow abortion at all in the world? China has in the last 30 years aborted 400 million babies. America has since Roe v. Wade aborted 53 million babies: more than all the casualties of war in American history. Does this not bring up the question that if there is a God, then He is not all knowing, not all powerful and not all loving. Let's talk about that:
1 All knowing God:
Knowing and causing are not the same thing. I know - I believe - the sun will come up tomorrow. But I have no cause or say in it. So, God's knowledge of sin in the world - abuse of free will - does not cause sin to take place. If God were the cause of sin, He would not be God. God cannot choose evil: that would be totally a contradiction to His very nature of infinite Goodness. Infinite Good cannot have a speck of evil. If even a minutest sliver of evil were in God, then His very nature would be non-existent. But God called Him by name: "I AM WHO AM!" God is by His very nature Life, itself, and Life that in infinte and personal and communicative and sharing. "bonum est diffusivum sui" - "Goodness has a tendency to go out if itself." No evil can come from God nor be implicated in any evil. To be implicated is would mean that God is not God. God is impeccable: not capable of any sin.
2) All powerful God:
Well, then if God cannot sin and cannot be implicated in any evil, then how can His allowing of evil not implicate Him in that evil?
When God allowed evil to happen to Job, God did not send that evil but only allowed that evil to come into Job's life to bring out a greater good. Job lost his wife, children, home, farm animals and reputation because many came to taunt him by saying that Job must have done something evil and now is being punished by God. But Job said: "My vindicator lives!" But I am bringing up Job because in all of the O.T. history, he seems to have suffered the most evil. And what is more, God seems to have allowed it. Is God implicated in that evil? Remember, it was NOT God's idea to send evil into Job's life. It was satan again who did this. Satan just is insanely jealous of good people and wants to destroy them. Envy operates on the delusion that is someone who is beautiful is detroyed, then I will be the most beautiful one left. [note the evil queen in Snow White who says: "Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all." When the mirror says that Snow White is fairer than she, she then plots to kill Snow White and even becomes a hideous witch - her true self manifested - to present the poison apple of death. Even in this story, more good comes out of the story than without the witch. In all literature, the dark of evil only make the goodness of good become the brigther.] But let us get back to Job: the most perfect example ever of good bring drawn from evil. Satan tells God that Job is good - [note that satan tries to tarnish the good of Job to make satan look better: almost a type of Cain and Able] - only because God is blessing Job. But that God would allow satan to test him, then God will see that Job will only curse God. God explicitely tells satan to not kill Job but can test him. All the evil that comes to Job from satan comes from the mind of satan not God. Job is so sorely tried that he prays to die and wishes he had never been born; still Job does still praise God and does not waver in his loyalty and love of God. HOWEVER, Job does QUESTION GOD why God is allowing all this to happen? Job has not a doubt but rather a theological question that is at the very foundation of his being...and actually the very foundation of our own being down the centuries. Job is all of us...asking God "Why?"
God answers Job by taking him on a tour of the cosmos: God asks Job a question instead: "Where were you when I created the universe, when I laid the foundations of the world, when I formed the seas..." So, God - a God of Dialogue (true prayer) - answers Job's univeral question for Job and all of us with a question of His own: Where were we when God created everything: the Universe and all the life on this planet and all planets? What is God saying? God is trying to enlarge our minds and expand our thinking to encompass the totality of all His Creation - the totality of all of God's Wisdom. God does not think small and does not want us to think small. In the end, God restores Job everything more than double. So, before being tested, Job was content. But God rewards Job for his love and loyalty by restoring to Job ten times or more what he had before being tested by satan. Of course, when satan got back home with his literal tail between his legs, he "caught hell" from all his fallen angels.
In all literature, it is the dark pitted agains the light that makes for a great novel or a great evil. When I saw the first time showing of Star Wars, I was amazed at the sophistication of evil (the dark side of the force) and the great power of good (the light side of the force). The conflict between good and evil brings about a greater good. And in the end, the good so triumphs over evil that even Darth Vade, the evil father of Luke, converts to the good side of the force. Even in this saga, is good and evil equal powers? Absolutely not. Evil has within itself, its own self destruction. It is Darth Vade - who is converted to the light side of the Force by the courage and sacrifice of his son, Luke, who tells his dad that there is much good in his dad and that Luke has seen it! O now, is not this interesting: Luke faith in his dad's goodness brings out the goodness in Darth Vader who is turn throws the "the satanic-like-lord-of-the-underworld-emporer" down into the fires of hell as the lighting emits from the emporer all the way down and causes an explosion - the destruction of evil. Notice the George Lukas is a reader of the Gospels because this image of the emporer is taken directly from the words of Jesus who said: "I saw satan like lightning fall from heaven." Satan was in heaven called "lucifer" - light bearer - because he was so bright and beautiful. God made him so. But Lucifer chose to become Satan and fell from heaven still streaking across the sky. Lucifer was so bright that his light did not completely go out on the way down. But by the time he got to hell, he was the Prince of Darkness! When Judas left the last supper and went out to betray Jesus, the gospel writer says: "It was night." Yes, Darkness is the only day-time that evil exists in: darkness of mind, darkness of will, darkness of heart and darkness of faith.
Therefore, God bids us to look at the whole picture - the whole plan of salvation - the whole way that God's forgives us and brings good out of evil. The greatest evil ever done by man was to crucify the Word of God, Jesus. And how does Jesus turn around this evil? Jesus says: "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." Jesus excuses them. His shed Precious Blood buys the forgiveness and resurrection of all humans who have lived and who will live...on this planet and even on other planets we have not found yet...Jesus died for all living intelligent life - now and forever. Now that is a great good coming out of the cruicifixion. But even Jesus asks the Father: "Why have you forsaken me?" Thus Jesus become not only the new Adam but now the new Job as well. And how does God the Father answer Jesus? God the Father who said: "This is My Beloved Son, listen to Him!" answers Jesus in just 33 hours later: by raising up His Son from the dead and restoring Jesus' Kingship on this earth and in Heaven...and His Kingdom will last forever!! and ever...just as Handel's Alleluia Chorus wonderfully expresse it. This great compositon of Handel was heard by Jesus before it was composed....The angels - over a million voices strong - sang it to Jesus upon His Resurrection! When we hear that composition, we stand up because our Salvation has come!
So, in this cosmos, God the Father is like a Great Artist: He paints beautifully the Beauty He alone can see in its fullest. Our eyes cannot span the billions of years since he created the Big Bang. His finger touched the nothingness and made it somethingness. We were not there. We do not see His Infinite Wisdom and Beauty. But even the Hubble and Keppler telecopes seek to see the universe by the contrast of light and dark.
Jesus is the Light of the World and of the Universe. Without the fall of Adam and Eve, there would not have been a need for Jesus. The Word of God would have just comfortably in the Bosom of the Father with the Holy Spirit. But "God so loved the world that He sent His only begotton Son...so that whoever would believe in Him would have eternal life." God did not will or plan the original sin -- and there may be world that have never sinned -- but God's Greatest Creativity is KNOWING how to bring GOOD our of EVIL!
God is go great that in restoring the world to JUSTICE, the end state of the World will be greater and better and more beautiful than if Adam and Eve had never sinned at all. Why? Because God is Good - All knowing and All powerful and All Loving"!
3) All loving God:
If God is all knowing, all powerful and all loving, then why did He create anything at all since He knew that some of His creatures would rebel against Him and some would even choose to not love Him ..for all eternity?
Why do parents give their children tricycles and bicycles? Parent know that their kids will fall off their little bikes and get a skinned knee. Some may even break a leg. I have 6 children; and I gave them all bikes. But I did forbid my boys to buy motorcycles. Why? Because cars do not see motorcycles and motorcyclist get killed. So even parents have limits to their gifts to their kids. But the things parents give to their kids is a kind of typology for why God gives gifts to us: gifts like freedom, life, pursuit of happiness. Well, let us look at the Godspel where Jesus explains this to us: Jesus says: "If your child asks for a fish, would you give him a snake? If your child asks for an egg, would you give him a scorpian? If you who are sinful know how to give your children good gifts, how much more will Your Father give you the Holy Spirit if you ask Him." Scripture also says: "All good gifts and all perfect gifts comes down from heaven, from the Father of Lights!" Notice that God NEVER gives us a BAD gift. Unhappiness, disease, wars, murders, envy, lust, avarice - all - do not come from God. He does not give these. All those things are created by humans. God's plan was to give us paradise here until He took us home to heaven body and soul after we had learned to love and take care of one another. But we messed up! And God came down! It is called REDEMPTION.
But still, if God knew that we would mess up, why did He create intelligent life on earth. Why did He not leave it all the the dinasours who could not choose to rebel or sin? The answer is that God wanted to create that was finite but the best possible creature He could even imagine. That creature was man and woman. These creatures are so humanly perfect that they are said to have been made in the very "image and likeness of God," Himself. That is the best God could do after He created angels that do not have bodies - pure spirits. But humans have matter to them and live in a material universe. Matter is good. To be is good.
Humans are simply the most perfect creatures God could come up with. He is perfect and likes to create perfectly. If we are so perfect, then how did we fall? We freely - without coercion - fell. If we were not free to love God or not, then we would not be perfect. God has placed us in the garden of this world to choose life and Him since He was so good and kind to create us in the first place. Before we were born, say, in the Renaissance period, (1500's) where were we; and did we know we were not existing? We have no memory that we did not exist before we were in the womb. This is an example that shows that God has always known that we would exist - has always loved us from all eternity - and has loved us INTO existence. He knew all our bad choice from all eternity. He also knew how to bring good out of them and bring us home to Heaven. The Prodigal Son story told by Jesus is the most perfect example of this thought:
The boy had left home to find happiness apart from his father's care and estate. The boy gathered his share of the estate and went off to find happiness is riotous living..making new friends...loving a lot of women. But after the boy did not find happiness and was starving for peace and true joy, the lad decides to go home to his dad because he knows his dad is good and kind. The boy does not know that his father's love for him is so great that the father goes out to the road every day to see if his son is coming home or not. But one day, "the father caught sight of his son from a far way off and ran to his son, embraced and kissed him..." The father after ordering his servants to have a great party and celebration with roasting of the fatted calf, he tells the other good son who did not leave: "We had to celebrate because your brother was lost and is now found...was dead and has now come back to life." That is SO GREAT! That tell is all...how and why created both the good and prodigal son. The Father could have just had a peaceful house of servants who are good and loyal (angels)...but God the Father loves to create sons and daughter whom He loves..Even if these sons and daughers go away from Him...He will still wait and look for us. The prodigal son - after feeling the Father's embrace and kiss - would never leave home again...and would remain with the Father forever!
So, you see, The whole thing is this: It is ALL ABOUT A TRUE LOVE STORY.
It is about the Father's love for us and about our coming home to Him and loving Hiim and one another for him. Heaven will be a billion billion billion souls all love God and one another! Now that is a good ending for all God's creation: the True Love Story that God the Father is telling us..even now as the Holy Spirit speaks to us in His Word, in His grace to us, in His detonating the experiences of our lives to show us His Love. He is the Author of all our Epiphanies. (Please see Proverb #142, "Epiphany..")
And as far as those who choose not to come home: satan, his angels, and souls who do not choose God -what about them! If God is so loving and good, why doesn't he just destroy hell and bring all those spirits and souls back to Himself? Well -- given God's infinite CREATIVITY and LOVE of God, let us wait and see how He brings GOOD out of all their evil. Will He forgive them all? He would glady forgive them if they would come home. But you see, their sin is the refusal of the Holy Spirit's calling them to come home. They refuse the mercy and forgiveness of God the Father. God is still there. He's there always. He did not run away from them; they ran away from Him. He hasn't moved. He would gladly embrace and kiss them all if they would accept His love and mercy and forgiveness; but God cannot force them to come home. That would then not respect their freedom. If He forces them, then they would not be loving God. God does not treat humans like animals...keeping them on a leash. If they even now chose Him and His loving forgiveness, He would bring them home. The Father in the Prodigal Son story did not run after his son when the boy left home...but He did run to meet him after seeing coming home. The Father respects the freedom of his son both in leavening and in returning. So, when satan and his angels and bad souls do not come home and refuse the Holy Spirit's Mercy; they commit an eternal sin: the sin agaisnt the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the Love of the Father for the Son; and the Son's love for the Father. To refuse the Holy Spirit is to refuse the Love of God. These souls' and spirits' refusal of the Love of God does not make God unloving. God is all love. "God is love; and wherever there is Love, there is God." In hell, there is no love for God or anyone else; so God is not there in their hearts. But are they in God's heart? Please see my Proverb 147: "Those in hell: does God love them?" for a fuller answer. God does love them.
I remember what my own dear and sweet day said to me once: "No matter how bad things get out there in the world, no matter what trouble you may see....remember this: the door is open. You can always COME HOME!"
God is all love...all kindness...all affectionate for us. He is not to be blamed for the evil in the world. He made man free. If man were not free - and just on a leash - then man would not be like God Who is able to know and love. That is how we are in the "image and likeness of God."
Dearest Father, please send us the Holy Spirit when we leave home to find happiness apart from You. Please look for us and run to us and hug and kiss us so that we can be with You now and forever. In Jesus's Name through Mary, we humbly ask. Amen.
Peace and love,
Pio
St. Thomas Aquinas says that if there are two infinite opposing things, the one will negate the other: philosphically and ontologically. So for sure God and Evil are not in any way equal. Actually they are the very opposite. They are mutually exclusive. Then how does an all knowing, all powerful and all loving God allow evil to exist at all. Did God create evil? God cannot create evil because evil is the absence of good. But Jesus said it all when He said: "Without Me you can do nothing!" Evil is the "nothing" - hole in being. Evil is the lack of being. Evil is the nothing we can do without God. God - the Creator of the cosmos - had absolutely no part in Adam and Eve's sin. He in fact warned them not to sin. Man by having a free will can choose to do the nothing: sin. But Jesus was free and Our Lady was free on this earth. They did NOT choose sin - ever!
So, just because we have free will does not mean we have to choose evil. But the Father warned Adam and Eve NOT to choose evil because evil would cause them to die - spiritually and physically. But Adam and Eve chose to listen to satan and not to God. Satan is the father of lies; and God is the Father of all the goodness in the universe. Why they listened to satan is a mystery. Satan is such an accomplished liar that he believed his own lies that he did not have to serve God but could be totally indepent of God so that saten could be his own god. Being one's own god is breaking of the First Commandment: "Thou shall love the Lord, Thy God and worship Him alone." Satan wanted to be a god and worship himself and wanted to get others to worship him, too. Satan told Jesus, "All these kingdoms of the world are mine and I will give them to you if you would bow down and worship me." Satan is very badly mistaken about who he is. He is merely a creature. The gap between a creature and the Creator is infinite! But, nonetheless, satan had to try to get Adam and Eve to do the same as he did and get them to worship himself by getting Adam and Eve to disobey God by just lying to them and presenting the eating of the fruit as a "good". But evil can never be good. Adam and Eve sinned by by wanting to decide for themselves what is "good" and "evil".
Pro-choice people do that 4,000 times a day when they kill babies in the womb so that women can decide for themselves what is "good" and "evil". That is over half the casualties of 9/11 every day. But there is no national monument to these casualties of the United States Supreme Court. But in fact, women say that they have a "right to abortion" which is not documented anywhere in American History. Roe was only granted the right to privacy not abortion.
President Obama made this statement which I heard with my own ears: "We must protect women's right to abortion1" By saying that he uttered a lie because no women have the right to kill another innocent human being. What refutes the President most powerfully is what he swore on his innaugeration to uphold: the United States Constitution that say in its 14th Amendment - which is very opposite of the evil of abortion:
"...no state shall deprive any person of the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and property without due process of law.."
So, President Obama and all Pro-choice woman say the very opposite of the U.S. Constitution and the 5th Commandment: "Thou shalt not kill!" The rights of the unborn child - little women in the case at least half of the abortions - is not granted to the child by women who say they have the right to abortion. They do not grant "liberty" nor "life" to others - but only to themselves. This inconsistency is the greatest EVIL on the planet because it kills babies in the name of women's free choice. They are free to choose for sure; but that choice is an EVIL one. President Obama commits a "social sin" which means that he makes it difficult for society to practice the virtues of protecting innocent life. Hitler did the very same social sin: he killed Jews because he felt they did not have a right to life.
But President Obama and Hitler should listen to the phrase that the Fathers of this Country put into the Constitution that we "have inalienable rights endowed by the Creator to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." "ENDOWED BY THE CREATOR" was a belief and concept and an utter convinction that came from the very hearts of the framers of the Constitution who also said: "We hold these truths to be self evident!" But these truths are not evident to the President or Pro-choice women because they promulgate and promote the "gospel of death" - that is they deny the right to life that is endowed by the Creator. It is not very interesting that President Obama in 5 different speeches when quoting the Constitution said to the nation that there are "..inalienable rights......to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness." But when he said these words quoting from the Constitution, he consistently and purposely omitted "endowed by the Creator." Evil is the absence of good. Obama with malice omitted the words "endowed by the Creator" because the "right to life" is defined by the Creator as in the very nature of man's being human and in the very Nature of God: to share His very life with us. Thus our lives - especially the littlest of humans in the womb - are SACRED to God because our lives reflect God: "Let us make man in our own image and likeness..male and female He created them." Genesis. God never created death; He never created abortion; He never created "choice" as an evil; but President Obama and Pro-choice (pro-choice to kill) have taken the gift of free will and use it to choose evil for others: 4,000 babies a day killed. The President and these women and pro-choice doctors have made their own interpretation of "right" to mean "right to abortion" - contrary to God's own Word and the words of the US Constitution. Hitler did the same: so how could God allow the President of the United States and the furer of Germany declare some select people to have no rights to life? Hitler used this phrase to kill Jews: "The final soluton!" President Obama and women who feel they have a right to abortion say: "Pro-choice". Please notice that both of these phrases sound like a "good" - satan is still at work.
And why does God allow abortion at all in the world? China has in the last 30 years aborted 400 million babies. America has since Roe v. Wade aborted 53 million babies: more than all the casualties of war in American history. Does this not bring up the question that if there is a God, then He is not all knowing, not all powerful and not all loving. Let's talk about that:
1 All knowing God:
Knowing and causing are not the same thing. I know - I believe - the sun will come up tomorrow. But I have no cause or say in it. So, God's knowledge of sin in the world - abuse of free will - does not cause sin to take place. If God were the cause of sin, He would not be God. God cannot choose evil: that would be totally a contradiction to His very nature of infinite Goodness. Infinite Good cannot have a speck of evil. If even a minutest sliver of evil were in God, then His very nature would be non-existent. But God called Him by name: "I AM WHO AM!" God is by His very nature Life, itself, and Life that in infinte and personal and communicative and sharing. "bonum est diffusivum sui" - "Goodness has a tendency to go out if itself." No evil can come from God nor be implicated in any evil. To be implicated is would mean that God is not God. God is impeccable: not capable of any sin.
2) All powerful God:
Well, then if God cannot sin and cannot be implicated in any evil, then how can His allowing of evil not implicate Him in that evil?
When God allowed evil to happen to Job, God did not send that evil but only allowed that evil to come into Job's life to bring out a greater good. Job lost his wife, children, home, farm animals and reputation because many came to taunt him by saying that Job must have done something evil and now is being punished by God. But Job said: "My vindicator lives!" But I am bringing up Job because in all of the O.T. history, he seems to have suffered the most evil. And what is more, God seems to have allowed it. Is God implicated in that evil? Remember, it was NOT God's idea to send evil into Job's life. It was satan again who did this. Satan just is insanely jealous of good people and wants to destroy them. Envy operates on the delusion that is someone who is beautiful is detroyed, then I will be the most beautiful one left. [note the evil queen in Snow White who says: "Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all." When the mirror says that Snow White is fairer than she, she then plots to kill Snow White and even becomes a hideous witch - her true self manifested - to present the poison apple of death. Even in this story, more good comes out of the story than without the witch. In all literature, the dark of evil only make the goodness of good become the brigther.] But let us get back to Job: the most perfect example ever of good bring drawn from evil. Satan tells God that Job is good - [note that satan tries to tarnish the good of Job to make satan look better: almost a type of Cain and Able] - only because God is blessing Job. But that God would allow satan to test him, then God will see that Job will only curse God. God explicitely tells satan to not kill Job but can test him. All the evil that comes to Job from satan comes from the mind of satan not God. Job is so sorely tried that he prays to die and wishes he had never been born; still Job does still praise God and does not waver in his loyalty and love of God. HOWEVER, Job does QUESTION GOD why God is allowing all this to happen? Job has not a doubt but rather a theological question that is at the very foundation of his being...and actually the very foundation of our own being down the centuries. Job is all of us...asking God "Why?"
God answers Job by taking him on a tour of the cosmos: God asks Job a question instead: "Where were you when I created the universe, when I laid the foundations of the world, when I formed the seas..." So, God - a God of Dialogue (true prayer) - answers Job's univeral question for Job and all of us with a question of His own: Where were we when God created everything: the Universe and all the life on this planet and all planets? What is God saying? God is trying to enlarge our minds and expand our thinking to encompass the totality of all His Creation - the totality of all of God's Wisdom. God does not think small and does not want us to think small. In the end, God restores Job everything more than double. So, before being tested, Job was content. But God rewards Job for his love and loyalty by restoring to Job ten times or more what he had before being tested by satan. Of course, when satan got back home with his literal tail between his legs, he "caught hell" from all his fallen angels.
In all literature, it is the dark pitted agains the light that makes for a great novel or a great evil. When I saw the first time showing of Star Wars, I was amazed at the sophistication of evil (the dark side of the force) and the great power of good (the light side of the force). The conflict between good and evil brings about a greater good. And in the end, the good so triumphs over evil that even Darth Vade, the evil father of Luke, converts to the good side of the force. Even in this saga, is good and evil equal powers? Absolutely not. Evil has within itself, its own self destruction. It is Darth Vade - who is converted to the light side of the Force by the courage and sacrifice of his son, Luke, who tells his dad that there is much good in his dad and that Luke has seen it! O now, is not this interesting: Luke faith in his dad's goodness brings out the goodness in Darth Vader who is turn throws the "the satanic-like-lord-of-the-underworld-emporer" down into the fires of hell as the lighting emits from the emporer all the way down and causes an explosion - the destruction of evil. Notice the George Lukas is a reader of the Gospels because this image of the emporer is taken directly from the words of Jesus who said: "I saw satan like lightning fall from heaven." Satan was in heaven called "lucifer" - light bearer - because he was so bright and beautiful. God made him so. But Lucifer chose to become Satan and fell from heaven still streaking across the sky. Lucifer was so bright that his light did not completely go out on the way down. But by the time he got to hell, he was the Prince of Darkness! When Judas left the last supper and went out to betray Jesus, the gospel writer says: "It was night." Yes, Darkness is the only day-time that evil exists in: darkness of mind, darkness of will, darkness of heart and darkness of faith.
Therefore, God bids us to look at the whole picture - the whole plan of salvation - the whole way that God's forgives us and brings good out of evil. The greatest evil ever done by man was to crucify the Word of God, Jesus. And how does Jesus turn around this evil? Jesus says: "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." Jesus excuses them. His shed Precious Blood buys the forgiveness and resurrection of all humans who have lived and who will live...on this planet and even on other planets we have not found yet...Jesus died for all living intelligent life - now and forever. Now that is a great good coming out of the cruicifixion. But even Jesus asks the Father: "Why have you forsaken me?" Thus Jesus become not only the new Adam but now the new Job as well. And how does God the Father answer Jesus? God the Father who said: "This is My Beloved Son, listen to Him!" answers Jesus in just 33 hours later: by raising up His Son from the dead and restoring Jesus' Kingship on this earth and in Heaven...and His Kingdom will last forever!! and ever...just as Handel's Alleluia Chorus wonderfully expresse it. This great compositon of Handel was heard by Jesus before it was composed....The angels - over a million voices strong - sang it to Jesus upon His Resurrection! When we hear that composition, we stand up because our Salvation has come!
So, in this cosmos, God the Father is like a Great Artist: He paints beautifully the Beauty He alone can see in its fullest. Our eyes cannot span the billions of years since he created the Big Bang. His finger touched the nothingness and made it somethingness. We were not there. We do not see His Infinite Wisdom and Beauty. But even the Hubble and Keppler telecopes seek to see the universe by the contrast of light and dark.
Jesus is the Light of the World and of the Universe. Without the fall of Adam and Eve, there would not have been a need for Jesus. The Word of God would have just comfortably in the Bosom of the Father with the Holy Spirit. But "God so loved the world that He sent His only begotton Son...so that whoever would believe in Him would have eternal life." God did not will or plan the original sin -- and there may be world that have never sinned -- but God's Greatest Creativity is KNOWING how to bring GOOD our of EVIL!
God is go great that in restoring the world to JUSTICE, the end state of the World will be greater and better and more beautiful than if Adam and Eve had never sinned at all. Why? Because God is Good - All knowing and All powerful and All Loving"!
3) All loving God:
If God is all knowing, all powerful and all loving, then why did He create anything at all since He knew that some of His creatures would rebel against Him and some would even choose to not love Him ..for all eternity?
Why do parents give their children tricycles and bicycles? Parent know that their kids will fall off their little bikes and get a skinned knee. Some may even break a leg. I have 6 children; and I gave them all bikes. But I did forbid my boys to buy motorcycles. Why? Because cars do not see motorcycles and motorcyclist get killed. So even parents have limits to their gifts to their kids. But the things parents give to their kids is a kind of typology for why God gives gifts to us: gifts like freedom, life, pursuit of happiness. Well, let us look at the Godspel where Jesus explains this to us: Jesus says: "If your child asks for a fish, would you give him a snake? If your child asks for an egg, would you give him a scorpian? If you who are sinful know how to give your children good gifts, how much more will Your Father give you the Holy Spirit if you ask Him." Scripture also says: "All good gifts and all perfect gifts comes down from heaven, from the Father of Lights!" Notice that God NEVER gives us a BAD gift. Unhappiness, disease, wars, murders, envy, lust, avarice - all - do not come from God. He does not give these. All those things are created by humans. God's plan was to give us paradise here until He took us home to heaven body and soul after we had learned to love and take care of one another. But we messed up! And God came down! It is called REDEMPTION.
But still, if God knew that we would mess up, why did He create intelligent life on earth. Why did He not leave it all the the dinasours who could not choose to rebel or sin? The answer is that God wanted to create that was finite but the best possible creature He could even imagine. That creature was man and woman. These creatures are so humanly perfect that they are said to have been made in the very "image and likeness of God," Himself. That is the best God could do after He created angels that do not have bodies - pure spirits. But humans have matter to them and live in a material universe. Matter is good. To be is good.
Humans are simply the most perfect creatures God could come up with. He is perfect and likes to create perfectly. If we are so perfect, then how did we fall? We freely - without coercion - fell. If we were not free to love God or not, then we would not be perfect. God has placed us in the garden of this world to choose life and Him since He was so good and kind to create us in the first place. Before we were born, say, in the Renaissance period, (1500's) where were we; and did we know we were not existing? We have no memory that we did not exist before we were in the womb. This is an example that shows that God has always known that we would exist - has always loved us from all eternity - and has loved us INTO existence. He knew all our bad choice from all eternity. He also knew how to bring good out of them and bring us home to Heaven. The Prodigal Son story told by Jesus is the most perfect example of this thought:
The boy had left home to find happiness apart from his father's care and estate. The boy gathered his share of the estate and went off to find happiness is riotous living..making new friends...loving a lot of women. But after the boy did not find happiness and was starving for peace and true joy, the lad decides to go home to his dad because he knows his dad is good and kind. The boy does not know that his father's love for him is so great that the father goes out to the road every day to see if his son is coming home or not. But one day, "the father caught sight of his son from a far way off and ran to his son, embraced and kissed him..." The father after ordering his servants to have a great party and celebration with roasting of the fatted calf, he tells the other good son who did not leave: "We had to celebrate because your brother was lost and is now found...was dead and has now come back to life." That is SO GREAT! That tell is all...how and why created both the good and prodigal son. The Father could have just had a peaceful house of servants who are good and loyal (angels)...but God the Father loves to create sons and daughter whom He loves..Even if these sons and daughers go away from Him...He will still wait and look for us. The prodigal son - after feeling the Father's embrace and kiss - would never leave home again...and would remain with the Father forever!
So, you see, The whole thing is this: It is ALL ABOUT A TRUE LOVE STORY.
It is about the Father's love for us and about our coming home to Him and loving Hiim and one another for him. Heaven will be a billion billion billion souls all love God and one another! Now that is a good ending for all God's creation: the True Love Story that God the Father is telling us..even now as the Holy Spirit speaks to us in His Word, in His grace to us, in His detonating the experiences of our lives to show us His Love. He is the Author of all our Epiphanies. (Please see Proverb #142, "Epiphany..")
And as far as those who choose not to come home: satan, his angels, and souls who do not choose God -what about them! If God is so loving and good, why doesn't he just destroy hell and bring all those spirits and souls back to Himself? Well -- given God's infinite CREATIVITY and LOVE of God, let us wait and see how He brings GOOD out of all their evil. Will He forgive them all? He would glady forgive them if they would come home. But you see, their sin is the refusal of the Holy Spirit's calling them to come home. They refuse the mercy and forgiveness of God the Father. God is still there. He's there always. He did not run away from them; they ran away from Him. He hasn't moved. He would gladly embrace and kiss them all if they would accept His love and mercy and forgiveness; but God cannot force them to come home. That would then not respect their freedom. If He forces them, then they would not be loving God. God does not treat humans like animals...keeping them on a leash. If they even now chose Him and His loving forgiveness, He would bring them home. The Father in the Prodigal Son story did not run after his son when the boy left home...but He did run to meet him after seeing coming home. The Father respects the freedom of his son both in leavening and in returning. So, when satan and his angels and bad souls do not come home and refuse the Holy Spirit's Mercy; they commit an eternal sin: the sin agaisnt the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the Love of the Father for the Son; and the Son's love for the Father. To refuse the Holy Spirit is to refuse the Love of God. These souls' and spirits' refusal of the Love of God does not make God unloving. God is all love. "God is love; and wherever there is Love, there is God." In hell, there is no love for God or anyone else; so God is not there in their hearts. But are they in God's heart? Please see my Proverb 147: "Those in hell: does God love them?" for a fuller answer. God does love them.
I remember what my own dear and sweet day said to me once: "No matter how bad things get out there in the world, no matter what trouble you may see....remember this: the door is open. You can always COME HOME!"
God is all love...all kindness...all affectionate for us. He is not to be blamed for the evil in the world. He made man free. If man were not free - and just on a leash - then man would not be like God Who is able to know and love. That is how we are in the "image and likeness of God."
Dearest Father, please send us the Holy Spirit when we leave home to find happiness apart from You. Please look for us and run to us and hug and kiss us so that we can be with You now and forever. In Jesus's Name through Mary, we humbly ask. Amen.
Peace and love,
Pio
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Pio's Proverb 160: Sacred Tradition: God-made or man-made?
When the Protestant Reformation swept Europe, the foundation of this reform was "Sola Scriptura" - that the sole source of Faith is Holy Scripture; whereas the Catholic Church has two sources of Faith: Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition. But why did Jesus say to the Pharisees against their man-made traditon of "Corban" (a precept that says one could dismiss taking care of one's parents by telling them "corban") : "You negate the Scriptures (4th commandment) by your human tradition..." Thus "tradition" can be a bad or a good or a neutral tradition. Jesus was not condemning "tradition" ontologically: in itself. Rather He was condemning BAD tradition that contradicts the Holy Word of God!
Where are there some GOOD Traditions?
1) St. Paul said: "Hold fast to the tradtions you have received.."..and also: "Keep away from believers who are living in ideleness and not accourding to the tradtion that they received from us. ..For you yourselves know how to out ought to immitate us.." Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians 2.15.
2) When Peter and Paul had a difference of opinion as to what God required of Gentiles coming into the Fatih, Peter wanted them to become Jews first and be circumsized. Paul did not think this burden should be placed on converting Gentiles. This matter was NOT decided by the Old Testament or even or the oral Gospels but rather by the First Council of Jerusalem attended by Peter, Paul, James and John. The Holy Spirit rendered that Paul was correct not to impose on the Gentiles burdens they could not carry.
3) St. Paul said to Timothy to "stir into the flame the Spirit betowed upon you by the laying of hand.." St. Paul had ordained Timothy. This is tradition at its best.
4) But the most important tradition was the one that Jesus gave to His disciples to celebrate the Holy Eucharist. Paul says how to do this and what to avoid. Paul said: "Is not this bread the Body of Christ and the cup we drink that Blood of Christ....whoever eats and drinks unworthily is guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord...and that is why there are some who are sick among you." Paul dictated what tradition was even to details like upraiding those who come and eat and drink food they bring and neglect those who have no food with them. St. Paul is thus concerned with tradtion and proper liturgy.
5) Those on the Road to Emmaeus later "recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread." Jesus celebrated the Eucharist after His resurrection. Notice that Jesus, Himself, observed the tradition that He, Himself, had initiated and instituted. But many Prostestant churches have done away with this tradition of the Sacraments because of their belief of "Sola Scriptura." Yes, these believers do understand what Jesus did at the last supper; but they ignore the centuries of the celebration of the Eucharist that has come down to us by Sacred Tradition.
Let us look at some comments by converts to Catholicism who were once Prostestants or Evangelicals, or Methodists who saw the inconsistency of Calvanism and Protestantism as to their understanding of Sacred Tradtion which turned about to be what really attracted them into the Catholic Church:
1) Scott Hahn, Professor of Franciscan University said: As a Presbyterian "I had a tradition of not believing in Tradition." He reconized that even as his church rejected the notion of tradition, still his congregation had many traditions: one of them being to not believe in Catholic Tradition. But who said that he should not believe in Catholic Tradition? It was the Presbyterian tradition that taught him this. That inconsistency led him with other things to come into embracing the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church. Also, his wife Kimberly really is the one who first evangelized Scott to see the truth of the Sacred Tradition of the Church even though that was not her original purpose. As a Protestant theologian, Kimberly did a paper on contracepition - was it Christian or not? Her research and quotes from Pope Paul VI convinced her of the absolute truth of the Catholic doctrine on the birth control and contraception. She was the first in this marriage to see the truth of Catholic Tradition that eventually led them both into the Catholic Church.
2) All Protestants - without really admitting and facing it - accept one important Tradition of the Catholic Church: acceptance of the 27 books of the New Testament as canons of Sacred Scripture. The table of contents in front of all Prostestant bibles is not inspired by the Sacred Scripture. These 27 books were placed there by Catholic Sacred Tradition. You will not find in Sacred Scripture which books should be part of the inclusion of these books into the Sacred Scripture.
3) Jews who convert to Catholicsm have no problem with accepting the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church because of their own Sacred Tradition being the very foundation of Catholic Tradition. As one said: "When the Word became flesh, the Word became a Jewish man." So, Judaism and Catholicism are united in the God-man, Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of all the O.T. Prophets and the Law.
4) Evangelicals are not really Protestants because they are not protesting anything. But Evangelicals looked at Catholic Tradition as "barnacles" on the ship of the Church that Jesus launced 2000 years ago.
Martin Luther and Calvin tried to scrape these barnacles off and threw out the Sacraments, although Lutherans do have Baptism and Eucharist; but gone are the other five Sacraments and the Tabernacles that keep Jesus with us day and night. Calvin's Predestination and Luther's "by faith alone" are direct rections of Sacred Tradition that do not teach either one. James even says: "Not by faith alone.." but Luther called that remark the "gospel of straw". Sacred Scripture says that "I will that all men be saved and that none be lost." Calvin said that some are saved by God's gratutious grace and all the others go their own way to hell. The traditions of Luther and Calvin are in direct and mutually exclusive opposition to the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church..which St. Paul says we should all hold on to firmly.
5) Part of Catholic Sacred Tradition are all the cathedrals, art and writings of the Church Fathers. In fact Scott Hahn has made an interesting diagram. He place a triangle with the Holy Spirit in the center as the creator of the three points of the triangle: Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church (the interpreter of Sacred Scriture. Prostestans are seeing more and more that there needs to be a body of infallible interpretation of Sacred Scripure which was alway known and practiced in the Catholic Church.) When I saw St. Peters in Rome the first time as I stepped off the bus and looked around to see the dome of St. Peter, goose bumps appeared on my arms. I am an artist..and came to see the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel after it was cleaned. I have been Roman Catholic and still reacted this way. What of those who are not Catholic? When they see St. Peters, many want to be a part of this Church, the Catholic Church that has such magnificent art and architecture. In the Vatican Museum, I almost "OD'ed" on Beauty. And Truth is very much conveyed to us by Beauty. Many come to believe in the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church by it sheer Beauty of its Art and Liturgy.
6) Afer St. Francis Xavier came to Japan in 1549 and baptized thousands with his own hand, there broke out a great persecution of Catholics in China under Hiteoshi in 1597. There were once 100,000 Christians in Japan; but all were forced to go underground because Hiteroshi killed so many. Among those martyred were 17 who were priests, laypersons, two 13 year old boys and one 12 year old boy. These condemned were taken from town to town and publicably beaten. One lad, Thomas Kashchi, wrote his mother that "Dad and I will be going to heaven tomorrow. Do not be afraid...and do not place my brothers in the homes of pagans for school." Thus Paul Miki who strove to become a Jesuit priest for 11 years preached a beautiful sermon from the cross saying that he was "being killed for teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ." After 200 years of persecution, the Catholics came out of hiding. When the French missionaries were allowed into Japan, they asked these Catholics what they believed in. They gave the Tradition that they honor Mary, Mother of God and that many were living celebate lives like the priests. And that they believed in the Sacrament of Marriage. How did these Traditions survive 200 years without a priest? Like the baton that runners in a relay race pass on to the next runner, the Tradition of the Church was passed on. Such runners do not pass on a new baton but the one and same baton! Regarding the honoring of the martyrs of Japan - which is in itself a Tradition -Blessed John Paul II visited this "Hill of Martyrs" and re-named it "Resurrection Hill." All the lives of the Saints are part of the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church.
7) Even Winston Churchhill believed - as an Episcopalian of the Church of England - in tradition, sacred and secular. He planned the liturgy of his own funeral liturgy. He asked that after the ceremony that the "taps" would be played to siginfy the end of the day..the end of his life. Then after that was comleted that the trumpet would play loudly the "revelry" - the miltary rousing wake up call - to signify his new life and resurrection.
Therefore, there are many natural and cultural traditions that the Family of Man has developed. Tradion is a good word and never was condemned by Jesus Christ ontologically. He did condemn bad traditions that Pharisees and Scribes promulgated. But Jesus was the Word of God come down to us to give us Sacred Tradition including the 7 Sacraments and the Magisterium ("Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earht is loosed in heaven."..And "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive they will be forgiven; whose sins you retain, they will be retained." And He said: "Go into the whole world baptizing in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." And especially, "This is My Body and This is My Blood...Whoever eats My Body and drinks My Blood, I will raise him up on the last day."...and "Do this in memory of Me."
IN conclusion, it is Jesus Christ, the Living Head of the Catholic Church who has established His Church: "Tu est Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam." Do you notice that Jesus said "Church" in the singular...not 50,000 denominations. The Catholic Church is not a denomination. These denominations came to be because of not having the Magisterium of the Catholic Church to teach the infallible interpretation of Sacred Scripture. It is the Catholic Church that Jesus founded upon His chosen "rock", "Peter". And all the 230 popes since St. Peter testify to the Tradition that Jesus, Himself, started!
Let us pray:
Father, in Heaven, please grant to all our dear non-Catholic brothers and sisters to see the value and treasure of Catholic Sacred Tradition as well as Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium. Lead them all to come "Home" to the Catholic Church so as to be themselves part of the "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church" - to be "one with us" as Christ's members and with Christ as our Head.
Please grant the prayer of Your Own Son: "Father, that they all may be one, just as You and I are one..that they may be one in us." Amen in Jesus' Name..through Mary, Mother of the Church.
Peace and love to All our brothers and sisters in Christ. Amen.
Pio
Where are there some GOOD Traditions?
1) St. Paul said: "Hold fast to the tradtions you have received.."..and also: "Keep away from believers who are living in ideleness and not accourding to the tradtion that they received from us. ..For you yourselves know how to out ought to immitate us.." Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians 2.15.
2) When Peter and Paul had a difference of opinion as to what God required of Gentiles coming into the Fatih, Peter wanted them to become Jews first and be circumsized. Paul did not think this burden should be placed on converting Gentiles. This matter was NOT decided by the Old Testament or even or the oral Gospels but rather by the First Council of Jerusalem attended by Peter, Paul, James and John. The Holy Spirit rendered that Paul was correct not to impose on the Gentiles burdens they could not carry.
3) St. Paul said to Timothy to "stir into the flame the Spirit betowed upon you by the laying of hand.." St. Paul had ordained Timothy. This is tradition at its best.
4) But the most important tradition was the one that Jesus gave to His disciples to celebrate the Holy Eucharist. Paul says how to do this and what to avoid. Paul said: "Is not this bread the Body of Christ and the cup we drink that Blood of Christ....whoever eats and drinks unworthily is guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord...and that is why there are some who are sick among you." Paul dictated what tradition was even to details like upraiding those who come and eat and drink food they bring and neglect those who have no food with them. St. Paul is thus concerned with tradtion and proper liturgy.
5) Those on the Road to Emmaeus later "recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread." Jesus celebrated the Eucharist after His resurrection. Notice that Jesus, Himself, observed the tradition that He, Himself, had initiated and instituted. But many Prostestant churches have done away with this tradition of the Sacraments because of their belief of "Sola Scriptura." Yes, these believers do understand what Jesus did at the last supper; but they ignore the centuries of the celebration of the Eucharist that has come down to us by Sacred Tradition.
Let us look at some comments by converts to Catholicism who were once Prostestants or Evangelicals, or Methodists who saw the inconsistency of Calvanism and Protestantism as to their understanding of Sacred Tradtion which turned about to be what really attracted them into the Catholic Church:
1) Scott Hahn, Professor of Franciscan University said: As a Presbyterian "I had a tradition of not believing in Tradition." He reconized that even as his church rejected the notion of tradition, still his congregation had many traditions: one of them being to not believe in Catholic Tradition. But who said that he should not believe in Catholic Tradition? It was the Presbyterian tradition that taught him this. That inconsistency led him with other things to come into embracing the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church. Also, his wife Kimberly really is the one who first evangelized Scott to see the truth of the Sacred Tradition of the Church even though that was not her original purpose. As a Protestant theologian, Kimberly did a paper on contracepition - was it Christian or not? Her research and quotes from Pope Paul VI convinced her of the absolute truth of the Catholic doctrine on the birth control and contraception. She was the first in this marriage to see the truth of Catholic Tradition that eventually led them both into the Catholic Church.
2) All Protestants - without really admitting and facing it - accept one important Tradition of the Catholic Church: acceptance of the 27 books of the New Testament as canons of Sacred Scripture. The table of contents in front of all Prostestant bibles is not inspired by the Sacred Scripture. These 27 books were placed there by Catholic Sacred Tradition. You will not find in Sacred Scripture which books should be part of the inclusion of these books into the Sacred Scripture.
3) Jews who convert to Catholicsm have no problem with accepting the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church because of their own Sacred Tradition being the very foundation of Catholic Tradition. As one said: "When the Word became flesh, the Word became a Jewish man." So, Judaism and Catholicism are united in the God-man, Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of all the O.T. Prophets and the Law.
4) Evangelicals are not really Protestants because they are not protesting anything. But Evangelicals looked at Catholic Tradition as "barnacles" on the ship of the Church that Jesus launced 2000 years ago.
Martin Luther and Calvin tried to scrape these barnacles off and threw out the Sacraments, although Lutherans do have Baptism and Eucharist; but gone are the other five Sacraments and the Tabernacles that keep Jesus with us day and night. Calvin's Predestination and Luther's "by faith alone" are direct rections of Sacred Tradition that do not teach either one. James even says: "Not by faith alone.." but Luther called that remark the "gospel of straw". Sacred Scripture says that "I will that all men be saved and that none be lost." Calvin said that some are saved by God's gratutious grace and all the others go their own way to hell. The traditions of Luther and Calvin are in direct and mutually exclusive opposition to the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church..which St. Paul says we should all hold on to firmly.
5) Part of Catholic Sacred Tradition are all the cathedrals, art and writings of the Church Fathers. In fact Scott Hahn has made an interesting diagram. He place a triangle with the Holy Spirit in the center as the creator of the three points of the triangle: Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church (the interpreter of Sacred Scriture. Prostestans are seeing more and more that there needs to be a body of infallible interpretation of Sacred Scripure which was alway known and practiced in the Catholic Church.) When I saw St. Peters in Rome the first time as I stepped off the bus and looked around to see the dome of St. Peter, goose bumps appeared on my arms. I am an artist..and came to see the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel after it was cleaned. I have been Roman Catholic and still reacted this way. What of those who are not Catholic? When they see St. Peters, many want to be a part of this Church, the Catholic Church that has such magnificent art and architecture. In the Vatican Museum, I almost "OD'ed" on Beauty. And Truth is very much conveyed to us by Beauty. Many come to believe in the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church by it sheer Beauty of its Art and Liturgy.
6) Afer St. Francis Xavier came to Japan in 1549 and baptized thousands with his own hand, there broke out a great persecution of Catholics in China under Hiteoshi in 1597. There were once 100,000 Christians in Japan; but all were forced to go underground because Hiteroshi killed so many. Among those martyred were 17 who were priests, laypersons, two 13 year old boys and one 12 year old boy. These condemned were taken from town to town and publicably beaten. One lad, Thomas Kashchi, wrote his mother that "Dad and I will be going to heaven tomorrow. Do not be afraid...and do not place my brothers in the homes of pagans for school." Thus Paul Miki who strove to become a Jesuit priest for 11 years preached a beautiful sermon from the cross saying that he was "being killed for teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ." After 200 years of persecution, the Catholics came out of hiding. When the French missionaries were allowed into Japan, they asked these Catholics what they believed in. They gave the Tradition that they honor Mary, Mother of God and that many were living celebate lives like the priests. And that they believed in the Sacrament of Marriage. How did these Traditions survive 200 years without a priest? Like the baton that runners in a relay race pass on to the next runner, the Tradition of the Church was passed on. Such runners do not pass on a new baton but the one and same baton! Regarding the honoring of the martyrs of Japan - which is in itself a Tradition -Blessed John Paul II visited this "Hill of Martyrs" and re-named it "Resurrection Hill." All the lives of the Saints are part of the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church.
7) Even Winston Churchhill believed - as an Episcopalian of the Church of England - in tradition, sacred and secular. He planned the liturgy of his own funeral liturgy. He asked that after the ceremony that the "taps" would be played to siginfy the end of the day..the end of his life. Then after that was comleted that the trumpet would play loudly the "revelry" - the miltary rousing wake up call - to signify his new life and resurrection.
Therefore, there are many natural and cultural traditions that the Family of Man has developed. Tradion is a good word and never was condemned by Jesus Christ ontologically. He did condemn bad traditions that Pharisees and Scribes promulgated. But Jesus was the Word of God come down to us to give us Sacred Tradition including the 7 Sacraments and the Magisterium ("Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earht is loosed in heaven."..And "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive they will be forgiven; whose sins you retain, they will be retained." And He said: "Go into the whole world baptizing in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." And especially, "This is My Body and This is My Blood...Whoever eats My Body and drinks My Blood, I will raise him up on the last day."...and "Do this in memory of Me."
IN conclusion, it is Jesus Christ, the Living Head of the Catholic Church who has established His Church: "Tu est Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam." Do you notice that Jesus said "Church" in the singular...not 50,000 denominations. The Catholic Church is not a denomination. These denominations came to be because of not having the Magisterium of the Catholic Church to teach the infallible interpretation of Sacred Scripture. It is the Catholic Church that Jesus founded upon His chosen "rock", "Peter". And all the 230 popes since St. Peter testify to the Tradition that Jesus, Himself, started!
Let us pray:
Father, in Heaven, please grant to all our dear non-Catholic brothers and sisters to see the value and treasure of Catholic Sacred Tradition as well as Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium. Lead them all to come "Home" to the Catholic Church so as to be themselves part of the "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church" - to be "one with us" as Christ's members and with Christ as our Head.
Please grant the prayer of Your Own Son: "Father, that they all may be one, just as You and I are one..that they may be one in us." Amen in Jesus' Name..through Mary, Mother of the Church.
Peace and love to All our brothers and sisters in Christ. Amen.
Pio
Pio's Proverb 159: "Ninety-nine-year old, Jim!"
In Kroger's yesterday, I met a man looking into a cooler for some special dinners that he could easily fix for himself. We got talking. He was Catholic and full of vim and vigor. He looked healthy, moved with ease and was a good - almost plump weight. I finally had to ask him how old he was. He said: "I was here when Taft was president. I am 99 years old. I will be 100 next December!" Notice the great confidence that he WILL be here next December. I believe he will well beyond 100. He did not have any real wrinkles in his face. I believe that it is only sin that ages us. Those who really live close to God do not show their age. Father John Hardon who was near 80 when I met him looked ---- ageless. He had not even one wrinkle in his face. He is now up for Canonization in the Catholic Church. Well, this man was good...good down deep. He was just as lively as a 10-ear old. He was confident that his body would do whatever command he gave it. He was spontaneous, out going and upbeat. I asked him his name: "Jim." he said. Then I asked him to pose so I could take a picture of him with my cell phone. But he engaged another man in conversation who was passing by and came over to listen to us. Jim did not pose for a picture because he would not stop his life he was living to take a snap-shot of his moment. He was an ongoing-savoring-of-the-moment-kind-of-guy. I did take his picture; and when I saw it later that evening, I could see him so engaged in life. He did not slow down or artificially stop it. He was a dynamo of life and intensely engaged in his task at hand. This if very heathly mentally. Do you notice why Doctors have in their waiting room a large fish tank? Do you suppose they like fish? No..they may not even be fond of fish at all; they put these fish out there for their patients because fish - in their erratic movements - cause the viewers to have to come into the moment. Only in the moment is where God can be found; where life can be found. Those who live in the "Bonanza world" (in the past) or in the "UFO world" (the future) are not living in the "Present world" - the NOW - where all life is contained. Those who live in the Present can pray to a God who is in the Present: our presence to God's Presence. That is sane theology.
But if you notice, Jim related to this man who came over. Jim did not think tha my taking a picture of him was part of his living experience. He did not mind if I wanted to interrupt my life by trying to capture a moment and print it out. No...but Jim did not for a moment let go of his lived moment! I asked Jim what was his secret for living so long. He answered spontaneously as if a "prophet of life": "Get Up in the morning! (His inflection meant that we should really GET UP and get going). He then said: "Get up and exercise!" He was saying for us to get into the moment of the new day! Greet the new day with a sacrifice of prayer by being alive to greet the new day gratefully. I could see that this man was a grateful man who had no plans or time for dying. He is living life....while so many are just dying by refusing to live in the very moment what God is giving them.
Just please realize...as I was looking at Jim, the thought occured to me that I was looking into the face of Abraham who begot Isaac, his son, at the age of 99. Now I can understand how it was that Abraham could indeed beget a son at 99. It looked like Jim could do the same. After Sarah died, Abraham married again and had 6 more sons at the age of 123.
What is the real secret of longevity? I believe it is in living a good and prayerful life, greeting the new day with gratitude and love for God who has decided to give us this new day. It was a conscious decision of God to create us and to give us this new day. It is knowing that we ARE because of God and that with God we shall always be!
Father, please continue to give us not only our daily bread but our daily day to eat the Bread from Heaven: the Holy Eucharist, to have the Holy Spirit, to have the sunshine of this day which is your loving and warm greeting and hug for us. Grant us to live every day you plan for us....and one day take us as You did Enoch - You just took him...You loved him so much that You just hugged him into eternity. Please do that for us, Father. "With You, Father, I shall always be" because I belong to You. I am Yours and You are mine, too. Thank You, Father, for this new day. Bless us all as You are blessing Jim with long life and peace and vigor and a lively Spirit of Joy. In Jesus' Name we pray through Mary whom You have called to heaven, body and soul. Amen.
Love and gratitude,
Pio
But if you notice, Jim related to this man who came over. Jim did not think tha my taking a picture of him was part of his living experience. He did not mind if I wanted to interrupt my life by trying to capture a moment and print it out. No...but Jim did not for a moment let go of his lived moment! I asked Jim what was his secret for living so long. He answered spontaneously as if a "prophet of life": "Get Up in the morning! (His inflection meant that we should really GET UP and get going). He then said: "Get up and exercise!" He was saying for us to get into the moment of the new day! Greet the new day with a sacrifice of prayer by being alive to greet the new day gratefully. I could see that this man was a grateful man who had no plans or time for dying. He is living life....while so many are just dying by refusing to live in the very moment what God is giving them.
Just please realize...as I was looking at Jim, the thought occured to me that I was looking into the face of Abraham who begot Isaac, his son, at the age of 99. Now I can understand how it was that Abraham could indeed beget a son at 99. It looked like Jim could do the same. After Sarah died, Abraham married again and had 6 more sons at the age of 123.
What is the real secret of longevity? I believe it is in living a good and prayerful life, greeting the new day with gratitude and love for God who has decided to give us this new day. It was a conscious decision of God to create us and to give us this new day. It is knowing that we ARE because of God and that with God we shall always be!
Father, please continue to give us not only our daily bread but our daily day to eat the Bread from Heaven: the Holy Eucharist, to have the Holy Spirit, to have the sunshine of this day which is your loving and warm greeting and hug for us. Grant us to live every day you plan for us....and one day take us as You did Enoch - You just took him...You loved him so much that You just hugged him into eternity. Please do that for us, Father. "With You, Father, I shall always be" because I belong to You. I am Yours and You are mine, too. Thank You, Father, for this new day. Bless us all as You are blessing Jim with long life and peace and vigor and a lively Spirit of Joy. In Jesus' Name we pray through Mary whom You have called to heaven, body and soul. Amen.
Love and gratitude,
Pio
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