Category Archives: Eternal Life

Eternal Life

Fear of Death can lead to Life

16 Monday Mar 2015

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I have had many failed attempts at making regular posts to my blog. There are many reasons for this, which amount to a pile of excuses. Recently I have been thinking that a regular post of my morning homily might be possible for the to keep up with. But I am going to try to keep it at 200 words or less so that I can actually get it done without spending a great deal of time on it. As a result, I may not explain things as well as I would like. So if you have questions about what I have written it would be an excellent opportunity to post a comment and I will answer.

Today’s Gospel reading for Mass can be found here. It is the story of the healing of the Official’s son.

The distance between Capernaum and Cana was approximately 20-25 miles. And it must be remembered that this distance had to be covered without benefit of modern conveniences such as buses, trains, planes, or cars. Therefore it would have taken a great deal of time for the Official in the Gospel to come to where Jesus was. We all know why he went to see Jesus – to ask for healing of his son. What we need to ask, though, is what motivated him to go to Jesus? His motivation, it seems to me, must have been the fear of losing his son.

Most parents would have a similar motivation for saving their children and other loved ones. That is why people spend billions and billions of dollars every year seeking cures to their various diseases. Therefore, if a doctor or miracle worker was able to guarantee healing for any disease then the line to see that person would never end.

And yet, healing for every spiritual infirmity is offered to us by Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of Penance. So why don’t the lines for Confession stretch out the door and down the street of every Catholic parish? It seems to me that one answer could be a lack of fear. That being, the fear of losing our soul for all eternity. Fear of losing his son drove the Official in today’s to Jesus. In a similar manner a fear of eternal death should drive us to Christ in the confessional. With a word He was able to heal the Official’s son and with a word – I absolve you – He is able to bring healing to whatever ails our souls. It is true that the fear of Hell is not the perfect contrition that God wants from us, but at least it is a start.

…and the Word became Flesh

25 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in Eternal Life, Salvation, Sermons

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Sermon for the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ

December 25, 2014

What is a word? This is not a question we would normally ask ourselves because we take words for granted. When we use words to communicate with someone we assume that they will understand what we mean. But with today’s Gospel reading we must come to an understanding of what a word really is if we are to understand what St. John means when he tells us, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

So, what is a word? To answer this question let us begin by saying what it is not. A word is not just letters on a page. And it is not merely a sound coming from someone’s mouth. The written and spoken words that we use can only be understood if the person we are trying to communicate with speaks the same language. For instance, if English is your language then you know what I mean when I say the word ‘dog’. But if your language is Chinese, then the same word would be only a meaningless sound. The word ‘dog’ still means the same thing but without knowledge of the language it is unintelligible. From this we can see that a word is a sign that means something specific. Or as St. John of Damascus describes it: a word is “the messenger of intelligence.” Therefore we can say that words are interior concepts which come from our mind to convey knowledge to another person.

But what does this tell us about the Word of God? First of all, take notice of what we heard from the letter to the Hebrews, “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets.” After sin entered the world and man lost his original connection to God, which was really his ability to communicate directly with God, God did not leave mankind without hope. The letter to the Hebrews tells us that God was always trying to communicate to us through various prophets in order to bring mankind back to a correct knowledge of Himself. He did this because He originally created us to know and love Him. And out of God’s infinite love for us, He desired to bring us back to a proper knowledge and love of Him. But there was a problem because the messages of the prophets He sent could only bring us so far in our understanding of God; and why, because there was an infinite gap between the language of man and a complete knowledge of God. There is, however, one Word that can close that gap: the Infinite Word of God.

But there is a language barrier between God and ourselves. How could we, who are finite, possibly understand a direct message from the One who is Infinite? Because of the infinite gap between man’s word and the knowledge of God only the Infinite Word could bring God’s message to us. But, in order for the message to be intelligible, He first had to become Man. And that is the very reason that the Word became Flesh and dwelt amongst us. And if, as I said earlier, words are concepts which come from our mind to convey knowledge to another, then the Word that comes to us from God brings us true knowledge of God and bridges that infinite gap that came about through the sin of Adam.

But even when the Infinite Word became Flesh, He had to speak to us through our own limited and finite language. And that was simply insufficient for us to truly understand the message of salvation that He came to deliver. Therefore, He spoke to us not only in word, but in deed. And the culmination of all that He said and did among us is found in His ultimate action, which speaks louder than any human word: His Eternal Word spoken to us from the Cross.

God has spoken His saving Word to us and if we want to understand the message it contains then we must learn the language of the Cross. Because if we don’t learn this language, then this day, the day of the birth of our Lord, and every other festival of the Church becomes just meaningless noise. On this day, and every day, God is trying to communicate salvation to us through His eternal Word. But if we do not understand what it is that He is saying then the message will not be effective. If you want to receive this message and come to fully know and love God and receive that salvation He is offering then learn the language that He is speaking.

How, then, do we learn this language of the Cross? There are only three simple things we need to know to learn this language, although it does take a lifetime to master it: they are dying to self, loving God above all things, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. This is the language of the Cross; this is the language of the Word made Flesh who was born for us on Christmas Day.

The Difference between Need and Want

05 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by in Eternal Life, Free Will, God's Will, Pope Francis, Salvation, Submission to God, Thought for the Day

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People…have become used to an image of God handed down to them as very conerned, even jealous, about receiving the honor and glory due him, as though he somehow needed this for his own sake. But this is a serious misunderstanding, both philosophically and religiously. God does not need anything from us to maintain his own happiness. His only wish is to share his own happiness with us as richly as possible. But on our part, for our own sake, we must honor and glorify him as the best way to turn ourselves toward him and render us open and attentive to receive his gifts.

The One and the Many, W. Norris Clarke, S.J. (p.238)

I will write only briefly in order to explain my title. As Fr. Clarke expresses so well above, God does not need us for His own happiness. But, out of His infinite love, He sincerely wants us to be with Him. And of course to be with God is what we were created for – it is our end, our goal. But in order to reach that goal we must turn away from our selves and turn towards Him. “We must honor and glorify him” and the only way to do that is by willingly doing as He has asked us to do. And what is that ultimately? We see the answer in the words spoken by God’s own Son, “not my will, but thine, be done.” (Luke 22:42)

On Loving God and Our Neighbor

27 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by in Catholic Obligations, Eternal Life, Forgiveness, Loving our Neighbor, Salvation, Sermons, Theosis

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Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

October 26, 2014

 

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” These words of our Savior, which we have just heard, are repeated at this parish everyday at every Anglican Use Mass. It is very good for us to hear these words at every Mass so that we are constantly reminded of our need to put God first by loving Him above all things; but, when something becomes so familiar to us we can develop a tendency to ignore its true meaning. What does it mean to love God with your entire being? This is a very serious question to which we must have the correct answer so that we can rightly order our lives toward God. But in addition, without the right understanding for the love of God we will not know how to keep the second of our Lord’s commands: to love our neighbor as ourselves. So, what does it mean to love God with all your heart, soul and mind? Before looking for the answer I want to address modern man’s take on this question.

 

In our secular and pluralistic society, modern man asks a similar but altogether different question. Instead of asking how to rightly love God, modern society demands an answer to the question “Why should we love God, if there is one? What has He ever done for us?” And even we as Catholics, and who claim to love God, don’t always prove it. Too often in our speech we say we love God, but in our actions towards Him we show a profound indifference. We let our lives get in the way of loving God by saying to ourselves – I just don’t have time go to Mass this Sunday, or to pray, or go to adoration, or to do some work of mercy. By so doing we functionally become agnostics because through our actions we ask the same question that our modern society constantly asks – why should we love God? Continue reading →

The Deafness of Indifference

22 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by in Catholic Obligations, Eternal Life, Sermons, Theosis

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Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity

September 21, 2014

There is one theme of today’s Gospel reading that is readily apparent: those who work in the Lord’s vineyard will all receive the same pay – that being eternal life. But it seems to me that there is a second, less obvious theme, which is what I want to discuss today.

The first thing to notice is that the owner of the vineyard goes out at the first part of the day to hire workers for his vineyard. Next, notice that he goes back at the third hour and sees others “standing idle in the market place” who he hires and sends into the vineyard. Then at the sixth and ninth hours the owner returns yet again and finds more workers who he hires and sends into his vineyard. Finally, at the eleventh hour, the last hour before the end of the day, the owner returns once again to the market place and finds others just standing around. He demands of them, “Why do you stand here idle all day?” And they respond, “Because no one has hired us.”

It is at this point in the story that you can feel the tension, which has been building throughout the parable, reach its culmination. Here it seems the owner could have said with a sense of exasperation, “What do you mean by saying that no one has hired you?! I have come to the market place four other times looking for workers but you were too lazy to take any notice.”

But, even though these words were not spoken by the owner, they do seem to be implied by what he does say next, “You go in the vineyard too.” In order to understand what he is really saying we must understand the grammar of this sentence. First notice that the owner does not say ‘please’. And there is a reason for this: in the Greek the word used for ‘you go’ is an imperative. In effect, he is telling all those who are still standing around at the eleventh hour to get out there and do something! I would say it is not unlike when a parent has told their children to clean their rooms multiple times and then finally has to command them to do it. But even then, as we all know, children can be disobedient.

And what is the meaning of this secondary theme of the parable? How are we to understand it? First of all, it is obvious that the owner of the vineyard is God. And the workers in the vineyard are those who have received God’s call and responded to it by doing the work they have been hired to do. As for those in the market place, they represent the rest of mankind that has not yet responded to the call of God: that being those who have never heard the Gospel, or those who have heard it and rejected it. And the day in which the work is to be done represents our lives. By breaking the day up into the various hours our Lord is showing us that God is continually calling us to go out and do the work that He has for us to do. He is constantly pleading with us to not be idle. It is this sense of urgency that is reinforced by our Lord’s use of the imperative “You go into the vineyard too.” But, we must ask this question: why is there such a sense of urgency?

To answer this question we must look to what happened “when evening came” in the parable. The evening represents the end of this life that will come to each and every one of us. In regards to the end of this life, the Catechism tells us that “death lends urgency to our lives” and that “remembering our mortality helps us realize that we have only a limited time in which to bring our lives to fulfillment.” It is this ‘bringing of our lives to fulfillment’ which is the reason that God is continually and tirelessly calling us into His vineyard to work. And this ‘work’ that He has given us to do is nothing less than preparing ourselves, and others through evangelization, for life everlasting. This work is accomplished through receiving the Sacraments, obeying the precepts and teachings of the Church, performing the spiritual and corporeal works of mercy, avoiding evil and doing good; in short, the work God has put before us is that of allowing ourselves to be transformed into the image of His Son. And this can only be accomplished if we heed God’s call, go out into the vineyard, and fulfill the purpose that He has for our lives.

But there is an alternative outcome which this parable does not address, but is addressed by many other parables. We are not told in this parable what happens to those who never responded to God’s call. What about those who just stood around the market place all day doing nothing? The owner of the vineyard will tell them, “Get out of my sight – you are not worthy of my generosity. All day I have called to you and you have not responded. But now, the day is over and there is no more work that can be done in order to receive what I was ready to give you. You have made your choice and it cannot be unmade.” If this sounds harsh then remember the parable of the sheep and the goats, or the parable of the wheat and the tares, or many other of our Lord’s parables. There will come a day for us when it is too late to accept what God is offering to us.

One of the main duties of the clergy is to share with God in this calling of people to go out into the vineyard and work. Therefore, I implore you to hear me: God has a unique calling for you, something that no one else can do in quite the same way. And that is why He is continually calling to us, shouting to us, and trying to break through the deafness of our indifference. This life does not last forever, but God does give each of us a lifetime to choose to follow Him. We cannot wait until the last hour is over because then it will be too late. Again hear the words of our Lord today, “You go into the vineyard.”

Hail Mary…

13 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by in Eternal Life, Loving our Neighbor, Salvation

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Just a few moments ago, as I was preparing to write, the bells for the Angelus started to ring. The Angelus has been a part of my life going back to the Episcopal seminary I attended. It was there that three times a day the bell would ring and everyone, no matter what they were doing, would stop and remember the Incarnation of Jesus beginning with the words, “The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary; and she conceived by the Holy Ghost.” And that angel was, of course, the Archangel Gabriel. And so it seemed to me very Providential today that the Angelus would ring out just as I was preparing to write about the Archangel Gabriel.

Specifically, my purpose today is to make an important point in regards to my last post. That being said, we must ask how does the ‘religion of peace’ relate to the Archangel Gabriel? Well, I would say that he does not relate in the least to Islam, which I will explain below. But Islam, on the other hand, has something else to say in regards to Gabriel.

Before we get to the Muslim belief on Gabriel, let us recap the Christian understanding. Gabriel appeared to the Blessed Virgin Mary and announced to her the coming of the Son of God, and that she was to be His mother. Mary accepted this very special vocation from God by agreeing to God’s plan and she conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Old Testament prophesied about this event and the New Testament consistently expresses that Jesus, the Son of Mary, was and truly is the Son of God. Even Jesus Himself confirms this in the Gospels. And all of this was announced by the Archangel Gabriel.

Now to Islam: Muslims believe that it was the Archangel Gabriel that appeared Muhammad and revealed to him Islam. They believe that it was Gabriel that dictated the Koran for Muhammed to right down. But, the Koran says that even though Jesus was indeed born to the Virgin Mary, He was only a prophet and not God.

Therefore we are left with two religions claiming contradictory things about the same angelic being. Common sense dictates that it is not possible that Gabriel came to Mary announcing the birth of God's Son and also came to Muhammad saying that Jesus was not God's Son. There is only one option: one of the religions is true and the other is a lie. As a Catholic priest I am sure you know with which religion I side.

Now this isn’t to say I don’t believe an angel appeared to Muhammad. It is entirely possible that an angel did appear to him. But, we must remember that there are two camps of angels: those who chose to do God’s will and those who did not. The angels that serve God would not say anything contradictory to the Truth; in other words, they would never lie. And so Gabriel could not have appeared to both Mary and Muhammad. But, there are a group of angels which would have no qualms whatsoever about lying. In regards to the leader of these angels Jesus said, “he is a liar and the father of lies.” This would be none other than Satan.

This is the reason that I called Islam an evil religion in my last post. It is a religion that is based on a lie that says that Jesus is not the Son of God. But, and this is very important, notice that I said it is the religion that is evil – not the people within the religion, at least not all of them. Yes, there are many within Islam that have done terrible, awful, and evil things, but that doesn’t change the fact that all Muslims, Christians, Jews, and everyone else on this planet were made in the image of God and Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for all of them on the Cross. He desires that all be saved. Therefore, let us remember that Muslims live within a lie and then do what we can to show them the Truth. And let us not hate them like so many of them hate us. Instead, let us pray for their eternal souls remembering that we too need prayers for our own.

 

St. Gregory the Great

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Catholic Church, Christian Unity, Eternal Life, Loving our Neighbor, Pope Benedict XVI, Saints, Salvation

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St. Gregory the Great and St. Augustine of Canterbury

Perhaps you have heard this story before but not perhaps from St. Bede the Venerable. This passage starts on page 86 of the pdf, which is numbered 74 in the text of the book. The whole book can be found here for free.

Nor must we pass by in silence the story of the blessed Gregory, handed down to us by the tradition of our ancestors, which explains his earnest care for the salvation of our nation. It is said that one day, when some merchants had lately arrived at Rome, many things were exposed for sale in the market place, and much people resorted thither to buy: Gregory himself went with the rest, and saw among other wares some boys put up for sale, of fair complexion, with pleasing countenances, and very beautiful hair. When he beheld them, he asked, it is said, from what region or country they were brought? and was told, from the island of Britain, and that the inhabitants were like that in appearance. He again inquired whether those islanders were Christians, or still involved in the errors of paganism, and was informed that they were pagans. Then fetching a deep sigh from the bottom of his heart, “Alas! what pity,” said he, “that the author of darkness should own men of such fair countenances; and that with such grace of outward form, their minds should be void of inward grace. He therefore again asked, what was the name of that nation? and was answered, that they were called Angles. “Right,” said he, “for they have an angelic face, and it is meet that such should be co-heirs with the Angels in heaven. What is the name of the province from which they are brought?” It was replied, that the natives of that province were called Deiri. (Note: Southern Northumbria) “Truly are they Deira,” said he, “saved from wrath, and called to the mercy of Christ. How is the king of that called?” They told him his name was Aelli;’ and he, playing upon the name, said, “Allelujah, the praise of God the Creator must be sung in those parts.”

Then he went to the bishop of the Roman Apostolic see (for he was not himself then made pope), and entreated him to send some ministers of the Word into Britain to the nation of the English, that it might be converted to Christ by them; declaring himself ready to carry out that work with the help of God, if the Apostolic Pope should think fit to have it done. But not being then able to perform this task, because, though the Pope was willing to grant his request, yet the citizens of Rome could not be brought to consent that he should depart so far from the city, as soon as he was himself made Pope, he carried out the long-desired work, sending, indeed, other preachers, but himself by his exhortations and prayers helping the preaching to bear fruit. This account, which we have received from a past generation, we have thought fit to insert in our Ecclesiastical History.

The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, St. Bede

I have always thought this to be a wonderful story. I suppose the main reason I find this story so intriguing and inspiring is because it led to the salvation of the English people, which is very important for me as an Anglican convert to the Catholic Faith. But of course there would be no ‘Anglican’ if St. Gregory had not first sent St. Augustine, which eventually led to Anglicanism after Henry VIII. So it is very appropriate that as Gregory sent Augustine to preach the Catholic Faith to the people and bring them into the one Fold of Christ, so also Benedict XVI published Anglicanorum coetibus to bring the lost sheep of Anglicanism back into the one Fold originally proclaimed by Augustine.

But there is another reason I am bringing up this story today. Notice what happens when Gregory sees the Angles being sold in the marketplace. His immediate and primary concern is not to see the slaves freed from their physical chains that hold them down. Instead, he is focused on another slavery that is far worse – that of being pagans, of being completely and hopelessly lost without a knowledge of Christ. It was the chains that enslaved their souls that he sought to free them from because it is those which have eternal consequences.

Many people today though have it completely backwards. They might see physical chains of some sort, some form of ‘social justice’ that needs to be performed, and through mere sentiment they seek to put right the perceived wrong. But of the spiritual situation of those in need they could not care less. This mindset is at least understandable in relief work done for the needy through various non-sectarian agencies. But when this is the attitude of those within the Church it makes no sense whatsoever!

Our Lord died to bring eternal, not temporal, salvation to mankind. This isn’t to say that we should not be concerned with the physical needs of our suffering brothers and sisters. We should – in fact our Lord demands it of us. But, we must have our priorities straight and remember that the help that others need most desparately, more than anything else, is not ‘justice’, whether it be social or otherwise. Instead what they need is mercy – the mercy that we can only receive through Christ’s redemption that He won for us on the Cross. St. Gregory understood this and we, as a Church that can see pagans of all kinds surrounding us, need to understand it.

Is Hell a ‘Good’ Thing?

21 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by in Eternal Life, Theodicy

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The main purpose of today's post is as a sort of note to myself for future reference. Due to the fact that part of what I am writing about is found (in English) only on the internet this seemed like the best place to make a note of it. But in addition to it being a note to myself, it is also interesting what the two people (Stratford Caldecott and Don Gabriele Amorth) have to say about hell.

In am nearing the end of Stratford Caldecott's wonderful book The Radiance of Being. Yesterday, I finished reading the chapter titled Time, Eternity, Hell. Basically this chapter has to do with how evil is possible even though God is all good, why mankind sins (and why the angels sinned), and the Christian teaching of eternal punishment in hell for those who reject God. Needless to say this is a difficult topic to tackle in one chapter. But like the rest of the book, the author had some very interesting insights that he deduced from his own reading of several other authors about the subject. While discussing something from the Catholic theologian von Balthasar he writes,

Hell is a Trinitarian event because everything that is created, hell not excepted, must have its archetype in the eternal Principle.

The Radiance of Being, p.246

Due to the fact that I do not understand the author's ideas well enough it would be very difficult for me to explain what he is trying to say here in the context of the rest of the chapter. But really what he 'means' in this passage (and the chapter) is not what I wanted to dispute. My dispute comes from his apparent presupposition that hell was created directly by God as a place of punishment.

Before moving on to what Don Gabriele Amorth has to say I will give my own understanding. I could not find anything in the Catechism stating whether or not God directly created hell. And (to me) it doesn't really make sense to say that He created hell because hell is not a good thing and we know that God, being all Good, only makes things that are good. In other words, only good can come from God. My understanding is that hell is the place, or non-place, from which God has withdrawn His presence completely so that it is not really a place that was 'created' at all.

But, on the other hand, nothing can exist without God willing it. Therefore, perhaps hell is a realm that was orginially created good by God, but then, like those who inhabit hell, it was twisted and perverted by sin. Then, after it was distorted by sin and the damned started to inhabit it, God removed Himself completely from that realm. Therefore, it is the 'place' for those who have definitively rejected God – a 'place' completely devoid of God or anything that is good.

This idea–that of complete separation from God–is supported by the Catechism in the few sections that it contains about hell. In §1033 it tells us, “This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called 'hell.'” In §1034 it quotes the words of our Lord from Matthew 25:41, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!” In §1035 it states that the “chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God.” And finally in §1861 we are told if mortal sin “is not redeemed by repentance and God's forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ's kingdom and the eternal death of hell.” But on the question of whether or not it was created by God–either directly as a place of punishment or something that was originally good and then twisted–the Catechism appears to be silent. (Unless I am overlooking something which is quite possible.)

Lastly, I want to quote what Don Gabriele Amorth has to say about the subject. But first a little information about Fr. Amorth–he is the chief exorcist of the Diocese of Rome and has been an exorcist for many years. The interview located here is where I found the following quote. (Here he is discussing the priest who trained him.)

Was Fr. Candido ironic even with the devil?

I want to tell you about one very important episode to help you understand a truth. You need to know that when there’s a case of diabolical possession, there is a dialogue between the exorcist and the devil. Satan is a great liar, but sometimes the Lord obliges him to tell the truth. Once Fr. Candido was liberating a person after many exorcisms and with his typical irony he told the devil: “Go away for the Lord has created a nice warm home for you, he has prepared a little house for you where you won’t suffer from the cold”. However, the devil interrupted him and replied: “You don’t know anything”.

What did he mean?

When the devil interrupts with a saying like this, it means that God has obliged him to tell the truth. And this time it was extremely important. The faithful often ask me: “But how is it possible that God created Hell, why did he think of a place of suffering?”. And so that time the devil responded to the provocations of Fr. Candido by revealing an important truth about Hell: “It was not Him, God, who created Hell! It was us. He hadn’t even thought of it!” Therefore in the plan of God’s creation the existence of Hell had not been contemplated. The demons created it! During exorcisms, I have also often asked the devil: “Did you create Hell?”. And his response has always been the same: “We all cooperated”.

This seems to shed some light on the subject with the exception that the Church teaches that the devil cannot create anything. Only God can create. Of course, in a certain sense man can 'create' things–artwork, poetry, literature, etc.–but only by using that which God has already created. And of course man can take those good things and twist them for evil purposes. And that seems to be the only explanation for what the devil says in the above quote: the demons took something that was good and 'redecorated' to their own hideous liking.

(There is one other possible explanation for hell which I mention here parenthetically. I suppose hell could be considered 'good' in the following way. God is completely good and God's justice is a part of what makes up the good of who He is. Punishment for the condemned is a part of justice (although I can't find anything in the Catechism to confirm this). Therefore, perhaps the punishment of hell is a good from God's point of view. Although, it is not a good I want to partake of.)

Freedom and Happiness

06 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in Eternal Life, Free Will, God's Will, Salvation, Sermons

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Sermon for the Third Sunday after Trinity

July 6, 2014

Two day ago we celebrated the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was on that day 238 years ago that the founders of this country declared their independence from a tyrannical government that tried to choke the air of freedom out of the people of this land. The founders of this country understood that mankind must be free and so they broke away from that oppressive government at the risk of their own lives. But, in considering this freedom that they won for us and that we now enjoy, we come up against a very important question – what does this freedom give us the “freedom” to do?

The reason that we must ask this question is because our country now suffers from a very distorted view of what freedom is. For example, it is the rule of law in this land that women have the “freedom” to abort their children and it is increasingly becoming the law that people have the “freedom” to “marry” someone of the same gender. But are we ever really free to do such immoral acts, even it if is legal? Both of these wrong-headed notions of freedom – and others – come from the fact that the ‘idea of freedom’ in this country has become one of the freedom to do whatever we wish – that there are no universal moral standards by which to measure what we should or should not do. In other words, there is prevalent today a disordered way of thinking, which for many people is subconscious, that says there is no real way to determine right from wrong and that anyone who tries to do so is to be labeled a narrow-minded and archaic hate-monger. And it is this disordered thinking that leads even faithful churchgoers to say things like this, “Well, I do not believe that such and such is right; but if someone else wants to do it then who am I to say that they shouldn’t?” This attitude is – quite simply – wrong and, therefore, we must ask why this type of distorted thinking is so prevalent within our society?

To begin to answer this we must first acknowledge that mankind wants to be happy. And since I have made reference to the 4th of July we can of course remind ourselves that the Declaration of Independence says we have the right to pursue happiness. In addition, we should also remember that God Himself wants us to be happy. But, without a correct understanding of what will and what will not make us happy, many people fall into the trap of chasing this or that ‘thing’ thinking that it is the thing that will make them happy. It starts when we are children when we think to ourselves, “If only I could have that toy or that piece of candy, then I would be happy.” And then throughout the rest of our lives it really does not change that much. There are many adults that still pursue various things they think will make them happy – if only I could have that man or woman to be my spouse, if only I had that job, house, car, boat, home theater, vacation, etc., then I would be really and truly happy. But in the end none of these things can satisfy us because we were not created to pursue them as our ultimate goal. To be sure, God did create good things for us to enjoy but we can only really enjoy them if we are willing to be without them.

But why is it that these good things can make us so unhappy once we have obtained them? It is because we have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, that we have been created by God and for God – He is our ultimate goal – and if we put anything He has created as the center and ultimate goal of our life then we can never be truly happy. To say it another way, we need to understand and live our lives in accordance with the fact that the primary reason for our existence is to know and love God. With this in mind we can now understand how it is that we should use the freedom that we enjoy in this country.

If it is God who has created us, then it is He who knows what is best for us. And He hasn’t left us without guidance in this matter. Our Lord Jesus Christ has revealed to us the Way to happiness with God. We heard Jesus say today, “no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” We, as Catholics, know and believe that Jesus is the revelation of all that we need to know in order to be truly happy. The freedom that God Himself has given to us and that we enjoy in this country can only rightly be used in the pursuit of our ultimate end: to know and to love God. True, God gave us free will and we can, if we wish, choose to do that which is wrong. But if we misuse our freedom in such a way then we will not, and in fact, we cannot be happy. Our freedom and our happiness rests in God alone. And until we – as individuals and as a nation – understand and accept that fact then we can never truly be happy or free.

Freedom – but to do what?

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in Eternal Life, Free Will, God's Will, Thought for the Day

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Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1731-1732

In this time when freedom means to most people the freedom to do whatever they want, we would do well to consider the Church's teaching on the matter. Yes, we have free will to choose between good and evil but we must never forget that there is good and evil to choose between. Many people in our society want to do away with any idea that there is sin – that there is good and evil – in order that they can pursure whatever sinful inclination they may have without remorse. But this is not possible. If we want to be truly free and to be happy then we must use our freedom to live in accordance with the will of God. After all, He made us, He knows and wants what is best for us, and if we follow Him then we will be happy for all of eternity.