~ SO ANYWAY, is it true that the great divide in Christianity is between “Just The Bible” groups and “all those human traditions” churches?
As even Luther had to admit (he who invented the 5 Solas), the idea of Sola Scriptura (The Bible Alone) quickly became SOLO Scriptura, as the radical “reformation” and countless sects, groups, split-off preachers and a doctrinal & Biblical chaos ensued. EACH ONE (as today) proclaimed themselves as the true interpreters of the Bible, including those who deny that “Sola Scriptura does not mean that Scripture is the only authority.”
Ask each Christian group what “This is my body” means, or “Those whom you forgive are forgiven in heaven”, or any other contested point of post AD 1500s interpretation of the Bible. My question is always “By what (final) authority?” Pretending that the protestant groups don’t have their own replacement magisteria & interpretations, “Just The Bible“? Misinformed & possibly disingenuous.
In 1600s Scotland, the Calvinists engaged in the brutal civil war against King and non-Covenanters cried “Jesus and No Quarter“, interpreting their opposition (especially Scots Anglicans, or Scots & Irish Catholics) as not just wrong, but evil– Amalekites, Canaanites, Babylonish sub-humans to be arrested, mistreated, executed, and exterminated at will.
@SqueakySqueakSqueak — Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”
What things? How many? Some? A few?
ALL includes redeeming/ making new and FULFILLING (Remember the pagan Wise Men) all things which may be redeemed. Art, music, architecture, culture, writing, poetry, literature, urban planning, education, medicine, public health.. ALL of it.
When the pagans of Europe were first evangelized, the preachers didn’t come and start wrecking and changing and condemning things. They took what was, and redeemed it, and gave it a totally new meaning in Christ.
So Germanic pagans sacrificed people on or under trees at the Winter Solstice (Dec 21-22). Do you start yelling at them and telling them how wrong & stupid they are?
The missionaries said: you know of blood sacrifice.. I will tell you of the One Sacrifice Once for All, and His name was Jesus. You put a precious thing under the tree to satisfy the gods? I will tell you of the Wise Men who were led by a star to Holy Bethlehem, where the Holy God-Man from heaven was born, sent from the Father to save us all. You have a holy place? God’s Son Jesus has come to make us holy, by obeying and serving Him, who died upon the Cross and Rose Again to give us eternal life. Let us remove your wooden idols, and put up a wooden cross, that we may glorify Him.
I must insist that there’s no such thing as “Pagan Cooties” which stick to everything pagans ever said or did, unless you’re literally talking a place of human sacrifice, magic, or the like. Pagans used knives.. shoes.. words.. fire.. buildings.. they ate food, they sang songs and told stories.. are these all forever poisoned by pagan cooties? Or else is Jesus Christ the Lord of All so weak and flawed that He cannot redeem all the things, and make all things new? ALL.
And contrary to your comment, I am a Christian, a Pureblood, and remain unconvinced by your rhetoric.
~ SO THERE I AM in early May 1995, on stage at the 1945 VE Day event for the entire province, in front of 1500 veterans, family, and guests.. only to realize I’d left my carefully crafted sermon… AT HOME, 45 minutes away. [BRAIN SPAZZ!]
Breathe!.. think!.. I normally wrote out my sermons as I’d speak them, if not for my moderate stage-fright. No time for that.
I start writing it out on a spare piece of paper, hoping the service I helped compose & the other observances will take a few minutes… Phew!
One of the most awkward but most rewarding moments ever, for a young first-time parish minister, proud to represent my grand uncles, my great uncle Gren who died in WW2, and my Grandfather, who served in Burma. Together with the men & women in front of the stage, I refused to fail them all, as they did not fail us.
Current national misleader (and Remembrance Day avoider) Trudeau & his petty minions do not represent or speak for me, or for so many families of veterans, who boldly say, down the years “WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.” Do it.
God gave me enough to preach as I’d intended that day, and I’ve tried to honour the memory of my own family veterans long years since. I also let the vets have their pick of hymns for local Remembrance Day services, without fussing too hard, as some clergy did back then.
When you’re a baby-Christian, verses like the one of Jesus on the cross crying out in Aramaic “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” can really unsettle you. “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” But how can the man Jesus, one person with God’s Incarnate Son, be forsaken by… Himself?!
Here’s The Thing
Maybe Jesus isn’t divine?
Maybe he was divine before he was made incarnate by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and then again after He rose again?
What is that about, verse, anyway?
OK, let’s back up. Way up.
After His crucifixion, death, and resurrection, the risen Jesus speaks with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus:
“Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” [Luke 24:44]
That is, the teaching of Jesus is that He is the true subject and the fulfillment of the whole of Israel’s history, her longing in the Prophets, and her Scriptures and holy writings. Even the ancient hymns called Psalms are prophetic, pointing to Him; they are His prayer-book, revealing the inner life & meaning of His mission, death, and resurrection.
So when we find out that “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?” is a quotation from the Psalms (22), it helps to understand that Psalm verse– spoken from the cross– is a window into the mind & heart of the dying King Jesus, Saviour of humanity.
The sufferings are real, even down to Jesus feeling that He is somehow cut off, forsaken, in the darkness with no obvious light. Although He is the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world: yet that black avalanche of everything in us that cuts us off from God and one another falls on Him.
After the sorrowful verses, this Psalm is a great dawning glow of hope, faith, and trust in the Lord shines through Psalm 22. After the suffering comes joy. After death is hope. God hears the cry of His Son, the suffering servant (read Isaiah 53), and does not abandon or reject Him, or us as found in Him.
Feelings Are Not Facts
So Jesus felt cut off from God, yet quotes the Psalm to say what His crucifixion & death means, to preach from the Cross, to share with us what it is like to feel far from God.
But feelings are not facts. Jesus was still the man divine, the only-begotten Son incarnate in the man Jesus Christ, one person & two natures. The Word made flesh. God in a man like us.
In some crisis we might say “It’s totally hopeless! We’re doomed!” even as our help is about to arrive, unexpectedly, out of the blue, at the very last minute, or otherwise in time to save & help us. In that case, how truly accurate were our feelings, versus the facts? Feelings must follow facts, else we get lost in a swamp of ever-shifting mirages.
Therefore, to wrongly imagine that “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?” somehow means that Jesus isn’t God (or some other complicated bad idea) shows an ignorance of Jesus, who He was, what he lived & taught, and how the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures & holy writings were ultimately about Him.
There is no deep where God is not, be the night never so dark. There is no fear or sorrow or sense of abandonment which Jesus our High Priest has not taken into Himself, and burnt up in the fire of infinite love in the offering of Himself to atone for our sins, once and for all.
And beyond that forsakenness, even beyond what seems to earthly a final ending of death, Jesus has conquered sin, and death, and hell, and shared with us the eternal & holy life of God, that we might rejoice in Him who is the Lord of the living and the dead, who went on a head to prepare a place for us, that where He is, we might be also, and that as He is in God the Father, we may be in God the Son, sharing the eternal life & Joy of the blessed Trinity in all the saints, in the unity of God the Holy Spirit, forever in heaven.
~ NEVER. NOT once. A crying baby during a sermon is aggravating, but those parents made the effort, and they are welcome, too.
Once in a while I’d pause the preachment, and quip
“Looks like someone wants to preach!”
or
“I think we have a new choir member in the house!”
or
“You dislike the sermon? Me too!”
Parents– comforted. Irritated people– reminded that we want young people. Congregation– babies belong, too.
Telling an infant to shut up in a public setting is an unspeakably rude, imperious, snarky & humiliating thing to do to the parents. But we know that such Communist characters as Mr. Sanders only love “The People” in abstract.. actual humans are an inconvenience to their high & lonely destiny, and their glorious plans.
FFS, Bern, who do you REALLY think you are? Oh, right… rich & ill-tempered future dictator of USSRmerica. Whole crowds will be swept off to the gulags, including all the babies counter-revolutionary enough to interfere with the oracles of pure truth which drop from your thin & angry lips. You show us in this little instance who you really are under the faux-folksy wise “Grampa Bern” shtick by which you fool.. very few.
Contrast this with Jesus, the incarnate Word Himself, who said “Let the little children come unto me, and forbid them not. For such are of the Kingdom of God.” ~
“For to this end Christ died, and lived again, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” Romans 14. 8, 9.
+
~ FOR MODERN MEN & WOMEN, losing any sense of Death, Judgment, Heaven Or Hell leads inevitably & directly to man acting as a self-judging mini-god. That leads to warfare, supremacism, mercilessness, and getting away with things. Thence madness, violence, lies, and 2018.
As I’ve been reading about our Western cultural elites, I’m shocked/ not shocked by what the rich & powerful do behind the scenes. Many ordinary people likewise.
But what if there IS a right & wrong? Good & evil? What if we are accountable? Much of ordinary human life is all about distracting us, crushing silence and unsettling thoughts and questions.
What if all desires are known, and no secrets truly hidden? What if our old unrepented forgotten hidden sins have not just dissolved with time? What if the evil whispers shall be shouted from the rooftops in That Day?
What if God is as the Church has taught, and we are a few missed heartbeats & breaths from standing naked & defenceless before His perfect infinite goodness.. and love?
Pray this day for those who have gone before us through the veil, especially our friends & enemies, family & benefactors, and all those who died with nobody to pray for them and with them.
O FATHER of all, we pray to thee for those whom we love but see no longer. Grant them thy peace; and in thy loving wisdom and almighty power, work in them the good purpose of thy perfect will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
REST eternal grant unto him, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon him. Amen.
“If only we kick out the Romans”, thought the Zealots, “then a perfect Kingdom on earth will come to pass.”
~ SURELY BY NOW GOD has had enough of our corrupt governments and perverse churches and fallen ways? Isn’t a revolution in order?
Fire them all, burn it down, start over! We’ll do better! May the last aristocrat be strangled with the entrails of the last priest, etc., and so on.
Utopia Now!.. Somehow..
Such has been the modern spirit since the 1700s, imagining utopia, by our own hands, and according to our own wisdom. This blood-dimmed tide is still claiming victims in many places on earth even as you read this.
A softer and stupider version of this revolution is pushed in our schools, and many parts of our overgrown government, not to mention in the leadership of many churches and sects. The revolution seems like a good idea, until (1) you actually see what it entails, and (2) you recall that it’s the same bent and failing human nature out of which perfection and utopia will come, (3) “They”, the horrible ones with power, are the same as most of us, if we had their power & opportunities. Salvation comes not via good intentions.
What then? Shall we be enamoured of the old evils, or favour new ones?
~ MY BELOVED Canada has been– longer than the Trudeaus, but sped up by them both– in a long slow fall away from our founding principles, towards every excess, bad idea, and anti-Christian notion on the books.
This sermon is a lovely thunderbolt of warning to awaken, fight, and work with God to stand on guard, keep our land glorious and free. Or fall.
Canada Day only falls on Sunday once every seven years. That’s an opportunity for an upbeat homily about our beautiful country and our many blessings. But not this year—because we need to take a look at some things that are happening in Canada and what they mean for Christians.
I know you’d rather hear a homily celebrating Canada than criticizing it; so would I. But a friend sent me a quotation this week attributed to Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who was not only America’s best preacher but a 20th century prophet. When I read it, I knew I couldn’t deliver a feel-good sermon today.
Long quotations don’t make good homilies, but I’m asking you to listen carefully to these prophetic words:
Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the times in which it lives.
Men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because they have no standard outside of themselves by which to measure their times. If there is no fixed concept of justice, how shall men know it is violated?
Only those who live by faith really know what is happening in the world; the great masses without faith are unconscious of the destructive processes going on because they have lost the vision of the heights from which they have fallen.
I don’t think one Canadian in ten thinks we have a problem in this country. And I do think that most of those who recognize the destructive processes at work are people of faith.
But even men and women of faith often fail to understand the heights from which Canadian society has tumbled, because our fall from Christian morality has happened in slow motion—not from one cause but from many.
We could analyze numerous social shifts that are opposed to Gospel values—for that matter, opposed to the values shared by most major religions—but I want to point out three of the most recent.
I
The first, of course, is euthanasia. Disguised by the Orwellian name “Medical Assistance in Dying,” the legalization of assisted suicide threatens the vulnerable, draws health care workers in to a moral snare, and creates an entirely false idea of compassion. It should not be necessary to remind people at Sunday Mass that assisted suicide can never be the right choice, but our first reading puts it simply: “God does not delight in the death of the living.”
Life is a good in and of itself— God “created all things so that they might exist.” All life is precious; its value is not measured by the so-called “quality of life” or anything of that sort.
We were created for eternity, and it is in eternity that the quality of life will more than compensate for the struggles some people encounter at the end of their life on earth.
Before turning to the second social shift—I should really call these legal shifts—I want to give you another reason for this somber homily on what should be a joyful day. The reason is simply this: law-abiding people, people like us, tend to think that if something’s legal is must be right. Law not only reflects social values, it creates them.
Archbishop Carney once told me that chicken wasn’t subject to meat rationing during the Second World War. As a result, Catholics—who were not allowed to eat meat on Friday—started to eat chicken, since if the government said it wasn’t meat, it must be true.
II
The second shift is the redefinition of tolerance. Canadians pride themselves on tolerance. American comedians on the late-night shows make jokes about how nice we are. But my dictionary says that to tolerate means “to allow the existence or occurrence of something, without interference.”
The courts have redefined tolerance in numerous decisions interfering with the freedom of people of faith. The most recent may be the most serious: the Supreme Court of Canada has effectively allowed the legal profession to be closed to graduates of a law school where students must commit to live according to the moral norms that were once universally held by all Christians. In the words of the two dissenting judges, the Court has turned the protective shield of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms into a sword.
And there’s not much doubt which group of Canadians that sword will slash.
III
The third source of sadness on this Canada Day may surprise you, since it’s hardly as grave as the euthanasia or Trinity Western decisions. But as I told you, I’m focusing on the most recent social shifts, and this one’s also current—the court-ordered legalization of marijuana, now enshrined in law.
Just last week, the Canadian bishops issued a statement reminding Catholics of the harm that will flow from increased marijuana use. They cite the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Psychiatric Association, and the Canadian Paediatric Society as pointing out how “the use of cannabis is linked to addictions, depression, anxiety, psychosis, damage to brain development, and lung problems such as asthma and emphysema.”
Although I didn’t use marijuana, I grew up hearing that it was not addictive. That was a lie or at least a huge mistake in terms of what we know now. The bishops rely on modern science and the modern understanding of addictions when they say marijuana “is an addictive substance that will have disastrous effects” for many people.
There was a time when a Canadian who didn’t break the law would be following God’s law in most matters. Sadly, tragically, that time has passed. Only the Creator’s law can guide us now to the good life, and to the righteousness that leads to life eternal.
It is truer than ever that
“Only those who live by faith really know what is happening in the world; the great masses without faith are unconscious of the destructive processes going on because they have lost the vision of the heights from which they have fallen.”
So on this Canada Day, let’s not only pray for the nation, but lift up our eyes to the lofty vision of creation and the human person that is our heritage as Canadians and Christians.
Posted by Msgr. Gregory Smith
Mother Canada weeps for her children, and their future.
— Do you or someone you know & care for suffer from ‘The Black Dog’?
— Does that addict or drunk or sad co-worker suffer from depression? Do you?
— Do you “helpfully” offer endless free advice and ‘fixes’ because you find dealing with depression really awkward?
~ FOR MANY PEOPLE, depression is a day, a week, a season. It is left behind as an sour note in an otherwise happy life.
In our happy “we can fix everything” universe, TV and movie stories resolve every problem via heroism and happenstance and all is well again. E xcept.. people can break, and sometimes only partly tape and glue and tie themselves half-together again, enough to limp along a while longer.
What Kind Of Beast IS This?
This Black Dog is patient, vicious, and quiet: it has hunted & haunted my parents, and grandparents, and down the genetic pathways for generations. For others, life & crises and trouble starts it up fresh for them.
Yet for others– yes, of all ages– it is interwoven into the very stuff of life, perhaps as far back as memory reaches, a misty shadowed valley that never seems to come to an end, with light only breaking through now and again. The Valley of the Shadow; this vale of tears; the bleak lands where affliction dwells.
Yet even there, Christ the Lord walks and talks with his own sheep. Sometimes, he will shift us up onto his shoulders awhile. Faith can make an infinite difference in the experience & severity of depression. I’m there: so’s He.
Pilgrim Walking
All better? Nope.
There are no magic happy-cures, nor skipping through the sparkly flowers on a unicorn– but a costly cross-bearing love which both lightens your burden, and enlightens the path and things around you. Suicide– the permanent solution to temporary problems– may lurk like a vulture on the crag, but need not live on your shoulders.
The proper meds & counselling and living life the best you can any given day will help, too. The grinding miserable trudge can thus become a pilgrimage: but to where?
The shadowed vale of tears is not infinite. God is.
Just A Little Farther
There is a fair City and golden castle farther on ahead, with towers and steeples and fair pennons flying.. you know not exactly how far.. but in it is light, and peace, and no more pain or black dogs, suffering or tears, and all the former things are passed away. There are battles to fight and people to help along this path– and many needing help– on our way.
And perhaps in that City, the black dog– which can teach us so much about perseverance, tribulation, compassion and understanding– will be revealed as having golden fur, for the troubles that lead us closer to God are blessed troubles. St. Paul besought the Lord to remove his sufferings, and instead, God said “My strength is made perfect in weakness.”
Without such hope and faith and love– and the mercy of God & others– I would be long-dead. Will you walk beside me and the others like me, or pass us by on the other side? ~
I’m an original Star Wars kid. Saw the first one 14 times that Summer of ‘77. Spent a couple thou on merch over the years, helping make the Dark Lord George rich. Those first three movies were big pivotal events. Cultural moments. Good versus evil, heroes vs. villains, big over-simplified sloppy-science nerdy space-opera.
Darth George The Hutt.. wanna buy a toy, kid?
Then, George got mad about the success of Titanic, and James Cameron. Enter the prequels. Meh, take the kids, maybe there’s something.. oh. What’s that smell? Little Rebel filmmaker George had morphed into Darth Jabba, bully billionaire toy-seller with a side-order of movie-making.
I Gotta Bad Feeling About This
Hey Fanyboyz.. get butthurt! Girl POWER!
The latest branded product? Pretty much that South Park episode with Lucas & Spielberg raping Indiana Jones, and the audiences of that dreadful UFO+Indy movie. Except now, it’s Jar Jar Abrams, Kennedy, Mickey Mouse, and Johnson taking their turns violating Luke Skywalker, and the nerdly audiences of these three beautifully filmed– but contemptuous– violations of the SW universe & fandom.
There’s a lot of puzzled, offended, angry, and turned-off fans out there right now. And it hurt 2017 ticket-sales, toy & collectible sales, DVD & BluRay and all the knock-on money expected from big tentpole movies like this.
Murdering Movie Franchises is FUN!
This feels like part revenge for #GamerGate; and the industry flipping the bird at the public for slumping ticket-sales for recent Hollywood rubbish; and the spoil-it-all ill-will of progressives towards anything they didn’t make, and of which they disapprove. Take something good, kill it & skin it, and wear the carcass while demanding respect for the new thing as if it’s still the old thing. Then, mock the fans, and drink their tears. Ha ha ha.
Clearly the next movies must be about hunting down each & every surviving character.. Chewie, R2D2, C-3PO, Nien Nunb, and Lando Calrissian in the retirement home for space-rascals, and killing them. Then, dancing on the grave of old Star Wars.
Deeper Stuff Is Important, Too
The nihilist meta-narrative that there is no good or evil, nothing worth living & dying for, no unifying spiritual force above & beyond appearances— so we can just all live in John Lennon’s craptastic revolutionary song ‘Imagine’? What a horrible dead life that would be, of competing chaotic forces wrecking everything & each other in a race to mutual bored destruction. This new Star Wars is a paean of praise to that “Eff It ALL” mentality.
Embrace the suckitude. Gray on gray on gray. Colourless and lifeless is the new awesome. Whatever. Shrugs all ’round.
The original movies were exciting & inspiring BECAUSE each person & their decisions mattered, made a difference. The protagonists were willing to live and die to help others, to hope and love and act in the face of apparently insurmountable tyranny. Leaving aside fanboyism and online insta-opinionated word-wars, it’s those deeply human elements that attracted us original kids in 1977.. a new take on movies, heroes & baddies, and interesting stories, remade with amazing effects and things we hadn’t seen before.
Of course they weren’t perfect. Of course they don’t make for a good religion or life. Of course you want to punch some fans in the nose and tell them to get a life and a religion.. but using a movie to do that is a pretty arrogant and dumb way to do it– and it’s bad business, no matter how many fart-sniffing film critics you make smirk with such work.
Nope. This original Star Wars fan is done. Not one more penny. Down with the Disney dystopia, and this disastrous train-wreck of a film franchise. ~
And perhaps in that City, the black dog– which can teach us so much about perseverance, tribulation, compassion and understanding– will be revealed as having golden fur, for the troubles that lead us closer to God are blessed troubles. St. Paul besought the Lord to remove his sufferings, and instead, God said “My strength is made perfect in weakness.”
A Swift Sunrise 