Sermon On The Plain Or Sermon On The Mount: Which One Is Correct On Poverty Or Are Both Correct?

Did Jesus give a sermon on the flatland and another on a hill?  He might have, but my guess is that He did not.  If He did, what He said on the plain and on the mount would have been consistent. He is after all, part of the Holy Trinity and any part of God is necessarily perfect. [1]  Inconsistency is imperfect, and cannot be a product of perfection.  However, the Gospels with respect to who are blessed are inconsistent.  Therefore, they cannot both be right.

I believe that one of the two sermons, the one allegedly given by Jesus on the plain, cannot be the words of Christ.  This flawed sermon is part of the Gospel of Luke which claimed that Jesus said, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." [2]  Assuming that the translation is accurate, the words cannot be more clear.  The poor, meaning those who are impecunious, unemployed and unemployable, who lack the basic necessities of life such as clothing, shelter, sufficient food, water and medication, are blessed.  I cannot imagine any indigent who cannot find work, who is homeless, hungry, drug-addicted, and sick, with no family or loved ones to care for him, would consider himself blessed.  And I do not believe that all who live in a state of poverty in this life, with no spiritual connection with God, will enter Heaven in the next by default.

To enter Heaven, one needs salvation, and in order to have salvation, one needs to have a relationship with God, directly by prayer or indirectly by the prayer of others [3], and the Blessed Virgin Mary's intercessions, all of which would have to go through Jesus Christ. [4]  Economic deprivation alone, according to the Gospel of Luke, is therefore an insufficient condition to enter Heaven.

Why then did the author of Luke's gospel make this claim?  Was he a politician trying to quell an uprising of the poor at the time by telling a lie in the form of a "feel-good" statement with no spiritual value?  If he was not, then what was the point for making a false connection between one's static economic status in this life to an eternity with God in Heaven? 
 
Perhaps the author of Luke's gospel made a mistake, heard it wrong, remembered it wrong, written it down wrong or had been distracted and did not hear or write down the rest of it, namely, the words "in spirit."    Or maybe St. Luke was hard of hearing and missed those two words when Jesus' voice trailed off after Jesus said "Blessed are you who are poor ..."  If Luke 6:20 was written by someone other than St. Luke, then the possible reasons as to why it was written that way would be too numerous to list.

In contrast, the Gospel of Matthew claimed that Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." [5]  By eliminating all the economics and social inequalities in the word poor, perfection is achieved, for it is poverty in spirit, not the lack of money, that leads one to Heaven.

So what exactly does poverty in spirit mean?  It means humility.  Only in humility will one be able to pray properly, will then God be able to hear the prayers and answer them, and will one be able to thank God properly.

Preaching about economic poverty, about income inequality in a papal outfit or some religious garb has nothing to do with poverty in spirit but everything to do with their lack  of understanding of poverty in spirit.  Their sermons ought to tell the world that it is not the poor people that are blessed and are destined to enter Heaven; it is that people are not poor enough in spirit  to be  blessed to enter Heaven.




[1] If a sermon is perfect, there can be no other version.  
[2] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+6%3A20&version=NIV
[3] The Fatima prayer (Latin):  Domine Iesu, dimitte nobis debita nostra, salva nos ab igne inferni, perduc in caelum omnes animas, praesertim eas, quae misericordiae tuae maxime indigent.
[4] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+14:6
[5] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5:3

The Need For Contemplatives

Around the world, the lives of many revolve around work and supporting their families and their loved ones, leaving little time to cook, clean, do laundry, maintain oral hygiene, let alone time for silence, to pray, to speak with and listen to God. [1]  When many people are too busy or otherwise too preoccupied to pray, the world needs contemplatives to pray on their behalf.  I believe the more contemplatives are praying for the world, the better off the world will become.  I also surmise that the world does not have enough contemplatives to make a significant improvement in the right direction (toward God) as more and more people feel spiritually lost and find their lives to be rather meaningless and empty.  That feeling of emptiness is a prelude to Hell for only in God does one find total fulfillment.


[1] With little to no time to pray, it is still critical to keep God in the forefront, on one's mind constantly, and to ask for assistance when necessary and give thanks when gratitude is due (even if it is late) -- that only takes seconds -- so the lack of time is not an excuse to banish God from one's consciousness, or take for granted that something difficult had gone smoothly. 

God's Saints And Man's Saints

Not all saints are equal.  I believe some saints are God's saints while many are man's saints.

God's saints are conduits of God.  Miracles flow through them, during their lives and after their deaths.  The miracles are plentiful, well-known to the local community and never in doubt.

Man's saints are conduits of man.  Miracles do not flow through them.  Miracles are attributed to them by the sheer will of men at the Vatican, often without sufficient proof and whatever proof that may be proffered, not much of it is beyond a reasonable doubt.  Man's saints are at best ordinary people acting as intercessors. [1]  At worst, they are irrelevant to any of the miracles that may have taken place.

By examining the life of each saint with care and without bias, one can usually conclude which saint is a saint of God and which saint is a saint by name only.


[1] Intercessors are important and I am not belittling the intersession of saints, be they man's saints or God's saints.  My main point here is the limitations of man's saints as compared to God's saints.  My secondary point is an inference, based on my opinion, that there maybe saints that are not worth the title, whether well-founded or not.  In terms of intercessors, our most effective intercessor is none other than the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.

A Saint In Hell - Is That Possible?

On April 27, 2014, John Paul II was canonized a saint by the current pope [1].  The same John Paul II was "seen" in Hell by Angelica Zambrano [2].

Now that former pope John Paul II is officially a saint, the immediate question is whether a saint can be in Hell.  Assuming that Angelica Zambrano did "see" him in Hell, the answer is yes.  Is a saint in Hell out of the realm of worldly and other-worldly possibilities?  Not at all, because even God's angel can end up in Hell.  Its name was Lucifer, and is now Satan.  If God's angel can be banished from Heaven, certainly a pope, elected by humans who are less than angelic, can suffer the same fate.

The next question is whether John Paul II is truly in Hell.  I do not know, but find Angelica Zambrano's testimony convincing.  What Angelica Zambrano did not "see" in Hell was Francesco d'Assisi nor did she "see" Bernadette Soubirous, who, I believe, are God's saints, not human saints that had been canonized due to politics, popularity and/or money paid to the Vatican bank and witnesses. [3]


[1] http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/04/27/vast-crowd-watches-francis-name-john-paul-john-xxiii-saints/hKYZaClXWjrSSXWn7voORK/story.html
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzW5VY8blzI
[3] I find the two miracles attributed to John Paul II had not undergone sufficient scrutiny by an objective panel of physicians and analysts and therefore in my opinion highly dubious.  Perhaps his fast track to sainthood was bought with lots of money and tainted with unholiness.  Hopefully, some day, in this life or after, the Truth will be revealed.

An Unholy Blogger's Thoughts During Holy Week

I had not gone to church to receive ashes on Ash Wednesday and I had not sacrificed anything when Lent began, but I say my rosary twice a day, not always perfectly and sometimes not at one sitting, and if I miss saying it twice, I make it up the next day.  I do that not because of Lent, this year's or a previous year's.  I have been saying the rosary once a day for quite some time now, and added another rosary daily over a year ago because of a personal need.  When my need is over, I plan to continue saying a second rosary daily not out of need but out of gratitude.  Saying a rosary out of gratitude is a joy and is a lot easier than saying it out of need.  Saying the rosary is not a substitute for living through a Lenten period like any ordinary period but I do not know what else I could do (that may sound nice and innocent but that is a lie).  I know for certain that I am able to give up something during Lent but would not and probably could not.  I am, after all, a non-repentant sinner.  I refuse to repent because I do not see the point of repenting -- knowing full well that I will fall back into sin again.  To repent and to sin again, then repent and sin again, I think, would be hypocritical.  I would rather be in sin in the most direct way than to have to add another layer of sin called hypocrisy.  As a sinner, all I can hope for is for God to know my sins (God knows everything) and for the grace of God to forgive them, again and again.  I suppose that this entry would be my confession before Easter. [1], [2], [3]


[1] I have only confessed formally once in my life inside a confessional.  With all the heaviness that was weighing down on me, I was asked to say three Hail Mary's afterward.  Just three.  I did not think that was enough.  Looking back, I still think that saying three Hail Mary's was not enough.  I do not know what would be enough.  I never stepped foot into a confessional again, not because I found the sentence for my sins too light, but  because I was expecting to feel exhilarated, to feel as if I could walk on air with the albatross around my neck lifted but did not.   My confession had not resolved my major concern, namely that I had never gone to a formal confession before with my truckload of sins.  When I entered the confessional, I did not dump my load of sins onto my confessor, going over with Father each and every sin I had committed but I did tell him that if I had to list them, it would take a very long time.  The Father who heard my confession told me that my confession was well-thought-out (it took me a long time to get it together) and I am glad he noticed it.  To be sure, I loved the experience, and I really liked my confessor, whoever he was.  I did not return for a second confession also because I was afraid, for no apparent reason.  Perhaps I was afraid that I would be too dependent on it and would like it too much.
[2] Another on-going sin that I commit is walking up to receive the Body of Christ (and drink the Blood of Christ when available) when I attend Mass, which is not often these days, without first confessing my sins.  I do it because I feel compelled to do so, because I love knowing that the Body of Christ that is being dissolved in my mouth is being absorbed into and is becoming an integral part of every fiber throughout my body that will stay with me forever and that the Blood of Christ is being infused into my blood stream is cleansing my entire being.
[3] Readers, if any, do not be like me, be much, much better. 

Is Money Everything?

A friend called me up in the early evening of Saturday telling me that he was at his friend's apartment which was in the same building as mine and asked me if I wanted to drop by to say hello.  I went over with a bottle of wine and chatted for a little while with this man I had never met.  He turned out to be a very wealthy Jewish man, probably in his fifties or so, who owned a lot of real property that he inherited.  He also did not drink alcohol but he was happy to receive the bottle of wine I brought.  Realizing that nobody was having wine that evening, I suggested that we go up to the roof to check out the view.

I do not recall how the conversation started but it was there that I said money was not that important to me. [1]  After hearing that, the rich Jewish man, looking down at his feet, replied, "Money," then paused, for many more seconds longer than I had expected (I was hoping to hear him expound on his philosophy of money), then raised his voice ever so slightly for emphasis and dramatic effect and continued, "is e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g."

I was stunned by his reply.  At that moment I could only think about God and nothing else.  I was frozen in place and in thought and went silent.  Then in my mind's child-like voice, I asked, "What about God?"  The friend who invited me to visit broke the silence by pointing to a door and asking if that was the way back down.  Oh, was I glad.  It was getting chilly up on the roof and the topic was forgotten.  I said good-bye and returned to my apartment.

It is difficult for me to imagine that anyone actually believes that money is everything.  How is that possible?  God in Heaven has everything anyone would ever want and no money can buy that.  So money cannot be everything.  It may buy comfort and power in this world of flesh and sin but in the spiritual realm, it is worthless.

We were spirits before incarnation and will become spirits again beyond our flesh.  Is that difficult to accept?

For those who believe that money is everything, then after they die and become spirits again, they will have nothing, and eternal nothingness is a part of Hell [2].  For those who believe that beyond having earthly faith in currencies and temporal ownership of tangible goods is the Truth of God, they ought to be able to find God, in this life and after, in Heaven, where eternal fulfillment awaits.



[1] In a conversation with rich people, the topic of money is almost never omitted or even tangential.
[2] Another part of Hell is eternal craving, in addition to eternal suffering, eternal regret and so on.

The Insidious Degradation And The Suffocation Of American Christian Values

The following speech, entitled Building a Culture of Religious Freedom, given by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M, Cap., at Napa Institute's 2012 Annual Conference in Napa, California, on July 27, 2012, quoted below (footnotes omitted) [1] is almost two years old but its conclusions are still valid today:

A friend of mine, a political scientist, recently posed two very good questions. They go right to the heart of our discussion today. He wondered, first, if the religious freedom debate had “crossed a Rubicon” in our country’s political life. And second, he asked if Catholic bishops now found themselves opposed—in a new and fundamental way—to the spirit of American society.

We should begin by recalling that even at the height of anti-Catholic bigotry, Catholics have always served our country with distinction. More than eighty Catholic chaplains died in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. All four chaplains who won the Medal of Honor in those wars were Catholic priests.

Time and again, Catholics have proven their love of our nation with their talent, hard work, and blood. So if the bishops of the United States ever find themselves opposed, in a fundamental way, to the spirit of our country, the fault won’t lie with our bishops. It will lie with political and cultural leaders who turned our country into something it was never meant to be.

That said, let’s turn to my friend’s first question. The Rubicon is a river in northern Italy. It’s small and forgettable, except for one thing. During the Roman Republic, it marked a border. To the south lay Italy, ruled directly by the Roman Senate. To the north lay Gaul, ruled by a governor. Under Roman law, no general could enter Italy with an army. Doing so carried the death penalty. In 49 BC, when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his Thirteenth Legion and marched on Rome, he triggered a civil war and changed the course of history. Ever since then, “crossing the Rubicon” has meant passing a point of no return.

Caesar’s march on Rome is a very long way from our nation’s current disputes over religious liberty. But “crossing the Rubicon” is still a useful image. My friend’s point is this: Have we, in fact, crossed a border in our country’s history—the line between a religion-friendly past, and an emerging America much less welcoming to Christian faith and witness?

Let me describe the nation we were, and the nation we’re becoming. Then you can judge for yourselves.

People often argue about whether America’s Founders were mainly Christian, mainly Deist, or both of the above. It’s a reasonable debate. It won’t end any time soon. But no one can reasonably dispute that the Founders’ moral framework was overwhelmingly shaped by Christian faith. And that makes sense because America was largely built by Christians. The world of the American Founders was heavily Christian, and they saw the value of publicly engaged religious faith because they experienced its influence themselves. They created a nation designed in advance to depend on the moral convictions of religious believers [2], and to welcome their active role in public life.

The Founders also knew that religion is not just a matter of private conviction. It can’t be reduced to personal prayer or Sunday worship. It has social implications. The Founders welcomed those implications. Christian faith demands preaching, teaching, public witness, and service to others—by each of us alone, and by acting in cooperation with fellow believers. As a result, religious freedom is never just freedom from repression but also—and more importantly—freedom for active discipleship. It includes the right of religious believers, leaders, and communities to engage society and to work actively in the public square. For the first 160 years of the republic, cooperation between government and religious entities was the norm in addressing America’s social problems. And that brings us to our country’s current situation.

Americans have always been a religious people. They still are. Roughly 80 percent of Americans call themselves Christians. Millions of Americans take their faith seriously. Millions act on it accordingly. Religious practice remains high. That’s the good news. But there’s also bad news. In our courts, in our lawmaking, in our popular entertainment, and even in the way many of us live our daily lives, America is steadily growing more secular. Mainline churches are losing ground. Many of our young people spurn Christianity. Many of our young adults lack any coherent moral formation. Even many Christians who do practice their religion follow a kind of easy, self-designed gospel that led author Ross Douthat to call us a “nation of heretics.”¹ Taken together, these facts suggest an American future very different from anything in our nation’s past.

There’s more. Contempt for religious faith has been growing in America’s leadership classes for many decades, as scholars such as Christian Smith and Christopher Lasch have shown.² But in recent years, government pressure on religious entities has become a pattern, and it goes well beyond the current administration’s Health and Human Services mandate. It involves interfering with the conscience rights of medical providers, private employers, and individual citizens. And it includes attacks on the policies, hiring practices, and tax statuses of religious charities, hospitals, and other ministries. These attacks are real. They’re happening now. And they’ll get worse as America’s religious character weakens.

This trend is more than sad. It’s dangerous. Our political system presumes a civil society that pre-exists and stands outside the full control of the state. In the American model, the state is meant to be modest in scope and constrained by checks and balances. Mediating institutions such as the family, churches, and fraternal organizations feed the life of the civic community. They stand between the individual and the state. And when they decline, the state fills the vacuum they leave. Protecting these mediating institutions is therefore vital to our political freedom. The state rarely fears individuals, because alone, individuals have little power. They can be isolated or ignored. But organized communities are a different matter. They can resist. And they can’t be ignored.

This is why, for example, if you want to rewrite the American story into a different kind of social experiment, the Catholic Church is such an annoying problem. She’s a very big community. She has strong beliefs. And she has an authority structure that’s very hard to break—the kind that seems to survive every prejudice and persecution, and even the worst sins of her own leaders. Critics of the Church have attacked America’s bishops so bitterly, for so long, over so many different issues—including the abuse scandal, but by no means limited to it—for very practical reasons. If a wedge can be driven between the pastors of the Church and her people, then a strong Catholic witness on controversial issues breaks down into much weaker groups of discordant voices.

Having said all this, the title of my comments is “building a culture of religious freedom.” So how do we do that?

We can start by changing the way we habitually think. Democracy is not an end in itself. Majority opinion does not determine what is good and true. Like every other form of social organization and power, democracy can become a form of repression and idolatry. The problems we now face in our country didn’t happen overnight. They’ve been growing for decades, and they have moral roots. America’s bishops named the exile of God from public consciousness as “the root of the world’s travail today” nearly sixty-five years ago. And they accurately predicted the effects of a life without God on the individual, the family, education, economic activity, and the international community.³ Obviously, too few people listened.

We also need to change the way we act. We need to understand that we can’t quick-fix our way out of problems we behaved ourselves into. Catholics have done very well in the United States. As I said earlier, most of us have a deep love for our country, its freedoms, and its best ideals. But this is not our final home. There is no automatic harmony between Christian faith and American democracy. The eagerness of Catholics to push their way into our country’s mainstream over the past half century, to climb the ladder of social and economic success, has done very little to Christianize American culture. But it’s done a great deal to weaken the power of our Catholic witness.

In the words of scholar Robert Kraynak, democracy—for all of its strengths—also “has within it the potential for its own kind of ‘social tyranny.’” The reason is simple. Democracy advances “the forces of mass culture which lower the tone of society . . . by lowering the aims of life from classical beauty, heroic virtues and otherworldly transcendence to the pursuits of work, material consumption and entertainment.” This inevitably tends to “[reduce] human life to a one-dimensional materialism and [an] animal existence that undermines human dignity and eventually leads to the ‘abolition of man.’”⁴

To put it another way: The right to pursue happiness does not include a right to excuse or ignore evil in ourselves or anyone else. When we divorce our politics from a grounding in virtue and truth, we transform our country from a living moral organism into a kind of golem [3] of legal machinery without a soul.

This is why working for good laws is so important. This is why getting involved politically is so urgent. This is why every one of our votes matters. We need to elect the best public leaders, who then create the best policies and appoint the best judges. This has a huge impact on the kind of nation we become. Democracies depend for their survival on people of conviction fighting for what they believe in the public square—legally and peacefully, but zealously and without apologies. That includes you and me.

Critics often accuse faithful Christians of pursuing a “culture war” on issues such as abortion, sexuality, marriage and the family, and religious liberty. And in a sense, they’re right. We are fighting for what we believe. But of course, so are advocates on the other side of all these issues—and neither they nor we should feel uneasy about it. Democracy thrives on the struggle of competing ideas. We steal from ourselves and from everyone else if we try to avoid that struggle. In fact, two of the worst qualities in any human being are cowardice and acedia—and by acedia I mean the kind of moral sloth that masquerades as “tolerance” and leaves a human soul so empty of courage and character that even the devil Screwtape would spit it out.⁵ [4]  In real life, democracy is built on two practical pillars: cooperation and conflict. It requires both.

Cooperation, because people have a natural hunger for solidarity that makes all community possible. And conflict, because people have competing visions of what is right and true. The more deeply they hold their convictions, the more naturally people seek to have those convictions shape society.

What that means for Catholics is this: We have a duty to treat all persons with charity and justice. We have a duty to seek common ground where possible. But that’s never an excuse for compromising with grave evil. It’s never an excuse for being naive. And it’s never an excuse for standing idly by while our liberty to preach and serve God in the public square is whittled away. We need to work vigorously in law and politics to form our culture in a Christian understanding of human dignity and the purpose of human freedom. Otherwise, we should stop trying to fool ourselves that we really believe what we claim to believe.

There’s more. To work as it was intended, America needs a special kind of citizenry; a mature, well-informed electorate of persons able to reason clearly and rule themselves prudently. If that’s true—and it is—then the greatest danger to American liberty in our day is not religious extremism. It’s something very different. It’s a culture of narcissism that cocoons us in dumbed-down, bigoted news, vulgarity, distraction, and noise, while methodically excluding God from the human imagination. Kierkegaard once wrote that “the introspection of silence is the condition of all educated intercourse,” and that “talkativeness is afraid of the silence which reveals its emptiness.”⁶ Silence feeds the soul. Silence invites God to speak. And silence is exactly what American culture no longer allows. Securing the place of religious freedom in our society is therefore not just a matter of law and politics, but of prayer, interior renewal—and also education.

We need to re-examine the spirit that has ruled the Catholic approach to American life for the past sixty years. In forming our priests, deacons, teachers, and catechists—and especially the young people in our schools and religious education programs—we need to be much more penetrating and critical in our attitudes toward the culture around us. We need to recover our distinctive Catholic identity and history. Then we need to act on them. America is becoming a very different country, and as Ross Douthat argues so well in his excellent book Bad Religion, a renewed American Christianity needs to be ecumenical, but also confessional. Why? Because “in an age of institutional weakness and doctrinal drift, American Christianity has much more to gain from a robust Catholicism and a robust Calvinism, than it does from even the most fruitful Catholic-Calvinist theological dialogue.”⁷

America is now mission territory. Our own failures helped to make it that way. We need to admit that. Then we need to re-engage the work of discipleship to change it.

I want to close by returning to the second of my friend’s two questions. He asked if our nation’s Catholic bishops now find themselves opposed—in a new and fundamental way—to the spirit of American society. I can speak only for myself. But I suspect that for many of my brother American bishops, the answer to that question is a mix of both no and yes.

The answer is “no” in the sense that the Catholic Church has always thrived in the United States, even in the face of violent bigotry. Catholics love and thank God for this country. They revere the American legacy of democracy, law, and ordered liberty. As the bishops wrote in 1940 on the eve of World War II, “[we] renew [our] most sacred and sincere loyalty to our government and to the basic ideals of the American Republic . . . [and we] are again resolved to give [ourselves] unstintingly to its defense and its lasting endurance and welfare.”⁸ Hundreds of thousands of American Catholics did exactly that on the battlefields of Europe and the South Pacific.

But the answer is “yes” in the sense that the America of Catholic memory is not the America of the present moment or the emerging future. Sooner or later, a nation based on a degraded notion of liberty, on license rather than real freedom—in other words, a nation of abortion, disordered sexuality, consumer greed, and indifference to immigrants and the poor—will not be worthy of its founding ideals. And on that day, it will have no claim on virtuous hearts.
In many ways I believe my own generation, the boomer generation, has been one of the most problematic in our nation’s history because of our spirit of entitlement and moral superiority; our appetite for material comfort unmoored from humility; our refusal to acknowledge personal sin and accept our obligations to the past.

But we can change that. Nothing about life is predetermined except the victory of Jesus Christ. [5]  We create the future. We do it not just by our actions, but by what we really believe—because what we believe shapes the kind of people we are. In a way, “growing a culture of religious freedom” is the better title for these comments. A culture is more than what we make or do or build. A culture grows organically out of the spirit of a people—how we live, what we cherish, what we’re willing to die for. [6]

If we want a culture of religious freedom, we need to begin it here, today, now. We live it by giving ourselves wholeheartedly to God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ—by loving God with passion and joy, confidence and courage; and by holding nothing back. God will take care of the rest. Scripture says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps 127:1). In the end, God is the builder. We’re the living stones. The firmer our faith, the deeper our love, the purer our zeal for God’s will—then the stronger the house of freedom will be that rises in our own lives, and in the life of our nation. [Emphasis in italics original.] [Underlined Emphasis added.]

[1] http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/07/6013/
[2] As much as I enjoyed reading Archbishop Chaput's speech and agree with his many conclusions, his reference to the "moral convictions of religious believers" ought not be overlooked because his underlying major assumptions here are that the Founders are "moral" Christians who depended on other "moral" Christians to take part in public life.  How moral were these founding Christians and those became government officials?  Did they not take part directly or indirectly in the killing of Native Americans?  Were the murders of Native Americans and the unauthorized taking of their land morally Christian?  Would Jesus have gone to Samaria to kill Samaritans and take ownership of their land because they were different from Him?  Were Native Americans such unworthy non-Christian humans that they deserved to be killed and their property taken without compensation?  See http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_Native_Americans_were_killed_by_the_US_government The number of Native Americans killed as reported by Wikianswers is large, but the killing even one Native American, I am sure, would have been too many for Jesus.  Could one of them who were killed had been living a life like Saint Kateri Tekakwitha?  See http://cjd.org/2013/04/20/native-footsteps-along-the-path-of-saint-kateri-tekakwitha/  How could Archbishop Chaput, the first Native American to be appointed archbishop (see http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1102854.htm) have omitted to acknowledge this immoral part of American Christian Founders?
[3] Golem, per dictionary.com, is: "Jewish Folklore. a figure artificially constructed in the form of a human being and endowed with life." [Emphasis original.]
[4] I just learned that Screwtape is a fictitious demon that appeared in a novel by C.S. Lewis.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters  This blogger, obviously, is not a reader; rather, he is a dreamer.
[5] I disagree.  The victory of Jesus Christ over Satan was not predestined.  Jesus exercised His Free Will when He chose to obey His Father, of Whom He is a part.  By His willingness to die on the cross, the sinless Jesus irrevocably rejected Satan to overcome eternal death.  Had Christ's victory been preordained, the Son of God's choice would not have been perfect because Free Will is inseparable from God's perfection, and He could not have been Adam's replacement and be called the New Adam, because in order to be the New Adam, Christ had to be as vulnerable as Adam to Satan's temptation and then to triumph over Its temptation by His Free Will.  One cannot look at the rear view mirror and conclude what had happened had to have happened because what turned out happened to be perfect.  Perfection, sadly, is often misinterpreted by the sinful, imperfect man as a product of conspiracy because he is incapable of comprehending God's perfection in its entirety.  In short, the victory of Jesus Christ over Satan was not rigged or staged: He freely rejected Satan by the sheer force of His unfettered Will.
[6] I do not think that anyone in today's American Catholic church hierarchy would be willing to die for religious freedom in the United States.

Believe In Prayer

I do not know how many times I have urged people to say the prayers of the rosary, or how many more times I will repeat myself.  Prayers are effective but often not effective in the manner and within the time frame that one wishes.  The Lord will answer the prayers of the faithful (those who believe in God without a shred of doubt) whether those prayers are for themselves, their loved ones, complete strangers [1] or for no one in particular. [2]

How does one know if prayers are effective when they are not answered in accordance with one's expectations?  This is where humility comes into play.  One must ask: "Who is the better judge of what is the perfect answer to a prayer, God or me?"  I hope nobody answers "me."

Life and death.  When it is a matter of life and death, is a long life necessarily better than a short one?  One cannot answer the question unless one sees clearly into the future and knows the Truth.  Since nobody but God knows the Truth and the future, one must defer to God on all matters of life and death. [3]

Sickness.  Sickness goes hand in hand with suffering.  While sickness is inconvenient, it forces one to examine and reassess one's life and the lives of those who have been assisting with the recovery.  Hopefully, the suffering will teach one to be less selfish, more patient and never to take for granted the gifts of life and health.

Patience.  Sometimes one is being delayed because of traffic, or by others for one reason or another and one misses someone, some thing, or the beginning of some event.  One is seldom glad about delays.  More seldom is one ever grateful for them because one usually takes for granted or does not recognize or what good God's delays have brought, perhaps an accident that never happened (one always expects to arrive at a destination safely in one piece), the speeding ticket that one did not get or a readily accessible parking spot that one did get (one usually considers that to be a random occurrence, such as luck or a coincidence), or seeing someone unexpected or something wonderful (one almost never thinks about delays when one is so captivated).

Believe in prayers and think about all the miracles [4] that come with saying them.


[1] I have no proof that any of my prayers for strangers had been effective, but I have faith that they were heard.
[2] Just saying prayers of the rosary with no defined wish or hope comes with many, many blessings.
[3] I suppose Satan also knows the Truth and sees the future but who would want Satan to have influence over one's life and death?  Those who do will have a life of Hell and an eternity in it.  One might ask that if Satan can see the future and knows that It will lose Its final battle against God, why is It still fighting God for the souls of men?  Creating misery for man, a creature Satan despises, is Its true goal.  Making people miserable even if one has nothing to gain is the essence of evil.  Satan is the essence of evil. 
[4] Look around, think of the possibilities that could have happened but did not, and all that have happened that in the end brought contentment.  Then think, did I just make all that happen?

Jesus' Alternatives To Crucifixion

A man has to choose when he faces an adversary.  His could stand his ground and be martyred, but his instinct is to fight, or take flight if he thinks he would be beaten.  He could step back for the time being and become a political community organizer, drum up support and confront the opposition at a later date.  He could propose a compromise, if the opposition is willing to negotiate.  Or he could turn the other cheek.

Jesus was no ordinary man.  He was both man and God, separate from God and simultaneously part of God.  So what did Jesus do when His adversaries confronted Him?

Jesus stood His ground.  Before He was betrayed by Judas, He could have fled because He foresaw the betrayal. [1]  Yet, He let it happen.  Before He was scourged, He could have defended Himself and said no to Pontius Pilate who asked Jesus if He was the King of the Jews. [2], [3]  If Jesus said no, then I do not believe there is a case against Him and therefore Pontius Pilate would have to free him.  As the trial unfolded, Jesus never answered the question.  His reply was: "You have said so." [4]  Then He said no more.

Jesus stood His ground but was not  a martyr.  Dictionary.com defines martyr as "a person who willingly suffers death rather than renounce his or her religion."  The reason Jesus was not a martyr is because Jesus did not  have a religion which dictionary.com defines as "a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects" and Jesus did not have a set of beliefs because Jesus knew the Truth.  When one knows the absolute truth, there is no need to believe.  One has the need to believe when one is uncertain and one needs to have faith in Jesus when one has not seen the resurrected Christ and felt His wounds.

Jesus did not fight or take flight.  Jesus did not attempt to escape from or fight off the soldiers who came to arrest Him.  In fact, he healed the ear of one soldier whose ear was cut off by one of the disciples. [5]

Jesus did not compromise.  Whether Jesus' enemies and oppressors were ready to negotiate a compromise is irrelevant.  The Truth requires no compromise.  Jesus is the Path of Truth and He laid Himself down for all to walk upon, so that those who are on His path would be led Christ Himself and God in Heaven.

Jesus was definitely not  a political community organizer.  Satan was the first political community organizer.  It gathered Eve and Adam together and encouraged them to eat the forbidden Apple in the Garden of Eden in order that they would be powerful, like God.  Satan wanted our first parents to have desire for power and they fell for it.  Although Jesus had His group of twelve disciples, He did not organize them into a community to gain political power to rule over the people.  Indeed, He was the messenger of God Who taught them lessons that separated the Kingdom of Heaven from politics: "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s." [6]  He called on his disciples to follow Him freely and to give of themselves to each other and to all in humility. [7]  Political community organizers are not about living in humility but in envy and vengeance.  Jesus lived in love - unconditional love.  He could have organized his followers to overwhelm the group who cheered for the release of Barabbas but He did not.  Barabbas was in prison because he took part in an uprising [8] - perhaps as a community organizer of that uprising.  The reason Jesus did not wish to be released in place of Barabbas because He came to die for all of our sins and Barabbas' sins were no exception.

Jesus turned the other cheek.  Jesus did not literally turn the other cheek, but He by His actions and words (the few He said) demonstrated as much.  First, He did not scold Judas but allowed him to complete his betrayal. [9]  Second, He did not stand up to His accusers and argue His case at trial before Pontius Pilate. [10]  Finally, he forgave His cruifiers: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." [11]





[1] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+22%3A21&version=NIV
[2] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+15
[3] I would think that a "no" answer is the Truth because Jesus is part of God and God rules over the entire Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Heaven is not monoethnic where only Jews can be found and only Jews can do the will of God and can enter.  In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said, "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."  See http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matt+7:21,
[4] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+15%3A2&version=NIV
[5] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+22%3A47-51&version=NIV
[6] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2012:17
[7] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+13:12-17
[8] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2018:40
[9] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+22%3A21-22&version=NIV  Even though Jesus said, "But woe to that man who betrays him [the Son of Man]," it does not mean that Jesus was unforgiving and vengeful.  Jesus was simply stating the truth that woe would come to Judas because Jesus could do nothing to save Judas.  Judas by his Free will made his final rejection of the Son of God and therefore God the Father as well.  Judas' woe that Jesus was referring to was an eternity in Hell.
[10] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+15%3A1-5&version=NIV
[11] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+23%3A32-34&version=NIV