If the part that is spiritual and holy can be represented by undyed clothing made from nature's fibers (see photograph below of cotton in its natural stage) then the part that is carnal and decadent (including everything less than pure that is attainable and can be possessed as well as those unattainable and can only be desired) can be represented by stains on it which can supposedly be laundered clean with each confession, but in reality stains can be stubborn in the sense that they tend to stay or reappear for the same reasons that they were there in the first place. Who has ever emerged from a confessional a saint in the purest sense and for the rest of life has become incorruptible, just as the Blessed Virgin Mary was incorruptible?
 |
| From Google Images |
As one continues to struggle with the choices one faces and makes throughout life, the need to pray for spiritual strength because of the lack of will to realize the potential God has given one to do good always ought to be on par with the critical need to seek emergent care should the need arises, at the risk of weighing down one's own soul at death so as not to be sufficiently airy to ascend to Purgatory but can only sink down to that dreaded eternity called Hell, since one is incapable of judging objectively how heavy one's sins are at any one moment, but not too many people have sin and the fear of Hell on their minds in today's world of extremism, secularism and relativism, especially with a pope that advertises falsely that God's mercy is in so much abundance that he seemed to have turned Hell into a concept.
In Bergoglio's Apostolic Letter Misericordia et miserae, he stated that "[e]verything is revealed in mercy; everything is resolved in the merciful love of the Father." [1] [Emphasis added.] Further into the Apostolic Letter, he retracted from his earlier remark and stated that "[t]he culture of mercy is shaped in assiduous prayer, in docility to the working of the Holy Spirit ..." [2] This sounds right but this is the same pope who launched the "‘One Minute for Peace’ [prayer] initiative." [3] Praying for something as important as peace for a minute is not quite the same as "assiduous prayer."
Hell is not a concept; it is a place. Atheists who do not believe in a Heaven and a Hell should take a careful look at the world and their own lives. Unless they see perfection, which can exist only in one's imagination, they ought to conclude that the world and their lives are a lot more like a "Hell" than a "Heaven," and it is they, and a growing chorus of secularists and religious hypocrites, joined by the pope, who could possibly be tomorrow's faces of the underworld. This is where "assiduous prayer" in life could possibly help open the flood gates to God's reservoir upon death from which an overabundance of mercy and love will flow to wash away once and for all of eternity the stains of sin.
It was out of God's unconditional love that Christ was born to suffer and die in order to pave the way for Adam and Eve's descendants to go back to God, but more often than not, God's unconditional love has been mistaken as the equivalent of blind love. God's unconditional love is not totally blind; it means that God is prepared to "be blind to" man's sins and forgive them, provided that man follow the two "greatest" Commandments which according to the Son of God, is first to "love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" and then to "love your neighbor as yourself." [4] If God's unconditional love were totally blind, then there would be no need for Christ to suffer and die in the first place and then to return to judge the living and the dead. [5] And if the path to Heaven were paved with unlimited mercy with "everything [being] resolved in the merciful love of the Father" [6], then Christ's entire existence and the Gospels would have been unnecessary and the Catholic Church a useless entity.
Stated differently, God's unconditional love for man requires man to love God and neighbor in return. It would be a mistake to think that mans' love for God can be a passive love, as the pope's version of "mercy" seemed to suggest at first, which is for man to sit there and sin and mercy will resolve everything that he has done wrong, even though he later admitted that man had to pray "assiduously" for mercy but when the pope is often seen and heard politicking in the news and not truly praying assiduously, he disappoints those expecting him to be true to his own words even knowing that he cannot be like Christ yet he remains popular among those who support his "worldly" or perhaps even "a near-secular" approach to Catholicism.
However, it matters not what one thinks of this or any other pope since everyone sins and nobody is incorruptible, no matter how often one confesses, there will be stains of sin that will always remain, no matter how dark or colorful is one's clothing, or the exclusivity of one's addresses and vacations spots or lack thereof, but all of them can be removed with the blood of Christ that flows from God's mercy (obtainable by faithful and sincere prayer) and ultimately from God's unconditional love (obtainable by adherence to the greatest two commandments), despite one lacking the will power to walk away permanently from sin yet oddly having the determination to dive repeatedly into every facet of decadence that happens to pique one's interest or curiosity while trying incongruously to be holy spiritually however conflicting it may be and however fruitless the outcome.
[1] https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_letters/documents/papa-francesco-lettera-ap_20161120_misericordia-et-misera.html
[2] Ibid,
[3] http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2017/06/07/pope_francis_appeals_for_%E2%80%98one_minute_for_peace%E2%80%99_initiative/1317386
[4] http://www.usccb.org/bible/matthew/22, at 36-40.
[5] https://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/prayers/creed2.htm - The Apostle's Creed
[6] https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_letters/documents/papa-francesco-lettera-ap_20161120_misericordia-et-misera.html
