Monday, January 1, 2018

Seeing the truth

In this blog, truths with a small "t" are individual truths.  Truths with a capital "T" are God's Truths.  God's Truths are eternal and they will always lead to God.  Human truths can change as circumstances and mores of the time change, and often wrapped inside them are deceptions, rationalizations and omissions, leading many astray and their originators closer and closer toward Satan.

Being able to see human truths cannot a blessing, for ignorance is bliss, words that have withstood the test of time and likewise these words as well: the ugly truth.  Individual truths can make a person ugly, very ugly.  To be able see individual human truths clearly all the time is to see all the ugliness in the faces of people around without pause (including the ugliness of those who on the surface appear to be the dearest and the most caring when they are most dear to themselves and most caring of themselves, which is self-centered pride wrapped in deceit).  Ugliness overwhelms and obliterates all that is and could be beautiful.  Living a life seeing every person's beauty destroyed by individual sinful truths is not easy, one that Christ must have led.

Not only did Christ see; He foresaw and foresees.  From His perspective, therefore, humanity ought to be a lump of indistinguishable ugliness festering in Satan's wasteland of sins, yet He chooses to overlook sins' deadly venom covering the ugly sinner.  What Christ must see is the potential beauty that is within each of God's creation, and it is this pure beauty that each person carries within the interior that Christ became man to save by becoming physically ugly Himself, by carrying upon his entire body from head to toe painful and open wounds, one that was also bruised and swollen by the stoning and the falling as He was lifting up and walking with the weight of humanity's sins in the shape of a cross, only to be nailed to it when He reached Golgotha.

Christ died while nailed to the cross of humanity's sins.  This was not just a crucifixion of a body.  This was the permanent attachment of sins committed from the time of Adam and Eve to the end of the world to sinless living flesh.  Only the living flesh of Christ is able to absorb sins of man; only by dying sinlessly on the cross of sins can humanity's sins drop off like parasites upon a host; and only by rising from the dead and entering into Heaven can sins no longer seek out their hosts and continue their parasitic existences, on earth and in Hell.

As imagined by this blogger, sins that dropped off the flesh after a sinner dies attach themselves to the soul of the sinner unless the soul of the sinner is saved by the inner beauty that was revealed while the soul and the body were still one in the world.  Inner beauty reveals itself in humility and manifests fully in sacrificial love.  Only souls that had revealed at least once its complete inner beauty and displayed sacrificial love fully when they were still connected to the flesh can enter Heaven.  In Heaven, there is no ugliness, only beauty.  One who refuses to reveal one's inner beauty that leads to sacrificial love in life will not be able to enter Heaven.  This is analogous to not being able to play in an orchestra without ever touching a musical instrument.

How much of one's potential inner beauty has been revealed despite one's continuous acts of sin in life, and how much effort has one willed to avoid deliberate sin may work to limit one's life tribulations and may after death reduce the soul's time in Purgatory and the severity of the cleansing necessary to be purified before entering Heaven.  Saint "Augustine [said] in a sermon (xli De Sanctis): 'This fire of Purgatory will be more severe than any pain that can be felt, seen or conceived in this world.'" [1]  This Saint Augustine is the same Augustine of Hippo who was an erstwhile fornicator, who "had contracted an illicit relationship with an unnamed woman and, from this union, came a son." [2]  Of the many saints, Augustine ought to know about the severity of the fire of Purgatory based on his past sins.

Supposedly there are ways to avoid Purgatory.  They are listed under this title: HOW TO AVOID PURGATORY  written by Fr. Paul O'Sullivan.  It is quite long and is available to read at http://www.theworkofgod.org/how_to_avoid_purgatory.htm or https://www.ewtn.com/library/spirit/avoidprg.txt.  As comprehensive as the publication seems to be, it appears to miss this one way that is without reference to Holy Souls under Fr. Paul O'Sullivan's Chapter 14, quoted below without hyperlink [3]:

Fifteen  Promises of Our Lady to those who pray the Holy Rosary, Given to St. Dominic and Blessed Alan de La Roche [:]
1. Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the rosary, shall receive signal graces.
2. I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the rosary.
3. The rosary shall be a powerful armour against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies.
4. It will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means.
5. The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the rosary, shall not perish.
6. Whoever shall recite the rosary devoutly, applying himself to the consideration of its sacred mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune. God will not chastise him in His justice, he shall not perish by an unprovided death; if he be just he shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of eternal life.
7. Whoever shall have a true devotion for the rosary shall not die without the sacraments of the Church.
8. Those who are faithful to recite the rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plenitude of His graces; at the moment of death they shall participate in the merits of the saints in paradise.
9. I shall deliver from purgatory those who have been devoted to the rosary.  [Emphasis original.]
10. The faithful children of the rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in heaven.
11. You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the rosary.
12. All those who propagate the holy rosary shall be aided by me in their necessities.
13. I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death.
14. All who recite the rosary are my sons, and brothers of my only son Jesus Christ.
15. Devotion of my rosary is a great sign of predestination

These promises, given directly by the Blessed Virgin Mary to Saint Dominic and Blessed Alan de La Roche, are in this blogger's opinion carry far greater weight than the multitude of ways any sinner, priest or not, can dream up, however sensible and correct they may be, not that they are wrong or entirely ineffective in any way, in avoiding Purgatory.  Simple recitation of prayers over a certain period, a lifetime or what seems to be a lifetime, appears to be preferable for the Blessed Mother and Her Son in order for one to avoid Purgatory.  See also St. Bridget's 7 prayers for 12 years, 15 prayers for one year and rosary of 7 sorrows in addition to "A true letter from Our Savior Jesus Christ." [4]

Heaven is about simplicity whereas humans love complexity.  It is therefore best to stay simple, humble and true.  With that, perhaps every sinner will be less ugly before Christ even though He can see and foresee the ugliness of every individual's sin, great and small, especially Satan's favorite, pride, the one most easily camouflaged and most difficult to recognize.



[1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Summa_Theologiae/Appendix/Question_2
[2] http://newtheologicalmovement.blogspot.com/2013/08/st-augustines-mistress-and-son-and.html
[3] http://www.theworkofgod.org/avoid_purgatory.htm
[4] Ibid.




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