Sunday, December 9, 2018

Reorganization Of The Vatican City State

This document entitled LEGGE SUL GOVERNO DELLO STATO DELLA CITTA' DEL VATICANO  was published in Italian [1] by the Vatican Publishing Library.  An option to translate it was provided.  The English version says this: LAW ON THE GOVERNMENT OF THE STATE OF THE VATICAN CITY.

From just scrolling down to the end of the document containing 35 articles without reading any of it, it looks multi-layered, just like any other secular organization, public and private, non-profit and for profit.  How did the church that Christ established get so complicated?  And this is only for the Vatican City State which does not include all of the other Catholic orders and entities, each with their own structure, rules and regulations.

Christ led a simple life with none of such complications.  This blogger cannot imagine God's Truth to be this complicated, nor Christianity to be so splintered.  This is not God's doing but man's because man is unwilling to be humble -- each wants his own way, unwilling to compromise, to love his fellow brother.  This is not what Christ had taught.  Man has not listened to the words of Christ, nor has His servants obeyed these words in John 13, quoted below without references [2]:

“You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am.  Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feetI have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.  Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.  Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them...” [Emphasis added.]

The words "one another" had fallen on deaf ears.  Clerics seemed to be willing to wash every other person's feet except one another's.

Later in John 17, Jesus prayed to the Father on behalf of His disciples, quoted below without references [3]:

“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.  I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.  My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.  They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.  Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.  As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.  For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me.  I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

As much as the Father wants to answer His Son's prayer, He yields to man's Free Will.  Sadly, man has not always made the right choices.  For this reason, Christianity is no longer united and the Catholic Church is not now functioning as a cohesive whole.  Every time when Christianity is made to suffer from within and without, Christ's wounds open up and bleed, so that His blood can continuously wash away man's sins.  Love cannot be greater than this or more painful.

Today begins the Second week of Advent.  Perhaps it is time for man to work a miracle, to truly live the words of Christ, to heal Christ's wounds, led by those called to follow His footsteps, by words and by example, without fear of ridicule and death, for nobody knows when Christ will come again.  The words below are quoted without references [4]:

“But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.

For as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

In [those] days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark.

They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away. So will it be [also] at the coming of the Son of Man.


[1] http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/motu_proprio/documents/papa-francesco-20181125_leggegoverno-cittadelvaticano.html
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+13&version=NIV, 13-17.
[3] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+17&version=NIV, 13-26.
[4] http://www.usccb.org/bible/matthew/24, 36-39.

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