An Afterthought on "Holy Victim"

I have written quite a few entries stating that Christ is not a victim, even though Christ is Holy. [1]  I have not changed my mind; I just want to add an afterthought.

Some people may think that "Holy Victim" sounds good, and that by putting the word "holy" in front of the word "victim" and capitalizing both words would somehow transform the meaning of victim into something otherworldly and therefore the two words together, capitalized, would describe Christ appropriately.  They cannot be more wrong.

In the English language, many idioms begin with the word "holy" which is followed by an obscene or vulgar four-letter word.  From what I know, an obscene act or a vulgar by-product preceded by the word "holy" is not transformed into something otherworldly.  Based on this reality, a victim is also not transformed into someone otherworldly when the word "holy" is placed before it, with or without capitalization.[2]


[1] http://lemomentdepaix.blogspot.com/2013/10/my-final-analysis-christ-is-not-victim.html
[2] Having made my argument, I now contradict myself by saying that it does not apply to the Holy Spirit or the Holy Trinity.  Holy Spirit is a name, a proper noun.  It is part of the Holy Trinity.  Likewise, Holy Trinity is also a name, a proper noun, to address the Father, Son and Holy Spirit together.  "Holy Victim," on the other hand, is not a name for Jesus Christ--it is a gratuitous, superfluous and affected attempt to describe Jesus.  It is very wrong, like calling Christmas Holy Victim's Birthday.  Christ is our hope for eternal salvation, not an eternal victim to be pitied through the ages.

The Betrayal, Suffering And Crucifixion Of Christ

Another thought on the victimhood of Christ came into mind today even though I was absolutely sure that I was done with the topic when my final analysis concluded that neither God nor Christ was a victim.  That was before my last entry discussing Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux's idea of Christ as a victim of love.  Nonetheless, the thought spoke and my job is to post it.

Neither the betrayal, the suffering nor the crucifixion of Christ is comedic or tragic; rather, these events taken together, as a whole, are salvific.

What led to the betrayal of Christ was the disbelief of Jesus, the Nazarene, was the Son of God.  The Jews believed and probably still believe that Jesus was a sorcerer, and that it was a joke, a cruel joke perhaps, that this man was sent by God, the God of Abraham.  I remember a line in a movie (I do not remember the name of the movie) uttered by a member of the Sanhedrin who said something to the effect that nothing ever comes out Galilee [1].  Funny line.  I chuckled.  As it turned out, the existence of Jesus was no joke.  Gradually Jesus became a threat and a nuisance to the Jews who were in power.  With their money, they bribed Judas to betray Jesus.

What came next changed the world. [2]  The scourging and the crucifixion of Christ Who was guiltless and sinless turned Christ into a victim, a holy, pure and spotless victim, in the minds of certain people.  How tragic this must have been was probably in the minds of these well-meaning but very mistaken people, or how wasteful, how meaningless or maybe how pitiful.

Anyone who thinks that Christ is a victim and deserves the crown of victimhood [3] because He is "holy, pure and spotless" [4] ought to review what Christ said at the Last Supper: "Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said, "Take and eat; this is my body" (Matthew 26:26). Then he took the cup of wine and said, "Drink from it all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." [5]

Christ, unlike any ordinary hapless victim, foresaw His own death.  The holy and victimless death of Christ ends the eternal deaths of many by His resurrection by way of His blood from His sufferings which was "poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." [6]  This is salvific.  Therefore the events that led to the outpouring of the salvific blood of Christ do not mark the tragic end of a holy, pure and spotless victim but the salvific beginning for those who continually, better yet, continuously, strive to be holy, pure and spotless like our Savior, Jesus Christ, Who knowingly, willingly and freely died for the redemption of Sin.



[1] Nazareth was "a very small village near the Plain of Esdralon in Galilee."  http://www.bible-history.com/geography/ancient-israel/nazareth.html
[2] As an aside, what came next also changed the calender of our lives.  See the answer to the question what is Anno Domini at http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100517010846AA3YHRy
[3] Christ is not the King of Victims but the Prince of Peace: "'For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, And the government will rest on His shoulders, And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)'"  See http://www.gotquestions.org/Prince-of-Peace.html

[4] http://www.jesuschristpassion.com/last_supper.html
[5]  http://www.jesuschristpassion.com/last_supper.html
[6] Ibid.

Christ: A "Vicitm of Love"

"In June [1897, Thérèse de Lisieux] said, 'Do not be troubled, little sisters, if I suffer very much and if you see in me, as I have already said to you, no sign of joy at the moment of death.  Our Lord really died as a Victim of Love, and see what His agony was!'  And in July she said: 'Our Lord died on the Cross in anguish, and yet His was the most beautiful death of love.  To die of love does not mean to die in transports.  I tell you frankly, it appears to me that this is what I am experiencing." [1], [2] [Emphasis original]

When Thérèse de Lisieux referred to Christ as a "Victim of Love" I cannot agree more because in a romantic sense, Christ was a victim of His pure and selfless love for all of us.  I do not think that Sainte Thérèse meant to use the word "victim" in a literal sense or with the connotation of meaninglessness, or maybe she did.  If she did, then I am at a loss as to how Christ can be a "victim" of God, His Father, Who is Love, or that the death of Christ was meaningless.  When Thérèse said the Lord's death on the cross "was the most beautiful death of love," [3] I believe she meant that Christ suffered with love, accepted His crucifixion with love and died of love.  Even as she was in agony before she died, Sainte Thérèse was seeing beauty but not blame, experiencing bliss but not bitterness and evoking purity but not pity.

"Mother Agnes collected the last words of Thérèse and wrote them in a notebook.

'I no longer believe in death for myself; I believe only in suffering.  Well so much the better!'
'O my God!'
'I love God!'
'O my good Blessed Virgin, come to my aid!'
'If this is the agony, then what is death?'
'Ah!  my God.  Yes, He is very good; I find He is very good!'
'If you but realized what it is to suffocate!'
'My God, have pity on me; have pity on your little child.  Have pity!'

"To Mother Marie de Gonzague Thérèse said:

'O Mother, I assure you, the chalice is filled to the brim!'
'God is surely not going to abandon me!'
'He has never abandoned me before!'
'Yes, my God, everything that You will, but have pity on me!'
'Little sisters, my little sisters, pray for me!'
'My God!  My God!  You are so good!'
'Oh! yes, You are good, I know it.'
'Yes, it seems I never looked for anything but the truth; I have understood humility of heart.  It seems that I am humble.'
'Everything I have written on my desire for suffering is true!'
'I do not regret having surrendered myself to Love.'
'Oh no!  I don't regret it; just the opposite!'" [4]

[1] Thérèse, de Lisieux, Saint.  Story of a Soul The Autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux . 3rd Edition. Translated by John Clarke, O.C.D.  Washington D.C.:  Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, Inc., 1996, p.269.
[2] Transports, defined in  OxfordDictionary.com, is an overwhelmingly strong emotion.  See  http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/transport
[3] Op. cit., Thérèse, de Lisieux, Saint, 269.
[4] Ibid, 270.

My Final Analysis - Christ Is Not A Victim, And Neither Is God

Ten or so days ago I wrote to Universalis.com about a prayer where it referred to Christ as an innocent victim.  I received a reply and posted it on this blog.  A few months back, a sermon given by a priest referred to Christ as a holy victim. [1]  I disagreed and protested on this blog on June 25, 2013.  I was inspired to delve into this topic once again by the reply Universalis.com gave me:

"[W]e didn't write this: the Church did. The Congregation for Divine Worship would be the people to consult.

"The hymn "Victimae paschali laudes" is ancient - and of course Christ is represented as a sacrificial victim (a sheep, in fact) in the Agnus Dei at every Mass."

After much thought, I maintain that Christ is not a victim but that Christ was aptly described as holy by the priest and innocent in the prayer.

In doing so, I though it to be a good idea to start at the beginning and ask if God was a victim of perfection in goodness when Adam and Eve, after receiving their Free Will, willed freely to disobey God by eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.

God is perfection.  In perfection, words [2] such as "innocent" and "holy", "pure" and "spotless" are superfluous when describing perfection since perfection sits far above any earthly accolade or concept, at a place beyond the grasp of human intellect and the reach of human verbalization. [3]  While "innocence", "holiness", "purity" and "spotlessness" are words are ranked below the realm of perfection, they, among others connoting virtue, are closer to perfection relative to many other words, such as the word "victim."  "Victim" is one of those words far removed from the light of perfection, so much so that it is not in the sphere of perfection in the way that no sinner is on the same level as God, or the Son, Jesus, God incarnate. [4]

My placement of "victimhood" in another dimension away from and below God is because I believe that an entity which is perfect cannot be a prey or victim.  Only a flawed entity can be a prey of Satan and a victim of Sin's circumstances.  A human being is just such an entity -- a flawed one.  Man is ever so weak as to fall prey to temptations and become a victim of his own weaknesses, individually, or collectively as part of mankind.  Due to his wholly inadequate nature, he cannot resist comparing God to himself, as Adam did when he desired to be equal to his Creator, because whenever man compares himself to God, he is not elevated to the sphere of God.  Instead, the man who compares himself  to God brings God down to his level and on his terms, turning God in his mind into a creature of imperfection that is beneath him.

Having the tendency to Sin, man cannot truly and fully comprehend God and attain perfection is all its glory.  He cannot control himself, but he thinks he can control anyone and anything else, including Christ, by shutting Him out, making Him irrelevant.  Therefore, he must deceive himself, aided by Satan, and trust that he is in control of himself and the circumstances surrounding him.  This delusion of man is the joy of Satan, because under this delusion, man will make a mess of things, and he has.

In his own megalomaniac world, a world spinning with Sin and all of its irresistible variations, man would have the audacity to describe God as a victim just like him, a perennial victim of Satan.  What man has done, describing Christ, the Son of God, Who is as strong in spirit as God the Father but Who as man was weak in the way that human flesh is weak, as a victim is a sin.  In the weakness of human flesh, Christ had bled when He was scourged, was pained when He was humiliated and was helpless when He was crucified.  Seeing Christ as a prey of the powerful, man was quick to reduce his Savior to a "victim" of circumstances on earth, more specifically, of circumstances resulting from the acts of man corrupted by evil on earth.

Man could not be happier to be able to reduce Christ to his level by labeling Him as a "victim" and that is exactly what man did.  By doing so, man is able to triumph over Christ continuously because as a victim, Christ is merely a statistic among all the victims of the world and as such, He would become another nobody over time, to be met with indifference or obliviousness on the one hand and scorn on the other.

The possibility that men of long ago had labeled Christ a "victim" does not lend the label credence in the least.  They were sinners just like those who came before and after them.  For those who long ago labeled Christ as a "victim" were in my opinion wrong.  For those who now find acceptable that Christ is a "victim" are in my opinion minions of Satan because the word "victim" has, as Brother Charles [5] said, has the connotation of meaninglessness whereas the life of Christ has an abundance of meaning and purpose.  The fact that the label of "victim" is preceded by an adjective "innocent" or "holy", "pure" or "spotless" does not diminish the error and certainly does not right the wrong or sanctify the sin.

If anyone at the Congregation of Divine Worship is reading this, you ought to reconsider to correcting the error, an error that weakens the foundation of the Church.

I would be naïve to think that my request would be heard, or heard without objection, and the error corrected and an instruction sent to all the religious notifying them that Christ is never to be thought of or described a "victim," however innocent, holy, pure or spotless.  The alternative is unsettling.   To allow Christ to be referred to as a "victim" would be to reduce Christ to an ordinary sinner capable to falling prey to Satan and its minions -- men who had willingly become the pawns of Satan.  As a result, Christ Who willingly sacrificed Himself at the alters of betrayal, torture and crucifixion would carry only the badge of victimhood with the Satanic effect of diminishing the meaning of Christ's life, nullifying the purpose of Christ's Passion and putting into doubt Christ's ability to lead souls to heaven by humbling and sacrificing Himself to compensate for the sin of Adam.



[1] I also heard it twice during the Eucharistic prayer said by two different priests on two separate occasions on EWTN's televised mass.  As it turns out, I am not the only person who has trouble with describing Christ as a "victim."  I am happy to find a friar's blog on the internet where Brother Charles also has a problem with the word.  I quote his blog at http://friarminor.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-translation-victimhood.html verbatim below:

"December 31, 2011

"New Translation: Victimhood

"In accord with my practice for the minimum use of Eucharistic Prayer I, I've been praying the Roman Canon through this whole week of the Christmas Octave. This has given me further opportunity to pray through and reflect upon the new translation.

"One thing that strikes me with some intensity is the restoration of the triad at the end of the Unde et memores: offered to God is the hostiam puram, hostiam, sanctam, hostiam immaculatam.

"The new translation renders this as it is in the Latin: this pure victim, this holy victim, this spotless victim.

"The old translation did away with the structure of the triad, replacing it with this holy and perfect sacrifice.

"On the one hand, I like the restoration of the normative structure of the prayer. Now I just have to let go of the interior urge to make the signs of the cross that accompany this moment in the Extraordinary Form! On the other hand, I see the translation problem. In our time and place, victimhood and victimization have such a connotation of meaninglessness injustice. Jesus' victimhood was certainly an injustice, but one that was, in the paradox of the cross, superabundant in meaning. Can we hear this over and above our common connotations of 'victim'?

"Even though hostia and victima may have been somewhat interchangeable in late antiquity when the Roman Canon came together, the meaning-history of hostia, with its general sense of sacrificial victim and technical use as such in ancient religion would seem to be lost to the average pray-er speaking it as 'victim' in twenty-first century English.

"So it goes to some basic questions regarding liturgical translation. For example, what is the value of trying to bring out the sense of terms in our best guesses as to their original connotation and intent? On other hand, one of the values embedded in the new translation, and to which I consent easily, is that sacral language, such as that of the liturgy, is not supposed to be the same as or beholden to common speech.

"So what do you think? Is it an o.k., good, or not-so-good thing to translate the hostia in hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam as 'victim'?" 

[2] Words in any language.
[3] God's perfection has not stopped me from verbalizing it, even in the course of doing so I have brought it down to a level so low so that it is within the limits of my understanding.  I do not think that attempts to reach for and comprehend the impossible are exercises in futility.  On the contrary, the more we try to understand and strive for perfection, however futile our repeated efforts, the farther we are able to distance ourselves from Sin and the closer we are able to place ourselves within the presence of God.  In the previous sentence I used the word "farther" to connote an actual measurable distance rather than "further" to connote a conceptual distance because Sin in all its forms and the Master of Sin, Satan are palpable.  Sin and all its variations seem abstract because they exist in disguise.  The serpent in the Garden of Eden is no longer wrapped around The Apple Tree around the apples of one's eye.  (The last three sentences added on November 20, 2013.)
[4] As Brother Charles said victimhood has the connotation of meaninglessness (see http://friarminor.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-translation-victimhood.html ).  It also connotes passivity.  A victim today is not seen to be blameworthy but rather an individual who has done nothing wrong (without regard that he might not care about God or have done anything good) and hurting nobody (or so it seems) and is merely living in neutrality (as if any sinner can live in neutrality to evil and as if neutrality to evil is a virtue -- a secular virtue perhaps, but certainly not a heavenly virtue).  Passivity, a characteristic of the modern victim is far, far away from the light of perfection which is God because passivity does not lead to God.  God has given us life, the Free Will and the ability to act in the first instance and act we must in order to go toward God. [6]  There are many acts but three stand out.  First is to love: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." See http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22%3A36-40&version=NIV.  Second is to be humble: "In order to show that humility is the most beautiful, as well as the most precious of all virtues, our Lord begins His beatitudes with humility, by saying: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for to them belongs the kingdom of heaven.'  St. Augustine tells us that the poor in spirit are those who have humility for their portions.  The prophet Isaias said to God: 'Lord, upon whom does Thy holy spirit descend?   Is it perhaps upon those who bear a great name in this world, and upon the proud?'  'No,' said the Lord, 'but  upon those that are humble of heart.'" [7]  Third is to think and act with purity (without guise, deceit, hypocrisy or the like): "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." [8]  Therefore, being passive or neutral is not enough.  Just as Christ had behaved and acted, so must we behave and act.  Note: Before Pontius Pilate, Christ did not act passively; He acted respectfully.  And Christ was not passive on the cross; He was at every moment of his suffering obedient to God until the very end in order to save us from eternal damnation.  Christ is our Savior, not a beloved victim.
[5] http://friarminor.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-translation-victimhood.html   
[6] God opened the door and gave us Christ, Christ the Savior, not Christ the innocent, pure, holy and spotless victim, to show us the way.
[7] Ven. Curé of Ars (Jean Baptiste Marie Vianney), Sermons of the Curé of Ars (Minnesota: The Neumann Press, 1984), 258.
[8] http://biblehub.com/niv/matthew/5.htm

My E-mail To Universalis - Continued

To my surprise, Universalis.com replied to my e-mail.  I replied.  The exchange is copied below:

Thank you, sincerely, Martin, for your reply.  I will think deeply about your edifying words and start with this question which I will answer in my blog:

Was God a victim of perfection in goodness by giving Adam and Eve Free Will?

God Bless.

Al

---

From: Universalis
To: (deleted by Al)
Sent: Tuesday, October 1, 2013 4:36 AM
Subject: Re: Midday Prayer Friday 27 September 2013

Well, we didn't write this: the Church did. The Congregation for Divine Worship would be the people to consult.

The hymn "Victimae paschali laudes" is ancient - and of course Christ is represented as a sacrificial victim (a sheep, in fact) in the Agnus Dei at every Mass.


At 22:48 27/09/2013 -0700, you wrote:

Dear Unversalis,

First of all, thank you for the website.

Today, I have questions on one of the prayers at Sext.  The prayer follows with the word in question highlighted:

Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ,
  who at this sixth hour, when the whole world was shrouded in darkness,
  mounted the wood of the cross
  as the innocent victim for our redemption,
give us always that light
  which will bring us to eternal life.
You live and reign for ever and ever.
Amen.

Why is Christ, the Son of God who chose freely to obey His Father, to suffer and be crucified for the redemption of Sin, a victim?  Can Christ Who is part of the Holy Trinity can ever be a victim?  Was Christ not someone who could have walked away from the Cross freely by choosing a different birth, a different path, or by submitting Himself to the will of the ruling Jews and Romans?  Was He not trying to set an example for all of us, to become leaders, to speak His Truth, to become His warriors, to battle for and become a testament to the Truth?  Is it not true that a victim has the right to blame others for their plight?  Did any of Christ's disciples blame anyone for theirs?  Do you think any one of them would consider themselves to be hapless victims rather than saviors of souls?  Do you think that Christ ever thought the He was a victim of circumstances beyond His control and therefore we can rightly consider Him to be a "victim"?

I would be most grateful if you are able to answer my questions and enlighten me.

Thank you.

Al

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A Teenage Victim

In the news this morning, a 58-year old woman driving a Mercedes-Benz SUV up to speeds of 128.75 kilometers per hour or 80 miles per hour on a city street slammed into a minivan stopped at a red traffic light, killing a 16-year old boy and critically injuring the mother and her daughter.  The driver of the SUV survived the crash with minor injuries.  The injured mother and daughter and the deceased teenage son were victims of a woman possessed by evil.

Do I even care?  I do care [1].  Not only do I care [1] about my family and friends, those who are part of my life temporarily, those who are not a part of my life but whom I see frequently and those with whom I share the same city but never met, I also care [1] about those with whom I share this world but a world apart, those who are in war zones, refugee camps, government offices, grand palaces, at home, at work or at play.  I care [1] because we are all part the whole of creation without regard to time and space and part of this living planet, breathing in the same air, drinking the same water and feeding off the same earth.  Even though we are not in proximity with each other, we are united by time -- the present -- and when one of us leaves us and this place that we once shared, we ought to feel that, just as much as we ought to feel for the ones who are still living and possessed by evil.  Those who have departed need our prayers so that they maybe forgiven and have salvation in heaven since they are not able to pray for forgiveness themselves anymore.  Those who are possessed by evil also need our prayers since they are so consumed by evil forces that they cannot see God anymore.  Our prayers would help extricate them from the suffocating grip of evil so that they would have another chance in choosing God over Satan.

If all of us can function as a whole, within the whole of creation, united to God, then truly we would be doing God's will on earth and it is in heaven.


[1] I must qualify the word "care" because there are varying degrees of care.  Sometimes I wonder if I even care even though I would like to think that I do.  Sometimes I am impatient or upset and care only about myself and that is not good.  Then there are times that I care and pray for everyone.  Those are the times I feel the happiest and like myself the best.

My E-mail To Unversalis.com

The following e-mail was sent today regarding:

Midday Prayer Friday 27 September 2013

Dear Unversalis,

First of all, thank you for the website.

Today, I have questions on one of the prayers at Sext.  The prayer follows with the word in question highlighted:

Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ,
  who at this sixth hour, when the whole world was shrouded in darkness,
  mounted the wood of the cross
  as the innocent victim for our redemption,
give us always that light
  which will bring us to eternal life.
You live and reign for ever and ever.
Amen.

Why is Christ, the Son of God who chose freely to obey His Father, to suffer and be crucified for the redemption of Sin, a victim?  Can Christ Who is part of the Holy Trinity can ever be a victim?  Was Christ not someone who could have walked away from the Cross freely by choosing a different birth, a different path, or by submitting Himself to the will of the ruling Jews and Romans?  Was He not trying to set an example for all of us, to become leaders, to speak His Truth, to become His warriors, to battle for and become a testament to the Truth?  Is it not true that a victim has the right to blame others for their plight?  Did any of Christ's disciples blame anyone for theirs?  Do you think any one of them would consider themselves to be hapless victims rather than saviors of souls?  Do you think that Christ ever thought the He was a victim of circumstances beyond His control and therefore we can rightly consider Him to be a "victim"?

I would be most grateful if you are able to answer my questions and enlighten me.

Thank you.

Al

God And Natural Disasters

Question #1:  "Where is God when natural disasters strike?"
Question #2:  "Why does God allow natural disasters to happen?"

Questions similar to these have been asked and none of the answers that I have heard was satisfactory.  Perhaps there is no good answer.  Certainly I do not have any, but I have questions, and I will ask them, even though they may sound offensive to many because I am rude for replying to question with a question and because some of my questions may go too far into one's conscience and may make people feel uneasy..

To those asking question #1, I ask:

Is it possible that God is where God was placed at the last wild party, while on vacation, when hurting the ones who love you, when betraying the Truth, or during all those calm days and years before the earthquakes, the sunamis, the volcanic eruptions, the tornadoes, the heavy rains, the floods and/or landslides, at that forgotten place called  NOWHERE, or OBLIVION, or maybe INDIFFERENCE?

Is it possible that it does not matter even if God is sitting at our dinner table asking us to do the same things Christ in the Gospels and the Blessed Virgin Mary during her many apparitions have asked us to do in order to avoid such calamities, because those requests would go in one ear and out the other after God leaves, and on the very next day, we would go back to the status quo, doing the same things we are used to doing, that we had done just yesterday, and the years before?  Would we even believe that disaster will come upon us when we feel so secure in our own environment?  Have we believed in the words in the Book of Revelations?  Do we even believe that things might change for the worse if we do not pray? [1]  Do we believe in evil, in Satan and its works? [2]  Do we truly believe in God, and are we truly kind, forgiving and loving in the way we want God us to be, I mean TRULY?  And if we are true followers of God, and pray with sincerity and humility and love, would we even suffer the consequences of a natural disaster in a big way? [3]

To those asking question #2, I ask:

Whose earth is it anyway?  Is it ours to claim?  Has it not been ours to abuse and destroy, disrespecting the natural order of Mother Nature?  Do we deny that earthquakes, sunamis, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, heavy rains, floods and landslides occur since we live in the very areas, build dwellings and amass possessions that are exposed to such known risks, however infrequent they occur or recur?  Why do we blame God for all that we have done to this planet?  Why do we blame God for our collective sins?  Are we perfect like God so that God is obligated to save us because we are sinless and identical to God in every way?  Do we find God to be imperfect and unfair because natural phenomenons occur, when they have been part of the natural course of events before we existed?  How can we expect to live in harmony with Mother Nature when we are so selfish, claiming Mother Nature to be ours to uproot, to carve out, to abuse and manipulate in every possible way using every possible means, invented and yet to be invented, to destroy it?  Is it not a natural law for all things to return to an equilibrium?  Does Mother Nature not have a right, under God Who created her, to assert her right to be beautiful and pristine again?  Did God give us humans the unfettered right to make Mother Nature our slave mother, to submit to our every whim, however self-centered?  Did God not give us the answer to the previous question by giving force and power to Mother Nature?

Can we honestly claim that we are victims of natural disasters or are we victims of our own Free Will making the wrong choices?  And why do we call merely natural phenomenons natural disasters?  Does placing ourselves deliberately in the path of natural phenomenons turn them into natural disasters?  Can we do no wrong?  Has our pride blinded us to the fact that perhaps we are the disasters? [4]

To those going to ask a combination of question #1 and #2, I have an answer:

On the one hand, I assert that we have abused Mother Nature and that she has the right and the power to reclaim what belongs to her while on the other hand, I assert that God will protect us against the wrath of Mother Nature if we prayed with sincerity, humility and love.  Does that mean that praying in such a manner would give us the right to abuse Mother Nature because we would be protected?  No.  Praying in such a manner does not mean we would be protected fully; it just means that by the grace and love of God, we are forgiven of our past selfishness and given another chance at life, however inconvenient or difficult it might be compared to what life was like before.  Therefore, we ought to wake up, to ask God always to lead us onto the right path and redirect us back to it whenever we stray, so that by praying daily with sincerity, humility and love and by our continuous and sincere efforts in following Christ, we could be saved by the mercy and love of God, in the flesh during this lifetime and in the spirit for an eternity afterwards.



[1] Think carefully, and deeply.  Things have already changed in the world for the worse because so many have not believed or  prayed.
[2] First arm yourself with the Truth of God in your heart, then look around, look into the eyes and conscience of those around you, especially the liars and hypocrites, and you will see.
[3] What about those who for the sake of God are/were persecuted and martyred?  Persecutions are not natural disasters.  Nonetheless, I am convinced that those persecuted and martyred have a special and close relationship with God and have been given God's peace while in life as their flesh suffered.
[4] On Judgment Day, when we face the Truth, there is nobody to blame but ourselves.  Better own up to our own mistakes now and take responsibility for our own choices and pray for forgiveness before it is too late.  There is no benefit in being bitter and blaming God for the ills and pains in our lives unless one wants to please Satan and aspires to spending an eternity in Hell.

Christ - Not A Victim

To have to sit through a sermon you do not agree with is torture.  This priest said Christ was a "holy victim."  Christ was indeed holy but He was not a victim.  A victim elicits pity and is comforted by sympathy.  Christ became man to die for our sins.  He is our Savior.  He certainly did not appear to be a victim, not even to His disciples.  He did not elicit any sympathy from them, not even from the three who were at Gethsemane with Him -- they fell asleep.  Jesus was sorrowful but was (is) not looking for His disciples' or our sympathy.  He certainly does no want our pity. He was here to carry out His Father's Will even though He was scared and prayed to His Father at Gethsemane to let the "cup" of suffering to "pass" from Him.  That did not happen and He allowed Himself to be betrayed as prophesied, and willingly suffered and died in accordance with His Father's Will.  Does Christ sound like a "victim" to you? 

My question is:  Why do some priests think that they are qualified to be priests?  Priesthood seems for them a livelihood rather than a calling.  The lack of God's grace and holiness in these priest somehow distances me from the Church, but I nonetheless love them for who they are, as persons upholding the Church and administering the sacraments, but not for what they say.

On the other hand, some priests give beautiful and meaningful sermons and I wish they would not stop preaching because I just want to sit there and listen to them.  These priests have the Grace of God and are truly called to serve.