Seven Upward | St. Paul Center For Biblical Theology

A great blog post by Dr. Scott Hahn on the importance of number seven in the bible and salvation history.  While you are the St. Paul Center page check out all the great resources that are there in the way of Bible Studies, Audio Courses and talks and a wealth of information in our library

Seven Upward | St. Paul Center For Biblical Theology

http://www.salvationhistory.com/

Worth Living For – Worth Fighting For – Worth Dying For

The answer to the above title is Jesus Christ.  He is worth living, fighting and dying for.   This past weekend I saw the movie, “Greater Glory” about the Mexican Cristero War or La Cristiada and it was one of the timeliest and best movies I have seen in recent memory.  I recommend first off that everyone Catholic or not go and see this movie.  Freedom in our country is being assaulted and this movie is about fighting for religious freedom.  It is about living, fighting and dying for our faith.  While I am not advocating that an armed revolt is the answer by any means, civil disobedience if it comes to that is a valid and effective form of protest against a government that is trying to define religious freedom simply as the right to worship.  In the sense that while you are in your church celebrating mass or a service that is ok but take one step out and that freedom is restricted.  While this has not occurred to that degree yet, the current health care law, the Affordable Care Act better known as Obamacare, and the HHS mandate set the precedent for the government to do this is in the future.  As the movie showed the restrictions did not start out very oppressive but grew after the first were accepted by a majority of the population without protest.  Catholics everywhere need to support, live, fight and defend the faith that they believe.  You may be a Catholic who goes to church on Sunday, prays and lives a good life, and God Bless you, my prayers are with you, but now there is the siren call to do more.  If we do not show unity in defense of this egregious attack on liberty, it will not end there.  Cardinal George in February of 2012 stated, “At the present moment, Catholics in this country are facing challenges to our institutional existence and our mission that we thought would never arise here. … The laws that used to protect us are now being used to weaken and destroy us, and this quite deliberately.”  Let your voice be heard in any way you can.  Through letters, emails, phone calls, protests.  Whatever your ability it is time to act.

Faith is worth living, standing up and declaring your faith, living what you believe is necessary.  Catholics and all Christians can no longer play lip service to their faith.  There must be life in what we believe and we must show it by our prayer and our actions.  If we are not living our faith in our every action, our every breath then we cannot effectively evangelize or convince others including the government that we take our religious liberty seriously.  What we believe must be reflected in our prayer and vice versa (Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi), and this needs to be translated into the way we live our lives.  By every breath we breathe we must speak the Truth of Christ.

Faith is worth fighting for, it is worth rallying, protesting, engaging in acts of civil disobedience.  While acts of this kind will probably be far less tolerated than the “occupy movement” was, if necessary and if the call is made then we must be prepared to live and defend what we stand for as Christians.  Catholic means universal and all need to be united in this fight to defend religious freedom.

Faith is worth dying for, while this may seem extreme, it may not be far off and is already occurring overseas in staggering numbers.  Cardinal George of Chicago reflected on this in 2010 stating, “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”  This statement is telling and if you look at the direction we are heading as a country and as Catholics.  They are set on a divergent path.  As St. Boniface and Blessed José Sánchez del Río laid down their lives for the faith, giving us the example for the future, I pray it does not come to that but I do not see our government backing down, more they have seemingly dug in for the long haul, established their trenches for the coming battle.

We must be outspoken, bold, and walk tall for our faith.  Heads held high we must live what we profess, fight for what we believe and freely lay down our lives every day for what it means to be Christian.  Make no mistake what is being perpetrated is a great evil and “evil must be opposed.” 

Now to show my geeky Star Trek side but there was a great quote I must include because of its relevance:

“Vedek Yassim: Can’t you see what is happening to you? You’re becoming an apologist for them, a defender of evil. What will it take to make you act, Kira, to stop accepting them, and start fighting back?
Major Kira: Vedek - you just don’t understand.
Vedek Yassim: You are right, I don’t. Maybe tomorrow... we will both understand.” (Star Trek Deep Space Nine, 1993)

“Major Kira: People can find a way to justify any action, no matter how evil.

Ziyal: You think my father is evil?
Major Kira: I think - you can’t judge people by what they think or say... only by what they do.” (Star Trek Deep Space Nine, 1993)

And to end with a quote from a martyr whose life and death we celebrate today:

"Let us continue the fight on the day of the Lord. The days of anguish and of tribulation have overtaken us; if God so wills, 'let us die for the holy laws of our fathers,' so that we may deserve to obtain an eternal inheritance with them." -St. Boniface (Borrowed from Facebook Apostles)

Catechism, Apologetics and Catholic Product Reviews: The New Evangelization Inside the family

This is a great and simple blog that emphasizes the role of the familyin Evangelization.  If we want to make a real success with the New Evangelization in the United States the family must be at the center of this missionary mandate.  The family has many different aspects and in the coming weeks I hope to expand on the role of family in evangelization


Catechism, Apologetics and Catholic Product Reviews: The New Evangelization Inside the family: A few years ago I was listening to some program or reading a book about evangelizing within the Church and I discovered that it had never oc...

Infinite Love

Love, something that is misunderstood in today’s day in age.  As I mentioned in my last post about unconditional love, the complete self-donating love that springs from God is missing.  The question is why?  Let me offer some reflection.  Our world places a premium on the material, the immediate, and the physical.  Absent from this is the Spiritual, delayed gratification, fasting, and those things that are supernatural.  We seek to replace God’s love with love of the world and worldly things. 

God’s love is so deep, a complete abyss of love that we can never reach the bottom.  Our hearts so thirst and cry out for this love.  There is nothing else that can fill this gap in our hearts.  There is an inscription written on our hearts when we were created by God, and this is the longing, the calling of our hearts for God.  We must seek God with all our hearts; seek His love for us, because "God is Love" (1 Jn 4:8) and love is his first gift, containing all others. "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Rom 5:5) (CCC 733)  This is a love that excludes no one; everyone is welcome at the table of the Lord.  If we look to our hearts we know this to be true, when we fill it with things of the world, it may be full for a short period but each day it needs to be refilled.  God fills that hole with His love till it overflows and explodes out of us.  God’s love explodes out of us in our works.  When we know the love of God deep in our hearts we cannot help but do the works of mercy. 

As deep cries out to deep so our heart cries out for God and when it is not filled with Him we are not fulfilled.  This is seen so often in today’s world where love is a finite concept.  Love is not finite but infinite.  If you have ever read the: Chronicles of Narnia the end of the last book ends with the children running in Aslan’s land and the call is this, Farther up and deeper in.  As they run farther up and deeper in the land grows larger and this is the analogy for God’s love.  The farther we delve into the depth of God’s love the bigger it gets, it is infinite.  This is where all love springs from, the complete and infinite love of God.  The constant sharing of Trinity, The Father begetting the Son and between the love of the two of them they spirate the Holy Spirit, the breath of God that comes to dwell in all of us.

We need to learn to pray to God in love.  God's love has no bounds, neither should our prayer. (see note 52) Praying "our" Father opens to us the dimensions of his love revealed in Christ: praying with and for all who do not yet know him, so that Christ may "gather into one the children of God."  (CCC 2793)

The Word became flesh so that thus we might know God's love: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him." (1 Jn 4:9) "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." (Jn 3:16)(CCC 458)

Unconditional Love

Unconditional love, something that our culture today does not understand but is what we  need, what we are all called to.  Love without expectations, without conditions, without preconceived ideas or notions.  Our hearts were made for this kind of love that is first and foremost found in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The Trinity, the eternal communion of love.  This is where love begins and ends.  As St. Augustine says, “our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.”  Love itself is an act of affection but not in the reductionist sense that we see it today.  Love today is used (abused) in many ways.  Love is misused to say I love pizza or I love my car.  This is such a simply basest view.  You may strongly like these things but you don’t really love them and share a deep interpersonal connect with the pizza or car.  Love in the sense of unconditional, agape love grows out of our first and foremost our love for God and our deep personal relationship that we have with him.  Love is putting yourself last and others first, your wellbeing behind the wellbeing of others.  True love is a self-donating love the complete giving of self to God and if your vocation is to marriage then the complete giving of yourself to your spouse, always seeking their wellbeing over your own.  And in the supreme act of love, the marital act of self-giving sexual intercourse that then leads to the two becoming one and sometimes producing a third.  As the old line goes, love so real that in nine months you have to give it a name. 

Our culture has lost its love and in losing love it has lost its guiding light, it has lost God.  Our culture has become an ugly place where the relativistic concepts of the person as product and the usability of everything and everybody are rampant.  The dignity of the human person and that each individual is unique, unrepeatable and created by God.  Only in discovering the beauty of God, His creation, His plan and His unconditional love can we recover it for ourselves.  Our selfishness threatens to overtake us as a culture, everything is me first.  People are trampled and shoved out of the way for mere material items, but is there ever a line to see Jesus.  Are our adoration chapels so packed that they cannot fit any more people in them?  Do people make time for Church or do they live for Jesus. 

There is no doubt that this is not the easy route, this is not the easy way out but it is what each of us are called to; follow Jesus, to live his call of unconditional love because only in His heart will we find our rest.  There was never a promise that it would be easy, never a promise of a smooth road.  When you take the road less traveled it is fraught with bumps and holes but Jesus promises to walk with us and aid us.  We must persevere in love, unconditional love that knows no end.  The more we love the more we grow in holiness, the more we grow closer to Jesus, adhering to his Most Sacred Heart. 

As Catholics, as Christians we hold the light of love in our souls, when we receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.  There is no act of love more unconditional than Jesus Christ humbling himself, coming down to us under the auspices of bread and wine and giving us Himself so that we might have eternal life, supernatural grace.  The more we frequent the Sacraments, the more we grow in grace and truth.  The more our souls are nourished by the source of life Himself.  It is then the inward beauty that bursts forth in love and charity.  The act of unconditional love explodes from our very soul because it can no longer be contained.  “Beauty grows in you to the extent that love grows, because charity itself is the soul's beauty.” (St. Augustine)

People may say such a thing does not exist, that it is human nature to be selfish, serving yourself first and others second.  But it is when we love unconditional, giving completely of ourselves in self-donation to another person that we are the most human, that we fulfill our vocation as men and women created by God.  Our world struggles under the weight of many problems but none more pressing than the loss of beauty, of holiness of unconditional love.

And just in case you were wondering what unconditional love looks like, I have provided a few images…

“  Behold The Heart  

        that has loved so much,  

               and been so little loved in return.” 

-Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque   

Is it easy, no; Is it our calling, the answer to the deepest desire of our hearts.  Yes.  

As always Sacred Scripture says it best:

"Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."  1 Corinthians 13:4-13

The Thirst Which Drives Us All: JESUS!!!

Our world is motivated by thirst, whether it be actual thirst for water or other beverage, thirst for food, thirst for material things (which seems to be unquenchable), thirst of the heart for love, or the thirst of the heart for more, for that one thing that will satisfy us completely.  Why is this seemingly random topic of thirst important, because it is what drives us.  If we thirst to be financially secure, we are scrupulous at saving.  If we thirst for a bigger house or car we are hard workers taking all the overtime we can get.  If we thirst for solid families (rare it seems in this culture) we devote our time to our kids.  If we thirst for God we devote our time to Him.  We devote our time to prayer, to adoration, to the Sacraments, to the Holy Mass.
As a volunteer at my local parish before coming to school you see this thirst in youth, adults, elderly.  You see the desire for more, and many times if someone is not there to tell them that the only thing that will quench their thirst is Jesus, then it is sought in the world.  A world full of relativistic and materialistic agendas that seek out the bigger and the better.
As a student in the Theology/Catechetics program at Franciscan University I came across this quote by our Holy Father when he was still the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and it struck me and inspired this post.
"It is the purpose and meaning of all Catechesis to lead to this thirst.  For one who knows neither that there is a Holy Spirit nor that one can thirst for Him, it cannot begin otherwise then with sensory perception.  Catechesis must lead to self-knowledge, to the exposing of the I, so that it lets the masks fall and moves out of the realm of something into that of being.  Its goal is conversio, that conversion of man that results in his standing face to face with himself.  Conversio ("conversion", metanoia) is identical with self knowledge, and self-knowledge is the nucleus of all knowledge.  Conversio is the way in which man finds himself and thus knows the question of all questions:  How can I worship God? It is the question that means his salvation; it is the raison d' etre (reason for being or the purpose that justifies a thing's existence) of Catechesis.
Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology pg. 354-55
Since we are all called to know God in an ever deeper way, we are all continuing called to conversion and from the continuing conversion springs the desire to bring others to this beautiful gift called faith.  Thus springs forth Evangelization of which Catechesis is but a part.  In my previous post I expressed that now was the time to Evangelize, Catechize and Commission.  At the root of all of this is the fulfilling of thirst of the human soul, which thirsts for the love of God which is given freely to all those who thirst.  The wellspring of eternal life resides in the saving work of Jesus Christ and Now is the Time to spread the Gospel, the "Good News."  Indeed the wellspring should be bubbling over in all of us so that we cannot help but to flood the world with the "Good News" of Jesus Christ
"All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!" Isaiah 55:1

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30

All of must first come to the water, drink of the waters of eternal life and then go forth and spread the "Good News"  Brothers and Sisters it was never promised that it would be easy, that it would fun, but we must always remember the words of Jesus.

"So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.  "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes will be those of his own household.  He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. "He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me. He who receives a prophet because he is a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward, and he who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward.  And whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward." Matthew 10:32-42

The cross may seem heaviest now but this is when Jesus is there with us helping us to lift the burden and to carry on.  In the face of persecution, the truth rings out with a clarity like that of a bell ringing throughout the land.  Persecution is occurring ever more in our country and in the world and in spite of that we stand for the Truth because we can do nothing less than what Our Lord did for us.  

Stand for Truth, Stand for Jesus, spread the Good News to all for the world is drinking the sand is dying of thirst because the waters of eternal life have not been shared with them.  The call has been issued forth, it is incumbent upon us to answer and to spread the waters of eternal life, Let the flood pour forth in our country!!! 

Now is the Time – Evangelize, Catechize and Commission

Now is the Time – Evangelize, Catechize and Commission

People Drink the Sand Because They Don’t Know the Difference

So no doubt there has been a lot going with the HHS mandate, lawsuits and other legal action.  However this corrosive mandate which has only been made worse by the “compromise” put forth by the administration is an opportunity.  There is a great deal of division in our country right now, things are a royal mess.  Even though I am only 29, I look back in recent history and can’t find a time where our rights have been so impinged upon.

So when we look to the division in our nation, but we should also be looking into the division in our Church, not just the Catholic/Protestant divisive but within the Catholic Church itself.  There is the “Catholic Health Association”, and “Catholics United” who have come out in favor of this mandate with the Obama compromise.  My opinion and it is only my opinion is that they were probably for it even before the compromise but could not actually state that because of the massive outcry that there would have been.

The Catholic Church right now in the current moment has unprecedented unification amongst its bishop.  All 180 bishops have spoken out against this mandate and why is this?  Because they can see that this is fundamentally wrong, the morality of it notwithstanding, but the rule of law being violated is egregious.  This moment of unity should be used as a time of evangelization and catechesis on what the church actually teaches.  The threat is real and so should be the catechesis given by our bishops, priests and lay catechists.  That is not say that I am not extremely proud of what the US Bishops are doing, I just hope to see more done.  It seems the bishops not only have reacted to the mandate but heard the words of the Pope in his this address…

“…it is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a RADICAL SECULARISM which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres. The seriousness of these threats needs to be clearly appreciated at EVERY LEVEL OF ECCLESIAL LIFE.” Benedict XVI, January 19, 2012

As many have said the sleeping giant that is the Catholic Church has been awakened, I would say though the giant has been startled and is waking up blinking his eyes and looking around.  The normal Catholic in the pew is looking around and seeing what is going on.  It could very easily if not pushed roll over and go back to sleep.  Thus the importance is shown of the necessity of catechesis and evangelization in the present environment on life issues.  Properly showing people why the church teaches what it does, seminars and catechetical events to educate and evangelize.  Secularism and Atheism has made major inroads in our culture and it is time that Catholics stand up and start to take back the culture because without the Catholic Church there wouldn’t be much of a culture to start with. 

So educate yourself, educated others, push your priests and bishops to hold educational seminars, teachings in homilies.  People are desperate for the truth and the as faithful Catholics we have a obligation to give it them. 

I would like to give you two quotes from the movie the American President which I think are exceedingly relevant right now:

 “America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free"…We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, [Barak Obama] is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.”

“[Lewis Rothschild] People want leadership…and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand…[Andrew Shepherd] People don't drink the sand 'cause they're thirsty. They drink the sand 'cause they don't know the difference.”

People have been complacent, lazy, thinking that what we have in this country is easy.  People have been drinking the sand for way to long and it is time for us [the Catholic Church] to lead them to the water, the water that gives eternal life, the divine wellspring that is the Catholic Church started by Jesus Christ when he walked this earth and sealed with the promise of the Cross.  It’s time to stand up, to be counted as passionately Catholic, to live what we are called to live, the Gospel Message, the Good News.  The news we have doesn’t get any better and yet we have not been sharing that, now is the time to change that, now is the time to reach out, now is the time to make a difference.  Whether it is one person or a thousand, it is time to speak out and speak up because if not there might not be an opportunity to do so again.

“The Church exists in order to Evangelize” Evangelii Nuntiandi 41 (Pope Paul VI)

“I sense that the moment has come to commit all the Church’s energies to a new evangelization and to the mission ad gentes.  “No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty:
to proclaim Christ to all peoples.”  Redemptoris Missio 3 (Blessed John Paul the Great)

Now is the time, Now is the time