Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited, a novel in dramatic form, revolves around a conversation between two men, Black and White, about the existence of God. White is a man in despair whom Black has just prevented from killing himself by jumping in front of an oncoming train. Black takes White home so that he can try to convince White of the goodness of life and that faith in Jesus gives life meaning, both of which White rejects. Ultimately, White leaves Black’s apartment, un-swayed by Black’s arguments, leaving a shaken Black asking God if what he did was “okay.”

McCarthy’s stories often include a memorably monstrous figure. Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men is most famous, but even more diabolical is Judge Holden in Blood Meridian, and more grotesque is Lester Ballard in Child of God (whom I previously discussed in “Strange Dignity”). These characters share a sense of having come into the world fully formed as evil. There was never a point at which they were corrupted; this is the way they seem to have always been. There seems to be no reason for their perversity, which challenges faith in the goodness and order of creation.

In The Sunset Limited (both the novel and the film adaptation starring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson), White similarly appears naturally corrupted, not so much in his willingness to be monstrously cruel towards others as in his rejection of his own goodness. We know nothing of his history at the start, and even when we learn some of it, it cannot fully account for his perverse despair. Like McCarthy’s villains above, he ultimately seems to be this way for no reason. However, unlike those villains, he is not a larger-than-life monster. Instead, he is all too human, and this makes him, in some ways, more unsettling than, say, Judge Holden who almost seems to be of supernatural origin. While the Judge is frightening because of how far removed he seems from humanity, White is unsettling because his frustrations and loneliness are familiar human issues. He faces all the struggles of the average man, but his answer to them is to destroy himself.

The Chitchat Apostolate

In White, Black is confronted with the problem of evil. How is he to respond to or understand something that, for no reason, rejects the good? He responds with truth and love, which Pope Benedict XVI identifies as pillars of Catholic social action. In his encyclical Caritas in veritate, he describes how

truth needs to be sought, found and expressed within the “economy” of charity, but charity in its turn needs to be understood, confirmed and practiced in the light of truth. In this way, not only do we do a service to charity enlightened by truth, but we also help give credibility to truth, demonstrating its persuasive and authenticating power in the practical setting of social living. (n. 2)

Black is bold in telling White that it is faith in Jesus that provides the meaning to life that White cannot see (and would refuse to accept even if he could see it). He says bluntly that he perceives Christ’s presence in his life. He balances this proclamation of Christian truth with showing love towards White; he save’s White’s life, feeds him, and tries to find White “constituents” who could be his friends. He engages in what Catherine Doherty, foundress of Madonna House, calls the “chitchat apostolate,” which tends toward a person’s intangible needs for friendship, in chatting about cooking with rutabagas and tripe, and telling jailhouse stories. All in all, Black acts to bring about good in White’s life; he acts with love.

However, even though Black’s conversation with White is founded on the pillars of truth and love, this fails to convince White of anything. Black does everything right from a Catholic perspective, yet his efforts do not bear fruit. His response to this evil seems insufficient. Now, this might not be his fault; the Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart says in The Experience of God that

An absolutely convinced atheist, it often seems to me, is simply someone who has failed to notice something very obvious – or, rather, failed to notice a great many very obvious things. This not any sort of accusation or reproach. Something can be incandescently obvious but still utterly unintelligible to us if we lack the conceptual grammar required to interpret it; and this, far from being a culpable deficiency, is usually only a matter of historical or personal circumstance.

Hart then goes on to use the example of a person raised in a culture without written language who encounters an abandoned city whose history is written down and available to the discoverer. The person would have an incredible amount of information staring him in the face, but he is unable to know what the information is – or even that it is there – if he does not realize that written language exists.

White, however, is not simply ignorant. He is a professor and is used to evaluating and studying Western art and culture. He is not entirely familiar with the tenets of Christianity, but he does know enough to discuss them in part. Even though he does not share Black’s “conceptual grammar,” White knows that he could find meaning in life if he were to accept those tenets, but he pre-emptively rejects the meaning they would provide, and therefore he will not accept them. It is not simply that he is unable to believe, but that he is a luciferian figure who rejects belief as such, aware of the cost.

Love and Reason

It is important to note that the conversation between Black and White is not an exchange of rational arguments for and against the existence of God, although they always lurk on the sidelines. Instead, the conversation transcends logical propositions to rest finally on issues of love, the greater apologetic. Rational arguments may or may not lead one to believe in an uncreated creator, or in the historicity of an empty tomb, but it is love shared among members of a communion and experienced as coming from that uncreated creator, that makes this belief seem real and vital. White hates instead of loves, and does not accept the love others give him; he tries to pay Black for having saved his life, which Black did as a gratuitous act of love shown to a fellow person Jesus has commanded him to love. Having cursed his neighbours thousands upon thousands of times, he has hardened his heart like Pharaoh. White is not completely insensitive to others; he looks to see that no children witness his suicide attempt, and makes occasional attempts to avoid offending Black too deeply. He may be failing to appreciate these obvious signs of concern for others as proof of a sort of love, but in his perverse despair he could probably interpret them as a failure to hate everybody properly.

One gets the sense that White could relatively easily be convinced of God’s existence, but would reject God all the same because he rejects the idea that God is loving or that He should be loved. He rejects God partly because of the evil he sees in the world, which he believes reveals the meaninglessness of human action and the absurdity of hope. He believes that if God exists, the sound of human suffering must be the sound most pleasing to His ears, and such a god would not be worth worshipping.

White is right to say that suffering has no meaning in and of itself (although there are instances in which there can be significance in accepting suffering), and that if it turns out that the suffering is part of a providential plan, God does seem to be cruel and capricious. His failure is not one of reason, but of love and of hope. Matthew Boudway, in Commonweal, notes that

The main appeal of an afterlife to those of McCarthy’s characters who believe in it—or hope for it—is not so much the promise of personal immortality as the prospect of reunion with the dead. They are often unsure that they can communicate directly with God, but they pray to their departed loved ones, and the confidence that these prayers are heard is the foundation of whatever faith they have. To put it another way: Rather than believing in what Christians call the communion of saints because they believe in God, their belief in God, strong or weak, springs from their belief in a communion of saints.

White, however, dreads seeing those he has known who have already died. He would rather cease to exist than see his mother again. He has no community on earth, having no close friends and cursing his neighbours daily, and so he has no interest in communion with others in another life. His rejection of earthly communion leads to his rejection of heavenly communion.

Love and Freedom

Boudway further argues that the villains in McCarthy’s stories tend to find meaning by “constructing abstract theories that will account for everyone’s past, as well as everyone’s future. Not incidentally, these comprehensive theories have the effect of absolving the villains of any responsibility for their deeds.” These theories allow the villains to say that they have no choice, and that they are simply fulfilling a larger role that fate or chance has given them when they do evil. White does something similar in that he has constructed a vast theory of nothingness that absolves him of responsibility for destroying himself. He believes that nothing in the world has real meaning, that his life has no meaning, that to live is to suffer for no reason, and that to die is to be nothing and to not suffer, and so, self-destruction is the only logical action. He believes that evolution inevitably leads to organisms perceiving the meaningless absurdity of existence, and so killing himself is the end result of evolution, over which he has no real control.

McCarthy’s stories tend to contain a moment when characters choose very deliberately to do evil or cooperate with it. The Counselor does this most obviously, in that the title character who chooses to participate in the drug trade is made very aware of its dangers and is constantly asked whether he truly wants to participate, and does so anyway. In Blood Meridian, the kid has a chance to shoot and kill the diabolical Judge, but chooses not to (despite my silently screaming at him to do it). The Sunset Limited reverses this, in that White chooses not to do good. He does not make the leap into faith. Instead, he lets himself be swept along by the current of his grand theory of nothingness, which absolves him of responsibility for rejecting belief. His choice is simply consistent with his idea that evolution leads to awareness of life’s absurdity, and so he need not answer for it.

The Sunset Limited ultimately comes down to what Black and White do with their freedom in a fallen world, whose inhabitants must hope for justice in the next world, if they hope for it at all. Reason by itself falls short and love always runs the risk of being rejected. Black is right to respond to White’s despair by loving him; in reality, he can do nothing more. He cannot override White’s freedom because freedom exists for the sake of love, as Pope St. John Paul II says in Love and Responsibility. So, if White is to learn to love and receive love, it must be done freely. Black knows that he is divinely commanded to love White, and because he also knows that he has the freedom not to do so, he feels responsibility for White once he has chosen to fulfill that command. He fulfills his freedom by using it to love. White denies his freedom and abdicates responsibility for his choice, believing it to be inevitable. Because he rejects freedom, he must also reject that for which freedom exists: love.

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From the first moment of birth we all experience suffering. A doctor rips a newborn child from a comfortable, warm, and familiar setting. Naked and thrown into an unknown world, he experiences hunger and cold.

The mother also feels intense suffering through nine months of enduring uncomfortable, sleepless nights, worrying about the health of the baby and her health. And of course, the mother experiences the intense physical pain of labor.

But with all that pain a new life enters the world. It is easy to see where this type of suffering leads. However, it is very difficult to see how other types of suffering lead to something as good as a newborn child.

Needless Suffering?

Is suffering needless? What is its purpose? It seems all suffering seems useless but to grow we need to suffer. When a person wants to succeed at his job, he has to work harder and later in the day. He has to improve himself by going to industry and corporate meetings which might involve days and nights away from family or friends. To be a better student, he needs to study late in the night, take the difficult courses, and forgo parties with friends.

The above examples are sufferings which one might choose to do to achieve a goal or desire but the sufferings which most people think of do not have any tangible happy ending someone can foresee or plan for.

It is the sufferings which are unplanned, unexpected, and undesirable that shock us. This type of pain shocks us because it is unexpected and undesirable. Then, we become distraught, distrustful and discouraged about life. Sufferings which seem needless are the ones which focus the mind. These needless sufferings are the ones that we need the help of God. It is God who will help us persevere.

Purpose of Suffering

I experienced intense suffering while growing up without a father. Well, he was around but he was an alcoholic and lived on the street. He died at 39 when I was 13. I felt immense suffering, anguish, and loneliness at the time.

So what was God’s purpose for a child suffering?  God’s purpose, I think, was that I learn from my experience to be the best father and husband I can be to my family. God showed me what a broken family can do to children. The uncertainty, the mortal danger of strange men coming into the house, the feeling of the lack of love, and the instability; all these cause havoc on the emotional well-being of children.

God’s purpose for me is to have me show my children and society the consequences of a marriage failing and when the responsibilities of being a father and mother are not taken seriously.

Look at Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe’s suffering. Saint Kolbe was a Catholic priest held prisoner at Auschwitz. He continued to perform the duties of a priest and the Nazis beat and harassed him.   When 10 prisoners disappeared, the Nazis picked 10 men to be starved to death. One of the men selected cried out, “My wife! My children!”.   Saint Kolbe volunteered to take his place.  He later was killed by lethal injection.

But whoever is made to suffer as a Christian should not be ashamed but glorify God because of the name. (1 Peter 4:16)

What was the purpose of Saint Kolbe’s suffering? Well, he continued to practice his duties as a priest and gave hope to the other prisoners. He saved a man’s life. He continued to practice Christ’s work in the most extreme circumstances.

Most of our suffering is not as intense as Saint Kolbe’s or as devastating as the pain of a parent who loses a young child.

I do not mean to be a Pollyanna but when people endure suffering it can be turned into a positive with the right attitude and outlook. In fact, good can come from suffering as seen by Saint Kolbe.

For as Christ’s sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow.  If we are afflicted, it is for your encouragement and salvation; if we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement, which enables you to endure the same sufferings that we suffer.(2 Corinthians 1:5-6)

Inevitable

Suffering in life is inevitable. It is part of the human experience. Sometimes we choose to suffer, other times it is forced upon us by circumstance beyond our control. Either way, we cannot allow the suffering to morph into victimhood. We have free will and feeling as if you are a victim allows others to control you.  Remember no man can control your thoughts.  It is difficult, but to live a more fulfilling life, one is required to look for the purpose and good of suffering.

We should also remember that suffering is not an isolated feeling. All humans suffer at one time or another in their lives. It is not a new phenomenon. All through history humans have suffered. We should use the many examples of the Saints and the examples of courage shown by ordinary people that we run into in our day; the woman suffering from cancer, the boy who has lost a parent, or the neighbor suffering from a loss of a job. We must remember that we are not alone in our suffering. God is with us. But we are here too, to reach out and help each other.

If we cannot redirect our feelings of sufferings then we cannot fully enjoy the glory of God and live a joyful and happy life.

Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance,and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us.For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. (Romans 5:3-5)

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Unimaginable Loss

Tragedy struck our family in February of this year. My 47-year-old aunt Jeannine, with whom I was close, committed suicide during a night when she was lost in deep despair. A despair we hadn’t known she battled, until we read her journal entries after the fact.

Our family has been and continues to reel from what happened. Waves of sadness, anger, detachment and acceptance, all ebb and flow like the tide. Sometimes it feels more like a tsunami, where a flashback or certain emotion hits me out of the blue, paralyzing me for a moment, until I can gain my bearings again. Grieving a suicide is a unique type of grief. And healing will take a long, long time.

The Social Stigma of Suicide

There is such a stigma around suicide in our culture, which I now firmly believe only makes the problem worse. Our family has been open about what happened to my aunt, but more than one person cautioned us against being honest. Against calling it what it was. We didn’t want to add to the stigma, and made the decision to be straightforward about what we knew. Many people responded with gratitude that we were so open. It helped them begin to heal, too, since the veil of mystery was lifted. It helped many know how to frame their grief.

But there are also many who don’t know what to say, or do. Or who try to say something helpful, or meant to lighten the mood, that actually makes things worse. I am confident that almost everyone I’ve talked to about this has wanted to be supportive, even if they didn’t exactly know how.

And my hope is to continue that dialogue-opening work by writing about our experience. To let people know what it’s like from the perspective of someone who has lived through it. And to hopefully, through that increased understanding, help people who have friends or family going through a similar circumstance, to know how to provide uplifting support.

In this article, I wish to share some of the things I am thankful for, during a very difficult time.

Thankfulness in the Midst of Grieving

I had the honor of talking with my aunt about issues of faith several times over the years. I was always thankful for her openness with me. And as I grew more comfortable in my own faith, particularly since my Catholic conversion, those talks got easier. Three months before she died, my aunt and I shared a car ride together where we talked about God for a good, long while.

Three days before my aunt made the decision to end her own life, she told my mom she was Catholic.

I will never know on this earth what connected in her mind to tell my mom she identified as Catholic. She wasn’t at the place yet where she had decided to end her life. Maybe something inside that conversation we had a few months prior stuck with her. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it was a thing she had temporarily settled on before she would have moved on and considered the next. Whatever it was, we were grateful to have something to go off of. Because of that, and because of her Catholic baptism as an infant, we planned for her a funeral Mass. I am thankful for that very special conversation in November and for her, seemingly random at the time words to my mother. It helped us know what to do.

Because of some family and friends relationships, Jeannine had a funeral Mass with two priests, a monsignor and a deacon. And it was beautiful. There was so much grace and love poured out for her between the wake and the service. And I grew even more thankful for my Catholic faith in a time of great sorrow.

I grew even more thankful for priests and deacons. They see life at its best and happiest, and at its worst and ugliest. And they were all so sensitive to our family, so full of compassion. A family friend who is a priest also came with me to Jeannine’s apartment in the wake of what happened. I had gone there to pick up some documents and pictures, and the whole apartment just had a feeling of heaviness to it. He joined me there and prayed through the space and blessed it with holy water. That helped give us peace as we had to return to the apartment for a whole day to go through it and pack up all her things.

I grew even more thankful for the mercy of the Church. Monsignor Michael Steber, my step-uncle, sent me the most beautiful brochure about the Catholic Church and suicide. It affirmed what we knew, that she wasn’t in a state of mind to make a clear decision, and that directly impacts a person’s culpability when making that tragic choice.

And I grew even more thankful that I can still will my aunt’s good with my prayers. The fact that God is outside of time has become even more important to me since this happened. I have clung to the hope that anything I pray for Jeannine now can be applied to her in the moment when she had the most need, to that moment in the past where she couldn’t see a way out. I can pray that she says yes to the hand of Love reached out towards her during a time when she felt surrounded by darkness. Because of these things, I can still have hope that she is at peace.

The Idea of God

My aunt struggled with the idea of God, but not with the idea of love. For part of our last big conversation about faith together, we talked about that. About how it was easier for her to attribute good things to a non-specific higher power than it was to attribute them to God. We talked about how, if that word is difficult for her, to know that God is love. So, whenever she was witness to or participating in an act of selfless love, she was seeing and experiencing God, even if calling Him by that name didn’t come easy.

After she set in motion the events that would end her life, past the time when anything could be done, I hope that she recognized God, recognized Love, and that she let Him wrap her up in His healing embrace. That she let Him take her home. I don’t know for sure what happened to my aunt after her death. But, thanks to the mercy of the Catholic Church, I will continue to pray. I will continue to be thankful for the Church’s support during a dreadful time.

And I will continue to have hope.

The post The Grace of the Catholic Church While Grieving Suicide appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Simply, the Catholic and Gnostic views of materiality are, respectively, Good and Evil, which engender hope and despair. It is paradoxical that the modern adoration of materiality in the form of technology should be concurrent and compatible with the Gnostic regard of materiality as evil. If we take the material and its pleasures as a god, we are quickly faced with the question of ennui and despair, ‘Is that all there is?’ However, the despair of Gnosticism is worse than that of mere idolatry. It is blasphemy. It sees created matter, not as the ultimate good as does idolatry. It sees created matter as evil. It is blasphemy to say what God has created is evil. Though a lesser evil, idolizing matter in its limited goodness can be a prelude to Gnosticism.

The Catholic View of Material Idolatry

We often think of the Catholic opposition to the world, the flesh and the devil as an opposition to and denigration of material reality. But, it is not so. The Catholic view recognizes the world and the flesh as good in themselves, but limited in beauty, goodness, truth and existence. The Catholic opposition is not to such beauty, but to making it our end in its limited existence. It is opposition to our wanting solely something, which leads to despair, rather than our wanting All, who yields infinite beatitude.

A Portrayal of Idolatry

Artists help us to understand material reality more clearly, not by our direct contemplation of nature, but by our appreciation of nature in its portrayal through artistic emphasis. Eugene O’Neil’s play, The Iceman Cometh, portrays the despair of material idolatry in the middle of the twentieth century. Life’s promise of happiness is a fraud. Pleasure is transient. Our seeking of happiness is constantly frustrated. One escape from the bleakness of life is drunkenness, but it too, is transient. The only true escape from the idolatry of matter, is suicide. In his youth, O’Neil lived the life of the proverbial drunken sailor. He suffered from depression and alcoholism all his life.

Material Idolatry Yields to Gnosticism as the Culture of Death

In the last fifty years, the despair of material idolatry has been yielding to the despair of Gnosticism. Gnosticism identifies material reality not as the idolatrous source of human happiness, but rather as evil in itself. It is quite poignantly identified as the culture of death.

In the creation of material reality by God in the first chapter of Genesis, God calls material creation ‘good’ seven times.

In the perennial philosophy, it is evident that the existence of each human being depends upon matter as the source of his individual identity and thereby his very existence. God could not create a human being without matter. Each human is neither a body nor a soul, but a composite of body and soul. In Ephesians 5:29, St. Paul notes that “No one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it”. Each of us exists in our personal identity, via the identity of our matter.

Yet, the essential goodness of matter is compatible with our suffering through matter. In Adam and in our personal sins, we rebel against the love of God for us. Consequently, our emotions instead of prompting us solely to do good, are in revolt against us. Adam and we are no longer in sync with our environment, “Cursed be the ground because of you!” (Gen 3:17). God’s response is to redeem us through created flesh, through his own incarnation.

The crowning glory of matter is the Incarnation, “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (Jn. 1:14) It is matter, which makes possible God’s becoming man and redeeming us through his human flesh. We receive Divine Grace through matter in the Mass and the other sacraments. In the Eucharist, God shows that he cannot wait until our death to be intimately united with us. “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.” (Is 49:15)

The Modern View of Creation

The modern view is that we are creators of reality. “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” It is not that liberty is the right to freely discover the meaning of existence, the universe and the mystery of life. The modern view of liberty is the right and the power to define and thereby create meaning in meaningless matter.

This is a task beyond human power. It is God that defines and identifies all material things in their very natures in the act of bringing them into existence.

A Tragic Instance of the Despair of Gnosticism

One aspect of the Gnostic foundation of the culture of death is the current belief that our bodies may not correspond to our personal identity, particularly in our biological sexuality. The evil of materiality is evidenced in this error, according to the Gnostic view.

Recently, a youth convinced of this particular error of materiality, expressed his conviction in the words, “I feel like I’m in a box, I am in the wrong place.” Although he was encouraged by his parents and had initiated the process of being transgendered, he could not endure the oppression of his materiality. This feeling may have been even more acute due to his interest in the arts, which make our view of life even more poignant. The evening before taking his own life, he said, “I feel trapped. This is not happening enough for me.” Gnosticism, in this instance, convinced its victim that he was a soul imprisoned in a body, that the only full escape from the evil of matter was suicide.

There is hope, not only that our culture should see the goodness and beauty of matter, but that this youth will be in the presence of the Beatific Vision and be graced with the resurrection of his body at the end of time. By grace, God may have presented to him Christ’s Incarnational beauty and love in all its materiality. Let us pray that this youth perceived and accepted the materiality of Christ and his own materiality with joy, just before his death. May he, thereby, rest in peace.

The post The Catholic and Gnostic Views of Materiality Yield Hope and Despair appeared first on Catholic Stand.

After we experience the touch of Jesus, we have a responsibility to become an effective witness of His goodness to those around us who are desperate for some sign of hope. I recently had a chat with a friend who was going through a tough time and was on the verge of what he said was losing hope. As I listened to him explain what he meant by being on the verge of losing hope, I was filled with a sense of sadness. Not because of the tough time or how hopeless he was being, but because my friend is one of those faithful Catholics who never miss the opportunity to attend Mass and receive Holy Communion. This chat happened soon after we had come from the evening Holy Mass, and yes, we both did receive the Holy Eucharist on this occasion. How was it possible that one can attend Holy Mass daily and even receive Holy Communion daily, and yet allow the trials of life to become so pressing; or the circumstances surrounding the event to become so disappointing; or the pain that is associated with it to become so unbearable, that one is tempted to arrive at a point of hopelessness?

This got me thinking about the many Catholic Christians, who, when faced with tough times are so pushed to the brink of hopelessness that they make such statements. Why should a practicing Catholic despair of finding a solution to their dilemma and not know where to turn? I thought it might be our definitions of what hope is, that is the reason many people make such statements. So, I went looking for the meanings of the word, “hope”, in the Oxford English Living Dictionary. Obviously, I found several definitions; but, one caught my eye. The count noun hope is here defined as “A person or thing that may help or save someone.”

If we go by this definition, then Christians must acknowledge that our hope (whether it is for help or salvation) is sure to be found in the promises that God has given us in His Word. When we refer to Scripture about that which is causing us to feel hopeless, we inevitably find God’s promise of freedom which has already come to us by way of the gift of eternal life made possible through His son, Jesus Christ. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the name Jesus in Hebrew means “God saves” (CCC. 430), and backs it up by explaining that at the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel gave the name Jesus as His proper name, expressing both his identity and his mission (cf. Luke 1:31). It is, therefore, His mission to help us and to save us from whatever trials, temptations or pain we may suffer. And, as Catholic Christians, we have many opportunities in the Sacraments to encounter this Jesus, who is our Hope. Why is it then that many times we find ourselves on the verge of losing all hope?

Encounter With Jesus, our Hope

All the synoptic gospels have a record of the Cleansing of a Leper (cf. Mark 1: 40 – 45, Matthew 8: 2 – 4 & Luke 5: 12 – 14). This encounter of the leper with the Lord Jesus serves as a good illustration of what putting our trust in the Lord Jesus does for any who finds himself/herself on the verge of hopelessness. Many are like this leper in suffering a pitiful existence. Here was a man, whose body was so afflicted by a physically destructive and infectious disease, who also faced ritual uncleanness and isolation from society because of the Law of Moses concerning such a disease. Many souls are likewise afflicted, but with spiritual disfigurement and isolation because of debilitating sinfulness. We are progressively enslaved by the sin of despair (cf. John 8:34 & Romans 7:14 – 24), and it is this state of sinfulness which separates us from God and from others (cf. Isaiah 59:2 & 1 Corinthians 5:11), leading us deeper into the state of hopelessness. From the leper, we learn that, as long as he did not find a cure, he remained in the wretched state. Likewise, for as long as we remain guilty of the sin of hopelessness, we are truly wretched!

If you are wondering where sin fits in this discussion, consider the definition of hopelessness. It is a mass noun that means “a feeling or state of despair; a lack of hope.” When we get to a state of despair, we sin against God because despair is a sin against hope. It is the attitude by which man ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins (cf. CCC 2091). In other words, whenever we reach the state of hopelessness, we are actually living in sin against the first commandment. It is also one of the sins against the Holy Spirit, which we must guard against, lest we doom ourselves (cf. Matthew 12:31, Mark 3:29 & Luke 12:10). That tendency to embrace hopelessness is a form of denial of the love of God that has been poured in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us (cf. Romans 5:5).

We know that sin is universal, and all of us have sinned and are therefore deprived of the glory of God (cf. Romans 3:23), especially when it comes to the sin against hope. The tendency to lose our hope is as ingrained in us as fallen beings. We also know that sin leads to eternal death (cf. Romans 6:23 & Revelation 21:8). But when it comes to hopelessness, we somehow do not perceive how this affects our relationship with God, causing us to enter into a state of separation from God and a spiritual death. How is it then possible for us to have a confident hope?

Identify the Lord Jesus as Our Only Hope

The good news for the leper was that he identified Jesus as his only hope, and took action to obtain it. He took a big risk, going out in the crowd in this state. He trusted that Jesus would neither send him away nor pronounce a curse upon him. Thus he gained courage and cried out to Jesus. His cry was earnest and desperate, “imploring Him” to do something. It was reverent – the gospels say, “Kneeling down to Him”, recognizing the authority in Jesus to sort this out for him. It was humble and submissive, asking “If You are willing”, ready to accept whatever Jesus was going to hand him. It was believing and trusting that “Jesus can”. It acknowledged the need he had – “to be made clean”. It was very highly specific – he did not say “bless me”; he said, “make me clean”. It was personal, stressing the issue on himself, “make me clean”. It was brief, not wordy – only five words are to be found in the original Aramaic New Testament (“Thou canst make me clean”).

We, too, must identify Jesus as our only hope, and cry out to Him for the forgiveness of the sin against hope. We do this first in Baptism, which enables us to call upon the Name of the Lord (cf. Acts 2:21, 37–41 & Acts 22:16). Then we have a good conscience (cf. 1 Peter 3:21) to be able to see despair for what it truly is; and we name it as a sin against hope and sin against God. We take this admission to the Confessional to receive absolution from it. We also acknowledge that it is only through the blood of Jesus Christ that we truly purify our conscience of this sinful state (cf. Hebrews 9:14); and we find our freedom from hopelessness through prayer (cf. Acts 8:13 & 22, 1 John 1:9), particularly in the highest form of prayer, the Holy Mass.

Experience the Restoring Power of the Lord Jesus

The leper experienced Jesus in the cleansing and healing that took place through a simple word and a touch. It was actuated by the Compassion of the Lord (cf. Mark 6:34 & Mark 9:36). It was accompanied by the touch of Jesus (cf. Mark 1:31). It was accomplished immediately at the spoken word of the Lord (cf. Mark 1:41 – 42). We should experience Jesus in a similar cleansing, through a simple act of faith. It should be actuated by God’s love, revealed to us (cf. 1 John 4:9 – 10). It should be accompanied by the redeeming blood of Jesus (cf. Ephesians 1: 7 & 1 Peter 1:18 -19). It should be accomplished when we are united with Jesus in baptism having been absolved of sin (cf. Romans 6:3 – 7 & Colossians 2:12 -13).

Become a Witness of the Lord Jesus

The leper received his commissioning when he was sent away quickly with a strict warning. His instruction was to tell no one anything, but to show himself to the priest (cf. Mark 1:43- 44), and offer what Moses commanded for his cleansing (cf. Leviticus 14:1 – 7) as a testimony to them of what great act Jesus had done (cf. Matthew 11:5 & Luke 7:22). Unfortunately, he, with misdirected zeal, failed to keep quiet as directed and publicized what happened so that news of it spread. This forced Jesus away from cities, and the people now had to find Him in deserted places. We, too, have a great commission to produce Disciples of Christ (cf. Matthew 28:19 – 20), to preach the gospel to every person (cf. Mark 16:15 – 16), and to proclaim repentance and remission of sins to all nations (cf. Luke 24: 47). However, we must show proper gratitude by being faithful to this commission and going out to the ends of the world (cf. Romans 10:18 & Colossians 1:5 – 6), preaching to every creature under heaven (cf. Colossians 1:23). As we endeavor to do it, we must be aware of misdirected zeal, by which we hinder rather than help the Lord Jesus in winning over lost souls. In bearing witness to Jesus our Hope, we do not have to speak (lest our words fail us); but we must show it in our actions, in the way we live.

Other souls who are on the verge of losing hope must see in us that Jesus our Hope is reachable, accessible, available and approachable. We, ourselves, must have the courage to approach Him and ask of Him when we are in need. We must tell Him the truth openly. We reach out to Him, accept Him and allow Him to touch us, and we make contact with Him. We must seek His touch which cleanses, heals, renews, restores and makes us whole again. We must constantly ask ourselves where we are right now in our life, and if we need to be touched. Then we choose the touch of Jesus because it signifies Intimacy; for the Lord Jesus wants to be involved in our lives. It indicates Power; for it causes a change to happen (e.g. Simon became Peter, Jacob became Israel, Abram became Abraham, lepers become cleansed, and you become…). It implies Transformation of disease to health, of deafness to the ability to hear and speak to Him, of blindness to opening of spiritual eyes, of being doomed to be blessed, of the dead coming to new life, of the deceived having a new base on life, and of the dismayed or fearful being brought to courage.

This is the promise we have from God, which is made available to us by Mother Church in the Sacraments. Ours is to embrace them and make use of them; but above all, bring them to life in our daily situations. May you experience the touch of Jesus, and may you become an effective witness of His goodness to us.

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Ireland has always been known as a place of enchantment, particularly in its poetry, music, and dance. As if to remind us of this, the Emerald Isle itself is even shaped like a harp! But to adopt the metaphor of Don McLean’s classic song, American Pie, May 25 was “the day the music died” in Ireland. Figuratively speaking, Ireland is now a broken harp.

The disastrous abortion referendum in Ireland has given many good people cause to lament. I am one of them. Watching one of the few remaining bastions of pro-life strength in Europe fall to such a devastating onslaught was an agonizing moment for me, especially since “my people,” as they say, came from the old sod.

A Textbook Case of Abortion Assault

Some blame the scandals in the Catholic Church in Ireland for the rejection of the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of life. I do not. The scandals certainly contributed to the decline of Church authority, which, when put to the test on so important an issue, was found seriously wanting. But the Irish have been rejecting the Catholic faith for a couple generations. As Russell Saltzman has noted in a perceptive article entitled, “Ireland and the Pagan Resurgence,” the Irish have drunk to the dregs the cup of paganism that St. Patrick had drained nearly sixteen centuries ago.  They had finally reached the “critical mass” necessary to vote abortion in.

Abortion does not enter a culture overnight. (Communist countries are an exception, where atheism is imposed and abortion follows quickly.) It takes a great deal of time and effort to install a mentality that accepts the killing of unborn children as a “human right” in a historically Christian country. The abortion referendum in Ireland, however, is a textbook case of how the ministers of death work to implement their agenda – step by step, stealthily, patiently, by coercion and deception. The progress of an abortion assault is the same in every culture that has ever legalized abortion.

Step One: Make them prosperous so they do not need God

Millennials were not the first generation born after Ireland joined the European Union (EU) in 1973, but they are perhaps the first to experience the unfettered economic prosperity and culture change that issued from that decision. The regional agreement symbolized a Europe that was no longer unified by the Catholic faith (as it had been since the time of Charlemagne) but rather by money. It was initially called the Common Market or the European Economic Union, was it not?

The Irish bought into the promise of the “good life” that was assured by their entrance into the EU, and the windfall of materialism was calamitous. Oftentimes the increase of disposable income is directly proportionate to the weakening of religious practice, especially for those whose prosperity is new-found. That was certainly true in the case of Ireland.

It is not my purpose to critique capitalism here (of which we know there are many benefits) but simply to point out its negative effects on a society that had been poor by Western standards until it suddenly found itself flush with cash. In fact, the Irish economy was so robust from the mid-’90s to the late 2000s that economists called it the “Celtic Tiger” with an economic growth rate of between 6% and 9.5%. That is unheard of growth, and the entire Millennial Generation was born in that time period.

Wealth and globalism brought secular influences and anti-Christian ideologies in their wake (environmentalism, radical feminism, pornography, etc.). Neither of these influences had not been there before, except in isolated enclaves of academia and the media. These forces did their inevitable dirty work of loosening the grip of religious faith over the hearts and minds of the people. And they were especially effective when it came to the younger generations. The Bible calls this phenomenon “worldliness” with all its negative baggage (1 John 2:15-17). I call it Step One. The scandals of the Irish Catholic Church were simply served up on a platter in recent years by the atheistic media to strengthen the case against God, faith, and traditional morality.

Step Two: Target and weaken their Christian laws

Step Two was the legal blitzkrieg, accompanied by a slander campaign to vilify Christian values. Ireland voted to cast off traditional legal prohibitions to contraception in 1992, to divorce in 1995, and to gay marriage in 2015.  Ireland was the very first country in the world to legalize it by popular vote. And the current Abortion referendum was actually the sixth in a series since the 1980s. These milestones and many other such challenges had an overall weakening effect on the laws and institutions of faith in Irish culture.

The international community piled onto little Ireland with its characteristic arrogance and unrelenting hostility. The practices of hauling Irish officials before boards of their peers, and shaming, blaming, and humiliating them are standard strong-arm tactics of the global elites. They have been very effective at coercing smaller nations into submission to the abortion agenda in this way. Intense pressure campaigns by the UN, the EU, the European Council of Human Rights, International Planned Parenthood, Amnesty International, among other groups, targeted Catholic Ireland with indictments of discriminatory, restrictive, oppressive, cruel, anti-woman, and anti-modern against Irish laws upholding traditional morality.

In recent years, embattled Irish governments simply stopped resisting international pressure and appointed compliant globalists as their representatives. One cabinet-level Irish government official, Katherine Zappone, for example, is a childless, married lesbian.  She is also a Wiccan.  Zappone aggressively campaigned for gay marriage in 2015 and then effectively used her office to promote abortion. She is the current Minister for Children and Youth Affairs.

The final pressure point was the hysterical reaction of the media/abortion conglomerate to the death of a woman named Aisha Chithira. Chithira died at the hands of a Nigerian abortionist in England after she was refused an abortion in Ireland. An investigation revealed that the poor woman died due to “repeated failures” (as many as 17) of the medical community to treat her properly. But the abortion lobby did not let the facts get in their way.  They went into a frenzy to blame the abortion restrictions in Ireland for her death, which, not ironically, is exactly the type of pressure they used to legalize abortion fifty years earlier in England. The abortion playbook never changes.

Step Three: Indoctrinate their youth

With diabolical foresight and scheming, the abortion lobby chose the Millennial Generation as the likely demographic that would vote abortion in. Their “backward” Catholic parents and grandparents had to die off or become the minority before a new generation would accept something as horrendous as the wholesale killing of babies. It is not coincidental that the youth who voted for abortion are the first generation born with cell phones, universal access to cable TV programming, disposable income, and the Internet. These were the effective instruments of Step Three: Indoctrination.

In the lead-up to the referendum there was not a single major political party in Ireland that advocated for the pro-life side. With the openly-gay Irish Prime Minister leading the charge, the Irish nation threw open its doors to abortion on May 25, with two-thirds of the nation welcoming the new culture of killing. A full 87% of the 18-24 demographic – the Millennials – voted for abortion.

No one with a Christian heart or a functioning conscience could stomach the “celebrations” of the right to kill that took possession of the Irish mobs after the abortion vote. They were reminiscent of the atrocious revelries of the Golden Calf generation in Israel that brought a curse down upon the people in the desert (Exodus 32). Will the Millennial abortion vote do the same for Ireland? Those lugubrious voices have largely driven the sacred music from the country’s soul and destroyed the magnificent pro-life, Catholic culture of Ireland.

As I watched those aftermath videos I couldn’t help but think also of the Israelites in the first Book of Samuel clamoring for a king against the Lord’s wishes. Their reason: to be “like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:5). The pretentious boast of every society that caves into abortion is always the same: “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15).

The Coming ‘Nuclear’ Fallout in Ireland

To discern the likely fallout of the Irish catastrophe we have only to view the benchmarks of cultural devastation in every nation where abortion has been legalized:

• Division: Irish culture and politics will be irreparably split down the middle between those who want the killing to continue and those who do not. The latter – the moral conscience of the nation – will be demonized as criminals, and the former will advocate for even more heinous offenses. Predictably, Ireland now plans to force Catholic hospitals to provide abortions, and we can expect euthanasia to follow quickly in abortion’s wake.
• Cultural jaundice: With abortion the law of the land, the nation will enter into an uneasy compromise with evil and turn a blind eye to other kinds of evils generated by their deal with death: the maiming of women; abortion as a cover-up for sexual abuse; the link between abortion and breast cancer, among other things.
• Undermining of the medical profession: The Hippocratic Oath will cease to have meaning or give guidance to the medical profession now; doctors, nurses, technicians, pharmacists and other medical personnel will become corrupted by abortion money or will compromise their consciences as they attempt to avoid various forms of cooperation with a heinous procedure that enjoys the endorsement of the law.
• Degradation of culture: The “altruistic” reasons for abortion (compassion, women’s rights, etc.) will soon give way to a pervasive culture of selfishness. Men will coerce women into abortions. Some 90% of women who have abortions will choose them for perfectly selfish motives, and abortion will become the default back up for failed birth control.
• De-population: Because Ireland is such a small country, it will more quickly feel the long-term effects of abortion, particularly in the population decline that is evident in every European country that has legalized abortion and is a ticking time bomb in China.

Everything the pro-life movement warned would happen as a result of abortion will happen. The nuclear fallout of such a diabolical decision will have devastating effects on Irish culture for generations – just as it has here in the U.S. – until they repent and return to sanity.

The Spiritual Problem and Solution

I am not one to blame the devil for every human problem, but the Evil One is most definitely the chief perpetrator of abortion everywhere. Jesus called him “a liar and the father of lies” and “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44), which is a fairly accurate description of what abortion is and how it comes about.

If the erosion of Christian faith is the root cause of Ireland’s acceptance of abortion, only a return to faith will be its solution. The demon of abortion does not tolerate reasoned argument or any level of compromise. It has to be rebuked and its serpents driven out of Ireland, again; a kind of spiritual warfare that is often necessary in the struggle for the soul of a nation.

Happily, the youthful, vibrant pro-life movement in Ireland is itself clear evidence that Catholic roots run very deep in that blessed soil. Not all the Millennials were corrupted. The astounding number of prayer campaigns, pilgrimages, Eucharistic and Rosary processions, and penitential actions carried out by pro-life youth in Ireland before the referendum was a marvel to behold and would have made St. Patrick proud.

No, their holy efforts did not succeed in keeping abortion out – apparently the Irish have to pay for their sins like every other nation on the face of the earth. But their actions were a brilliant Christian witness that would give my ancestors cause to cheer. In Ireland, as in America, the pro-life youth are the hope of the future. Ireland’s harp may be broken, but St. Patrick’s hallowed music will not be suppressed.

The post Broken Harp: The Deadly Abortion Deal in Ireland appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Many in the Church have made serious assertions that we can have a reasonable hope that at the Final Judgement Hell will be empty – that the Mercy of God is so great that even those that do not repent will be saved. Some have even gone so far as to assert that in the end even the Devil will be saved. These are shocking assertions, but do we really have a reasonable hope that Hell will be empty? Will everyone really end up in Heaven, regardless of their actions? I believe the answer to both questions is no, and in this article, I will explain why.

Scripture

Let’s start with the firm assertion that Jesus Christ came to earth to die for our sins, after suffering His passion, and then rising from the dead provide the grace necessary to be saved. Salvation is freely given to those who acknowledge their sins, and by his grace repent of them and persevere to the end of their lives in friendship with the Father through Jesus. There is no doubt in Catholic teaching, and in most Christian denominations about this basic tenet. For God so loved the world that he sent his Only Begotten Son that we may have eternal life.

However, some stop there and forget what has been said in the Holy Scriptures about Hell – what it is like, and who goes there. The reality of saving Grace and Salvation for those who achieve holiness through Christ is often used to mask the reality of Hell for those who break friendship with God and deliberately choose to be wicked and to live evil lives. People don’t like to hear that such punishment exists, or to even acknowledge damnation. But what does scripture really say about Hell?

Hell Is Not a Pleasant Place

2 Samuel 22:6, Psalm 18:5 – There are sorrows in Hell.
Job 11:8, Psalm 86:13 Hell is deep.
Psalm 116:3 – There is great pain in Hell.
Isaiah 33:10-17 There is a devouring fire, and everlasting burnings
Isaiah 66:24 – in Hell, their worm shall not die and their fire shall not be quenched.
Jer. 15:14 – in my anger, a fire is kindled which shall burn forever.
Judith 16:17 – in the day of judgment the Lord will take vengeance on the wicked and they shall weep in pain forever.
Matt. 3:12; Luke 3:17 – John the Baptist said the Lord will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.
Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 24:51, 25:30, 13:28  – There is darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Matthew 25:41 Hell is an Everlasting Fire
Mark 9:47-48 – Jesus refers to hell as where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. It lasts forever.
James 3:6 The tongues of the damned are set on fire in Hell.
Revelation 14:9-12, 20:10 The damned are tormented with fire and brimstone in God’s presence.
Revelation 21:8 Hell is a lake of fire and that is the second death.

Who goes to Hell?

Psalm 9:17, Psalm 55:15 All the wicked and all the nations that forget God.
Proverbs 27:20 Hell is never full.
Isaiah 5:14 Hell has enlarged herself to make room for all the damned.
Isaiah 14:15 The Devil will go there – he is not there now (Matthew 8:28-29, Revelation 20:10)
Ezekiel 31:16-17 The Devil is cast into hell
Matt. 25:41 – Jesus says, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
Matt. 25:46 – Jesus says, “they will go away into eternal punishment” which is in reference to this eternal fire.
Matt. 7:21 – all those who say “Lord, Lord” on the last day will not be saved. They are judged by their evil deeds.
2 Thess. 1:6-9 – the angels will come with flaming fire and the disobedient will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction.
Heb. 12:14 – without holiness, no one will see the Lord. Holiness requires works of self-denial and charity and does not come about simply by a profession of faith.
2 Peter 2:4 The angels that sinned have been cast down to hell, and are chained there until the day of judgment (Revelation 20:11-15)
Jude 6-7 – the rebelling angels, and Sodom and Gomorrah serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Isaiah 24:17-23 The angels that have yet to sin and rebel will be shut up in hell
Revelation 11:7, 17:8 The antichrist is right now in the bottomless pit.
Revelation 14:11 – the worshipers of the beast suffer and the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.
Revelation 20:10 – they’re tormented in the lake of fire and brimstone day and night forever and ever.
Revelation 20:15 Whoever is not found in the book of life.

(Source:  ScriptureCatholic.com)

The verses listed above are just a sampling of what Scripture has to say about Hell. I would remiss, however, if I did not add the sobering verse containing Jesus’ teaching about the narrow path, making it clear that few are saved and most are not.

“Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”  Matthew 17: 13-14

There are many more describing who will be saved and who will not, and what sins will disqualify us from entering Heaven. In summary, there is absolutely no basis in the Holy Scriptures to suggest that Hell does not exist, that it has been abolished, that it is figurative, or that it will be empty at the end of time. We know it exists and that it is well populated. Many mystic saints and visionaries have been allowed to glimpse Hell and its torments in order to warn others and call for prayer penance to save souls. The accounts given by the three Fatima children, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Faustina are quite compelling. Our Lady of Fatima specifically asked for the praying of the Rosary for the conversion of sinners that they may not end up in Hell.

The Reality of Sin

Those that spend time suggesting that Hell is going to be unpopulated at the Final Judgement want to downplay the seriousness of sin and its eternal consequences. It’s sobering and it must be considered by any serious Christian. The teaching of the Church assures us that sin, whether it be venial or mortal, is serious and offends God. Sin is not serious because we will be punished; sin is serious because it offends the Triune God who loves us so much. In fact, as St. Alphonsus Liguori wrote, God loves us so much (and hates sin so much) he came to us and died a horrible death to save us from it. He transformed sin and death into a pathway we can freely choose, with his assistance, to be saved.  But some will still choose the wide path that leads to perdition.

Venial sins are those sins we commit out of ignorance or weakness during our lives.  St. Thomas Aquinas called this tendency to sin concupiscence. Even with the mark of Baptism, the stain of original sin still calls us to thoughtlessly do foolish and evil things. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a primary means to correct those offenses against God, as we offer our sinfulness along with Jesus’ one-time sacrifice to set ourselves back on the path.  Each week we come back to the fountain to be refreshed by Grace, because we fail during the week.  Daily communicants make even better progress. We abide with Christ and walk with him. Our failings are made up by Christ who helps us recover and get back on the path.

Habitual venial sin can lead to Mortal sin, discussed in the next paragraph, so don’t take these sins lightly. On the other hand, being active in the sacramental life, we can relax and trust that if we ask and desire it we can be freed from those sins – especially with frequent confession and reception of the Eucharist. This participation is in part how we abide with Christ and live in the spirit of Hope as adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus.

Mortal sin are those sins that are grave in nature, and done with full knowledge and free will. Mortal sins are the most serious.  It literally breaks our relationship with God and removes us from a “state of Grace.” This is a calamity for those in this state because if they were to die, most likely they would be damned to Hell. Those in this state should not receive the Eucharist because as St. Paul wrote, we eat and drink condemnation upon ourselves. The remedy that makes up for venial sins committed because we are weak and stupid during the week will become a poison which further offends God and moves us closer to damnation. St. John Bosco wrote that the soul of a person in this state is already in Hell in a manner of speaking, even while their body still lives. The longer someone is away from God’s grace, the harder it is for him or her to find their way back. Those in this situation should not delay – as scripture says, “Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call to Him while he is still near.”  (Isaiah 55: 6-7)

False Autonomy of Conscience

There are many who claim that their consciences have told them that sins identified by the Church are not in fact sins. Recent teachings, as found in Chapter 8 of Amoris Latitiae, have even stated that God understands when people can’t live up to his commandments and that a lesser standard of a guiding principle is ok for some.  However, this idea is in error.  Grace can help us overcome all sin – this is what the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus achieved – victory over death. And that victory is not by redefining sin or watering down teaching.  Those that come to the conclusion that the public revelation of the Church is not for them suffer from a malady called “False Autonomy of Conscience.”  (CCC 1792)  One’s conscience can be understood to be correct when it agrees with the Magisterium, and false when it does not.

If sin was not important, God would not have come to earth to suffer and die on the Cross. If all were going to be saved in the end, what would have been the point?  If the Devil and his Demons were to be saved, why did Jesus describe him as our opponent and say that he was damned forever in Hell, and that Our Lady would crush his head?  Why would Jesus caution us over and over about losing salvation? It makes no sense.

Climbing the Mountain

The purpose of the Church is to guide us to Heaven, to save our souls and the souls of everyone that can be evangelized. Bishops and pastors are our guides as we climb this mountain – and seek Jesus who is the only Way, Truth, and Life. Church doctrine is the clearly marked path, and it’s essential that it remains crystal clear not only for unity but to eliminate confusion and lost sheep who fall off the path. The sacraments provide that “oxygen” we need as we get closer and closer to God, for worldly wisdom will only call us back down to the Valley of Death.  We must stay on the path. Let us pray that our leaders teach doctrine clearly, and speak without fear about sin, Heaven, and Hell.  After all, the reality is – and it’s no laughing matter – that souls are at stake.

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Matt 4: 17

The post Hell Yes! appeared first on Catholic Stand.

I have not done a word-by-word analysis. I have not counted the occurrences. I have not spent the time necessary to validate the following statement, but, it occurs to me that the simple word “hope” must appear a couple of hundred times in the Bible.

The Reason for Our Hope

Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope. (1 Peter 3:15)

Before we can be ready to give an explanation for our hope, the first task would be to define the word. The Oxford Dictionary defines hope as “A feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen.”

The New International Version of the Bible provides another version of this “He said it, and I believe it.” Psalm 119:114 “You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word.” And in Psalm 33:17, we are reminded that hope can be easily misplaced, “A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save.”

Paul carries this a bit further in Romans when he states in 8:24, “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees?”  This would become analogous to sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee at 8:15 AM, having showered, and saying, “I hope I get up before 8:30 this morning.” If it has already happened, or if you can objectively see it, it is no longer an act of hope.

Hanging On, Praying Expectantly

When, in conversation, I use the word “hope”, I most often add that, to me, it is an acronym and means “Hanging On, Praying Expectantly”.  This acronym is in compliance with the Oxford Dictionary definition of “A feeling of desire for a particular thing to happen.” This acronym also applies to Abraham in that, he believed in God in spite of the biology involved.

The most difficult thing for us to do may be the ability to hang on while maintaining an air of expectation about what may happen next.  The world is ganging up on you, bills are overdue, kids are sick, the car needs massive repair work, your job appears to be at risk, the dog, the cat and your wife are all expecting, how are you supposed to stay upbeat, positive and pray in the face of all this?

We may wish to consider that “hope” could be regarded as a voluntary muscle which can be exercised, strengthened, and conditioned for use when the world is a bit distressing.  How?

Strengthen your faith – look at all of God’s previously fulfilled promises and the adversity many of the people of the Bible had to overcome to be able to “Hang On while Praying Expectantly”.

Trust God’s timing.  He will always answer a prayer, His response may simply be ‘Yes’, it may be more difficult to understand if His answer is ‘No’, but the response which requires that we continue to hold on and pray is when He says, ‘Wait, I have a better idea.’

Submit yourself to God, that is, get out of the way and let Him do His job. Fr Mychal Judge, a chaplain for the NYFD and the first certified fatality of 9-11, had a short prayer he used under most circumstances: “Lord, take me where You want me to go, Let me meet who You want me to meet, Tell me what You want me to say, And keep me out of Your way.” This prayer kept Fr Judge in the mindset of serving, not being, god.

MOST IMPORTANTLY – Thank God today, every day, without fail.  If you consider it, the word GRATITUDE is essentially a contraction of the words GREAT and ATTITUDE.  If you carry an attitude of gratitude and thank God for His many blessings each day, it becomes much easier to see when He acts in your life.

Remember In the Dark What He Said In The Light

It becomes critical that we exercise our ‘HOPE’ muscles in order to recognize, respond or react appropriately.  Well before Candidate Trump used the phrase “Drain the swamp”, there was a poster which was popular in the 70’s which reminded people that when you were up to your butt in alligators, it was difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.

By keeping our ‘HOPE’ muscles ready, it becomes much easier to take a moment, look around, and remember in this, our temporary darkness, what He told us in the light.

We must, as 1 Peter 3:15 tells us, “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope”.  To always be ready, we must have prepared our ‘HOPE’ muscles, we must have put ourselves in the right spot with God and we must always say ‘Thank you’.

When things go right, look up and say ‘Thank you’, when things go badly, look up and say ‘Thank you. Help me to use this to grow in my faith, hope and love.’

The post Hope Explored and Explained appeared first on Catholic Stand.

First Reformed, written and directed by Paul Schrader, is, along with The Witch, at the vanguard of a recent renaissance of Calvinist cinema but still engages with themes of interest to Catholic audiences, such as the distinction between hope and optimism, stewardship of Creation, and free will. It tells the story of Reverend Ernst Toller, who encounters Mary and Michael, a married couple struggling with whether to abort their unborn child because of the imminent environmental catastrophes that Michael believes will render their child’s life unbearable. Toller is drawn into Michael’s struggle with despair.

Hope and Optimism

First Reformed outlines the distinctions evident in hope, despair, optimism and pessimism. On a secular level, Michael and Toller have only a pessimistic view of Creation, as they see it being degraded without optimism for its recovery. However, this temporal pessimism causes them to struggle with spiritual despair, wondering if God will forgive humanity’s failure to be good stewards of Creation. They see the effects wrought by sin, which lead them to become temporally pessimistic for Creation’s future and to spiritually despair of salvation for humanity.

Now, this temporal pessimism is not necessarily opposed to the theological virtue of hope for salvation. One can know that future generations will struggle with sin and that this sin will damage human relationships and Creation yet still have hope that Christ will make all things anew. As St. Paul says in Romans 8, “the whole of creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time,” (v. 22) and all Creation has suffered from the effects of Original Sin and will continue to suffer until hope is brought to fruition.

This is not to diminish sin, saying that hope for the new Creation allows us to exploit Creation with abandon. An obstinate refusal to be good stewards of the environment because it would hinder easy profit could be sinful. However, Michael and Toller do not seem to be aware of the distinction between temporal pessimism and spiritual despair. Catholics speak of having a sacramental imagination, in which the tangible things of the world make present the grace of God. Toller’s imagination is not sacramental but purely material: despite knowing that the ways of God do not necessarily correspond to human instincts, he sees humanity’s future and salvation firstly in terms of continuing generations of material existence. First Reformed shows many images of environmental decay, inevitably making the case for pessimism more vivid. As Steven Greydanus says, “Hope and despair struggle to the end, but the despair is anchored in crushing realities, while the hope is nebulous and chimera,” so hope is less obviously present in the film than despair.

A Faith with Political Consequences

Tied up with the distinction between secular optimism and theological hope is the way in which Christianity makes claims with both spiritual and political consequences. The Church’s teaching on the dignity of life from conception to natural death motivates political action to protect life at all stages, and its teaching on stewardship of Creation has implications for the way Creation is treated. The First Reformed Church of which Toller is pastor has historical significance because it was a stop for escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad; it is an example of the Church acting for good within a politically-charged context. The question is whether First Reformed Church can act again to inspire the conversion of those who unjustly exploit Creation. However, the industrialist Edward Balq, who is identified as a prominent polluter sponsoring the church’s anniversary celebration, rejects any suggestion that the Church has something to say on the subject of environmental stewardship as merely political, and therefore something he can reject summarily. It might not be appropriate for clerics to propose policy from the pulpit, but the authority of Christianity’s moral claims does not evaporate upon leaving the front door of the church due to contact with “politics.” First Reformed understands the Christian moral vision must not be restricted to the private sphere but is concerned with the common good, and to achieve this common good must enter the public sphere; furthermore, it is not just secularists who want to prevent this entry but also Christians who do not want the moral claims of their faith to prevent them from acting as they would like.

Now, Christianity cannot be reduced to political activity; it is the hope in the Resurrection, in the new Creation and salvation, and so the question of forgiveness re-enters the analysis. God will forgive us for what we have done if we repent and do not despair of His forgiveness. Does First Reformed portray this repentance? Michael despairs and kills himself. Balq refuses to consider whether he is complicit in the degradation of Creation. Even Toller, although he lets himself become obsessed with the sins of humanity against Creation, rejects any notion that the non-marital sexual relationship he engaged in constitutes sin; he also believes the only option is to protest Balq by blowing himself up during the anniversary ceremony. This is where the characters most lose hope: not upon observing the deteriorating environment, but by rejecting the idea that they need forgiveness because they believe they do not need it, or that it would not be offered anyway.

When Toller loses hope and is only pessimistic for the environment, his actions lose their spiritual dimension and become purely political, with the end not of converting sinners so they repent of their sins and seek God’s grace, but of destroying the enemy so the temporal aim of saving the world might be advanced. He plans to become not a triumphant (or even resigned) martyr for God, choosing to bear witness to hope in salvation instead of sinning while believing that even in the depths of death he can encounter Christ Whose suffering he imitates, but a desperate mass murderer who has no hope of encountering Christ in the darkness and despairs of converting sinners. And the thing about political action is that it is something people do by their own power, as opposed to a hope in salvation enabled by Christ’s sacrifice and mercy. Schrader describes Toller as finding “the cloak of martyrdom that he can wrap around himself and turn its sinfulness into redemptiveness. That’s the virus he catches. It’s a pathology very well known in Christianity: the pathology of suicidal glory. The pathology that I can effect my own salvation through my own suffering” (think of Flannery O’Connor’s little girl who could never be a saint, but could be a martyr if they killed her quickly). In turning his planned suicide into a political martyrdom, he comes close to rejecting salvation by God’s action and trying to achieve it himself. He is not seeking hope in Christ’s Resurrection but optimism in action: the film compares to Islamic jihadism and a consequentialism justifying itself by political consequences.

Not all in First Reformed despair. Mary is determined to be a mother, and Toller initially portrays the unborn child as a sign of hope. Pregnancy is a sign of hope in the ability to pass love into the future and to spread it to all people. It is an eschatological hope; Ian Caveny says, in response to environmental activists seeking to reduce childbirth, that “eschatology and politics in the Christian faith both begin with the Incarnation of Christ.” This is because the long-awaited King, “the hope of salvation and the end of politics, arrived in the form of a little baby.” Therefore, Caveny argues that

…it is impossible for us to imperil the environment by testifying to the Incarnation that undergirds creation. Christian people will not tamp down our faithful hope: We will, instead, declare it with our lives. In a society growing more and more reticent to bear babies, it will be the Christians who will bear babies and, in so doing, bear witness.

Mary’s determination to bear her child affirms the humanity Toller ignores in his political enemies. As Alexi Sargeant says,

What holds First Reformed back from being a film that takes Christianity seriously, despite Schrader’s protestations to the contrary, is its Apocalypticism. The fate of Schrader’s universe once again comes down to a self-willed, manly moment of existential martyrdom. And yet any Christian versed in the rhythms of liturgy or the writings of the saints could tell him that’s a delusion. God calls us most often to slow and small and self-forgetful acts of service.

In and of itself, this child does not solve any environmental crisis, but it defends the dignity of human life alongside hoping for more responsible environmental stewardship, and participates in the renewal of Creation by assuming the role of co-Creator and raising new stewards.

Waiting for Toller to Blow

The problem with First Reformed is that while its beginning raises important questions, its ending drifts away from those questions. Instead, there are scenes of Toller looking at himself in the mirror while wearing a suicide vest and driving the streets at night while observing sin and debauchery, a clear allusion to the film Taxi Driver, which Schrader wrote. That film’s protagonist, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) points a gun at a mirror and drives around New York City seeing debauchery. Bickle is a ticking time bomb and much of Taxi Driver is taken up with waiting for his violence to wreak havoc. Identifying Toller with Bickle primes the audience to expect violence from Toller. It also makes Toller’s violence seem inevitable, the result of inherent psychopathy like Bickle, instead of the result of despair. Therefore, much of First Reformed is waiting not for thematic insight, but to see how bad Toller’s violence will be. Sargeant says,

It’s not that there isn’t material out there for a religious drama about environmental stewardship. Pope Francis famously discussed the need for sustainable development and the dangers of pollution and climate change in his encyclical Laudato si’… If a pastor became convinced his denomination was too beholden to wealthy polluters, what could he do? How do you cleanse the temple?… But a film about this topic would have to take God and the earth seriously, rather than simply slouching towards a one-man Armageddon. First Reformed skims shallowly over theology and environmentalism, hoping to make up for it with the shock value of a reverend in a suicide vest.

To give a more generous (if not more convincing) interpretation, this inevitability may actually engage First Reformed’s themes of hope. First Reformed Church is Calvinist, and a prominent aspect of Calvinist theology involves predestination, wherein God has chosen from eternity to whom He will give mercy and salvation. We might see this narrative inevitability as, rather, the theological inevitability that Toller is deprived of mercy and living in a world that is incomprehensible to him because he will not see the new Creation.

This depends on how we understand the ending: Toller has donned a suicide vest under his vestments and is about leave his room to begin the anniversary ceremony when he sees Mary, still pregnant, arriving at the church. Not wanting to hurt her or her child, he removes the vest, wraps barbed wire around himself, and prepares to drink Draino. Mary enters and they kiss, as the camera, which had been still throughout the film, spins around them. Did Toller drink and die, and is he seeing a vision of glory, or is he alive and in ecstasy? Is he finding personal salvation amidst the decay of Creation? The whirling camera certainly suggests a new way of seeing. To some extent, his love for Mary and her child keeps him from committing the sins of murder and suicide, suggesting that love has some salvific effect. That would imply some freedom to choose to accept the salvation offered, despite the Taxi Driver-style impending violence. And if this inevitability can be thwarted, perhaps Toller’s temporal pessimism can also be thwarted. Or maybe he is too totally depraved to receive that love and dies nonetheless.

The post First Reformed: Hope Without Optimism appeared first on Catholic Stand.

The Patrick Coffin Show podcast features weekly interviews with A-list influencers and outliers in the effort to recover the Judeo-Christian roots of the culture. Patrick is the Canadian-born former host of Catholic Answers Live, and he has raving fans around the world. He injects these fascinating interviews with his own distinctive blend of depth and levity. If you’re tired of politically correct mediaspeak, you want to see God back in the public square, and you’re not allergic to having a laugh, this is the place to be.

Despair

Ours is an age of social disruption, isolation, and atomization. Rates of suicide among young people, rich and poor, along with instances of clinical depression are on the sharp rise since 1999. A dark ennui—call it despair, or melancholia, or depression—has settled into the lives of millions of people.

Sources of community support that used to provide a bulwark against all this “apartness,” such as a vibrant parish at the center of family life and vice versa, men’s and women’s social clubs, and a culture that supported the ideals of monogamy, have withered or vanished.

Psychiatrist Dr. Aaron Kheriaty

Psychiatrist Dr. Aaron Kheriaty deals with the fall-out of these disruptions every day in his clinical practice and as an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California Irvine where he is also director of the bioethics program.

This is a fascinating exchange of ideas—from social science data to poetry, to the living witness of the saints to the truths of Scripture—related to helping those suffering maladies that seem to cruelly evacuate hope from the human heart. Very few doctors see the interconnectedness between the order of nature (and nurture) and the order of grace. Aaron Kheriaty is one of them, and he’s downright evangelical about getting the word out about the urgently needed, good old-fashioned hope. He’s also a fine writer who is attuned to the mystery of suffering in a way that is wise and accessible.

The Hail Holy Queen prayer describes the location of our sojourn as “this vale of tears” for good reasons. If you or someone you know has had serious vicissitudes, trials, or setbacks in his or her life, this is a “don’t miss” interview.

In this interview, you will learn:

• Why the worlds of psychiatry and of faith have large areas of overlap and agreement
• A workable definition of despair and its antidote
• How the lives of some of the (mentally ill) saints can be a sign of great hope and consolation
• Why suicide, and examples of triumph over despair, can both be “contagious”
• The ways in which the Incarnation of God in Christ provides the direct proof of divine accompaniment and healing regarding mental illness and the loss of hope
• The difference between human hope and the supernatural virtue of hope.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• The Catholic Guide to Depression  by Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, with Monsignor John Cihak
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor Frankl
• People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil by Dr. M. Scott Peck
• The Hound of Heaven and Other Poems  by Francis Thompson,
• Intro by G.K. Chesterton Dying of Despair essay in “First Things” by Dr. Aaron Kheriaty
• University of California Irvine link to Kheriaty’s bio and contact info

The post The Patrick Coffin Show:Hope When Hope Seems Gone-Dr. Aaron Kheriaty appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Comfort can be derived from many sources. It might be measured by the number of zeros in a person’s savings account, or in the size of their house. A title that has been earned or a promotion that has been received can bring someone a feeling of security. Perhaps we feel the beauty of the person with whom we share an intimate relationship is what makes us whole.

Sometimes these desires grow to an unhealthy excess. In this state, we always want more, perhaps more money or higher promotions. The beauty of one person isn’t enough; we only feel complete by sharing a bed with as many people as possible. In other problematic cases, it takes a certain amount of alcohol or a drug to bring about comfort.

Comfort isn’t promised

One thing I’ve learned the hard way over the past six years is the Christian faith doesn’t exactly guarantee comfort. Yes, I am able to find security and peace of mind both in and through Jesus. However, at the times when I have felt the most comfortable, my relationship with Jesus isn’t quite what it’s supposed to be. If you’re one of the many Catholics who want to tell me your faith is so strong that you have never felt uncomfortable about your beliefs, I’d have to say that you’re not living the life Jesus intended you to live.

Before you rush off to the comment section or start frantically typing an email to question how long I’ve been a Christian, spend some time reviewing John 21. Jesus has already been crucified and risen from the dead. The apostles have been able to experience their risen Lord on more than one occasion. Still, I can’t help but believe they still felt a level of uncertainty. Life for them is not like it was before Jesus was arrested in the garden.

Up to that night, those following Jesus had to feel pretty secure in what they were being taught to believe. The Rabbi they had spent around three years with was performing miracles on a regular basis. When He spoke, the winds at sea would obey. Jesus had turned a few fish and some bread into enough to feed thousands of people. Whenever they needed Him, Jesus was right there to come to their rescue.

Searching for a new comfort

All of that was different now. Their Lord was no longer with them constantly, and they didn’t know what would happen to them next. They hid from the Jewish authorities in the upper room, anxious and uncertain. Sure, they had been able to see Jesus a few times here and there, but it wasn’t the same. They were expecting the Messiah to change the world they lived in as they knew it, to bring Israel to independence from Rome and a great earthly prosperity (see Acts 1:6). While Jesus did change the world and bring freedom and glory, His mission didn’t mean what everyone hoped it would.

In John 21:3, Peter does exactly what I think the majority of us would do today. Things haven’t turned out exactly like he’d imagined. He makes the decision to return to what he knew best before he began following Jesus. Peter tells the others, “I am going fishing.” He returns to what once provided him with the only comfort he knew.

While simply going fishing isn’t a sin, it’s a detour in the purpose God had for Peter and the disciples. It’s Peter saying to himself and others, “The plan didn’t turn out like we thought it would. I have to do something on my own to make the situation better for myself. I need to fix the mistake God made. I’m going to manufacture a level of comfort I’m unable to experience in His plan.”

Comfort vs. sanctification

I’ve gone on several of these “fishing trips” of my own since surrendering my life to Jesus in 2012. The majority of them have been accompanied by a case of beer and a new friend for a couple of weeks. Satan hasn’t had to put much effort into keeping me off track when I am unable to find the comfort I desire from my Bible or prayer life. Things normally spiral out of control quickly. I’m unable to find the feeling I expect God to fill me with. As a result, I do the best I can to create it on my own. In the end, I find myself further away from Jesus than I’ve ever been before. This is once how the story would end every time.

These experiences have shown me that we can’t make comfort the center of our lives. I’ve learned the hard way the lies and dishonesty that come with this kind of comfort. I think that’s one of the reasons we aren’t promised comfort every day of the rest of our lives once we become Christians: because, in this life, we cannot truly encounter God nor grow in grace without suffering. I doubt Jesus experienced much comfort while being nailed to and hanging from a piece of wood. St. Paul more than likely didn’t experience comfort while being locked away for his faith. Even the disciples went on to experience torture and deaths that were anything but comfortable.

Over time, I have finally been able to see lack of comfort in my own life for what it truly is: a means of experiencing Jesus in ways I never have before. It exposes a piece of my heart that has never experienced pain before to the elements around me, and so purifies and strengthens that piece. These seasons of life now enrich my prayer life instead of weakening it. You get to a point where you go through enough discomfort in life that you’re able to see it coming a mile down the road. Only when we are able to identify a lack of comfort as the passing trial it is are we finally able to experience the peace Jesus provides us with through every storm.

The post How Important is Comfort to You? appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Let us begin with a story: A man and woman, very distraught and discouraged about today’s problems, walk into a store and see Jesus Christ standing behind the sales counter. As they look for something to lift their spirits, Jesus suggests they make a list of what they want to buy. They list peace, hope, and love for the world.

In return, Jesus gives them a packet of seeds as well as the equipment and instructions to make them grow. He explains that to have peace, hope, and love grow in the world, they have to work the seeds and tend to them daily so nothing will impede their growth. The man and woman left the store, buying nothing.

To paraphrase a passage from the letter of St. James, what good is it if someone says he or she has faith, but does not have works? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and we say to them—go in peace, keep warm and eat well, but we do not give them the necessities, what good is it? (James 2:14-16). We can say we want peace, hope, and love for the world, but if we do not put in the effort, what good is it?

Good from God

The good comes when we seek first the Kingdom of God and all His righteousness, enabling us to receive the graces we need to live according to God’s instructions—God’s plan. When we live life for God’s sake, when we proclaim the greatness of God, we proclaim the greatness of God’s love in all that we say and do even in our most ordinary tasks. St. Teresa of Avila once said: “Our Lord is moving among the pots and pans.”

Consider the story of Martha and Mary. Mary sat and listened to Jesus speak while Martha did all the serving. Martha complained that Mary was not helping her. Perhaps Martha would not have gotten upset if she saw her work as an act of love for God. Each us has a unique offering of love in terms of our careers, home life, and relationships because each of us is unique by God’s design.

Peace, Hope, and Love

Practicing the presence of God—the presence of love—gives meaning and purpose to all the events and circumstances in our daily lives. As a result, our very being begins to change. We find that our faith becomes more active in every aspect of our living. An inner peace takes over in good days and bad, enabling us to say, “Ok Lord, let it be done to me according to Your will because You love me and I love you.”

With that peace and the essence of God’s love, we have a hope in our hearts that does not dissipate even in our most difficult hour. Good works replace sinful acts, selflessness overcomes selfishness, and by the grace of God, we become His living instruments that spread peace, hope, and love in the world.

The post What Good Is It? appeared first on Catholic Stand.

On All Souls Day, I attended a Mass celebrated by my bishop in a local cemetery. As always, this was a powerful reminder of the intimate connection we have with the dead. As we were processing through the cemetery singing the Litany of the Saints, this encounter with the reality of death was beautiful and uplifting. However, at this moment, I recalled how there was a time in my life when just the thought of death aroused only anxiety and terror. But, fortunately, my unhealthy fear of death was overcome through conversion, catechesis and a deeper relationship with Christ.

My Unhealthy Fear

I do not recall any specific trigger but I can remember being intensely afraid of death beginning sometime in middle school. I would have to distract myself from my own imagination – not because I invented horrific scenarios but because even a simple thought of my own death or the death of a loved one caused such inner turmoil and anxiety. My solution for these fears was avoidance of the subject and suppression of my worries; this continued until I was in my thirties.

I never spoke to anyone about this topic because I assumed it was natural to be afraid. And growing up, I rarely had to confront my fears as very few people close to me died. I remember being unsettled by “creepy” cemeteries and having great angst of “getting old” because these were terrifying reminders of my mortality. I learned how to detach myself from images of death such as seeing a crucifix or watching people die in a movie. And while I always had a desire for heaven, as sad as this is, I rarely contemplated death or the afterlife because the “joys of heaven” did not bring much peace because the act of dying remained far too unsettling. I realize now this was an unhealthy fear of death but what I have discovered in retrospect is that this was merely a symptom. The root issue was that I had a very superficial understanding of the faith and, unfortunately, this ignorance also prevented me from knowing – and experiencing – the hope we have been given by Christ who has transformed death.

Conversion Brings Understanding and Hope

It was only recently that my unhealthy fear of death was overcome. I did not notice the change instantly but, after having experienced a deep conversion in the faith ten years ago, I gradually became aware of my enriched understanding of death. Having a Christocentric view of life, I no longer saw death as a source of trepidation but of hope.

The Church teaches that it was never God’s intention for humanity to experience death as we now know it; rather, it is one of the tragic consequences of sin and disobedience (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1008, 1018). But after the Fall, God did not abandon us. In love, Christ became incarnate and offered himself as a sacrifice on the cross for our sins and, by dying and rising, he transformed death (CCC 1009).

If we unite ourselves to Christ, we will still experience physical death but we can then contemplate the end of this earthly life with an eager anticipation for the glory we will receive in heaven. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that in death, for all the faithful departed, life is not ended but changed (CCC 1012), and God has revealed that the joys of heaven are inconceivably more marvelous than anything we could fathom (1 Corinthians 2:9)! The Church tells us that rather than be a source of terror, the reality of death should be an urgent reminder that this life has eternal consequences (CCC 1007). Christ has merited for all of us the possibility of everlasting life and offers us sufficient grace to enter our heavenly home (CCC 1019) but God will not coerce us. Jesus warns us repeatedly in the Gospels that eternal misery awaits all those who freely choose to remain separated from God. It is during our brief time on earth that God offers us his grace and mercy, and we must open our hearts to him now (CCC 1013). And though pondering these truths about death may enkindle fear, it should not be of death. Rather it should be a fear of sin and the loss of God for all eternity.

Christ Brings A Positive Meaning to Death

St. Paul writes that because of Christ’s death and resurrection, Christians can joyfully proclaim, “Death where is your victory? O death where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). This is because if we are united to Christ, death is no longer an enemy. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

Because of Christ, Christian death has a positive meaning: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). “The saying is sure: if we have died with him, we will also live with him” (2 Timothy 2:11). Death is this: through Baptism, the Christian has already “died with Christ” sacramentally, in order to live a new life; and if we die in Christ’s grace, physical death completes this “dying with Christ” and so completes our incorporation into him in his redeeming act…

In death, God calls man to himself. Therefore, the Christian can experience a desire for death like St. Paul’s: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ” (Philippians 1:23). He can transform his own death into an act of obedience and love towards the Father, after the example of Christ… (CCC 1010-1011)

Reflecting on Death

It is not a sign of unfaithfulness if you have some fears of death. I recall reading St. Therese of Lisieux had moments where she feared it. Death is a mystery and often we become anxious about the unknown. But as Christians, we should see death in a new light. It should not be something morbid or depressing. We must avoid having an unhealthy fear that preoccupies us so much that we neglect our vocations to be holy and authentic witnesses of the faith. We also cannot allow fear to cause us to avoid contemplating death and the next life altogether because then we risk losing sight of our goal – heaven!

The Church calls us to reflect on the reality of death because she wants us to always be prepared since we never know when our life on earth will end. Thomas Kempis in The Imitation of Christ speaks of this powerfully:

Therefore, in every deed and every thought, act as though you were to die this very day. If you had a good conscience you would not fear death very much. It is better to avoid sin than to fear death. If you are not prepared today, how will you be prepared tomorrow? Tomorrow is an uncertain day; how do you know you will have a tomorrow?…

Blessed is he who keeps the moment of death ever before his eyes and prepares for it every day…Be always ready, therefore, and so live that death will never take you unprepared. Many die suddenly and unexpectedly, for in the unexpected hour the Son of God will come. When that last moment arrives you will begin to have a quite different opinion of the life that is now entirely past and you will regret very much that you were so careless and remiss.

How happy and prudent is he who tries now in life to be what he wants to be found in death. Perfect contempt of the world, a lively desire to advance in virtue, a love for discipline, the works of penance, readiness to obey, self-denial, and the endurance of every hardship for the love of Christ, these will give a man great expectations of a happy death…

See, then, dearly beloved, the great danger from which you can free yourself and the great fear from which you can be saved, if only you will always be wary and mindful of death. Try to love now in such a manner that at the moment of death you may be glad rather than fearful. Learn to die to the world now, that then you may begin to live with Christ… (Book 1, chapter 23)

It is important to recognize what I have discovered in my own life: having an unhealthy fear of death is dangerous. For me, my fears were related to the fact I was lukewarm in the faith, and, by succumbing to them, I did not contemplate death or my heavenly goal. I focused on the present failing to prepare for the inevitable future – death and the moment I would find myself standing before the judgment seat of Christ. Thanks be to God things have changed for me as I have discovered Christ and the abounding hope he brings. I remain aware I may not be given another day on this earth, so in every moment, by God’s grace, I strive for holiness. And rather than fear death, I now eagerly await the joys of heaven. I try to always be prepared so that when that day does come, I can say along with St. Therese of Lisieux: “I am not dying; I am entering life” (CCC 1011).

The post From Fear of Death to Abounding Hope in Christ appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12

We are living in a very tumultuous time in the church.  It seems you can’t read the news about what is happening without feeling a little depressed or hopeless with all the scandal and fighting that has been going on.  But it is precisely in times like these that I believe Jesus sometimes provides us with a little miracle so we know where to keep our focus.  Our focus must be on Him.  As storms swirl around us, He whispers, “keep your eyes on me.”  It is precisely what His message was for a 5th-grade religious education classroom in Tennessee on Wednesday, September 19, 2019, at a church just down the road from my house.

My friend teaches 5th-grade religious education. She always begins her class with a procession into the classroom with a bible, crucifix and a lit candle.  This night started off the same as any other.  They processed in, she, the co-teacher and the kids placed the items on the table in the classroom and prayed together. Then they sat down and she began teaching them about prayer, emphasizing to them the importance of their prayer life in their relationship with God.

A little while into the class a boy noticed that the candle on the table had gone out.  My friend looked over at it and said, “yes it has.” She decided to go grab it and take took the opportunity to talk about the Sanctuary Candle that is lit next to the tabernacle in our churches.

She began to explain that when you see a candle next to the tabernacle in church it means that Christ is present in the tabernacle.  All the while she was holding up the burnt out candle from the classroom.  She really wanted to emphasize to the children that inside the tabernacle Jesus is really and truly present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, so she explained that they should be reverent.  She emphasized to them that they should never ignore Jesus.   She explained with enthusiasm that you should imagine that Jesus is standing there right in front of you and that as Catholics this means we should acknowledge him with a genuflection, sign of the cross, and a prayer.

A Miracle

And…. when she said this….she told me she heard a crackling sound, and then… THE CANDLE RELIT INTO A BRIGHT WHITE LIGHT, larger than it had been originally!  She was astonished.  So astonished she checked with the co-teacher to ask if quite possibly that teacher had come over to relight it and perhaps she had just missed that.  The co-teacher said, “no,” I did not relight it.  She glanced over her shoulder and the lighter was still on the table where she had originally placed it.

My friend, the co-teacher and children exclaimed that they had just witnessed a miracle. Seven kids and two adults all saw the candle relight! I kid you not!  She called me right after class so excited.  I was so excited too.  Just when you think things are getting despairing, Christ Himself shows up to remind us who is the true Light of the World.

God Is So Good

I share this with you so that you can all know that it is Christ who is present in the Eucharist and it is Christ who we should keep our eyes on during these times.  This little miracle lets us know of His giant love for us.  The Flame of Love is with us.

The post Miracle in the Classroom appeared first on Catholic Stand.

I have not done a word-by-word analysis. I have not counted the occurrences. I have not spent the time necessary to validate the following statement, but, it occurs to me that the simple word “hope” must appear a couple of hundred times in the Bible.

The Reason for Our Hope

Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope. (1 Peter 3:15)

Before we can be ready to give an explanation for our hope, the first task would be to define the word. The Oxford Dictionary defines hope as “A feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen.”

The New International Version of the Bible provides another version of this “He said it, and I believe it.” Psalm 119:114 “You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word.” And in Psalm 33:17, we are reminded that hope can be easily misplaced, “A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save.”

Paul carries this a bit further in Romans when he states in 8:24, “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees?”  This would become analogous to sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee at 8:15 AM, having showered, and saying, “I hope I get up before 8:30 this morning.” If it has already happened, or if you can objectively see it, it is no longer an act of hope.

Hanging On, Praying Expectantly

When, in conversation, I use the word “hope”, I most often add that, to me, it is an acronym and means “Hanging On, Praying Expectantly”.  This acronym is in compliance with the Oxford Dictionary definition of “A feeling of desire for a particular thing to happen.” This acronym also applies to Abraham in that, he believed in God in spite of the biology involved.

The most difficult thing for us to do may be the ability to hang on while maintaining an air of expectation about what may happen next.  The world is ganging up on you, bills are overdue, kids are sick, the car needs massive repair work, your job appears to be at risk, the dog, the cat and your wife are all expecting, how are you supposed to stay upbeat, positive and pray in the face of all this?

We may wish to consider that “hope” could be regarded as a voluntary muscle which can be exercised, strengthened, and conditioned for use when the world is a bit distressing.  How?

Strengthen your faith – look at all of God’s previously fulfilled promises and the adversity many of the people of the Bible had to overcome to be able to “Hang On while Praying Expectantly”.

Trust God’s timing.  He will always answer a prayer, His response may simply be ‘Yes’, it may be more difficult to understand if His answer is ‘No’, but the response which requires that we continue to hold on and pray is when He says, ‘Wait, I have a better idea.’

Submit yourself to God, that is, get out of the way and let Him do His job. Fr Mychal Judge, a chaplain for the NYFD and the first certified fatality of 9-11, had a short prayer he used under most circumstances: “Lord, take me where You want me to go, Let me meet who You want me to meet, Tell me what You want me to say, And keep me out of Your way.” This prayer kept Fr Judge in the mindset of serving, not being, god.

MOST IMPORTANTLY – Thank God today, every day, without fail.  If you consider it, the word GRATITUDE is essentially a contraction of the words GREAT and ATTITUDE.  If you carry an attitude of gratitude and thank God for His many blessings each day, it becomes much easier to see when He acts in your life.

Remember In the Dark What He Said In The Light

It becomes critical that we exercise our ‘HOPE’ muscles in order to recognize, respond or react appropriately.  Well before Candidate Trump used the phrase “Drain the swamp”, there was a poster which was popular in the 70’s which reminded people that when you were up to your butt in alligators, it was difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.

By keeping our ‘HOPE’ muscles ready, it becomes much easier to take a moment, look around, and remember in this, our temporary darkness, what He told us in the light.

We must, as 1 Peter 3:15 tells us, “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope”.  To always be ready, we must have prepared our ‘HOPE’ muscles, we must have put ourselves in the right spot with God and we must always say ‘Thank you’.

When things go right, look up and say ‘Thank you’, when things go badly, look up and say ‘Thank you. Help me to use this to grow in my faith, hope and love.’

The post Hope Explored and Explained appeared first on Catholic Stand.

First Reformed, written and directed by Paul Schrader, is, along with The Witch, at the vanguard of a recent renaissance of Calvinist cinema but still engages with themes of interest to Catholic audiences, such as the distinction between hope and optimism, stewardship of Creation, and free will. It tells the story of Reverend Ernst Toller, who encounters Mary and Michael, a married couple struggling with whether to abort their unborn child because of the imminent environmental catastrophes that Michael believes will render their child’s life unbearable. Toller is drawn into Michael’s struggle with despair.

Hope and Optimism

First Reformed outlines the distinctions evident in hope, despair, optimism and pessimism. On a secular level, Michael and Toller have only a pessimistic view of Creation, as they see it being degraded without optimism for its recovery. However, this temporal pessimism causes them to struggle with spiritual despair, wondering if God will forgive humanity’s failure to be good stewards of Creation. They see the effects wrought by sin, which lead them to become temporally pessimistic for Creation’s future and to spiritually despair of salvation for humanity.

Now, this temporal pessimism is not necessarily opposed to the theological virtue of hope for salvation. One can know that future generations will struggle with sin and that this sin will damage human relationships and Creation yet still have hope that Christ will make all things anew. As St. Paul says in Romans 8, “the whole of creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time,” (v. 22) and all Creation has suffered from the effects of Original Sin and will continue to suffer until hope is brought to fruition.

This is not to diminish sin, saying that hope for the new Creation allows us to exploit Creation with abandon. An obstinate refusal to be good stewards of the environment because it would hinder easy profit could be sinful. However, Michael and Toller do not seem to be aware of the distinction between temporal pessimism and spiritual despair. Catholics speak of having a sacramental imagination, in which the tangible things of the world make present the grace of God. Toller’s imagination is not sacramental but purely material: despite knowing that the ways of God do not necessarily correspond to human instincts, he sees humanity’s future and salvation firstly in terms of continuing generations of material existence. First Reformed shows many images of environmental decay, inevitably making the case for pessimism more vivid. As Steven Greydanus says, “Hope and despair struggle to the end, but the despair is anchored in crushing realities, while the hope is nebulous and chimera,” so hope is less obviously present in the film than despair.

A Faith with Political Consequences

Tied up with the distinction between secular optimism and theological hope is the way in which Christianity makes claims with both spiritual and political consequences. The Church’s teaching on the dignity of life from conception to natural death motivates political action to protect life at all stages, and its teaching on stewardship of Creation has implications for the way Creation is treated. The First Reformed Church of which Toller is pastor has historical significance because it was a stop for escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad; it is an example of the Church acting for good within a politically-charged context. The question is whether First Reformed Church can act again to inspire the conversion of those who unjustly exploit Creation. However, the industrialist Edward Balq, who is identified as a prominent polluter sponsoring the church’s anniversary celebration, rejects any suggestion that the Church has something to say on the subject of environmental stewardship as merely political, and therefore something he can reject summarily. It might not be appropriate for clerics to propose policy from the pulpit, but the authority of Christianity’s moral claims does not evaporate upon leaving the front door of the church due to contact with “politics.” First Reformed understands the Christian moral vision must not be restricted to the private sphere but is concerned with the common good, and to achieve this common good must enter the public sphere; furthermore, it is not just secularists who want to prevent this entry but also Christians who do not want the moral claims of their faith to prevent them from acting as they would like.

Now, Christianity cannot be reduced to political activity; it is the hope in the Resurrection, in the new Creation and salvation, and so the question of forgiveness re-enters the analysis. God will forgive us for what we have done if we repent and do not despair of His forgiveness. Does First Reformed portray this repentance? Michael despairs and kills himself. Balq refuses to consider whether he is complicit in the degradation of Creation. Even Toller, although he lets himself become obsessed with the sins of humanity against Creation, rejects any notion that the non-marital sexual relationship he engaged in constitutes sin; he also believes the only option is to protest Balq by blowing himself up during the anniversary ceremony. This is where the characters most lose hope: not upon observing the deteriorating environment, but by rejecting the idea that they need forgiveness because they believe they do not need it, or that it would not be offered anyway.

When Toller loses hope and is only pessimistic for the environment, his actions lose their spiritual dimension and become purely political, with the end not of converting sinners so they repent of their sins and seek God’s grace, but of destroying the enemy so the temporal aim of saving the world might be advanced. He plans to become not a triumphant (or even resigned) martyr for God, choosing to bear witness to hope in salvation instead of sinning while believing that even in the depths of death he can encounter Christ Whose suffering he imitates, but a desperate mass murderer who has no hope of encountering Christ in the darkness and despairs of converting sinners. And the thing about political action is that it is something people do by their own power, as opposed to a hope in salvation enabled by Christ’s sacrifice and mercy. Schrader describes Toller as finding “the cloak of martyrdom that he can wrap around himself and turn its sinfulness into redemptiveness. That’s the virus he catches. It’s a pathology very well known in Christianity: the pathology of suicidal glory. The pathology that I can effect my own salvation through my own suffering” (think of Flannery O’Connor’s little girl who could never be a saint, but could be a martyr if they killed her quickly). In turning his planned suicide into a political martyrdom, he comes close to rejecting salvation by God’s action and trying to achieve it himself. He is not seeking hope in Christ’s Resurrection but optimism in action: the film compares to Islamic jihadism and a consequentialism justifying itself by political consequences.

Not all in First Reformed despair. Mary is determined to be a mother, and Toller initially portrays the unborn child as a sign of hope. Pregnancy is a sign of hope in the ability to pass love into the future and to spread it to all people. It is an eschatological hope; Ian Caveny says, in response to environmental activists seeking to reduce childbirth, that “eschatology and politics in the Christian faith both begin with the Incarnation of Christ.” This is because the long-awaited King, “the hope of salvation and the end of politics, arrived in the form of a little baby.” Therefore, Caveny argues that

…it is impossible for us to imperil the environment by testifying to the Incarnation that undergirds creation. Christian people will not tamp down our faithful hope: We will, instead, declare it with our lives. In a society growing more and more reticent to bear babies, it will be the Christians who will bear babies and, in so doing, bear witness.

Mary’s determination to bear her child affirms the humanity Toller ignores in his political enemies. As Alexi Sargeant says,

What holds First Reformed back from being a film that takes Christianity seriously, despite Schrader’s protestations to the contrary, is its Apocalypticism. The fate of Schrader’s universe once again comes down to a self-willed, manly moment of existential martyrdom. And yet any Christian versed in the rhythms of liturgy or the writings of the saints could tell him that’s a delusion. God calls us most often to slow and small and self-forgetful acts of service.

In and of itself, this child does not solve any environmental crisis, but it defends the dignity of human life alongside hoping for more responsible environmental stewardship, and participates in the renewal of Creation by assuming the role of co-Creator and raising new stewards.

Waiting for Toller to Blow

The problem with First Reformed is that while its beginning raises important questions, its ending drifts away from those questions. Instead, there are scenes of Toller looking at himself in the mirror while wearing a suicide vest and driving the streets at night while observing sin and debauchery, a clear allusion to the film Taxi Driver, which Schrader wrote. That film’s protagonist, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) points a gun at a mirror and drives around New York City seeing debauchery. Bickle is a ticking time bomb and much of Taxi Driver is taken up with waiting for his violence to wreak havoc. Identifying Toller with Bickle primes the audience to expect violence from Toller. It also makes Toller’s violence seem inevitable, the result of inherent psychopathy like Bickle, instead of the result of despair. Therefore, much of First Reformed is waiting not for thematic insight, but to see how bad Toller’s violence will be. Sargeant says,

It’s not that there isn’t material out there for a religious drama about environmental stewardship. Pope Francis famously discussed the need for sustainable development and the dangers of pollution and climate change in his encyclical Laudato si’… If a pastor became convinced his denomination was too beholden to wealthy polluters, what could he do? How do you cleanse the temple?… But a film about this topic would have to take God and the earth seriously, rather than simply slouching towards a one-man Armageddon. First Reformed skims shallowly over theology and environmentalism, hoping to make up for it with the shock value of a reverend in a suicide vest.

To give a more generous (if not more convincing) interpretation, this inevitability may actually engage First Reformed’s themes of hope. First Reformed Church is Calvinist, and a prominent aspect of Calvinist theology involves predestination, wherein God has chosen from eternity to whom He will give mercy and salvation. We might see this narrative inevitability as, rather, the theological inevitability that Toller is deprived of mercy and living in a world that is incomprehensible to him because he will not see the new Creation.

This depends on how we understand the ending: Toller has donned a suicide vest under his vestments and is about leave his room to begin the anniversary ceremony when he sees Mary, still pregnant, arriving at the church. Not wanting to hurt her or her child, he removes the vest, wraps barbed wire around himself, and prepares to drink Draino. Mary enters and they kiss, as the camera, which had been still throughout the film, spins around them. Did Toller drink and die, and is he seeing a vision of glory, or is he alive and in ecstasy? Is he finding personal salvation amidst the decay of Creation? The whirling camera certainly suggests a new way of seeing. To some extent, his love for Mary and her child keeps him from committing the sins of murder and suicide, suggesting that love has some salvific effect. That would imply some freedom to choose to accept the salvation offered, despite the Taxi Driver-style impending violence. And if this inevitability can be thwarted, perhaps Toller’s temporal pessimism can also be thwarted. Or maybe he is too totally depraved to receive that love and dies nonetheless.

The post First Reformed: Hope Without Optimism appeared first on Catholic Stand.

The Patrick Coffin Show podcast features weekly interviews with A-list influencers and outliers in the effort to recover the Judeo-Christian roots of the culture. Patrick is the Canadian-born former host of Catholic Answers Live, and he has raving fans around the world. He injects these fascinating interviews with his own distinctive blend of depth and levity. If you’re tired of politically correct mediaspeak, you want to see God back in the public square, and you’re not allergic to having a laugh, this is the place to be.

Despair

Ours is an age of social disruption, isolation, and atomization. Rates of suicide among young people, rich and poor, along with instances of clinical depression are on the sharp rise since 1999. A dark ennui—call it despair, or melancholia, or depression—has settled into the lives of millions of people.

Sources of community support that used to provide a bulwark against all this “apartness,” such as a vibrant parish at the center of family life and vice versa, men’s and women’s social clubs, and a culture that supported the ideals of monogamy, have withered or vanished.

Psychiatrist Dr. Aaron Kheriaty

Psychiatrist Dr. Aaron Kheriaty deals with the fall-out of these disruptions every day in his clinical practice and as an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California Irvine where he is also director of the bioethics program.

This is a fascinating exchange of ideas—from social science data to poetry, to the living witness of the saints to the truths of Scripture—related to helping those suffering maladies that seem to cruelly evacuate hope from the human heart. Very few doctors see the interconnectedness between the order of nature (and nurture) and the order of grace. Aaron Kheriaty is one of them, and he’s downright evangelical about getting the word out about the urgently needed, good old-fashioned hope. He’s also a fine writer who is attuned to the mystery of suffering in a way that is wise and accessible.

The Hail Holy Queen prayer describes the location of our sojourn as “this vale of tears” for good reasons. If you or someone you know has had serious vicissitudes, trials, or setbacks in his or her life, this is a “don’t miss” interview.

In this interview, you will learn:

• Why the worlds of psychiatry and of faith have large areas of overlap and agreement
• A workable definition of despair and its antidote
• How the lives of some of the (mentally ill) saints can be a sign of great hope and consolation
• Why suicide, and examples of triumph over despair, can both be “contagious”
• The ways in which the Incarnation of God in Christ provides the direct proof of divine accompaniment and healing regarding mental illness and the loss of hope
• The difference between human hope and the supernatural virtue of hope.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• The Catholic Guide to Depression  by Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, with Monsignor John Cihak
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor Frankl
• People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil by Dr. M. Scott Peck
• The Hound of Heaven and Other Poems  by Francis Thompson,
• Intro by G.K. Chesterton Dying of Despair essay in “First Things” by Dr. Aaron Kheriaty
• University of California Irvine link to Kheriaty’s bio and contact info

The post The Patrick Coffin Show:Hope When Hope Seems Gone-Dr. Aaron Kheriaty appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Comfort can be derived from many sources. It might be measured by the number of zeros in a person’s savings account, or in the size of their house. A title that has been earned or a promotion that has been received can bring someone a feeling of security. Perhaps we feel the beauty of the person with whom we share an intimate relationship is what makes us whole.

Sometimes these desires grow to an unhealthy excess. In this state, we always want more, perhaps more money or higher promotions. The beauty of one person isn’t enough; we only feel complete by sharing a bed with as many people as possible. In other problematic cases, it takes a certain amount of alcohol or a drug to bring about comfort.

Comfort isn’t promised

One thing I’ve learned the hard way over the past six years is the Christian faith doesn’t exactly guarantee comfort. Yes, I am able to find security and peace of mind both in and through Jesus. However, at the times when I have felt the most comfortable, my relationship with Jesus isn’t quite what it’s supposed to be. If you’re one of the many Catholics who want to tell me your faith is so strong that you have never felt uncomfortable about your beliefs, I’d have to say that you’re not living the life Jesus intended you to live.

Before you rush off to the comment section or start frantically typing an email to question how long I’ve been a Christian, spend some time reviewing John 21. Jesus has already been crucified and risen from the dead. The apostles have been able to experience their risen Lord on more than one occasion. Still, I can’t help but believe they still felt a level of uncertainty. Life for them is not like it was before Jesus was arrested in the garden.

Up to that night, those following Jesus had to feel pretty secure in what they were being taught to believe. The Rabbi they had spent around three years with was performing miracles on a regular basis. When He spoke, the winds at sea would obey. Jesus had turned a few fish and some bread into enough to feed thousands of people. Whenever they needed Him, Jesus was right there to come to their rescue.

Searching for a new comfort

All of that was different now. Their Lord was no longer with them constantly, and they didn’t know what would happen to them next. They hid from the Jewish authorities in the upper room, anxious and uncertain. Sure, they had been able to see Jesus a few times here and there, but it wasn’t the same. They were expecting the Messiah to change the world they lived in as they knew it, to bring Israel to independence from Rome and a great earthly prosperity (see Acts 1:6). While Jesus did change the world and bring freedom and glory, His mission didn’t mean what everyone hoped it would.

In John 21:3, Peter does exactly what I think the majority of us would do today. Things haven’t turned out exactly like he’d imagined. He makes the decision to return to what he knew best before he began following Jesus. Peter tells the others, “I am going fishing.” He returns to what once provided him with the only comfort he knew.

While simply going fishing isn’t a sin, it’s a detour in the purpose God had for Peter and the disciples. It’s Peter saying to himself and others, “The plan didn’t turn out like we thought it would. I have to do something on my own to make the situation better for myself. I need to fix the mistake God made. I’m going to manufacture a level of comfort I’m unable to experience in His plan.”

Comfort vs. sanctification

I’ve gone on several of these “fishing trips” of my own since surrendering my life to Jesus in 2012. The majority of them have been accompanied by a case of beer and a new friend for a couple of weeks. Satan hasn’t had to put much effort into keeping me off track when I am unable to find the comfort I desire from my Bible or prayer life. Things normally spiral out of control quickly. I’m unable to find the feeling I expect God to fill me with. As a result, I do the best I can to create it on my own. In the end, I find myself further away from Jesus than I’ve ever been before. This is once how the story would end every time.

These experiences have shown me that we can’t make comfort the center of our lives. I’ve learned the hard way the lies and dishonesty that come with this kind of comfort. I think that’s one of the reasons we aren’t promised comfort every day of the rest of our lives once we become Christians: because, in this life, we cannot truly encounter God nor grow in grace without suffering. I doubt Jesus experienced much comfort while being nailed to and hanging from a piece of wood. St. Paul more than likely didn’t experience comfort while being locked away for his faith. Even the disciples went on to experience torture and deaths that were anything but comfortable.

Over time, I have finally been able to see lack of comfort in my own life for what it truly is: a means of experiencing Jesus in ways I never have before. It exposes a piece of my heart that has never experienced pain before to the elements around me, and so purifies and strengthens that piece. These seasons of life now enrich my prayer life instead of weakening it. You get to a point where you go through enough discomfort in life that you’re able to see it coming a mile down the road. Only when we are able to identify a lack of comfort as the passing trial it is are we finally able to experience the peace Jesus provides us with through every storm.

The post How Important is Comfort to You? appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Let us begin with a story: A man and woman, very distraught and discouraged about today’s problems, walk into a store and see Jesus Christ standing behind the sales counter. As they look for something to lift their spirits, Jesus suggests they make a list of what they want to buy. They list peace, hope, and love for the world.

In return, Jesus gives them a packet of seeds as well as the equipment and instructions to make them grow. He explains that to have peace, hope, and love grow in the world, they have to work the seeds and tend to them daily so nothing will impede their growth. The man and woman left the store, buying nothing.

To paraphrase a passage from the letter of St. James, what good is it if someone says he or she has faith, but does not have works? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and we say to them—go in peace, keep warm and eat well, but we do not give them the necessities, what good is it? (James 2:14-16). We can say we want peace, hope, and love for the world, but if we do not put in the effort, what good is it?

Good from God

The good comes when we seek first the Kingdom of God and all His righteousness, enabling us to receive the graces we need to live according to God’s instructions—God’s plan. When we live life for God’s sake, when we proclaim the greatness of God, we proclaim the greatness of God’s love in all that we say and do even in our most ordinary tasks. St. Teresa of Avila once said: “Our Lord is moving among the pots and pans.”

Consider the story of Martha and Mary. Mary sat and listened to Jesus speak while Martha did all the serving. Martha complained that Mary was not helping her. Perhaps Martha would not have gotten upset if she saw her work as an act of love for God. Each us has a unique offering of love in terms of our careers, home life, and relationships because each of us is unique by God’s design.

Peace, Hope, and Love

Practicing the presence of God—the presence of love—gives meaning and purpose to all the events and circumstances in our daily lives. As a result, our very being begins to change. We find that our faith becomes more active in every aspect of our living. An inner peace takes over in good days and bad, enabling us to say, “Ok Lord, let it be done to me according to Your will because You love me and I love you.”

With that peace and the essence of God’s love, we have a hope in our hearts that does not dissipate even in our most difficult hour. Good works replace sinful acts, selflessness overcomes selfishness, and by the grace of God, we become His living instruments that spread peace, hope, and love in the world.

The post What Good Is It? appeared first on Catholic Stand.

On All Souls Day, I attended a Mass celebrated by my bishop in a local cemetery. As always, this was a powerful reminder of the intimate connection we have with the dead. As we were processing through the cemetery singing the Litany of the Saints, this encounter with the reality of death was beautiful and uplifting. However, at this moment, I recalled how there was a time in my life when just the thought of death aroused only anxiety and terror. But, fortunately, my unhealthy fear of death was overcome through conversion, catechesis and a deeper relationship with Christ.

My Unhealthy Fear

I do not recall any specific trigger but I can remember being intensely afraid of death beginning sometime in middle school. I would have to distract myself from my own imagination – not because I invented horrific scenarios but because even a simple thought of my own death or the death of a loved one caused such inner turmoil and anxiety. My solution for these fears was avoidance of the subject and suppression of my worries; this continued until I was in my thirties.

I never spoke to anyone about this topic because I assumed it was natural to be afraid. And growing up, I rarely had to confront my fears as very few people close to me died. I remember being unsettled by “creepy” cemeteries and having great angst of “getting old” because these were terrifying reminders of my mortality. I learned how to detach myself from images of death such as seeing a crucifix or watching people die in a movie. And while I always had a desire for heaven, as sad as this is, I rarely contemplated death or the afterlife because the “joys of heaven” did not bring much peace because the act of dying remained far too unsettling. I realize now this was an unhealthy fear of death but what I have discovered in retrospect is that this was merely a symptom. The root issue was that I had a very superficial understanding of the faith and, unfortunately, this ignorance also prevented me from knowing – and experiencing – the hope we have been given by Christ who has transformed death.

Conversion Brings Understanding and Hope

It was only recently that my unhealthy fear of death was overcome. I did not notice the change instantly but, after having experienced a deep conversion in the faith ten years ago, I gradually became aware of my enriched understanding of death. Having a Christocentric view of life, I no longer saw death as a source of trepidation but of hope.

The Church teaches that it was never God’s intention for humanity to experience death as we now know it; rather, it is one of the tragic consequences of sin and disobedience (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1008, 1018). But after the Fall, God did not abandon us. In love, Christ became incarnate and offered himself as a sacrifice on the cross for our sins and, by dying and rising, he transformed death (CCC 1009).

If we unite ourselves to Christ, we will still experience physical death but we can then contemplate the end of this earthly life with an eager anticipation for the glory we will receive in heaven. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that in death, for all the faithful departed, life is not ended but changed (CCC 1012), and God has revealed that the joys of heaven are inconceivably more marvelous than anything we could fathom (1 Corinthians 2:9)! The Church tells us that rather than be a source of terror, the reality of death should be an urgent reminder that this life has eternal consequences (CCC 1007). Christ has merited for all of us the possibility of everlasting life and offers us sufficient grace to enter our heavenly home (CCC 1019) but God will not coerce us. Jesus warns us repeatedly in the Gospels that eternal misery awaits all those who freely choose to remain separated from God. It is during our brief time on earth that God offers us his grace and mercy, and we must open our hearts to him now (CCC 1013). And though pondering these truths about death may enkindle fear, it should not be of death. Rather it should be a fear of sin and the loss of God for all eternity.

Christ Brings A Positive Meaning to Death

St. Paul writes that because of Christ’s death and resurrection, Christians can joyfully proclaim, “Death where is your victory? O death where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). This is because if we are united to Christ, death is no longer an enemy. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

Because of Christ, Christian death has a positive meaning: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). “The saying is sure: if we have died with him, we will also live with him” (2 Timothy 2:11). Death is this: through Baptism, the Christian has already “died with Christ” sacramentally, in order to live a new life; and if we die in Christ’s grace, physical death completes this “dying with Christ” and so completes our incorporation into him in his redeeming act…

In death, God calls man to himself. Therefore, the Christian can experience a desire for death like St. Paul’s: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ” (Philippians 1:23). He can transform his own death into an act of obedience and love towards the Father, after the example of Christ… (CCC 1010-1011)

Reflecting on Death

It is not a sign of unfaithfulness if you have some fears of death. I recall reading St. Therese of Lisieux had moments where she feared it. Death is a mystery and often we become anxious about the unknown. But as Christians, we should see death in a new light. It should not be something morbid or depressing. We must avoid having an unhealthy fear that preoccupies us so much that we neglect our vocations to be holy and authentic witnesses of the faith. We also cannot allow fear to cause us to avoid contemplating death and the next life altogether because then we risk losing sight of our goal – heaven!

The Church calls us to reflect on the reality of death because she wants us to always be prepared since we never know when our life on earth will end. Thomas Kempis in The Imitation of Christ speaks of this powerfully:

Therefore, in every deed and every thought, act as though you were to die this very day. If you had a good conscience you would not fear death very much. It is better to avoid sin than to fear death. If you are not prepared today, how will you be prepared tomorrow? Tomorrow is an uncertain day; how do you know you will have a tomorrow?…

Blessed is he who keeps the moment of death ever before his eyes and prepares for it every day…Be always ready, therefore, and so live that death will never take you unprepared. Many die suddenly and unexpectedly, for in the unexpected hour the Son of God will come. When that last moment arrives you will begin to have a quite different opinion of the life that is now entirely past and you will regret very much that you were so careless and remiss.

How happy and prudent is he who tries now in life to be what he wants to be found in death. Perfect contempt of the world, a lively desire to advance in virtue, a love for discipline, the works of penance, readiness to obey, self-denial, and the endurance of every hardship for the love of Christ, these will give a man great expectations of a happy death…

See, then, dearly beloved, the great danger from which you can free yourself and the great fear from which you can be saved, if only you will always be wary and mindful of death. Try to love now in such a manner that at the moment of death you may be glad rather than fearful. Learn to die to the world now, that then you may begin to live with Christ… (Book 1, chapter 23)

It is important to recognize what I have discovered in my own life: having an unhealthy fear of death is dangerous. For me, my fears were related to the fact I was lukewarm in the faith, and, by succumbing to them, I did not contemplate death or my heavenly goal. I focused on the present failing to prepare for the inevitable future – death and the moment I would find myself standing before the judgment seat of Christ. Thanks be to God things have changed for me as I have discovered Christ and the abounding hope he brings. I remain aware I may not be given another day on this earth, so in every moment, by God’s grace, I strive for holiness. And rather than fear death, I now eagerly await the joys of heaven. I try to always be prepared so that when that day does come, I can say along with St. Therese of Lisieux: “I am not dying; I am entering life” (CCC 1011).

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