The Glow of Grace

You wouldn’t want to run a marathon while in the middle of a fast. You would lack the energy to go very far. Marathon runners carbo load their bodies with energy so they can successfully run the race.

Many of us think of grace in much the same way. It is a mystical fuel that we can store up in our spiritual gas tanks. When we do something right or partake in the sacraments, God gives us his grace which strengthens us in our day and helps us to live a good Christian life. We take God’s grace and deposit it into our spiritual bank accounts for a withdrawal later.

But grace is more an effect than an object. Grace is what happens to us when our wills and our actions are in harmony with God. When our wills are aligned with God’s the light of God’s loves shines through us, making our souls glow brightly. This glow is veiled to us who can only see the natural world but it is spectacularly visible to the supernatural world.

There have been occasions when the veil has been lifted and man has been allowed to see what grace looks like. The most notable was Jesus' transfiguration on the mountain. When Jesus was visited by Moses and Elijah on the mountain top Peter, James, and John were permitted to see what the angels could. Jesus took on a glow, a light emanating from within that had no apparent source. Jesus, being the second person of God, is always full of grace. On this occasion we were allowed to see him as the angels do.

Mary, mother of God, was conceived without sin and lived a sinless life. Her life was in communion with God’s will from the very moment she came into being. When the angel Gabriel addressed her he refers to he as ‘full of grace’. Mary’s glow of grace is the brightest of all creatures, second only to that of Jesus. She is a guiding light for all humanity and the epitome of what a human can become if we could only say yes to God’s plan for our lives.

When we are in communion with God we are in a state of grace. When our wills are aligned with his the light of God’s love shines through us. As we separate ourselves from God through venial sin that glow starts to diminish. When we commit mortal sin we separate ourselves completely from God and that glow no longer exists. The glow of grace acts as a beacon to all creatures supernatural. Joy filled is the guardian angel whose assignment glows brightly. The glow of grace is a light that hurts the devil’s eyes. No demon can tolerate being in the presence of Mary. Her cooperation with God’s will casts her in such a light that demons flee from her. Having Mary by your side is one of the best protections from evil you can get.

But woe to the man who is not in a state of grace. Just as a bedroom light scares monsters from under a child’s bed at night the glow of grace helps keep demons at bay. When this glow is faint or does not exist at all it is like ringing a dinner bell for those who look to devour a weak will. Fearful are the guardian angels whose assignments lack the glow of grace. They must work harder for those they protect to ward off the roaming lion looking to devour the weak or lost soul.

It would be so much easier if we could see the supernatural. We could see the angels that surround us and the demons that lurk in the shadows preparing to pounce. We could see Mass for what it really is. We could see all of the Saints who have gone before us. We could see those who are in a state of grace and we could see those who are struggling. We could aid the angels and the Saints to help those who were struggling.

But we do not need supernatural vision to do that. We aid those around us by being in a state of grace ourselves. Our glow can help those who don’t. The light of God’s love shining through us can be a beacon and offer protection to those still in darkness. It all starts with us. Partake in the Sacraments, especially the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Align your will with that of God’s so your soul glows brightly with grace. Help make this world and the supernatural one a brighter place.

Happy Anniversary Protestants

It was Halloween, 1517. A defiant Catholic monk nails a paper to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg and shakes his fist defiantly in the air. The Protestant Reformation had begun. At least that was the story taught to me when I was growing up in the Lutheran Church.

For the most part that story is a fable. Luther did write his Ninety-five Theses where he protested the sale of indulgences. He did not intend to challenge the Church but offered the paper as scholarly objection. For years prior to this Luther had begun teaching things more in line with his evolving personal beliefs than what the Church held true and had taught for fifteen hundred years. The Church responds to these things slowly because the charge of heresy is extremely serious. They took time to review each line of the Ninety-five Theses and other of Luther’s writing and teaching. Eventually a case of heresy was cast at Luther who was then called in to be examined.  The hearings broke down and Luther directly challenged Church teaching. An order for his arrest was issued but Luther snuck away in the middle of the night to avoid it. Luther was ordered to recant forty-one sentences from things he had written. When he refused to do so he was excommunicated in 1521.

Luther determined that the Church had fallen into error and that only he knew the truth. He founded his own church based upon his opinions, translating the bible into common German. He took out seven books of the bible that had been in the Catholic Canon for over a thousand years. He even added the word “alone” in Romans 3:28 to support his concept of Sola Fide. Other reformers, like Knox, Calvin, and Wesley, also agreed with Luther that the Catholic Church had fallen into error. They disagreed with Luther that Luther knew the truth and each founded their own denominations of the Christian church. Luther lived long enough to see his own church splinter into denominations of Lutheranism when other Lutherans believed Luther was in error and formed their own churches. As the world becomes smaller and smaller through immediate and electronic communications the splintering of the Christian faith continues at an ever increasing rate. There are currently over 40,000 different flavors of Christianity in the world today, each teaching what they believe to be the one truth passed down from Jesus.

The one thing the Catholic Church can claim that no other church can is that they have the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus physically present in their Church at all times. The Catholics believe that when a priest consecrates a host Jesus becomes fully present in that host through transubstantiation. The hosts are no longer bread and wine but are actually body and blood. Lutherans believe in substantiation, or of the same substance. Jesus exists within the bread and wine but for only as long as communion takes place. Then he leaves from the leftovers.

If what the Catholic Church believes is false there is little reason to be Catholic. Almost any Christian church would work at that point. But, if what they say is true there is little reason to be anything but Catholic. I am Catholic because I do believe what they claim to be true is actually true. God has given us signs and miracles so that we may know that the Catholic claim is true. As with every sign, God gives us enough room to not believe. When we are blessed with a sign the Church investigates it. They will rule if the sign can be believed or should not be believed. They never require that a sign be believed.

So why do I believe the Eucharist is the actual body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus my Lord?

Mystics exist who can tell the difference between a consecrated host and an unconsecrated one. When they look at the hosts a consecrated host had a glow to it. They have been tested time and time again by placing a consecrated host among hundreds of unconsecrated ones. They can always successfully pick the consecrated host.

A consecrated host is needed to perform a proper black mass by Satan worshipers. When we are trained as Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion we are taught to be on a constant lookout for those who pose as Catholics to obtain a consecrated host. This happens in no other church. A Lutheran communion wafer does not cut it in a black mass. If they are all the same what would it matter?

Probably the strongest evidence to me are the Eucharistic miracles. There are several well documented cases where a consecrated host has changed in to flesh and blood. When this happens the Church launches a thorough investigation by an independent third party investigator. If the miracle is found to be what it appears to be the Church will rule that it is worthy of our belief. We are still given the option to disbelieve if our hearts are not moved by it.

One of the most recent Eucharistic Miracles happened in Buenas Aires, Argentina in 1996. The short story is that a host was dropped on the ground. It was placed in some water to dissolve. After a few days it started to change. The Archbishop, a man named Jorge Mario Bergoglio, ordered an investigation be done on this host. You may know him by his new name of Pope Francis. (See linked video)

Two samples were taken to laboratories in California and New York.  The scientists looking at the sample were not told what it was a sample of. One of the scientists was an expert in cardiology, pathology, and biochemistry. He said that the sample was heart tissue taken from a man who had been tortured to death. He had no idea that this was taken from a consecrated host.

Then the scientist asked a question. How is it that this heart tissue is alive? It is moving. It is beating. This was three years after the sample had been taken.

You can believe this or not. I do not require proof that what the Catholic Church claims is the truth. I believe it with all of my heart. I believe it to the point that I am willing to die for it. How could I ever consider going to a another church, a church that does not have the physical presence of Jesus in it?

This year the world celebrated the 500^th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. The world celebrated the anniversary of the beginning of the Church Jesus created being torn apart, shredded into over 40,000 pieces by men who thought they knew more than the Church Christ promised to stand by until the end of the age. Is this something that should be celebrated or a tragedy that should be mourned? Did Luther reform the Church or revolt from it?

Lost in Translation...again.

When I took over doing international support on my company’s products I was asked to go to England. I came home and told my brother that I was going to London. The first thing he asked me was, “Do they speak English there?”

I couldn’t resist. I replied back, “No. They are sending a translator with me.”

In the end the joke was on me. Although we both spoke English many words and phrases don’t hold the same meaning. The first night I was there we went for kabobs, which to me meant meat on a stick. To my London coworkers they were gyros. Over there you can shag and suck on fags. To me the first meant to dance and the second was quite offensive. To them the first was offensive and the second means nothing more than to smoke a cigarette. When my Australian coworker came to the US and went skiing he was told by the female instructor that if he had problems with a run to go down on his fanny. To an Australian that refers to a body part a man does not have. Imagine the look of shock that was on his face.

The fact of the matter is that languages rarely translate smoothly. Words do not hold the same meaning and the best we can do is to get as close as we can when we translate. One of the problems with a casual read of the bible is that we are reading a translation of a translation using modern understanding of words without a historical context or frame of mind. Before the scriptures were written it was passed on orally. Very few people could read or write and paper was made of papyrus and animal skins that were very expensive. It will come as a surprise to some to learn that ancient Jews did not speak English.

Jesus would have spoken Aramaic, the common language of the Jews, and Hebrew, the religious language. He would have also spoke Greek, which was the common language of business, and if he didn’t speak Latin, the language of the ruling government, he would have at least understood some of it. The oral history and stories would have been told in Aramaic and scripture would have been read in Hebrew. When the early Church told the story of Jesus to the Jews it would have been in Aramaic but when it was passed on to the Gentiles and finally written down it was done so in Greek. Not all words translated easily when written in Greek.

One example is that Jesus referred to God, the Father as “Abba”.  This was translated to Greek as πατερ (pater) which was also pater in Latin, père in French, padre in both Italian and Spanish, vater in German, and eventually father in English. The word father often leads one to think of the adult relationship one has with the man responsible for his parentage. When we think of God the Father this is usually how we think of him.

Yet, Abba had a much deeper meaning than father. If we were to translate the Aramaic straight to English we come closer to the actual meaning of Abba with our word daddy. Daddy is a much more intimate term used between a small child and a father. It signifies a different type of relationship between the two.  A small child needs much greater care and has a more innocent love for his daddy than an adult does for his father. So the prayer Jesus handed down to his Church really begins, “Our Daddy, who art in heaven… “

The English translation of the bible we have comes from a Greek text. There are many examples where the Greek does not translate the full meaning to English. For example, Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?”

Peter answers three times, “You know I love you.” And then Peter gets upset. When read in English it doesn’t make much sense.

We have only one word for love. I can love my wife. I can love my children. I can love my squirrel. I can love my pencil. The word love is used in each of these but we can assume that it is a love of a different type or level for each. The Greek has many words depicting a different type of love. In this passage Jesus is asking Peter if he loves him above all else, with sacrificial love. Peter is answering, “Naw, I love you like a brother.”

This demonstrates the danger of trying to read and gather meaning of the bible on your own. We are reading a translation of a translation of a translation using modern definitions and understanding. It is very easy to miss what is actually being said and receive the wrong message from the text. The devil uses this to direct man into using Holy Scripture to justify every type of evil. We can end up on the wrong road and create our own misguided ad incorrect theology. This is the primary reason we have over 30,000 different flavors of Christianity in the world today.

As a Catholic I am very lucky to come from a faith tradition rooted in an oral history. The Church passed down scripture orally long before it was written. The meaning of a passage was handed down through the ages and I have the Magisterium to teach me that meaning. This does not mean that I don’t read scripture. Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ. This also does not mean that I can’t gain a personal inspiration from scripture. What it does mean is that I cannot redefine for myself what the actual teaching of scripture is based solely on my opinion. I do not get to disagree with the Magisterium on the meaning of scripture.

Read scripture. Learn from it. Refer often to a competent guide that can direct you to the things that have been lost in translation.

No Wives Allowed

I love each and every one of you reading this blog right now. I would like to have a personal relationship with each of you. I would like to hang out with you and be BFFs. The issue is that I can’t stand your spouse. They are flawed. One has an attitude problem. One isn’t a good house keeper. One has really bad halitosis. We can hang out and do things together but they are not invited.

How good of a relationship do you think we will have if this is how I truly felt? I can tell you from personal experience that we won’t. I have destroyed some of the closest, dearest relationships in my life because I couldn’t accept my friend’s spouse. When you attack a person’s spouse you attack that person.

Yet, this is exactly what millions of Christians do to Jesus each and every day. One of the most used metaphors to describe Christ and his Church is that of the bride groom and bride. The Church founded by Jesus is his bride and he is her groom. The entire book of Revelation is about the wedding feast in heaven.

So many people today have turned their backs on the Church. The Church has no relevance in their lives. They don’t need the Church. All they need is a personal relationship with Jesus. They have Jesus and they have the bible. They have no need for the Church. The Church is flawed. The Church makes mistakes. The Church is human. Jesus is God. Jesus is perfect. Jesus loves me, the bible tells me so.

When we attack the Church we attack Jesus himself. When we cast the Church away we tell Jesus that we love him but want nothing to do with his bride. There are some who believe that Jesus is all sweet and gentle and full of love. They conveniently ignore the passages that talk about justice and wrath. That’s the Old Testament God. He has mellowed through the years. The First commandment tells us that God is a jealous God. He is a God of love, and although he loves all of creation, his bride holds a special place in his heart. So does his mother, but that is another blog entry.

So is just any church the bride of Christ? Is the Lutheran church? Is the Presbyterian church? How about the Jehovah Witness church? I have heard them all make claim to be that church. They are all part of the universal church and therefore it doesn’t matter which church you are part of. Even the people who only want a personal relationship with Jesus are a church. They are just a church with one member.

But scripture is pretty clear that Jesus is referring to the Church he created. That can’t be the Lutheran church. That church was created by Martin Luther in the year 1517. He created this church because he disagreed with the Church Jesus created. He felt that Church had fallen into error so the best thing to do was to cast her aside and begin again in a church of his making. Sorry Jesus, your bride is messed up so we are going with her second cousin.

It can’t be the Presbyterian church. John Knox started that church in Scotland in 1560 for much the same reason that Luther started his church. John didn’t like Christ’s bride either and replaced her with one more to his liking.

And then there is Charles Taze Russell, a Restorationist minister, who founded the Jehovah Witness church in 1931. He believed that the mainstream Protestant religions of the day had also fallen into error and that only he knew the way.

The buzz word of the day is Ecumenism. Ecumenism is recognizing that all Christians belong to the body of Christ and finds a way that we can pray and celebrate Jesus together. Ecumenism is everyone looking for a way to become more unified and grow closer together no matter how far we grow apart. In the end it really comes down to the great mercy of God towards those who have attacked and maligned his bride. I know how I would respond to someone who has attacked my bride in the vicious way the world has attacked Christ’s. But then again, I am a fallen, sinful human. His ways are so much greater than my ways.

If you love God and live your life the best you can trying to love, honor, and serve him we have some common ground to stand on. Faith is a personal journey we each have to walk on our own. We are all on different parts of this Road to Damascus but we all are trying to reach the same destination. This is where ecumenism starts.

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

One of the things Christopher Columbus discovered when he landed in the new world was a fruit no one in Europe had ever seen. It was juicy and sweet like an apple but it was oddly shaped, like a pinecone. Thus, it was named the pineapple.

Columbus took a boat load of the new fruit home with him when he returned to the known world. It was an instant hit and the demand for the fruit grew. It became a status symbol of luxury, being reserved solely for the rich. A single pineapple would sell for the equivalent of $8000 a piece in today’s currency. People would throw viewing parties where a pineapple would be put on a pedestal and unveiled to a group of awestruck friends and neighbors. Then it would be put on display for all to see in a prominent part of the home. The pineapple would often go uneaten, left on display until it began to rot.

Thanks to companies like Dole and Del Monte and the invention of the steam ship pineapples soon became widely available to everyone of every economic class. The allure of the pineapple faded and now you can get it in a can from any mega mart or dollar store for next to nothing.

Human sexuality has followed a similar path as the pineapple. Before 1950 when a woman had sex with a man she did so at the risk of her very life. Pregnancy was the leading cause of death for women, either from preterm complications or in child birth. On June 23, 1960 the FDA approved the birth control pill to be sold in the United States. On January 22, 1973 the Supreme Court of the United States made laws that prohibited abortion unconstitutional. These two things combined have done more to destroy America than anything else in our history.

Human sexuality is a treasure that was given to man by God. God loved man so much that he included him in his great plan of salvation by entrusting us to fill heaven with Saintly humans. This is a gift that he did not share with the angels. Human sexuality has two purposes, unitive and procreative. Sex was designed to be so intimate that it united two individuals into one flesh. The result of that is procreative, the bringing about of new life into this world. Sex unites husband and wife together and brings about the child which forms a family. The family, not the individual, is the primary building block of every society. That is the design and purpose for which God created human sexuality. Any use of this sexuality that goes against its designed purpose is disordered.

Virginity, therefore, is something to be treasured. It is a unique and special gift a husband can give his wife and wife to husband. Yet, in today’s culture virginity is a dirty word. It is something we try to get rid of at the earliest possible time. Being a virgin can bring with it a great amount of criticism and teasing from one’s peers or even one’s parents. Instead of being a treasure, guarded and given as the deepest meaning gift, it is thrown away in a moment that holds no more meaning than to be able to say, “I did it!”

Besides the sacrifice of our Lord and the air in our lungs there is no greater gift man has been given than our human sexuality. It is the glue that holds a family together and the action that brings about future saints. Because of this nothing is attacked more by the devil. We throw virginity away on a whim and reduce sex to nothing more than an unattached physical action between any number of people. The pill has enabled us to accept God’s gift of life on our terms allowing people to have sex without consequence. This in turn has destroyed the unitive affects of sex. Abortion on demands allows us to correct our mistakes if a sexual encounter brings about a new life we do not want. With the glue between husband and wife severely weakened or gone altogether and sex being done for recreation instead of procreation the American family has taken a serious beating. Rare is it to find an intact marriage after twenty years. Rarer is it to find an unbroken or unblended family.

If the family is the primary building block of the society when you have a broken family you have a broken society. You don’t have to look very far in today’s culture to see how true that really is. The devil has been very successful in getting us to embrace the “I” over the “we” and our world is paying a dear price. We have heard that children are our future so when we stop having children we create for ourselves a very bleak future. Every first world nation is now under replacement rate, meaning we produce fewer children than the number of people who die. Entire towns in Europe are disappearing, like the ghost towns in the Wild West, because there is no one to replace the elders when they pass. Less children means there will be less people to do the work and less people to pay taxes to support those who have retired. Less people to pay taxes means those who do will have to pay more for longer and that services currently provided must be cut.

Fewer children mean fewer priests, volunteers, donors, and people in our pews. Mass greatly needs more crying babies for without them we will have empty churches in forty years. There will be no volunteer groups that do so much of the necessary ministry in our world today.

The devil has done all the ground work to insure civilization's destruction. He hung the noose and we have eagerly stuck our heads in it. He is not waiting for us to jump but he is actively trying to knock the chair out from under us. His pleasure at what we have become is immense.

And God continues to offer us salvation, in this world and the next. All we have to do is recognize the genius of his creation and use it as he has designed it. If we turn back to him, in our hearts, minds, and actions we can save this world he has worked so hard to create.