But even this does not end the list of the convert's new benefits. He also receives certitude. Philosophy gives a proof for the existence of God; the science of apologetic gives the motives for believing in Christ, the Son of God; but all the incontrovertible proofs they offer fall short of the certitude that actually comes to a convert through the gift of Faith. Imagine a young man whose father has been lost for years. A friend, returned from a trip, assures him that he has certain evidence that his father really exists on another continent. But the young man is not fully satisfied with the evidence, however convincing it is; until he is restored to his father's actual presence, he will not have peace.
So it is with conversion: Before, one knows about God; afterward, one knows God. The first knowledge the mind has is notional and abstract; the second is real, concrete, and it becomes bound up with all one's sentiments, emotions, passions, and habits. Before conversion, the truths seemed true but far off; they did not touch one personally. After conversion, they become so personalized that the mind knows that it is through with the search for a place to live; it can now settle down to the making of a home. The convert's certitude is so great that his mind does not feel that an answer has been given, but the answer - the absolute, final solution, which one would die for rather than surrender.
As a result, all the doubts and despair of the intellectual vanish - and here the Church differs from all other world religions. In other religions, doubts increase with the development of reason, but in the Church faith intensifies as reason develops. This is because our reason and our faith in Christ and His Mystical Body both derive from the same God of Light, whereas reason and belief in a pagan teacher often have different sources. Reason is from God, but a belief in pagan teaching comes merely from the external environment or through propaganda.
It is historically true that an age of the Summa of the thirteenth-century Thomas Aquinas is an example. This relation is a logical one: Just as reason is the perfection of the senses, so faith is the perfection of reason. A person neither sees nor walks as well when he is drunk as when he is sober; his senses lack the perfecting power of reason. In the same way, a mind reasoning without faith does not function as well as reasoning with faith.
Those who have never gone through the experience of a complete conversion imagine that reason must be completely abdicated for such a step. We hear them make such remarks as, "I cannot understand it; he seemed like an intelligent man." But those who have gone through the experience of conversion see that just as the eye winks, closing itself to the light for an instant that it may reopen and see better, so, too, one winks his reason for that brief instant in which he admits that it may not know all the answers. Then, when faith comes, the reason is found to be intact and clearer sighted than before. Both reason and faith are now seen as deriving from God Himself; they can never, therefore, be in opposition. Knowing this, the convert loses all his doubts. His certitude in his faith becomes unshakable - indeed, is his old notions are now apt to be shaken by the earthquake of his faith.
Now the certitude in the Divinity and infallibility of Christ, in all that implies, surpasses even the evidence and the arguments for it, for the certitude is derived from God Himself. "Flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven." - Matt. 16:17 - Now the convert understands that there are three lights to guide humanity to happiness: there is the light of the sun for our senses, the light of reason for our sciences, theology and the light of faith for our religion and salvation. Those who lack the gift of faith and those who have it are like two persons looking at a rainbow: One of them is blind, and the other is blessed with eyesight. There are little children in our parochial schools who could never answer the objections of learned professors who might attack their faith; yet such objections would no more shake their faith than if they attempted to prove that their eyes could not see color nor their ears hear sounds.
This absence of confusion, this absolute conviction of Divine and Absolute Truth, is one of the greatest consolations of the faithful. The converted soul sees itself as the man born blind - now restored to vision and to light. As a result the soul becomes bolder in his judgments; the blinkers are now removed, and he has a Divine standard by which to judge not only his own actions but world events about him. Only a person of faith can understand the present world situation; such a person alone appreciates that it is not the clash of conflicting political systems, but a moral judgment on the way people think and live. Even in the midst of such tribulations as today's, his faith begets patience and productivity; thanks to the magnet of faith, all his scattered fragments of ideas are like iron filings, made of one piece and suffused with one energy.
But some will surely ask, "Don't conversion and the acceptance of the authority of the Church as the authority of Christ destroy human freedom? Doesn't the acceptance of the absolute of the Church imply authoritarianism?" The answer is negative. To myopic eyes, there may, indeed, seem to be a superficial resemblance between accepting the authority of the Church and accepting the authoritarianism of a Stalin. But there are three profound differences between the two.
First, the authoritarianism of modern politics is external; the authority of the Church is internal. The dictator's rule is imposed from without, is pressed on one as insistently as a dog barking at the heels of the sheep, and it is accepted coweringly and under pressure. Submission to arbitrary rules that do not coincide with our own best judgment leads to the complete destruction of personality. But the authority of the Church is never arbitrary, never communicated entirely from without; it coincides with the Truth of Christ, which is already in the soul and which has been accepted on evidence our reason approves. Here the authority accords with our conscience, and it completes the personality that submits to it.
The relationship of the Christian and the Church is very much like that of a student and a professor, the more the student learns, and the smaller the gap dividing them becomes; one day the student may himself become an associate of that teacher. It was such submission to this spiritual authority of which Our Lord spoke to His Apostle: "I will not now call you servants: for the servant knows not what his lord does. But I have called you friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you." - John 15:15 -
There is a second difference: The totalitarian state, to make its whimsical rulings accepted, must always aim at suppressing freedom of choice. For example, it will tell a citizen that he is not free to work at what he likes, to live where he pleases. But the authority of the Church tries, through training her children in the proper use of freedom of choice, to develop the freedom of perfection. Far from discouraging individuals from following their own preferences, the Church devotes much of her energy to teaching them how to choose, and to choose wisely.
An instructor in aviation teaches a candidate the laws of flight, the principles of gravitation and navigation. Then the student is given full freedom of choice; he can either obey the laws of flight or disobey them. If he uses his freedom to disobey, he will crash; if he uses his freedom to obey the laws he has learned, he will enjoy flying. The Church, likewise, teaches us the laws that govern reality and the consequences of breaking them. This is what Our Lord meant when He said, "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32 -
For moral freedom - like every other freedom - is limited by the order of the universe. You are free to draw a triangle (provided that you give it three sides instead of thirty); you are free to draw giraffe (provided that you respect its nature, giving it a long neck and not a short one); you are free to teach chemistry (provided that you tell the students that water is H2O and not H2So4). So with the Church: We are free to reject the teachings of Christ in His Church, just as we are free to ignore or disobey the laws of engineering; but we find that the rejection of her laws never leads us to the perfection of our personality, as we foolishly hoped. It results, instead, in a morbid affirmation of the ego, which can even lead to self-destruction.
Life may likened to children playing. The totalitarian would build them a playground where all their movements are supervised, where they are ordered to play only those games that the state dictates - games that the children nearly all detest. The result is that freedom of choice is, of course, taken away. Moreover, all hope and spontaneity are lost to the children. But the playground established by the Church might be a rock in the sea, surrounded by great walls; inside of those walls the children may dance and sing and play as they please. Liberals would ask the Church to tear down the walls on the grounds that they are a restraining influence; but if this were done, you would find all the children huddled in the center of the island, afraid to play, afraid to sing, afraid to dance, afraid of falling into the sea. Spiritual authority is like those beneficent walls. Or, again, it is like a levee that prevents the river of thought from becoming riotous and destroying the countryside of sanity.
The third difference between the discipline of the authoritarian state and the Church concerns their authority has on the subject. Totalitarianism begets fear in the hearts of its subjects, because it habitually enforces its will by the whip, the chain, the concentration camp, and the false charge, which slanders a person; it thus develops hostility within the hearts of its subjects. Church authority, since it is internal, uses absolutely no threat or fear or compulsion; it relies, rather, on the echo each of its rulings raises in the heart and mind of the individual. Anyone of its subjects is as free to reject the Church as Judas Iscariot, as his moment of departure he is asked to return with the kindly word "Friend." One submits to the authority of the Church as a child submits to the authority of his parents - because he loves them - and from this love flows an ardent admiration and gratitude.
In the light of these differences, it is evident that the real choice offered today is not between freedom from authority and submission to authority; it is rather a matter of choosing which kind of authority we will accept.
The modern person is so confused that, for all his talk about freedom, he is often eager to renounce this gift in favor of security. Even when no greater security is offered him in exchange, he is eager to give up his freedom of choice; he cannot bear the burden of its responsibility. Weary of being alone and afraid and isolated in a hostile world, he wants to surrender himself to something or to somebody - to commit a kind of mayhem of the will. Will he surrender to the anonymous authority of a collective state, or will he accept a spiritual authority that restores his freedom with the acceptance of truth?
Page 3
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
So it is with conversion: Before, one knows about God; afterward, one knows God. The first knowledge the mind has is notional and abstract; the second is real, concrete, and it becomes bound up with all one's sentiments, emotions, passions, and habits. Before conversion, the truths seemed true but far off; they did not touch one personally. After conversion, they become so personalized that the mind knows that it is through with the search for a place to live; it can now settle down to the making of a home. The convert's certitude is so great that his mind does not feel that an answer has been given, but the answer - the absolute, final solution, which one would die for rather than surrender.
As a result, all the doubts and despair of the intellectual vanish - and here the Church differs from all other world religions. In other religions, doubts increase with the development of reason, but in the Church faith intensifies as reason develops. This is because our reason and our faith in Christ and His Mystical Body both derive from the same God of Light, whereas reason and belief in a pagan teacher often have different sources. Reason is from God, but a belief in pagan teaching comes merely from the external environment or through propaganda.
It is historically true that an age of the Summa of the thirteenth-century Thomas Aquinas is an example. This relation is a logical one: Just as reason is the perfection of the senses, so faith is the perfection of reason. A person neither sees nor walks as well when he is drunk as when he is sober; his senses lack the perfecting power of reason. In the same way, a mind reasoning without faith does not function as well as reasoning with faith.
Those who have never gone through the experience of a complete conversion imagine that reason must be completely abdicated for such a step. We hear them make such remarks as, "I cannot understand it; he seemed like an intelligent man." But those who have gone through the experience of conversion see that just as the eye winks, closing itself to the light for an instant that it may reopen and see better, so, too, one winks his reason for that brief instant in which he admits that it may not know all the answers. Then, when faith comes, the reason is found to be intact and clearer sighted than before. Both reason and faith are now seen as deriving from God Himself; they can never, therefore, be in opposition. Knowing this, the convert loses all his doubts. His certitude in his faith becomes unshakable - indeed, is his old notions are now apt to be shaken by the earthquake of his faith.
Now the certitude in the Divinity and infallibility of Christ, in all that implies, surpasses even the evidence and the arguments for it, for the certitude is derived from God Himself. "Flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven." - Matt. 16:17 - Now the convert understands that there are three lights to guide humanity to happiness: there is the light of the sun for our senses, the light of reason for our sciences, theology and the light of faith for our religion and salvation. Those who lack the gift of faith and those who have it are like two persons looking at a rainbow: One of them is blind, and the other is blessed with eyesight. There are little children in our parochial schools who could never answer the objections of learned professors who might attack their faith; yet such objections would no more shake their faith than if they attempted to prove that their eyes could not see color nor their ears hear sounds.
This absence of confusion, this absolute conviction of Divine and Absolute Truth, is one of the greatest consolations of the faithful. The converted soul sees itself as the man born blind - now restored to vision and to light. As a result the soul becomes bolder in his judgments; the blinkers are now removed, and he has a Divine standard by which to judge not only his own actions but world events about him. Only a person of faith can understand the present world situation; such a person alone appreciates that it is not the clash of conflicting political systems, but a moral judgment on the way people think and live. Even in the midst of such tribulations as today's, his faith begets patience and productivity; thanks to the magnet of faith, all his scattered fragments of ideas are like iron filings, made of one piece and suffused with one energy.
But some will surely ask, "Don't conversion and the acceptance of the authority of the Church as the authority of Christ destroy human freedom? Doesn't the acceptance of the absolute of the Church imply authoritarianism?" The answer is negative. To myopic eyes, there may, indeed, seem to be a superficial resemblance between accepting the authority of the Church and accepting the authoritarianism of a Stalin. But there are three profound differences between the two.
First, the authoritarianism of modern politics is external; the authority of the Church is internal. The dictator's rule is imposed from without, is pressed on one as insistently as a dog barking at the heels of the sheep, and it is accepted coweringly and under pressure. Submission to arbitrary rules that do not coincide with our own best judgment leads to the complete destruction of personality. But the authority of the Church is never arbitrary, never communicated entirely from without; it coincides with the Truth of Christ, which is already in the soul and which has been accepted on evidence our reason approves. Here the authority accords with our conscience, and it completes the personality that submits to it.
The relationship of the Christian and the Church is very much like that of a student and a professor, the more the student learns, and the smaller the gap dividing them becomes; one day the student may himself become an associate of that teacher. It was such submission to this spiritual authority of which Our Lord spoke to His Apostle: "I will not now call you servants: for the servant knows not what his lord does. But I have called you friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you." - John 15:15 -
There is a second difference: The totalitarian state, to make its whimsical rulings accepted, must always aim at suppressing freedom of choice. For example, it will tell a citizen that he is not free to work at what he likes, to live where he pleases. But the authority of the Church tries, through training her children in the proper use of freedom of choice, to develop the freedom of perfection. Far from discouraging individuals from following their own preferences, the Church devotes much of her energy to teaching them how to choose, and to choose wisely.
An instructor in aviation teaches a candidate the laws of flight, the principles of gravitation and navigation. Then the student is given full freedom of choice; he can either obey the laws of flight or disobey them. If he uses his freedom to disobey, he will crash; if he uses his freedom to obey the laws he has learned, he will enjoy flying. The Church, likewise, teaches us the laws that govern reality and the consequences of breaking them. This is what Our Lord meant when He said, "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32 -
For moral freedom - like every other freedom - is limited by the order of the universe. You are free to draw a triangle (provided that you give it three sides instead of thirty); you are free to draw giraffe (provided that you respect its nature, giving it a long neck and not a short one); you are free to teach chemistry (provided that you tell the students that water is H2O and not H2So4). So with the Church: We are free to reject the teachings of Christ in His Church, just as we are free to ignore or disobey the laws of engineering; but we find that the rejection of her laws never leads us to the perfection of our personality, as we foolishly hoped. It results, instead, in a morbid affirmation of the ego, which can even lead to self-destruction.
Life may likened to children playing. The totalitarian would build them a playground where all their movements are supervised, where they are ordered to play only those games that the state dictates - games that the children nearly all detest. The result is that freedom of choice is, of course, taken away. Moreover, all hope and spontaneity are lost to the children. But the playground established by the Church might be a rock in the sea, surrounded by great walls; inside of those walls the children may dance and sing and play as they please. Liberals would ask the Church to tear down the walls on the grounds that they are a restraining influence; but if this were done, you would find all the children huddled in the center of the island, afraid to play, afraid to sing, afraid to dance, afraid of falling into the sea. Spiritual authority is like those beneficent walls. Or, again, it is like a levee that prevents the river of thought from becoming riotous and destroying the countryside of sanity.
The third difference between the discipline of the authoritarian state and the Church concerns their authority has on the subject. Totalitarianism begets fear in the hearts of its subjects, because it habitually enforces its will by the whip, the chain, the concentration camp, and the false charge, which slanders a person; it thus develops hostility within the hearts of its subjects. Church authority, since it is internal, uses absolutely no threat or fear or compulsion; it relies, rather, on the echo each of its rulings raises in the heart and mind of the individual. Anyone of its subjects is as free to reject the Church as Judas Iscariot, as his moment of departure he is asked to return with the kindly word "Friend." One submits to the authority of the Church as a child submits to the authority of his parents - because he loves them - and from this love flows an ardent admiration and gratitude.
In the light of these differences, it is evident that the real choice offered today is not between freedom from authority and submission to authority; it is rather a matter of choosing which kind of authority we will accept.
The modern person is so confused that, for all his talk about freedom, he is often eager to renounce this gift in favor of security. Even when no greater security is offered him in exchange, he is eager to give up his freedom of choice; he cannot bear the burden of its responsibility. Weary of being alone and afraid and isolated in a hostile world, he wants to surrender himself to something or to somebody - to commit a kind of mayhem of the will. Will he surrender to the anonymous authority of a collective state, or will he accept a spiritual authority that restores his freedom with the acceptance of truth?
Page 3
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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