The Church makes none of us less than we were before. But we chiefly value freedom in order to give it away; everyone who loves surrender his or her freedom, whether his passion be the love of another person, the love of a cause, or the love of God. When a man loves a woman, he says, "I am yours," and the surrender of freedom gives him into a sweet slavery. Every person in love with God says, as Saint Paul did, "What will you have me to do?" - Acts 9:6 - and adds, as we do in the Our Father, "Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." In both instances, freedom is surrendered for the sake of a greater joy. Freedom hoarded is of little value - spent, for something we love, it brings peace and perfects one's personality in the law and love of God.
The new certitude of the convert, then, is a precious thing and very different from the abandonment of will and intellect some imagine it to be. But the full tale of the benefits from conversion is not ended. We must speak of another christening gift - peace of soul. There is a world of difference between peace of mind and peace of soul. Peace of mind is the result of bringing some ordering principle to bear on discordant human experiences; this may be achieved by tolerance, or by a gritting of one's teeth in the face of pain; by killing conscience, or denying guilt, or by finding new loves to assuage old griefs. Each of these is an integration, but on a very low level.
This kind of peace Our Lord calls false, and He likens it to living under the dominion of Satan: "When a strong man fully armed guard his palace, his possession are safe." - Luke 11:21 - It is the peace of those who have convinced themselves they are animals; the peace of the stone-deaf whom no word of truth can pierce; the peace of the blind who guarded themselves against every ray of heavenly light. It is the false peace of the slothful servant who had the same talent at the end as at the beginning because he ignored the judgment that would demand an account of his stewardship. It is the false peace of the man who built his house on the shifting road, so that it varnished with the floods and the storms. With such false peace of mind, Satan tempts his victims; he makes it seems refined to the refined, sensual to the sensual, and coarse to the coarse.
Conversion brings the soul out of either chaos or this false peace of mind to true peace of soul. "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world gives, do I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid." - John 14;27 - The true peace is born of the tranquility of order, wherein the senses are subject to the reason, the reason to faith, and the whole personality to the Will of God. The true peace that follows conversions is deepened, not disturbed, by the crosses, checks, and disquietude of the world, for they are all welcomed as coming from the hands of the Loving Father. The true peace can never come from adjustment to the world, for if the world is wicked, adjustments to wickedness make us worse. It comes only from identification of one's own will with the Will of God.
The peaceful soul does not seek, now, to live morally, but to live for God; morality is only a by-product of the union with Him. This peace unites the soul with his neighbor, prompting him to visit the sick, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked; for by loving another soul one gives to God.
The only real pain the convert now has is his inability to do more for the love of God. It is easy to fulfill the claims of lesser ideals, such as Humanism, and their disciples quickly become complacent; there are already as virtuous as their code asks them to be. It is very easy to be a good Humanist, but it is very hard to be a true follower of Jesus Christ. Yet it is not the memory of past sins that creates this pain amid the peace, but present shortcomings: Because the convert loves so much, he feels as if he had done nothing. What gift can ever be an expression of this new love? If he could give God the universe, even that would not be enough.
All energy that was previously wasted in conflict - either in trying to find the purpose of life or in trying alone and futilely to conquer his vices - can now be released to serve a single purpose. Regret, remorse, fears, and the anxieties that flowed from sin now completely vanish in repentance. The convert no longer regrets what he might have been; the Holy Spirit fills his soul with a constant presentiment of what he can become through grace. This spiritual recuperation is accompanied by hope, at no matter what age the change occurs - although the convert always regrets that he waited so long. As Saint Augustine of Hippo said, "Too late, O ancient beauty, have I loved thee." But since grace rejuvenates, it quickens even the old to consecrate service.
And there are many other ways in which peace of soul will manifest itself after conversion. It makes somebody out of nobody by giving them a service of Divine Sonship; it roots out anger, resentments, and hate by overcoming sin; it gives the convert faith in other people, whom he now sees as potential children of God; it improves his health by curing the ills that sprang from a disordered, unhappy, and restless mind; for trails and difficulties, it gives him the aid of Divine power; it brings him at all times a sense of harmony with the universe; it sublimates his passions; it makes him fret less about the spiritual shortcomings of the world because he is engrossed in seeking his own spirituality; it enables the soul to live in a constant consciousness of God's presence, as the earth, in its flight about the sun, carries its own atmosphere with it.
In business, in the home, in household duties, in the factory, all actions are done in the sight of God, all thoughts revolve about His Truths. The unreasoning blame, the false accusations, the jealousies and bitterness of others are borne patiently, as our Lord bore them, so that love might reign and that God might be glorified in the bitter as in the sweet. Dependence on Him becomes strength; one no longer fears to undertake good works, knowing He will supply the means. But above all else, with this deep sense of peace, there is the gift of perseverance, which inspires us never to let down our guard, or to shrink from difficulties, or to be depressed as the soul presses on to its supernal vocation in Christ Jesus, Our Lord.
A final effect of complete conversion is less pleasant: One becomes the target of opposition and hate. A person can join any other movement, group, or cult without provoking hostile comment from his neighbors and friends; he can even found some esoteric sun cult of his own and be tolerated as a citizen exercising his legitimate freedom and satisfying his own religion needs. But as soon as anyone joins the Church, hatred and opposition appear. This is because his friends intuitively know that he no longer shares the spirit of the world, that he is now governed by Spirit, is lifted into a truly supernatural order, is united with Divinity in a special way, which is a challenge and reproach to those who would make the best of two worlds.
This reaction is not difficult to understand. Forget, for a moment, that the Church exists; and suppose there should suddenly appear on earth an institution equally Divine, which claimed to teach Truth as unerringly as God teaches it; which summoned children every morning to schools where they would begin and end their lessons with prayer; which forbade its married members to dishonor their marriage ties; which taught purity in a carnal environment; which, in all its decisions on society, on human rights, on politics and economics, started with the principle that nothing really matters except the salvation of a soul.
How would the world receive it? With defiance, hatred, vilification, persecution, and unremitting attacks. Whenever the Voice is heard, the Presence felt, there is such violent opposition as had been promised: "But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." - John 15:19 -
As a consequence of this opposition to Christ, those who know a convert invoke a thousand far-fetched explanations to avoid the true reason - namely, the appeal of Divinity. The conversion of the young is explained as a phenomenon of adolescence; in the slightly older, it is blamed on a disappointment in love; the mature are called guilty of a mental aberration due to change of life; the old are accused of senility; in the unlearned, it is due to ignorance; in the learned, it causes raised eyebrows and the reflection, "Surprising! I thought he was too intelligent for that sort of thing."
It is this fear of provoking the enmity of the world that discourages many from becoming converts. Of this Our Lord Himself warned: How else could heaven be known but by the enmity it would provoke among the worldly? "For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against the mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." - Matt. 10:35 - In this sense, Our Lord, indeed, brought a sword, causing division among human beings; but the peace He also brought recompenses those who, apparently giving up everything and find all that is.
Who are the prospects for conversion? How are the men and women set apart who will, in a year or two, seek out the Church? What kind of people need conversion? There is no special temperament, no unique mood that marks the next year's convert. Everyone in the world is looking for certitude, peace of soul, and freedom of spirit. In the quest of every pleasure, even in the pursuit of the unlawful, all people pursue their ceaseless quest of the Infinite. Where they look for God is the only question on which they differ. In this they are divided, as music lovers are: The music we love is the music we already have in our souls. The disordered soul likes discordant music; the unregulated will enjoys unregulated dissonances and rejects the finer, better orchestrated symphonies. It might take considerable education and self-discipline to make jive-loving minds appreciate the "Leonore" No.3, overture, or any work of Handel, Mozart, or Beethoven. Yet the love of some kind of music is in everyone; it is in the kind of music one loves that the difference lies, and no one enjoys good music without training and discipline.
Everyone wants the things that only a love of God will bring, but most people today seek them in a wrong places. That is why no one comes to God without a revolution of the spirit; a person must stop seeking his good in Godlessness. "And this is the judgment: because the light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light: for their works were evil. For everyone that does evil hates the light, and comes not to the light, that his works may not be reproved." - John 3:19-20 - Anyone who turns his face toward the light will be converted; but the turning must be done of his or her own free will. One can bribe tyrants, coax Quislings, flatter dictators, but there is no way to win God's love except by love. To each soul, He is forever saying, "Behold, I stand at the gate, and knock." - Apoc. 3:20 - Shall we refuse to open it? To each mind, he reiterates, "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life." - John 14:6 -
Are we ashamed to receive the truth, lest it expose our ignorance and perversity - even though that exposure bring us to glory and peace? To every heart, Our Lord says, "I am the Good Shepherd." - John 10:11 - Shall the frightened lambs lost in the brambles and thickets of modern life refuse His saving Hand? There is one simple way of beginning a conversion: Cease asking what God will give you if you come to Him, and begin to ask what you will give God. It is not the sacrifice it sounds, for, in having God, you will have everything besides.
BY ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN ( 1895 to 1979 )
Page 4
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 -
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Saturday, April 21, 2012
The new moral life is not austere or arduous, because there is no longer a feeling that one has to live up to a hated contract; instead, the convert is motivated by a feeling that he or she can never do enough for Him Whom he loves. The nagging reminder that one ought to avoid sin has been replaced by the desire that nothing must hinder us from drawing nearer to God. From this new orientation come the passion and zeal of a Saint, Paul's: "For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." - Rom. 8:38-39 -
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 -
Thursday, April 19, 2012
The Church is the Totus Christus, the Whole Christ, and it complements the individual Christ. In its physical aspect Christ's Body is perfect, but in its mystical aspect it is merely growing to perfection, for now it includes not only Him but us, with our imperfections. The prayers, sacrifices, and liturgy of the Church are offered not by the members alone - not by Christ, the Head alone - but by the Head and members together to the glory of God, the Everlasting Father. A new cell is added to the Mystical Body of Christ at every Baptism.
So much for the two most conspicuous effects of conversion in theological terms. But the psychological effects of conversions and incorporation into the Whole Christ are those of which the convert and his circle are sometimes more sensibly aware.
There is, first, a recentering of life and a revolution of all its values. This fresh, intellectual readjustment of thought to make room for God is one proof that conversion is not an emotional matter, for the emotions do not normally control the judgments. Before conversion, life is a confused and unintelligible blur, like the figures on a flattened Japanese lantern; afterward, it resembles that same lantern opened to its full height, with a candle to reveal the unity of the pattern and design.
Faith not only puts the candle into the lantern of life - it also lights it. A highly educated person before conversion may have had a vast knowledge of history, literature, science, anthropology, and philosophy, but these branches of his knowledge were divided into watertight compartments with no live correlation of one to the others; they were only isolated tidbits of information, a vast hors d'oeuvre of detail. After conversion the same facts are gathered into a unity, ordered in a hierarchy of knowledge that reveals an overwhelming evidence of Providence in history and also confers a new unity on one's personal life. What was before information has now become wisdom.
The unconverted soul was often exhausted, fatigued from having used up all its energies trying to find a purpose in life. It was tired in its mind and then tired in its body. A mind that cannot decide where it is going next soon exhausts itself by indecisiveness. Anxieties and fears possess the mind and fritter away the strength of the body. But once the goal of life is discovered, one does not need to waste his energy trying to discover it; the energy can now be spent in making the journey. The travel circulars are thrown away as one plunges into the joy of a voyage of discovery.
Many a young student in college is confused because he is without a philosophy of life or a pattern of existence. His education is but a substitution of this theory for that, a jettisoning of one relative point of view for another. The statistics he studied in his senior year are obsolete the year after graduation. His professors, who used the philosophy of Spencer as their inspiration twenty year ago, are now using Marx or Freud - withing another ten years they will have found another substitute. Education has become little more than the mechanical replacing of one point of view by another, as the automobile displaced the horse and buggy. The mind is constantly solicited by contrary and contradictory points of views; it becomes more harassed than a body in constant oscillation between chill and fever. With conversion, education becomes an orderly progression from one truth that need never be discarded to the next. The student is given reasons and motives of credibility for an ordered philosophy of life; his education is now a growing penetration into a central mystery, a sounding of new depths of truth. His knowledge and understanding accrue, as life expands from cell to cell in the development of every living body.
Associated with the convert's sense of intellectual growth is a consciousness of being newly possessed of the intellectual heritage of the past, of having joined a living tradition of sound thinking. A past one respects is an essential for physical life. As an individual cannot think without a memory, neither can a society think without tradition. No longer uprooted from the past, but made the heir of its wealth, the convert ceases to visit the past as a mere antiquarian; he brings the past and the present into happy conjunction as the stepping stone toward progress and enrichment in the future.
The convert's judgment of values in his personal life is no less radically transformed. Things that before seemed precious are now considered trivial, and things that before seemed inconsequential have now become the essence of real life. Without the Divine sense of values that conversion brings, the soul is like a department store where the wrong price tags are on everything; hairpins sell for a thousand dollars, and diamond rings for a nickel. Conversion hangs the price tags on the right things and restores a true sense of values.
That is why the outlook of a convert is entirely changed on such subjects as marriage, death, education, wealth, pain, and suffering. As a stained glass window looks different from the inside of the Church than it does from the outside, so all the great problem of life take on anew meaning and significance when one stands inside the Faith. Such a person now sees why religious education is essential - for unless the soul is saved, nothing is saved. Marriage is sacred to him because because it is a symbol of the union of Christ and the Church. Suffering becomes bearable as a gift of God, to be offered in reparation for sin and for filling up the sufferings that are wanting to the Body of Christ; sickness is accepted in the knowledge that God is more concerned with what I am for Him than what I get done. The old eagerness for economic security gives way to a serenity that does not worry about tomorrow before it comes and that trusts in God at all times. Peace is no longer understood to mean an escape from the crosses of life, but as the victory won over them by faith.
A second perceptible result of conversion is a definite change in behavior and conduct of life. Not only does conversion change one's values; it also reverses the tendencies and energies of life, directing them to another end. If the convert before conversion was already leading a good moral life, there is now less emphasis on keeping a law and more emphasis on maintaining a relationship of love. If the convert has been a sinner, his spiritual life frees him from habits and excesses that before weighed down the soul. He no longer need resort to alcohol or sleeping tablets. He often finds that these practices were not so much appetites as attempts to flee responsibility or to ensure, by plunging into unconsciousness, that he could avoid the necessity of choice. Before conversion, it was behavior that to a large extent determined belief; after conversion, it is belief that determines behavior.
There is no longer a tendency to find scapegoats to blame for the faults of self, but rather a consciousness that the reformation of the world must begin with the reformation self. There is still a fear of God, but it is not the servile fear a subject has for a dictator, but a filial fear, such as children have a good parent whom they would never wish to hurt. From such a Love one does not ever need to run away, and the previous acts of dissipation, which were disguised forms of flight, are now renounced.
Once the soul has turned to God, there is no longer a struggle to give up these habits; they are not so much defeated, as crowded out by new interests. There is no longer a need of escape - for one is no longer in flight from oneself. The person who once did his own will now seeks to do God's will; the one who once served sin now hates it; the person who once found thoughts of God dry or even unpleasant now hopes above all else one day to behold the God Whom he loves. The transition the soul has undergone is as unmistakable as the passage from death to life; there has been, not mere giving up a sin, but such a surrender to Divine Love as makes him shrink from sin because he would not wound the Divine Beloved.
Conscience, thus, transformed in a convert, undergoes a paradoxical change: It is not nearly so harsh a master as before, in spite of the reform in conduct. It is true that behavior is changed - but that is only a surface proof of the fact that conscience is changed. Before conversion, conscience seemed to be a restraining, coercive power; God was a hostile and exacting judge; the commandments were prohibitions; and the Church was an inhibition. Responsibilities were identifies with obligation; duty was seen as opposed to desire; the morally right was identified with the physically unpleasant; and love was opposed to morality. But after conversion the conscience no longer accuses; it never seems to command, or order, or inhibit, because there are no longer two wills in opposition. The will of the convert is the will of God. There is no need for a conscience to tell him what "ought to be done." Conscience is swallowed up in love, and there is no duty or "must" between lovers.
Duty, to the sinful mind, was the unwilling fulfillment of a command. Now, desiring only what God desires, the convert needs no restraint on his wishes; he is beyond good and evil, in the realm where there is no duty "to behave" but only the joy of living. What was previously a compulsory task is now a spontaneous pleasure. Converts who have had the habit of sleeping late are fearful at first that they will not be able to rise early enough for Sunday mass - and certainly not, they tell you, early enough for daily Mass. But once possessed of Divine Love, they find that early rising is a joy, for nothing is hard to one who loves.
Before, life was based on self-determination, and the will always worked to safeguard self-interest and selfishness. Afterwards, life is Christ-determined; the convert wants no other mind than that of Christ, no other will than Christ's will. Behavior has changed at its source; now it issues from a relationship of love. Generosity is easy; sharing apples will not make people brothers and sisters, but if they are conscious of their relationship, they will gladly share an apple.
Page 2
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 much for the two most conspicuous effects of conversion in theological terms. But the psychological effects of conversions and incorporation into the Whole Christ are those of which the convert and his circle are sometimes more sensibly aware.
There is, first, a recentering of life and a revolution of all its values. This fresh, intellectual readjustment of thought to make room for God is one proof that conversion is not an emotional matter, for the emotions do not normally control the judgments. Before conversion, life is a confused and unintelligible blur, like the figures on a flattened Japanese lantern; afterward, it resembles that same lantern opened to its full height, with a candle to reveal the unity of the pattern and design.
Faith not only puts the candle into the lantern of life - it also lights it. A highly educated person before conversion may have had a vast knowledge of history, literature, science, anthropology, and philosophy, but these branches of his knowledge were divided into watertight compartments with no live correlation of one to the others; they were only isolated tidbits of information, a vast hors d'oeuvre of detail. After conversion the same facts are gathered into a unity, ordered in a hierarchy of knowledge that reveals an overwhelming evidence of Providence in history and also confers a new unity on one's personal life. What was before information has now become wisdom.
The unconverted soul was often exhausted, fatigued from having used up all its energies trying to find a purpose in life. It was tired in its mind and then tired in its body. A mind that cannot decide where it is going next soon exhausts itself by indecisiveness. Anxieties and fears possess the mind and fritter away the strength of the body. But once the goal of life is discovered, one does not need to waste his energy trying to discover it; the energy can now be spent in making the journey. The travel circulars are thrown away as one plunges into the joy of a voyage of discovery.
Many a young student in college is confused because he is without a philosophy of life or a pattern of existence. His education is but a substitution of this theory for that, a jettisoning of one relative point of view for another. The statistics he studied in his senior year are obsolete the year after graduation. His professors, who used the philosophy of Spencer as their inspiration twenty year ago, are now using Marx or Freud - withing another ten years they will have found another substitute. Education has become little more than the mechanical replacing of one point of view by another, as the automobile displaced the horse and buggy. The mind is constantly solicited by contrary and contradictory points of views; it becomes more harassed than a body in constant oscillation between chill and fever. With conversion, education becomes an orderly progression from one truth that need never be discarded to the next. The student is given reasons and motives of credibility for an ordered philosophy of life; his education is now a growing penetration into a central mystery, a sounding of new depths of truth. His knowledge and understanding accrue, as life expands from cell to cell in the development of every living body.
Associated with the convert's sense of intellectual growth is a consciousness of being newly possessed of the intellectual heritage of the past, of having joined a living tradition of sound thinking. A past one respects is an essential for physical life. As an individual cannot think without a memory, neither can a society think without tradition. No longer uprooted from the past, but made the heir of its wealth, the convert ceases to visit the past as a mere antiquarian; he brings the past and the present into happy conjunction as the stepping stone toward progress and enrichment in the future.
The convert's judgment of values in his personal life is no less radically transformed. Things that before seemed precious are now considered trivial, and things that before seemed inconsequential have now become the essence of real life. Without the Divine sense of values that conversion brings, the soul is like a department store where the wrong price tags are on everything; hairpins sell for a thousand dollars, and diamond rings for a nickel. Conversion hangs the price tags on the right things and restores a true sense of values.
That is why the outlook of a convert is entirely changed on such subjects as marriage, death, education, wealth, pain, and suffering. As a stained glass window looks different from the inside of the Church than it does from the outside, so all the great problem of life take on anew meaning and significance when one stands inside the Faith. Such a person now sees why religious education is essential - for unless the soul is saved, nothing is saved. Marriage is sacred to him because because it is a symbol of the union of Christ and the Church. Suffering becomes bearable as a gift of God, to be offered in reparation for sin and for filling up the sufferings that are wanting to the Body of Christ; sickness is accepted in the knowledge that God is more concerned with what I am for Him than what I get done. The old eagerness for economic security gives way to a serenity that does not worry about tomorrow before it comes and that trusts in God at all times. Peace is no longer understood to mean an escape from the crosses of life, but as the victory won over them by faith.
A second perceptible result of conversion is a definite change in behavior and conduct of life. Not only does conversion change one's values; it also reverses the tendencies and energies of life, directing them to another end. If the convert before conversion was already leading a good moral life, there is now less emphasis on keeping a law and more emphasis on maintaining a relationship of love. If the convert has been a sinner, his spiritual life frees him from habits and excesses that before weighed down the soul. He no longer need resort to alcohol or sleeping tablets. He often finds that these practices were not so much appetites as attempts to flee responsibility or to ensure, by plunging into unconsciousness, that he could avoid the necessity of choice. Before conversion, it was behavior that to a large extent determined belief; after conversion, it is belief that determines behavior.
There is no longer a tendency to find scapegoats to blame for the faults of self, but rather a consciousness that the reformation of the world must begin with the reformation self. There is still a fear of God, but it is not the servile fear a subject has for a dictator, but a filial fear, such as children have a good parent whom they would never wish to hurt. From such a Love one does not ever need to run away, and the previous acts of dissipation, which were disguised forms of flight, are now renounced.
Once the soul has turned to God, there is no longer a struggle to give up these habits; they are not so much defeated, as crowded out by new interests. There is no longer a need of escape - for one is no longer in flight from oneself. The person who once did his own will now seeks to do God's will; the one who once served sin now hates it; the person who once found thoughts of God dry or even unpleasant now hopes above all else one day to behold the God Whom he loves. The transition the soul has undergone is as unmistakable as the passage from death to life; there has been, not mere giving up a sin, but such a surrender to Divine Love as makes him shrink from sin because he would not wound the Divine Beloved.
Conscience, thus, transformed in a convert, undergoes a paradoxical change: It is not nearly so harsh a master as before, in spite of the reform in conduct. It is true that behavior is changed - but that is only a surface proof of the fact that conscience is changed. Before conversion, conscience seemed to be a restraining, coercive power; God was a hostile and exacting judge; the commandments were prohibitions; and the Church was an inhibition. Responsibilities were identifies with obligation; duty was seen as opposed to desire; the morally right was identified with the physically unpleasant; and love was opposed to morality. But after conversion the conscience no longer accuses; it never seems to command, or order, or inhibit, because there are no longer two wills in opposition. The will of the convert is the will of God. There is no need for a conscience to tell him what "ought to be done." Conscience is swallowed up in love, and there is no duty or "must" between lovers.
Duty, to the sinful mind, was the unwilling fulfillment of a command. Now, desiring only what God desires, the convert needs no restraint on his wishes; he is beyond good and evil, in the realm where there is no duty "to behave" but only the joy of living. What was previously a compulsory task is now a spontaneous pleasure. Converts who have had the habit of sleeping late are fearful at first that they will not be able to rise early enough for Sunday mass - and certainly not, they tell you, early enough for daily Mass. But once possessed of Divine Love, they find that early rising is a joy, for nothing is hard to one who loves.
Before, life was based on self-determination, and the will always worked to safeguard self-interest and selfishness. Afterwards, life is Christ-determined; the convert wants no other mind than that of Christ, no other will than Christ's will. Behavior has changed at its source; now it issues from a relationship of love. Generosity is easy; sharing apples will not make people brothers and sisters, but if they are conscious of their relationship, they will gladly share an apple.
Page 2
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 -
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
The Tormented Minds of today are not the products of our tormented world. Rather, it is our upset minds that have upset the world. Man, by attempting to exist either apart from God or defiant of God, has made the world as delirious as his own mind is neurotic. The crisis today is so deep in its causes that all social and political attempts to deal with it are bound to be as ineffective as talcum powder in curing jaundice. It is man who has to be remade first; then society will be remade by the restored new man. The dictators that have been cast upon the shores of the twentieth and twenty-first century are not the creators of the disorder, but rather its creatures.
They are symptoms, not causes, of the universal breakdown of a moral order in the heart of humanity. The constant refusal of man to allow a supra historic Divine Power to break into his closed mind is the pride that prepares catastrophe. Most people are intuitively aware that no change other than a spiritual change will be enough: The extreme sensitiveness and ready anger of those who urge revolutions against society and morality as their remedy are proof of the insecurity of their very position. The violence of their opposition to all criticism is a sure sign of the defenselessness of their own position; even they suspect that mankind stands less in need of revolution than redemption.
Humanity cannot redeem itself by its own human reason or power; but human beings can use both reason and power in cooperation with Divine Grace. This is what a person does when he and she becomes converted. It is time now to talk of the effect such a conversion has on the soul. The soul is now open to the working of Sanctifying Grace, which elevates our nature so that we become something we were not naturally - partakers of the Divine nature Who descended to the level of our mortality to make us share His Life.
This new grace, which adds Divine to human affiliation so that we become Children of God as well as children of our parents, is not extrinsic to the soul or mere imputation of the merit of Christ. There is a reality in the soul that was not there before - a created reality that comes directly from God Himself, a reality we ourselves cannot merit in the strict sense of the term. That is why it is called a grace; it is gratis,or free.
One effect of grace is that Our Divine Lord is no longer extrinsic to us, as He is for those who think of Him as only a historical figure Who lived 2000 years ago. If Our Divine Savior had remained on earth, they would be right. He would be only an example to be copied, a voice to be heard. But once He ascended into Heaven and sent His Spirit to us, then He ceased to be a model to be copied and became a Life to be lived.
Though we are more interested here in pointing out the psychological effects of grace on the soul than its many theological effects, two of these are too important to be omitted. These are the Divine Presence in the soul after Baptism and the incorporation of the individual into the Mystical Body of Christ. "Presence of God" is a phrase very loosely used today to cover anything from the Pantheism of the Lake poets to the vague sentimentalism of the Romanticist, who likes the woods because he "feels" God there. God is, indeed, present in the universe in many various ways, as any artist can be present in various ways, for example, in his paintings, as its creator; in a museum, as a representative of culture; and in his children, as a father. God is present in the whole universe as a Cause, and in this sense He is in the flowers and the trees. But a far more intimate presence was evidenced in the Incarnation, where God appeared as man in the heart of a new humanity that was to become His new Body.
The Incarnation (in the Hypostatic Union) made God man. The union of grace and nature makes us defied. As the actions of Jesus Christ were both Divine and human, so those of a person in the state of grace are God-like, being performed by both God and man; these acts are meritorious of heaven. The presence of God in such a soul is not a mere sentimental manner of speech, but a real possession. Because we have become adopted children of God by being born of Him, we now live by the Spirit of Christ. "For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba, Father" - Rom. 8:15 - The body has now become the Temple of God. "Or know you not, that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God; and you are not your own." - 1Cor. 6:19 -
Christ is the Head of such sanctified souls, and they stand in relation to Him as members of His Body, "And he has subjected all things under his feet, and has made the fullness of him who is filled all in all." - Eph. 1:22-23 - The relation between Christ and His Body, the Church, was said by Christ Himself to be like that of the vine and its branches: "Yet a little while: and the world sees me no more. But you see me: because I live, and you shall live. In that day you shall know, that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." - John 14:19-20 -
"Now you are clean by reason of the world which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine; so neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches: he that abides in me, I in him, the same bears much fruit: for without me you can do nothing." - John 15:3-5 -
Jacques B. Bossuet has expressed this intimate relation of Christ with His Body, the Church, by describing the latter as the "prolongation of the Incarnation." Christ can have only one Body; therefore there cannot be many churches. Any church founded this morning or yesterday afternoon or even a hundred years ago is too remote from Pentecost to be Christ's Body. The Body and the Soul, the Church and the Holy Spirit - these must have been allied from the beginning.
The unity among the members of that Body cannot be a vague and undetermined association that any member is free to change, any more than a human body can be changeable, sometimes having one eye and one ear or no heart and seven lungs. The unity of the faithful in Christ's Body is not organizational, although an organization is necessary, and although those who admire the Church for its unity of belief and faith and liturgy attribute this to its organization.
The Church is, rather, an organism. As a human body is one because it has one soul, one visible head, and one invisible mind, so the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is one because it has one soul - the Holy Spirit of God - one visible Head - Peter and his successors - and one invisible Head - Christ. As Christ took upon Himself a human nature from the womb of His Mother (overshadowed by the Holy Spirit) so He took from the womb of humanity (overshadowed by the Pentecostal Spirit) His Mystical Body, the Church. Christ teaches through His Body - therefore, His teaching is infallible. He governs through His Body - therefore, the authority is Divine. He sanctifies through His Body - therefore, the sanctification accomplished in the Sacraments does not depend on the personality or character of those who administer the Sacraments.
Page 1
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 -
They are symptoms, not causes, of the universal breakdown of a moral order in the heart of humanity. The constant refusal of man to allow a supra historic Divine Power to break into his closed mind is the pride that prepares catastrophe. Most people are intuitively aware that no change other than a spiritual change will be enough: The extreme sensitiveness and ready anger of those who urge revolutions against society and morality as their remedy are proof of the insecurity of their very position. The violence of their opposition to all criticism is a sure sign of the defenselessness of their own position; even they suspect that mankind stands less in need of revolution than redemption.
Humanity cannot redeem itself by its own human reason or power; but human beings can use both reason and power in cooperation with Divine Grace. This is what a person does when he and she becomes converted. It is time now to talk of the effect such a conversion has on the soul. The soul is now open to the working of Sanctifying Grace, which elevates our nature so that we become something we were not naturally - partakers of the Divine nature Who descended to the level of our mortality to make us share His Life.
This new grace, which adds Divine to human affiliation so that we become Children of God as well as children of our parents, is not extrinsic to the soul or mere imputation of the merit of Christ. There is a reality in the soul that was not there before - a created reality that comes directly from God Himself, a reality we ourselves cannot merit in the strict sense of the term. That is why it is called a grace; it is gratis,or free.
One effect of grace is that Our Divine Lord is no longer extrinsic to us, as He is for those who think of Him as only a historical figure Who lived 2000 years ago. If Our Divine Savior had remained on earth, they would be right. He would be only an example to be copied, a voice to be heard. But once He ascended into Heaven and sent His Spirit to us, then He ceased to be a model to be copied and became a Life to be lived.
Though we are more interested here in pointing out the psychological effects of grace on the soul than its many theological effects, two of these are too important to be omitted. These are the Divine Presence in the soul after Baptism and the incorporation of the individual into the Mystical Body of Christ. "Presence of God" is a phrase very loosely used today to cover anything from the Pantheism of the Lake poets to the vague sentimentalism of the Romanticist, who likes the woods because he "feels" God there. God is, indeed, present in the universe in many various ways, as any artist can be present in various ways, for example, in his paintings, as its creator; in a museum, as a representative of culture; and in his children, as a father. God is present in the whole universe as a Cause, and in this sense He is in the flowers and the trees. But a far more intimate presence was evidenced in the Incarnation, where God appeared as man in the heart of a new humanity that was to become His new Body.
The Incarnation (in the Hypostatic Union) made God man. The union of grace and nature makes us defied. As the actions of Jesus Christ were both Divine and human, so those of a person in the state of grace are God-like, being performed by both God and man; these acts are meritorious of heaven. The presence of God in such a soul is not a mere sentimental manner of speech, but a real possession. Because we have become adopted children of God by being born of Him, we now live by the Spirit of Christ. "For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba, Father" - Rom. 8:15 - The body has now become the Temple of God. "Or know you not, that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God; and you are not your own." - 1Cor. 6:19 -
Christ is the Head of such sanctified souls, and they stand in relation to Him as members of His Body, "And he has subjected all things under his feet, and has made the fullness of him who is filled all in all." - Eph. 1:22-23 - The relation between Christ and His Body, the Church, was said by Christ Himself to be like that of the vine and its branches: "Yet a little while: and the world sees me no more. But you see me: because I live, and you shall live. In that day you shall know, that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." - John 14:19-20 -
"Now you are clean by reason of the world which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine; so neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches: he that abides in me, I in him, the same bears much fruit: for without me you can do nothing." - John 15:3-5 -
Jacques B. Bossuet has expressed this intimate relation of Christ with His Body, the Church, by describing the latter as the "prolongation of the Incarnation." Christ can have only one Body; therefore there cannot be many churches. Any church founded this morning or yesterday afternoon or even a hundred years ago is too remote from Pentecost to be Christ's Body. The Body and the Soul, the Church and the Holy Spirit - these must have been allied from the beginning.
The unity among the members of that Body cannot be a vague and undetermined association that any member is free to change, any more than a human body can be changeable, sometimes having one eye and one ear or no heart and seven lungs. The unity of the faithful in Christ's Body is not organizational, although an organization is necessary, and although those who admire the Church for its unity of belief and faith and liturgy attribute this to its organization.
The Church is, rather, an organism. As a human body is one because it has one soul, one visible head, and one invisible mind, so the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is one because it has one soul - the Holy Spirit of God - one visible Head - Peter and his successors - and one invisible Head - Christ. As Christ took upon Himself a human nature from the womb of His Mother (overshadowed by the Holy Spirit) so He took from the womb of humanity (overshadowed by the Pentecostal Spirit) His Mystical Body, the Church. Christ teaches through His Body - therefore, His teaching is infallible. He governs through His Body - therefore, the authority is Divine. He sanctifies through His Body - therefore, the sanctification accomplished in the Sacraments does not depend on the personality or character of those who administer the Sacraments.
Page 1
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 -
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
The Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible is certainly the most remarkable "Book of Love" in the world. It records the greatest love story ever written - God's unconditional love for us.
Yes, God loved the world so much
that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost
but may have eternal life. - John 3:16
It is not easy to die even for a good man - though of course for someone really worthy, a man might be prepared to die - but what proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us while we were still sinners. - Rom. 5:7-8 -
This is the love I mean:
not our love for God,
but God's love for us when he sent his Son
to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away. - 1John 4:10 -
Love is one of God's attributes; it is also an essential part of His nature. "God is Love," 1John 4:8,16 declares. Love does not come to an end. Such Spirit inspired love never fails but always flourishes.
The Old Testament demands love from man to God, and from peoples to peoples, but it gives priority to God's love for human beings. All other loves derive from this one, but the word often used for God's love can also be translated as "mercy" - Psalms 103 -
In the New Testament, Jesus preaches love for God's, love for enemies as well as for neighbors. Love always involves a movement outward from the self, a movement of identification with the other. That is why love can take so many forms without changing its essential nature. Love for a suffering human being expresses itself as a bearing or sharing of the other's affliction. Love for an enemy expresses itself as the active pursuit of reconciliation. Love for God expresses itself as awe and obedience. Love between a man and a woman [male and female] can express itself through sexual union. In all cases union is the theme, and in each case love is the richer and the stronger if it recognizes its kinship with the rest.
Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people's sins but delights in the truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. Love does not come to an end. - 1Cor. 13:4-8 -
In short, there are three things that last: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love. - 1Cor. 13:13 -
Page 1
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 -
Yes, God loved the world so much
that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost
but may have eternal life. - John 3:16
It is not easy to die even for a good man - though of course for someone really worthy, a man might be prepared to die - but what proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us while we were still sinners. - Rom. 5:7-8 -
This is the love I mean:
not our love for God,
but God's love for us when he sent his Son
to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away. - 1John 4:10 -
Love is one of God's attributes; it is also an essential part of His nature. "God is Love," 1John 4:8,16 declares. Love does not come to an end. Such Spirit inspired love never fails but always flourishes.
The Old Testament demands love from man to God, and from peoples to peoples, but it gives priority to God's love for human beings. All other loves derive from this one, but the word often used for God's love can also be translated as "mercy" - Psalms 103 -
In the New Testament, Jesus preaches love for God's, love for enemies as well as for neighbors. Love always involves a movement outward from the self, a movement of identification with the other. That is why love can take so many forms without changing its essential nature. Love for a suffering human being expresses itself as a bearing or sharing of the other's affliction. Love for an enemy expresses itself as the active pursuit of reconciliation. Love for God expresses itself as awe and obedience. Love between a man and a woman [male and female] can express itself through sexual union. In all cases union is the theme, and in each case love is the richer and the stronger if it recognizes its kinship with the rest.
Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people's sins but delights in the truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. Love does not come to an end. - 1Cor. 13:4-8 -
In short, there are three things that last: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love. - 1Cor. 13:13 -
Page 1
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 -
Monday, April 16, 2012
People of faith is not that who is credulous but rather the one who is faithful. Firmness is at the heart of faith, but human firmness of this kind comes from a relationship with the ever constant God. His steadfast love is the ground of our steadfast faith and action.
Most people nowadays distinguish between belief - [by which they mean ideas they hold to be true,] trust - [by which they mean the confidence they feel in someone else,] cynic - [by which they mean one who believes all human action has selfish motives.] But faith is not only belief in the truth, it is a religious conviction as well, that is, perhaps some may say, "believing where we cannot prove."
The Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible, however, knows nothing of these distinctions. Both the Old and the New Testament have one word to convey what we meant by "belief," by "trust," and by "faith" - except that the scriptural/biblical word never really means "believing where we cannot prove" if this means that faith disregards known fact.
Scriptural/Biblical faith includes believing things to be true; it includes an attitude of trust toward another person; and it includes a way of seeing things visible in a context of things invisible. This last, however, is not at all the same thing as giving intellectual assent to propositions for which there is no supporting evidence. This faith is hypothesis, and its strength is proportionate to the extent to which it rings true when all known facts are looked at in its light.
Abraham is the pioneer of faith, not just because he accepted the truth of God's promises, but because he resolute acted on them. Jehoshaphat exhorted his army both to believe in and to believe. His story also dramatizes what is involved in faith: God's love evoking a resolute response in both action and worship.
In the New Testament, the mission of Jesus opens with a challenge to believe the Good News that He brings. Since He was Himself at the heart of this Good News, a personal relationship was involved. Epilepsy was always described at that time as 'being in the grip of an evil spirit' and it was the father of an epileptic boy who demonstrated the many sides of this personal relationship. He trusted, he believed, he also trusted Jesus with his unbelief. That is faith putting the whole self, doubts included, into the hands of another.
Saint Paul sees faith as the very core of a right relationship with God. He finds evidence for this in the Old Testament - especially in the texts that treat faith as an entry into righteousness - but for apostle Paul, it is the coming of Jesus that has made it possible to put aside any thought of getting right with God by fulfilling His Law, and to substitute a trusting relationship with God's representative. It is this union through faith that justifies - that is, puts right.
The comprehensive significance of the term "faith" as the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible uses it is hardly recoverable. We would probably be wise to accept the variety of terms in our current vocabulary and to use a number of them to cover different aspects of the subject. For instance, when people speak of identifying with some person or cause, they may be expressing something of what the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible would call faith. And it is indeed true that to some degree people are what they identify with. To identify with righteousness is to place yourself in a position where you can be treated as righteous - at any rate by a judge who looks at your intentions rather than your achievements.
Inevitably, the various shades of faith do run into one another. The trusting, loving, admiring attitude of "identification with" leads to a personal relationship, to commitment, and to action. All of these involve the formulating of ideas about what is true: believing in leads to believing that this, that, or the other is in fact true. But the believing in is always larger than the believing that, and there is room within it for change to the better and variety in the matter of ideas. Believing can include much uncertainty and agnosticism. It can even embrace much unbelief.
Page 1
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 -
Most people nowadays distinguish between belief - [by which they mean ideas they hold to be true,] trust - [by which they mean the confidence they feel in someone else,] cynic - [by which they mean one who believes all human action has selfish motives.] But faith is not only belief in the truth, it is a religious conviction as well, that is, perhaps some may say, "believing where we cannot prove."
The Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible, however, knows nothing of these distinctions. Both the Old and the New Testament have one word to convey what we meant by "belief," by "trust," and by "faith" - except that the scriptural/biblical word never really means "believing where we cannot prove" if this means that faith disregards known fact.
Scriptural/Biblical faith includes believing things to be true; it includes an attitude of trust toward another person; and it includes a way of seeing things visible in a context of things invisible. This last, however, is not at all the same thing as giving intellectual assent to propositions for which there is no supporting evidence. This faith is hypothesis, and its strength is proportionate to the extent to which it rings true when all known facts are looked at in its light.
Abraham is the pioneer of faith, not just because he accepted the truth of God's promises, but because he resolute acted on them. Jehoshaphat exhorted his army both to believe in and to believe. His story also dramatizes what is involved in faith: God's love evoking a resolute response in both action and worship.
In the New Testament, the mission of Jesus opens with a challenge to believe the Good News that He brings. Since He was Himself at the heart of this Good News, a personal relationship was involved. Epilepsy was always described at that time as 'being in the grip of an evil spirit' and it was the father of an epileptic boy who demonstrated the many sides of this personal relationship. He trusted, he believed, he also trusted Jesus with his unbelief. That is faith putting the whole self, doubts included, into the hands of another.
Saint Paul sees faith as the very core of a right relationship with God. He finds evidence for this in the Old Testament - especially in the texts that treat faith as an entry into righteousness - but for apostle Paul, it is the coming of Jesus that has made it possible to put aside any thought of getting right with God by fulfilling His Law, and to substitute a trusting relationship with God's representative. It is this union through faith that justifies - that is, puts right.
The comprehensive significance of the term "faith" as the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible uses it is hardly recoverable. We would probably be wise to accept the variety of terms in our current vocabulary and to use a number of them to cover different aspects of the subject. For instance, when people speak of identifying with some person or cause, they may be expressing something of what the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible would call faith. And it is indeed true that to some degree people are what they identify with. To identify with righteousness is to place yourself in a position where you can be treated as righteous - at any rate by a judge who looks at your intentions rather than your achievements.
Inevitably, the various shades of faith do run into one another. The trusting, loving, admiring attitude of "identification with" leads to a personal relationship, to commitment, and to action. All of these involve the formulating of ideas about what is true: believing in leads to believing that this, that, or the other is in fact true. But the believing in is always larger than the believing that, and there is room within it for change to the better and variety in the matter of ideas. Believing can include much uncertainty and agnosticism. It can even embrace much unbelief.
Page 1
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 -
Sunday, April 15, 2012
In the Old Testament, the psalmist and the prophets speak of God as hope of Israel. It is when the situation seems hopeless that prophet Jeremiah addresses God as 'Hope.' But the hope is not so much an experience that isolates and examines as it is an essential element in its whole attitude to the future. Hope is built into the structure of the Old Testament faith and experience. Significantly, when events shake that basic confidence in what lies ahead, the Old Testament remedy is to look at what lies behind.
Hope is the precondition of effective action. The farmer exemplifies it when he sows his seed, especially if he is hungry and weeps to see the seed corn thrown onto the ground when he would much rather eat it. Without hope based on past experience he would sow nothing.
The New Testament hope was focused on a day of fulfillment beyond the range of world history, but the fact that their hope looked beyond death did not make New Testament Christians indifferent to the present and the future of the world we know. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was, for them, evidence that the end of Israel's long road was in sight, but the Spirit of God reached back to them from the risen Christ to sustain them in the continuing pilgrimage. Hebrews 6:19 speaks of hope as an anchor that is fastened securely in the invisible world.
Indeed, the purpose that constitutes the ground of all human hope is one which transcends even humanity. Nature itself is caught up in the great forward movement. This does not lead to a belief in the inevitability of human improvement. It does mean that even human failure and suffering cannot frustrate the purpose with which we are invited to identify ourselves through faith, hope, and love - Saint Paul's list of the three things which endure/last.
The Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible does not say that what you fear will not happen. It does say that, even if the worst happens, there is beyond that a good that will be wrung from it and in which you will find the true fulfillment of your hope. Oddly, this does not made peoples resigned to the threatening evil. On the contrary, it gives them more heart to fight against it. Hope is a better spur than desperation.
Our generation, threatened by vast and destructive forces, is often said to be particularly in need of hope. But hope cannot be had just because it would be a useful contribution to mental stability. Nor can it be had on its own. Faith and love are inseparable from it, and they must be used to dig deeper into events and experience in order to find the underlying purposes with which hope can be aligned. Hope is not optimism. It is realism - but realism on a scale large enough to encompass the possibility of tragedy.
So far then we have seen that, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith we are judged righteous and at peace with God, since it is by faith and through Jesus that we have entered this state of grace in which we can boast about looking forward to God's glory. But that is not all we can boast about; we can boast about our sufferings. These sufferings bring patience, as we know, and patience brings perseverance, and perseverance brings hope, and this hope is not deceptive because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us. - Rom. 5:1-5 -
But as I say, we must hope to be saved since we are not saved yet - it is something we must wait for with patience. - Rom. 8:25 -
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth as his sons, by raising Jesus Christ from the dead, so that we have a sure hope and the promise of an inheritance that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away because it is being kept for you in the heavens. - 1Peter 1:3-4 -
Free your minds, then, of encumbrances; control them, and put your trust in nothing but the grace that will be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. - 1Peter 1:13 -
Page 1
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 -
Hope is the precondition of effective action. The farmer exemplifies it when he sows his seed, especially if he is hungry and weeps to see the seed corn thrown onto the ground when he would much rather eat it. Without hope based on past experience he would sow nothing.
The New Testament hope was focused on a day of fulfillment beyond the range of world history, but the fact that their hope looked beyond death did not make New Testament Christians indifferent to the present and the future of the world we know. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was, for them, evidence that the end of Israel's long road was in sight, but the Spirit of God reached back to them from the risen Christ to sustain them in the continuing pilgrimage. Hebrews 6:19 speaks of hope as an anchor that is fastened securely in the invisible world.
Indeed, the purpose that constitutes the ground of all human hope is one which transcends even humanity. Nature itself is caught up in the great forward movement. This does not lead to a belief in the inevitability of human improvement. It does mean that even human failure and suffering cannot frustrate the purpose with which we are invited to identify ourselves through faith, hope, and love - Saint Paul's list of the three things which endure/last.
The Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible does not say that what you fear will not happen. It does say that, even if the worst happens, there is beyond that a good that will be wrung from it and in which you will find the true fulfillment of your hope. Oddly, this does not made peoples resigned to the threatening evil. On the contrary, it gives them more heart to fight against it. Hope is a better spur than desperation.
Our generation, threatened by vast and destructive forces, is often said to be particularly in need of hope. But hope cannot be had just because it would be a useful contribution to mental stability. Nor can it be had on its own. Faith and love are inseparable from it, and they must be used to dig deeper into events and experience in order to find the underlying purposes with which hope can be aligned. Hope is not optimism. It is realism - but realism on a scale large enough to encompass the possibility of tragedy.
So far then we have seen that, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith we are judged righteous and at peace with God, since it is by faith and through Jesus that we have entered this state of grace in which we can boast about looking forward to God's glory. But that is not all we can boast about; we can boast about our sufferings. These sufferings bring patience, as we know, and patience brings perseverance, and perseverance brings hope, and this hope is not deceptive because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us. - Rom. 5:1-5 -
But as I say, we must hope to be saved since we are not saved yet - it is something we must wait for with patience. - Rom. 8:25 -
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth as his sons, by raising Jesus Christ from the dead, so that we have a sure hope and the promise of an inheritance that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away because it is being kept for you in the heavens. - 1Peter 1:3-4 -
Free your minds, then, of encumbrances; control them, and put your trust in nothing but the grace that will be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. - 1Peter 1:13 -
Page 1
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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