Mary Immaculate,

Merely a woman, yet

Whose presence, power is

Great as no goddess's

Was deemed, dreamed.

One of Gerard Manley Hopkins' most striking poems compares Our Lady 'to the air we breathe.' The image provokes Hopkins into some wonderfully evocative, creative writing, and rather diverts our attention from what he is saying doctrinally. Mary 'mother each new grace / That does now reach our race'; she continues to conceive Christ in us; she herself is not merely our almoner, but is identified with God's 'sweet alms.'

Through her we may see him

Made sweeter, not made dim,

And her hand leaves his light

Sifted to suit our sight.

In these beautifully paced lines, Hopkins is seducing us into an account of the Blessed Virgin Mary's role in the life of all believers that many would instinctively qualify or reject were it put in a more prosaic form: everything we know of the light of God comes to us refracted through Mary. Blessed Virgin Mary's presence is greater than had ever been attributed to any of the pantheon of goddesses, because the life of the one true God is a life of self-giving, a self-giving into which Mary is mysteriously and uniquely incorporated, a self-giving of which she becomes in some way a part.

Hopkins was, of course, an imaginative genius; he was also given to original theological speculation. But the instinct to assign a special role to Mary was one that he shared with the ordinary Roman Catholic piety of his day. Mary was Mother of God, not simply 'Saint Mary the Virgin': 

The saints are high in glory

With golden crowns so bright;

But brighter far is Mary

Upon her throne of light.

The invocations of the Litany of Loreto were common coin - 'tower of David, house of gold, ark of the covenant.' Catholics were proud of their devotion to Mary, and prepared to defend it against hostile Protestant criticism:

When wicked men blaspheme thee

I'll love and bless thy name.

In the 1960, following Vatican II, this exuberance began to feel awkward, and therefore to vanish. The downplaying of devotion to Mary was one of the most obvious effects of the council on mainstream Catholic life, rivaled perhaps only by the disappearance of the Latin liturgy. The council's decision - one which was quite controverted on the council floor - not to write a decree specifically about Mary, but to deal with her in a chapter of its Constitution on the Church, was taken only very narrowly: a large number of the council Fathers wanted indeed to make a dogmatic proclamation of Mary as mediating all graces.

What prevailed, however, was a more ecumenically sensitive presentation, avoiding new titles, and setting Mary within the perspective of salvation history. It became fashionable to base any account of what we might want to say about Mary on what Christianity must say about human beings in general. In such a light, the dogma of the assumption appears simply as an affirmation that Mary models (perhaps by anticipation) what will ultimately be true of all of us. Similarly, the immaculate conception appears as an affirmation that grace prevails over original sin even at the origins of the human race. Influentially, Raymond E. Brown, the noted Roman Catholic biblical scholar, often centered his account of Mary in the Bible on the concept of the 'perfect disciple.'

This tendency influenced even official teaching. Paul VI's  1974 Apostolic Exhortation on Mary, Marialis cultus, acknowledged the difficulties which many - especially Christians of the other Churches - had with devotion to Blessed Virgin Mary. Paul was aware of 'the discrepancy existing between some aspects of this devotion and modern anthropological discoveries and the profound changes which have occurred in the psycho-sociological field in which modern man lives and works.' In authentic Roman Catholic devotion to Mary, 'every care should be taken to avoid any exaggeration which could mislead other Christian sisters and brothers about the true doctrine of the Catholic Church.' When Paul describes an authentic devotion to Mary for his time, he stresses how she can serve as a model for Christian humanity: She is worthy of imitation because she was the first and the most perfect of Christ's disciples. All of this has a permanent and universal exemplary value.

The excesses complained about by Christians of the Reformation 'are not connected with the Gospel image of Mary nor with the doctrinal data which have been made explicit through a slow and conscientious process of drawing from Revelation':

The reading of the divine Scriptures, carried out under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and with the discoveries of the human sciences and the different situations in the world today being taken into account, will help us to see how Mary can be considered a mirror of the expectations of the men and women of our time. (nn. 35-7)

A contemporary theologian sees a theology of Mary as indicating ... that God's redemption in Jesus Christ has taken root and has started in the rest of humanity which is not Jesus Christ, so that affirmations about Mary are actually also affirmations about the nature of human salvation. - Johnson 1984: 155-82 (181) -

This approach to Mary - Mary as the preeminent hearer and keeper of the Word - may have served a useful, even necessary purpose in the period immediately following the council. Many were helped by the encouragement to think of Mary in less obviously exalted terms, to imagine her as a human being, faced with the normal challenges of the human condition. Preconciliar accounts of original sin certainly needed to be complemented by a doctrine of an even more original grace, and it may be that the traditions of Mary's Immaculate Conception were indeed a useful pointer. Similarly, heaven was all too easily spoken of in terms of an unreal and inhumane beatific vision; perhaps the doctrine of the assumption, dogmatic as it was in 1950, had some effect in encouraging us to take seriously the communion of saints and the resurrection of the body, and to recognize that our glorified life must still - whatever we want to say about divinity - be a human life.

Some, like the German theologian Wolfgang Beinert, lamented how 'the choral praise of the mother of God in the days of Pius XII' had been 'succeeded by a deep silence'; certainly the relative eclipse of Marian devotion in the period was not the intention of the council, of Paul VI, or the theologians most influential over the council's Marian statements. Others, however, saw this eclipse of Marian rhetoric as salutary, an ecumenically sensitive corrective to earlier exaggeration. It was high time we learned to focus on the woman of Nazareth; we needed to divest her of a greatness associated with goddesses, and see her instead as a human being under God. If the rhetoric of Marian privilege - of immaculate conception and assumption into heaven body and soul - helped us understand better what it was to be human under God, well and good; if not, then it was ripe for demythologization.

The changes in the Church's Marian devotion and rhetoric can never, of course, be understood in isolation. As we have already noted, ecumenical considerations played a part; perhaps feminism too, and more generally the profound changes in gender relations in the twentieth century, had some influence. Here, however, I want to concentrate on how these changes in Mariology connect with broader trends in the history of theological ideas. Vatican II was concerned to situate the distinctive elements in Christian revelation - Jesus, Scripture, Church - within the whole sweep of salvation history, presenting the Church as the Sacrament of Salvation. Theologians might then tease out what this must imply for our understanding of Christian uniqueness: the Church is not the ark in which alone God's grace can be found, but something at once more richly generous and more unassuming: the definitive presence of a grace diffused over the whole creation.

Such an approach leads some to hesitate and others to criticize. Precisely because it tries to understand the central elements of Christianity in terms of what we must say about human beings at large, it can never - so it is claimed - do justice to a Jesus who claims to be not simply the 'real and proper man' of the 1970s liturgical ditty, but rather, uniquely and singularly, 'the Way, the Truth, the Life.' The Church is surely instituted 'from above'; it is not simply a matter of devout human beings organizing themselves.  And Mary is Mother of God: Catholic tradition requires that we not simply understand her as the model of human response to God. The Church's liturgy - particularly the Marian solemnities - seem to imply something stronger than a Mariology of perfect discipleship.

There are different possible responses to such criticisms. One is simply to accept them. and hence conclude that much post-conciliar theology is misguided, a sell-out of Christianity to the spirit of the 1960s. Another denies their validity: religious maturity consists precisely in our abandoning any sense of Christian pre-eminence, precisely in our replacing the language of special divine initiative in Jesus with that of an ever more authentic commitment to serve the world in humane partnership. Both of these approaches, however, violate a fundamental principle of Christian theology. Both proceed as if you resolve the tensions in the Christian message by option either for an approach 'from above' prioritizing the 'divine' or from below, prioritizing the 'merely human.' Central to Christianity's witness is that such ways of thinking miss the point. Claims about the divinity of Jesus are not made at the expense of claims about his humanity; claims about Scripture's divine inspiration must not imply a denial of the human agencies through which it came to be.

We must therefore not understand 'Mary woman of Nazareth' and 'Mary Mother of God' as somehow on competition, as though one of these descriptions is true only to the extent that the other is false. We have to find ways of understanding them together, as complementary truths. This suggests, then, the need for a third and rather different response. This understands the divine and human life of Jesus (and therefore also of Mary) within the context of the divine life given to all human beings in grace. But it also attempts to do justice to rooted intuitions about their special role within this universal grace, to a sense that they represent the presence of God among us in a particular and distinctive way.

At this point, I introduce the figure of Karl Rahner SJ and in particular one idea from an essay which he wrote in 1954 in honor of its being a Marian year, marking the centenary of Pius IX's proclaiming Mary's Immaculate Conception to be a dogma, declares that 'from the first moment of her conception' Mary was 'preserved from all stain of original sin.' This occurred through a 'singular grace and privilege of Almighty God'; by implication, the rest of us are conceived and born in sin, and grace is given to us only later, when we are baptized. (as least by desire) Politely, Rahner points out that there are problems with such a way of thinking because it seems unduly pessimistic about the unbaptized infant:

This child... is already, as unbaptized an object of God's infinite mercy, in spite of original sin; it is included in God's vision of God's only-begotten Son, and thus it has, if not yet realized, at least a 'remote' claim to inheritance with the Son.

Simply by virtue of its existence, its creation, the child is 'already comprehended within God grace and love.' It is only because this love of God is already there that the child's salvation 'takes a sacramentally visible form.' It follows that nothing of decisive significance turns on just when baptism takes place - as Rahner asks ironically, '[H]as anyone ever seriously regretted having been baptized after a fortnight instead of as a two-day-old?' And hence,

... the whole mystery of Mary's Immaculate Conception cannot simply consist in the fact that she was graced a little earlier, temporarily speaking, than we were. The distinction must lie deeper, and this deeper distinction must condition the temporal difference.

Karl Rahner SJ is writing diplomatically here, but the force of his argument is that the idea of a temporal difference between when grace begins in Mary and when it begins in the rest of us must be merely a figure of speech pointing to something much more significant. If the doctrine of the immaculate conception is to mean anything significant, it must point to some stronger sense in which Mary's relationship to sin and grace differs from that of human beings at large.

Rahner, good Thomist that he is, can simply assume that divine grace and human freedom are compatible: to say that God wills Algernon to perform an action is not to deny that Algeron freely performs that action. Thus Mary's free response to God's call, expressed in the Gospel of Luke's Annunciation story, is nevertheless - for Rahner - something which is predestined in the designs of God, just as is Jesus' free acceptance of his mission even unto death. It is in this context, of freedom and predestination, that Rahner makes what he sees as the necessary distinction. God's predetermining will to become incarnate in Christ entails that 'an earthly Mother of the Son was likewise predestined' - an earthly Mother who gives free consent; and for her, 'the divine purpose of salvation' is 'the predestination of Christ himself:

That is to say, if she had not been willed as the Holy one and the perfectly Redeemed, then Christ himself would not have been willed by God in just the way he stands before us.

Had Mary said `No' to the invitation represented by Luke's angelic message to her, had God's saving will not included Mary's consent, Jesus Christ quite literally would not have existed. This cannot be said of any other creature. Peter and Judas, to say nothing of countless later Christians, may reject Christ, be ambivalent about him, and in an extended sense, therefore, affect whose Christ is. But their rejection would not bring about the withdrawal of the promise which Christ, crucified and risen, represents for us: 'in every other case Christ could exist and be predestined by God without its being necessary for the individual concerned to be one of the redeemed.' Mary, by contrast, 'stands within the circle of Christ's own predestination':

and thus she is different from us not merely through her having become the graced one at a temporally earlier point in her existence. The mystery that really gives the temporal difference between her and us in the mystery of her immaculate conception its proper meaning is, rather, the mystery of her predestination.

Christ incarnate, crucified and risen represents to us a promise that a life without sin is possible. Christ embodies the promise; the rest of us receive it and hand it on. We are not talking here about a divine reality being communicated to human beings. We are talking, rather about a God who exists in self-giving to the creation, about all humanity (not just that of Jesus) caught up in the very life of Christ - 'I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am', as Hopkins reminds us. What makes Jesus distinctive is not that God is somehow `more' present in him than in the rest of creation, but rather that he alone reveals that presence definitively. He assures us that sin will be overcome. Rahner's rather abstract argument about Mary's predestination in connection with Christ's then amounts to claim that Mary is not simply a recipient of this message: her saying `Yes' is, rather, a constitutive - if duly subordinate - element within the message.

The ideas in Rahner's 1954 essay on the immaculate conception need to be linked with what Rahner wrote elsewhere about salvation. In the 1954 essay, Rahner talks about redemption in rather conventional terms that he elsewhere challenged. There are powerful reasons for asserting that the primary agent in our salvation is the love of God, which is eternal and changeless. Christ's death and resurrection must not be understood as if they made any difference to that - as if, for example, they could somehow convert the anger of God into graciousness. Christians have all too easily used religious language as a vehicle for expressing their own hostilities, and forgotten that - as Julian of Norwich so memorably put it - 'it is the greatest impossibility conceivable that God should be angry, for anger and friendship are two contraries.' Christ causes God's will to be salvific only in a very carefully qualified, transferred sense of the term `cause.' `Cause' here simply means that in Christ's death and resurrection, God's salvific will is expressed as an irrevocable promise to us who must accept it and work it through in faith; his uniqueness consists in his embodying the promise, whereas we must receive it.

If we combine this idea with what Rahner wrote in 1954, the conclusion is clear: within this properly Christian (more so than most conventional ones) understanding of redemption, Mary is Co-Redemptrix. The promise of sin's being overcome that God made in Christ involved her too in a subordinate way that was quite unique to her. It would obviously be crassly offensive were Roman Catholic authority to make a dogma out of this title. But that does not mean that there is no truth in the idea. Christ transforms us by giving us in his person, his message, his death and his resurrection, God's assurance that what we call sin is overcome. In so far he is essentially dependent for his very existence on Mary, she too is not merely the most perfect recipient of redemption, but rather part and parcel of its proclamation. Feminist theology has, happily, begun to reform our conceptions of God, and to deconstruct the use of Mary in Catholic Christianity as a safety-valve within an inhumanly patriarchal system. But the abuses are rooted in something positive, something which it would be a pity to lose completely.

Too easily Christians are trapped in ways of thinking that will not allow them to express Christian truth. Too easily, we think we need to choose between Christ as divine and Christ as human, Mary as Mother of God or Mary of Nazareth, the perfect disciple. One of the reasons why standard Mariologies appear either too extravagant or too reductive is that we imagine revelation as a divine message to a godless humanity. We need, instead, to think of the world as bathed in grace from the start; revelation in one sense changes nothing, although by giving us assurance of God's irrevocable love it also changes everything. As Christina Rosetti's hymn reminds us, the effect of Christ's coming is to shatter conventional cosmology:

Heaven and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign.

Mary is `great as no goddess' because she is one factor defining a world in which powers and domination are overcome and being a god or a goddess has ceased to have meaning, a world in which the only God there is lives in irrevocable solidarity with creatures, even the lowest and most despised. Christ's manifestation of this mysterious truth inevitably involves his mother, and that is why she will always have a special place in any healthy Christian theology. As Hopkins put it, Mary's `presence, power' has `this one work' to do:

Let all God's glory through
God's glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.

BY REV. FR. PHILIP ENDEAN, S.J.

                                                                       Page 1
Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. 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 -

From the beginning of recorded history, the calender has been used to keep records and predict the time for the changing of the seasons. It is a system of reckoning time, usually based on a recurrent natural cycle, or tabular register, of days according to a system usually covering one year and referring the days of each month to the days of the week. The calender provided a framework in which human beings could plan his/her work. It was an effective timetable for marking various festivals that were to be celebrated at regular intervals.

In calender terms, the day is the smallest and most consistent unit of time. In the ancient world, the term day was used in two senses. It described a 24 hour period, as well as daylight in contrast to the night. - Gen. 1:5 - The beginning point of the 24 hour day varied. In fact, the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible contains references to the day beginning in the morning as well as in the evening. - Gen. 19:34; Neh. 13:19; Acts 23:32 -

The dawn was the twilight before sunrise. - 1Sam. 30:17; Matt. 28:1 - The evening was the late afternoon between the day and the night or it could mean literally 'late' in the day just before the stars came out. Noon was the end of the morning which marked mealtime. Noon was also referred to as 'midday' or 'broad daylight' and 'heat of the day.' - Gen. 43:16; Deut. 16:6; 2Sam. 4:5; 1Kings 18:26; Neh. 4:21; Pro. 7:9; Jer. 6:4; Amos 8:9; Mark 11:19 -

In the time of the Roman Empire, the day may have begun at midnight, as indicated by the Gospel of John 4:6, 19:14 -

The day was divided into three parts: evening, morning and noon. Midnight was the midpoint of the night. - Ps. 55:17; Matt. 25:6; Acts 20:7 - In the Old Testament the night was divided into three watches - Ex. 14:24; Judges 7: 19 - while it was divided into four watches in the New Testament. - Matt. 14:25; Mark 13:35 - The term hour was used to mean 'immediately' or it could express the idea one-twelfth of the daylight. - John 11:9 -

The week was a seven day unit begun at the time of creation. - Gen. 1:31-2:2 - The word week means 'seven'. - Gen. 29:27; Luke 18:12 - In the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible the days of the week were called the 'first day', 'third day' and so forth. - Gen.1:8-31; Matt. 28:1 - although the seventh day was known as "Sabbath". - Ex. 16:23; Matt. 12:1 - The day before the Sabbath was called "the Preparation Day" - Mark 15;42 - and Christians referred to the first day of the week as "the Lord Day" - Rev. 1:10 -

The month was a unit of time closely tied to the moon. The Hebrew word for 'month' also meant 'moon'.  The reason for the connection between the month and the moon is that the beginning of a month was marked by a new moon. The moon was carefully observed by the people of the ancient times. When it appeared as a thin crescent, it marked the beginning of a new moon.

The lunar month was about 29 days long. Therefore, the first crescent of the new moon would appear 29 or 30 days after the previous new moon. At times the crescent was not visible because of clouds. But this was allowed for with a rule that the new moon would never be reckoned as more than much variation in the calender.

The Hebrew word for year comes from the idea of change or repeated action. Thus, the year expresses the concept of a 'complete cycle of change.' Due to the repeated seasons, man set up a calender to account for yearly events and to alert him of the coming seasons. The calender revolved around the agricultural cycles. Man observed the climatic changes and the length of days in him planting and harvesting. Religious festivals were also established to parallel the agricultural year. No major festival, for example, was celebrated during the busy harvest season. Man observed that there were four seasons and that the year was about 365 days long. Although the calenders were not always precise, adjustments were made periodically to account for the lack of precision.

The marking of time in Old Testament days revolved primarily around the months, seasonal religious festivals, and the year. The month was marked by the first appearance of the crescent of the new moon at sunset. The first day of each month was considered a holy day marked by special sacrifices, and it was to be announced with the blowing of trumpets. - Num. 10:10, 28:11-15; Ps. 81:3 -

Normally the months were designated numerically: first, - Ex.12:12 - second, - Ex. 16:1 - third, - Ex. 19:1 - fourth, - 2Kings 25:3 - fifth, - Jer. 28:1 - sixth, - 1Chr. 27:9 - seventh, - Gen. 8:4 - eighth, - Zech. 1;1 - ninth, - Ezra 10:9 - tenth, - Gen. 8:5 - eleventh, - Deut. 1:3 - and twelfth. - Esther 3:7 -

The first month of the Hebrew calender was in the spring, around March/April. In their early history the Israelites adopted Canaanites names for the months which were connected with agriculture and climate. Only four of these names are mentioned in the Old Testament. The month Abib was the first month (around March/April) which was at the time of barley harvest. The word Abib means 'ripening of grain'. - Ex. 13:4; Lev. 2:14 - The month Ziv - 1Kin. 6:1 - was the second month (April/May) This word means 'splendor' and it refers to the beauty of flowers blooming at that time. Ethanim - 1Kin. 8:2 - was the seventh month (September/October) which occurred during the rainy season. Bul - 2Kin. 6:38 - was the eighth month (October/November) Its name may have reference to 'rain' since the eighth month was between the early and latter rains. These four names for the months were associated with the most important agriculture times of the year.

In its later history the nation of Israel adopted all 12 months of the Babylonian calender as their civil calender. But not all of the 12 months are listed in the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible. The seven that occur are: Nisan, the first month - Neh. 2:1 - Sivan, the third month - Esther 8:9 - Elul, the sixth month - Neh 6:15 - Chislev, the ninth month - Zech. 7:1 - Tebeth, the tenth month - Esther 2:16 - Shebat, the eleventh month - Zech 1:7 - and Adar, the twelfth month. - Ezra 6:15 - The first month of this calender also fell during the springtime.

Since Israel was an agricultural society, its calender worked well for the people and their religious festivals. In the first month (coinciding with our March/April) the fourteenth day was Passover. - Ex. 12:18 - the fifteenth day through the twenty-first day was Unleavened Bread - Lev. 23:6 - the sixteenth day was First-fruits - Lev. 23:10-14 - dedicating the first ripe barely sprigs. The second month (April/May) marked the celebration of a later Passover, in case some had missed the first celebration. - Num. 9:10-11 -

On the sixth day of the third month (May/June) the people celebrated Pentecost, which was also called the Feast of Weeks - Lev. 23:15-22 - in commemoration of the completion of the barely and wheat harvest. In the seventh month (September/October) the first day was the Feast of Trumpets - Lev. 23:23-25; Num. 29:1 - celebrating the New Year; the tenth day was the Day of Atonement - Lev. 16:29-34, 23:26-32 - the fifteenth to the twenty-second days were the Feast of Tabernacles - Lev. 23:33-43 - in commemoration of all the harvests of the year. Thus, the feasts revolved around the harvests.

With regard to the year, the Jewish historian Josephus stated that Israel had two New Years - the commercial New Year, which began in the fall (seventh month) and the religious new Year, which began in the spring (first month) Since the months were based on the lunar system and since each month averaged 29.5 days, the year would be 354 days, or 11 days short of the solar year. In just three years the calender would be off more than a month.

To reconcile the lunar month with the solar year, Babylon had a sophisticated system where seven months would be added to the calender over a 19 year cycle, resulting in an error of only two hours and four minutes by the end of the cycle. This is remarkable accuracy for that day. Israel must have adjusted her calender in a similar fashion by adding a "Second Adar" month whenever necessary.

During the period when the Greeks ruled the ancient world, the Seleucid calender system was most widely used. Two basic systems were used for reckoning time in the Seleucid era - the Macedonian calender and the Babylonian calender. It is difficult to be dogmatic as to which system was used, but the Jewish people seem to have used the Macedonian calender. This means the Seleucid era in Jewish history began on the first day of their seventh month, Tishri, about 312/311 B.C.

The New Testament contains no references to the Roman or Gentile calender or to the Jewish calender, except in speaking of the days of the week. But there is one reference to the "new moon". - Col. 2:16 - The Sabbath, Saturday, is mentioned many times. The New Testament also mentions the "first day", Sunday "the Lord's Day", Sunday and the "Day of Preparation" or "Preparation Day", Friday. However, these are references to the cult aspects of the Jewish calender. - Matt. 12:1-12, 27:62; Mark 15:42, 16:2; Luke 23:54, 24:1; John 19:14, 31, 42; Acts 20:7; 1Cor. 16:2; Rev. 1:10 -

Frequent mention is made, especially in the Gospel of John, of the Passover. - John 2:13, 23, 6:4, 11:55, 12:1, 13:1, 18:39 - Other mentioned in the New Testament are Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast of Dedication. - Matt. 26:17; Mark 14:1, 12; John 10:22; Acts 2:1, 20:16; 1Cor. 16:18 -

Although the New Testament makes no references to the Roman or Gentile calender, it does refer to the reigns of rulers. The most specific example is Luke 13:1, which speaks of "the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar." This refers to the time of the rulers then in office in Judea and the surrounding territories and to the beginning of the ministry of John the Baptist. This must have been in A.D. 28-29, assuming that Saint Luke used either the Julian calender, which began in January or the regional calender, which began in August. The most general references speak not of the year but of the reigns of emperors Caesar Augustus - Luke 2:1 - and Claudius Caesar - Acts 11:28 - of provincial governors Quirinius - Luke 2:2 - and Gallio - Acts 18:12 - of king Herod - Matt. 2:1; Luke 1:5 - and of the ethnarch of Aretas. - 2Cor. 11:32 -

One New Testament calender problem is that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke portray Jesus as having celebrated the "Passover" with His disciples on the eve of His betrayal - Matt. 26:19-20; Mark 24: 16-17; Luke 22:13-15 - whereas the Gospel of John pictures the Jews as not having celebrated the "Passover" at this time - John 18:28 - Many attempts have been made to reconcile this problem. Possibly, the solution is that the first three Gospels reckoned their timetable of the crucifixion events according to the Galilean method (beginning the day at sunrise) which was used by Jesus, the disciples, and the Pharisees. But John may have reckoned according to the Judean method (beginning the day at sunset) a system used by the Sadducees. If this is true, different calender systems may have been in use at the same time within the nation of Israel.

My friends, this is my second letter to you, and in both of them I have tried to awaken a true understanding in you by giving you a reminder: recalling to you what was said in the past by the holy prophets and the commandments of the Lord and saviour which you were given by the apostles.

We must be careful to remember that during the last days there are bound to be people who will be scornful, the kind who always please themselves what they do, and they will make fun of the promise and ask, 'Well, where is this coming? Everything goes on as it has since the Fathers died, as it has since it began at the creation.' They are choosing to forget that there were heavens at the beginning, and that the earth was formed by the word of God out of water and between the waters, so that the world of that time was destroyed by being flooded by water. But by the same word, the present sky and earth are destined for fire, and are only being reserved until Judgment Day so that all sinners may be destroyed.

But there is one thing, my friends, that you must never forget: that with the Lord, 'a day' can mean a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord is not being slow to carry out his promises, as anybody else might be called slow; but he is being patient with you all, wanting nobody to be lost and everybody to be brought to change his ways. The Day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements will catch fire and fall apart, the earth and all that it contains will be burnt up.

Since everything is coming to an end like this, you should be living holy and saintly lives while you wait and long for the Day of God to come, when the sky will dissolve in flames and the elements melt in the heat. What we are waiting for is what he promised: the new heavens and the new earth, the place where righteousness will be at home. So then, my friends, while you are waiting, do your best to lives without spot or stain so that he will find you at peace. Think of the Lord patience as your opportunity to be saved: our brother Paul, who is so dear to us, told you this when he wrote to you with the wisdom that is his special gift. He always writes like this when he deals with this sort of subject, and this makes some points in his letter hard to understand; these are the points that uneducated and unbalanced people distort, in the same way as they distort the rest of scripture - a fatal thing for them to do. You have been warned about this, my friends; be careful not to get carried away by the errors of unprincipled people, from the firm ground that you are standing on. Instead, go on growing in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory, in time and in eternity. Amen. - 2Peter 3:1-18 -

Meanwhile let the sinner go on sinning, and the unclean continue to be unclean; let those who do good go on doing good, and those who are holy continue to be holy. Very soon now, I shall be with you again, bringing the reward to be given to every man according to what he deserves. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. - Rev. 22: 11-13 -


                                                                           Page 1
Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. 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 -

Abraham ( father of a multitude ) originally Abram ( exalted father ) is the first great Patriarch of ancient Israel and a primary model of faithfulness for Christianity. The accounts about Abraham are found in the Book of Genesis 11:26 to 25:23.

The aspects of Abraham's life begins with his migration with the rest of his family from Ur of the Chaldeans in ancient southern Babylonia - Gen. 11:31 - He and his family moved north along the trade routes of the ancient world and settled in the flourishing trade center of Haran, several hundred miles to the northeast.

While living in Haran, at the age of 75 Abraham received a call from God to go to a strange, unknown land that God would show him, and promised him that He would make him and his descendants a great nation. The promise must have seemed unbelievable to Abraham because his wife Sarah (called Sarai) was childless. But Abraham obeyed God with no hint of doubt or disbelief. He took his wife and his nephew, Lot, and went to the land that God would show him.

Abraham moved south along the trade routes from Haran, through Shechem's holy place, the Oak of Moreh, and arrived at Canaan. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. God appeared to Abram and said, 'It is to your descendants that I will give this land.' The circumstances seemed quite difficult, but Abraham's faith in God's promises allowed him to trust in the Lord. So Abram built there an altar for God's who had appeared to him. - Gen. 12:1-9 - 

When famine came to the land of Canaan, Abraham moved to Egypt for a short time. During this trip, Abraham introduced Sarah to the Egyptians as his sister rather than as his wife, thinking that it can help him to avoid trouble, because his wife is very beautiful. When he arrived in Egypt the Egyptians did indeed see that the woman was very beautiful. Pharaoh, the Egyptian ruler, then took Sarah as his wife. It was only because God plagued Pharaoh, and his house with great plagues that Sarah was returned to Abraham. - Gen. 12:10-20 -

Upon his return from Egypt, Abraham and his nephew, Lot, quarreled over pasture lands and went separate ways. Lot settled in the Jordan River Valley, while Abraham moved into Canaan. After the split, God reaffirmed His promise to Abraham.

Yahweh said to Abram after Lot had parted company with him. 'Look all round from where you are towards the north and the south, towards the east and the west. All the land within sight I will give to you and your descendants for ever. I will make your descendants like the dust on the ground: when men succeed in counting the specks of dust on the ground, then they will be able to count your descendants! Come, travel through the length and breadth of the land, for I mean to give it to you.' - Gen. 13:14-17 -

Apparently Abraham headed a strong military force by this time as he is called "Abram the Hebrew." - Gen. 13:16 - He succeeded in rescuing his nephew Lot from the tribal chieftains who had captured him while raiding the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. However, Abraham became anxious about the promise of a nation being found in his descendants because of his advanced age. It is a common practice at that time among heirless families was to adopt a slave who would inherit the master's goods.

Therefore, because Abraham was childless, he proposed to make a slave, his heir. But God rejected this action and instructed Abraham that his heir shall be of his own flesh and blood. Then taking him outside, God said, 'Look up to heaven and count the stars if you can. Such will be your descendants.' Abraham put his faith in God, who counted this as making him justified. That day God's made a Covenant with Abraham and the Divine promises reaffirmed. - Gen. 15:1-21 -

Sarah provided Abraham with a hand-maiden, because she had not borne a child. This also appears to be a familiar custom of the ancient world. According to this custom, if the wife had not had a child (preferably a male) by a certain time in marriage, she was obliged to provide a substitute (usually a slave woman) to bear a child to her husband and thereby insure the leadership of the clan. Thus, Hagar, the Egyptian maidservant, had a son by Abraham. He was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

Abraham said to God, 'Oh let Ishmael live in your presence!' But God replied, 'No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son whom you are to name Isaac. With him I will establish my Covenant, a Covenant in perpetuity, to be his God and the God of his descendants after him. For Ishmael too I grant you your request: I bless him and I will make him fruitful and greatly increased in numbers. He shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation. But my Covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear you at this time next year. - Gen. 17:18-21 -

After Abraham's death God blessed his son Isaac. - Gen. 25:11 - His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah opposite Mamre, in the field of Ephron the Hittite, son of Zohar. - Gen. 25:9 -

The most substantial account of the Covenant between Abraham and God is given and told in Genesis 17 - a covenant that extended the promise of the land and descendants to further generations. This covenant required Abraham and the male members of his household to be circumcised. In this chapter Abraham and Sarah receive their new names, [Their old names were Abram and Sarai] The name of the son whom God promises that will bear is designated as Isaac. The practice of Circumcision instituted at this time is not unique to the ancient Hebrews, but its embodies as a religious requirement is a unique feature of God's Covenant People. It became a visible sign and symbol of the covenant between Abraham and his descendants and their redeemer God.

Yahweh appeared to Abraham at the Oak of Mamre while he was sitting by the entrance of the tent during the hottest part of the day. He looked up and there he saw three men standing near him. 'Where is your wife Sarah?' they asked him. 'She is in the tent' he replied. Then his guest said, 'I shall visit you again next year without fail, and your wife will then have a son.' Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well on in years, and Sarah had ceased to have her monthly periods. So Sarah laughed to herself, thinking, 'Now that I am past the age of child bearing and my husband is an old man, is pleasure to come my way again!' But Yahweh said to Abraham, 'Why did Sarah laugh and say, "Am I really going to have a child now that I am old?" Is anything too wonderful for Yahweh? At the same time next year I shall visit you again and Sarah will have a son. I did not laugh Sarah said, lying because she was afraid. But he replied, 'Oh yes, you did laugh.' - Gen. 18:1, 9-15 -

Abraham named the son born to him Isaac, the son to whom Sarah had given birth. Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Then Sarah said, 'God has given me cause to laugh; all those who hear of it will laugh with me.' She added: "Who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children! Yet I have borne him a child in his old age.' - Gen. 21:3-6 -

The child grew and was weaned, and Abraham gave a great banquet on the day Isaac was weaned. Now Sarah watched the son that Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. 'Drive away the slave girl and her son,' she said to Abraham; 'this slave-girl's son is not to share the inheritance with my son Isaac.' This greatly distressed Abraham because of his son, but God said to Abraham, 'Do not distress yourself on account of the boy and your slave girl. Grant Sarah all she asks of you, for it is through Isaac that your name will be carried on. But the slave-girl's son I will also make into a nation for he is your child too.' -Gen. 21:8-13 -

God was with the boy. He grew up and made his home in the wilderness, and became a bowman. He made his home in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother chose him a wife from the land of Egypt. Gen. 21:20-21 -

These are the descendants of Ishmael, the son of Abraham by Hagar, Sarah's Egyptian maidservant. These are the names of the sons of Ishmael in the order of their birth: Ishmael's first born was Nebaioth; then Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish and Kedemah. These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names, according to their settlements and encampments, twelve chiefs of as many tribes. The numbers of year Ishmael lived was one hundred and thirty-seven. Then he breathed his last, died, and was gathered to his people. He lived in the territory stretching from havilah to Shur, which is to the east of Egypt, on the way to Assyria. He set himself to defy his brothers. - Gen. 25:12-18 -

God's commands for Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac was the supreme test of his faith. He was willing to give up his son in obedience to God, although at the last moment God intervened to save Isaac. God's promise of descendants as numerous as the stars of the heavens was once again reaffirmed as a result of Abraham's unquestioning obedience.

It happened some time later that God put Abraham to the test. 'Abraham, Abraham' God called, 'Here I am' he replied. 'Take your son,' God said 'your only child Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him as a burnt offering, on a mountain I will point out to you.' ....... 'Do not harm him, for now I know you fear God. You have not refused me your son, your only son.' - Gen. 22:1-19 -

Sarah had died some time earlier. Abraham eventually remarried and fathered several children by Keturah, but Abraham gave all his possessions to Isaac. To the sons of his concubines Abraham gave presents, and during his lifetime he sent them away from his son Isaac eastward, to the east country. - Gen. 25:1-6 -

Abraham was the father of the Hebrews and the prime figure and example of a righteous person. In spite of impossible odds. Abraham had faith in the promises of God. Therefore, he is presented as a model of human behavior. He was a God fearing man and hospitable to strangers, and who was obedient to God's laws. The promises originally given to Abraham were passed on to his son Isaac, and to his grandson Jacob. [also called Israel] In the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible references, the God of Israel/Jacob is frequently identified as the God of Abraham and Israel is often called the people 'of the God of Abraham.' - Psalms 47:9, 105:6; Is. 41:8 - Abraham was such an important figure in the history of God's people that when they were in trouble, Israel appealed to God to remember the covenant made with Abraham. - Ex. 32:13; Deut. 9:27; Ps. 105:9 -

Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible foretold that God's will make Abraham a great nation; God's will bless Abraham and make his name so famous that it will be used as a blessing. "You are heirs of the prophets, the heirs of the covenant God made with our ancestors when He told Abraham: in your offspring all the families of the earth will be blessed." - Acts 3:25 - In the New Testament, Abraham is presented as the prime example of the faith required for the Christian believer. He is viewed as the spiritual father for all who share a similar faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Matthew 3:9 John the Baptist reminded and warned those especially, the Pharisees and Sadducees  who abuse God's blessing, for He is the Almighty. "But if you are repentant, produce the appropriate fruit, and do not presume to tell yourselves, "We have Abraham for our father' because I tell you, God can raise children for Abraham from these stones."

Does this mean that God has failed to keep his promise? Of course not. Not all those who descend from Israel are Israel; not all the descendants of Abraham are his true children. Remember: It is through Isaac that your name will be carried on, which means that it is not physical descend that decides who are the children of God; it is only the children of the promise who will count as the true descendants. The actual words in which the promise was made were: I shall visit you at such and such a time, and Sarah will have a son. - Rom.9:6-9 -

Sacred Scripture foresaw that God was going to use faith to justify the pagans, and proclaimed the Good News long ago when Abraham was told: In you all pagans will be blessed. Those therefore who rely on faith receive the same blessing as Abraham, the man of faith. - Gal. 3:8-9 - 4:21-31 -

You believe in the one God - that is credible enough, but the demons have the same belief, and they tremble with fear. Do realize you senseless people, that faith without good deeds is useless. You surely know that Abraham our father was justified by his deed, because he offered his son Isaac on the altar? There you see it: faith and deeds were working together; his faith became perfect by what he did. - James 2:19-22 -

To the Jews who believed in him Jesus said:

'If you make my word your home
you will indeed be my disciples,
you will learn the truth
and the truth will make you free.'

They answered, 'We are descended from Abraham and we have never been the slaves of anyone; what do you mean, "You will be made free"?' Jesus replied:

'I tell you most solemnly,
everyone who commits sin is a slave.
Now the slave's place in the house is not assured,
but the son's placed is assured.
So if the Son makes you free,
you will be free indeed.
I know that you are descended from Abraham;
but in spite of that you want to kill me
because nothing I say has penetrated into you.
What I, for my part, speak of
is what I have seen with my Father;
but you, you put into action
the lessons learnt from your father.'

They repeated, 'Our father is Abraham.' Jesus said to them:

'If you were Abraham's children,
you would do as Abraham did.
As it is, you want to kill me
when I tell you the truth
as I have learnt it from God;
that is not what Abraham did.
What you are doing is what your father does.'

'We were not born of prostitution' they went on 'we have one father: God.' Jesus answered:

'If God were your father, you would love me,
since I have come here from God; yes, I have come from him;
not that I came because I chose,
no, I was sent, and by him.
Do you know why you cannot take in what I say?
It is because you are unable to understand my language.
The devil is your father,
and you prefer to do
what your father wants.

He was a murderer from the start;
he was never grounded in the truth;
there is no truth in him at all:
when he lies
he is drawing on his on store,
because he is a liar, and the father of lies,
But as for me, I speak the truth
and for that very reason,
you do not believe me.
Can one of you convict me of sin?
If I speak the truth, why do you not believe me?
A child of God
listens to the words of God;
if you refuse to listen,
it is because you are not God's children.

The Jews replied, 'Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and possessed by a devil?' Jesus answered:

No, I am not possessed;
no, I honor my Father,
but you want to dishonor me.
Not that I care for my own glory,
there is someone who takes care of that and is the judge of it.
I tell you most solemnly,
whoever keeps my word
will never see death.'

The Jews said, 'Now we know for certain that you are possessed. Abraham is dead, and the prophets are dead, and yet you say, "Whoever keeps my word will never know the taste of death." Are you greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? The prophets are dead too. Who are you claiming to be?'  Jesus answered:

'If I were to seek my own glory
that would be no glory at all;
my glory is conferred by the Father,
by the one of whom you say, "He is our God"
although you do not know him.
But I know him,
and if you were to say: I do not know him,
I should be a liar, as you are liars yourselves.
But I do know him, and I faithfully keep his word.
Your father Abraham rejoiced
to think that he would see my Day;
he saw it and was glad.'

The Jews then said, 'You are not fifty yet, and you have seen Abraham!' Jesus replied:

'I tell you most solemnly,
before Abraham ever was,
I Am.'

At this they picked up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself and left the Temple. - John 8:31-59 -

                                                                     Page 1
Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. 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 -

Anyone who gives freedom to another assumes great risks, whether it be a parent to a child or a Creator to a creature. In a certain sense, even God took a great risk when He made man free, for the very freedom to become a child of God implied the possibility of becoming a rebel.

Since God made us to choose what is right, we are also free to choose the wrong. We too often interpret freedom as the right to break God's commandments. When you buy an automobile, the manufacture will give you a set of instructions. He will tell you the pressure to which you ought to inflate your tires, the kind of oil you ought to use in the crankcase, and the proper fuel to put in the gas tank. Really, he has nothing against you because he gives you these instructions, as God had nothing against you in giving you His commandments. The manufacturer wants to be helpful: he is anxious that you get the maximum utility out of the car. And God is more anxious that you get the maximum happiness out of life. That is why He gives you commandments.

But of course you are free. You can do as you please. You ought to use gasoline in the tank, but you can put in Chanel 5. Now there is no doubt that it is nicer for your nostrils if you fill the tank with perfume rather than with gasoline. But the car simply will not run on Smell / Chanel 5. In like manner we were made to run on the fuel of God's love and commandments, and we simply will not run on anything else. We just bog down. And that is what happened to human nature in the Fall.

God did not give man the frightening responsibilities of freedom without at the same time offering him incentives to choose right rather than wrong. God would not force His happiness on anyone. In almost so many words, God said to Adam and Eve at the very beginning of history: As an inducement to choose what is best, I shall give you certain gifts. If you use your freedom in the direction of what is best for you, that is, for your perfection, I shall give you permanently the supernatural gift of sharing in my Divine Nature, that is, of being a child of God and an heir of heaven. To this I add permanently some lesser gifts: You will never die, your passions will never rebel against your reason, and your mind will be free from error.

But to preserve these gifts for themselves and posterity, one condition was imposed on Adam and Eve by God, and it was very easy. They merely had to love God who is their perfection. We must not think that this condition was equivalent to saying to a child: "If you eat a woolly worm, I will give you a dollar" because a woolly worm is not the perfection of a child. Rather, it was like saying to the child: "If you drink milk and eat good food you will be healthy." As obeying the laws of health is the perfection of the child, so too obeying the will of God is our perfection.

We said that the one condition imposed was that they love God. But how could man prove his love of God? How do you know anyone loves you? Because he tells you? Most certainly not! Love is proved only one way: by an act of choice, by choosing the one we love over something or somebody else. Love is not love unless it is free; it is only because of the possibility of saying "No" that there is so much harm in the "Yes."

Hence the choice presented to our first parents was between a fruit and a garden, the part and the whole. God said they could eat of all fruits in the garden of Paradise, save the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Was there anything unreasonable about the trail? Is not life filled with abundant instances of receiving rewards on the condition of love? Imagine a wealthy man going away for the summer and telling the chauffeur and his wife that they may live in his house, eat his food, drink his wine, use his cars, and ride his horses, but on one condition: That they must not eat the artificial apple he has on the dinning room table. The owner well knows the artificial apple will give them indigestion. He does not tell them that. They ought to trust him in the light of all he has done for them. Now if the wife persuades her husband to eat the apple, she would not be a lady; and if he eats it, he would not be a gentleman. By doing the one thing forbidden they would lose all the good things provided and have indigestion besides - and they even lose the opportunity of passing these things on to their children.

To make light of the fruit in the story of the Fall is to miss the point that it was the test of love. Not to shake hands with a passerby on the street is of no importance, but not to shake hands as a sign of contempt is very serious. eating of the forbidden fruit was a sign of contempt; the symbol of rebellion. Like Pandora, man opened the forbidden box and lost all his treasures.

But you ask: Well! Granted that Adam sinned! What have I to do with Adam? Why should I be punished because of him? When President Roosevelt declared war on December 8, 1941, you declared war without any explicit declaration on your part. What the Chief of the Nation did, we did. Now Adam is the head of the human race. What he did, we did. "Through one man, sin entered the world." - Rom. 5:12 -

But you say: "It was very unjust of God to deprive me of friendship with Him, and these other gifts, simply because Adam sinned." There would have been injustice if God deprived you of your due. But you are no more entitled to be a child of God than a razor has a right to bloom, or a rose has the right to bark, or a dog has the right to quote Dante. What Adam lost was gifts, not a right.

On Christmas Day when you distribute gifts to your friends, would I have a right to say to you: "Why do you not give me a gift?" You would answer: "I am not doing you an injustice, because I owe you nothing. I am not even obliged to give these gifts to my friends. And if I had not given them gifts, I would not have deprived them of anything I owed them." So neither did God owe us anything beyond our nature as a creature of His handiwork.

But the loss of the supernatural gift of being a child of God weakened our will and darkened our intellect without corrupting our nature. The Fall disorganized our normal human faculties, making us just as we are now, with a bias toward evil, with a will reluctant to do good, with a tendency to rationalize evil. But each of us is still human - not a depraved human, totally corrupt, as those who ridicule the doctrine of the Fall say, but still a person capable of becoming what each once was. The disorder in us is like getting dirt in our eye: we still have the eye as an organ of sight, but it sees through tears. It is right here that Christianity begins. In all other religions you have to be good to come to God. In Christianity you do not. Because there is evil in the world, we need God. Christianity begins with the recognition that there is something in your life and in the world that ought not to be, that need not be, and that could be otherwise were it not for evil choices. If you are ever to be good, you must first believe you are bad.

If you know that you could be better than you are; if you feel like the master painting of a great artist that has become somewhat defaced and stained; if you know that though you are too good for the rubbish heap, you are nevertheless too spoiled to hang in the Metropolitan Gallery; if you know that you cannot restore yourself to your pristine beauty; if you know that no one could restore you better than the Divine Artist who made you - then you have already taken the first step toward peace. The Divine Artist did come to restore the original and He came on Christmas Day.

Such is the meaning of Christmas. The Son of God became man that man might become the adopted son of God.

This is Christmas Eve. Kind of sad, isn't it?

Fathers! are not your sons away because there is something wrong with the world? Then maybe God is out of His Heaven because there is something wrong with man. That star blazing in Bethlehem's sky is the Heavenly Father's service flag. His Son too has gone to war.

Mothers! You shrink in terror and fear from what might happen to your boy amidst whistling steel and whining shell. Then understand how another Mother drew a Babe to her breast in fear of the thundering hoofs and drawn swords of those who would take away His life before He had scarcely begun to live.

Sons and daughters in the service: To conquer, you must first make a landing in enemy territory. That was Bethlehem - God's beachhead in a land of sin. And how we must fight to keep it!

You dead on the far-thrown battlefields of the war! You died that others might live. You were the human expendables. This Babe is the Divine Expendable who came not to live but to die, that we might die to sin and live to love!

But you ask: how find Christmas peace in a world at war? You cannot find peace on the outside but you can find peace on the inside, by letting God do to your soul what Mary let Him do to her body, namely, let Christ be formed in you. As she cooked the meals in her Nazarene home, as she nursed her aged cousin, as she drew water at the well, as she prepared the meals of the village carpenter, as she knitted the seamless garment, as she kneaded the dough and swept the floor, she was conscious that Christ was in her; that she was a living ciborium, a monstrance of the Divine Eucharist, a Gate of Heaven through which a Creator would peer upon creation. a Tower of Ivory up whose chaste body He was to climb "to kiss upon her lips a mystic rose."

As He was physically formed in her, so He wills to be spiritually formed in you. If you knew He was seeing through your eyes, you would see in every fellow man a child of God. If you knew that He worked through your hands, they would bless all the day through. If you knew He spoke through your lips, then your speech, like Peter's would betray that you had been with the Galilean. If you knew that He wants to use your mind, your will, your fingers, and your heart, how different you would be. If half the world did this there would be no war!

Why not resolve this year to spend an hour a day in His presence? Do not stay away because you are wicked. Remember that Babe did not come to earth because you are good, but because you are not. He did not come because there was Peace, but because there was none.

Children are so unsuspecting. Taking candy away from a baby is easy - but not as easy as taking happiness from that Child!

Let not your unworthiness keep you back. Remember, love is blind, and no love is as blind as this Child's; otherwise, how could He love you and me? He does love us and that is enough to make us very happy.

That is what I mean when from a devoted heart I say, "Merry Christmas, Friends!"


BY ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN  ( 1895 to 1979 )

                                                                      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 -

But non attachment from the world, as ideal worth seeking for itself, is not the answer. We cannot say, with Aldous Huxley, "The ideal man is the non attached man. Non attached to his bodily sensations and lusts. Non attached to his cravings for power and possessions. Non attached even to science and speculation and philanthropy. The non attachment of Buddhism or Taoism is not the Christian ideal; though it sounds very noble to say that they who possess are possessed, are slaves to the illusions of life. Non attachment and unworldliness are vain unless they are regarded as secondary, as a mere means to attain to the primary goal, which is love of God and neighbor.

But this is not an age in which asceticism, as an end, offers so great a temptation to most people that they need this warning. Self-indulgence is an error many times commoner today. It is more fatal, too. There is nothing so dangerous for a civilization as softness, as there is nothing so destructive of personality as a want of discipline. Arnold Toynbee, the historian, tell us that, out of twenty-one civilizations which have vanished, sixteen collapsed because of decay within. Nations are not often murdered; they more often commit suicide. That is the sinister meaning of our present mood of selfishness and love of pleasure, our affirmation of our egotism, our widespread refusal to discipline the self. Although two world wars have imposed upon us many sacrifices that we have accepted willingly, even these have not been sufficient to make us perform the greatest sacrifice of all - to give up the illusion that a person is most self-expressive when he allows the animal to gain mastery over the spirit.

We are scandalized at seeing what the release of the sub-human has done to the Fascists, Nazis, and Communists. Yet we have not learned that the same deleterious effects can be present in the individual who, starting with the philosophy that he is only a beast, immediately proceeds to act like one. To just the extent that a person is unmortified in his selfish passions, it becomes the necessary for some external authority to control and subdue those passions. That is why the passing of morality and religion and asceticism from political life is inevitably followed by a police state, which attempts to organize the chaos produced by that selfishness. Law gives way to force; ethics is replaced by the secret police. "There is no correlation between the degree of comfort enjoyed and the achievement of civilization. On the contrary, absorption in case is one of the most reliable signs of present or impending decay."

The totalitarian regimes are symptomatic of a disease that has also attacked the men and women in countries that are free. It is the disease of disorder within humanity. Few realize the terrible dimensions of the present catastrophe; they are blinded by the fact that man has made great material progress. The truth of the matter is, however, that humanity has lost control over itself at the very moment when it has gained control over nature. Because humans have lost self-control and denied the spiritual purpose in life, they utilize for destructive ends the forces of nature that they have harnessed. Every gain in mastery of the forces of nature becomes a potential danger unless it is matched by an equal gain in man's mastery over his animal impulses.

To just the degree that a materialist psychologist interprets self-expression as the release of the animal instincts, he contributes to the world's present woe and disorder. Animal guided humans cannot conduct a civilization. They are more at home in war than in peace. We of today can be united against a common enemy through hate; it takes spirit and a common purpose to bind us together when peace comes. It used to be that wars were hard to wage, that peace came naturally with victory. Today the situation is reversed; the power of destruction are greater than the powers of construction in the modern world.

Peace is a fruit of love, and love flowers in the person oriented toward God. The greatest privilege that can come to a person is to have his life God-directed; this follows when he has remotely paved the way by disciplined self-direction. God cares enough for us to regulate our lives - and this is the strongest proof of love that He could give to us. For it is a fact of human experience that we do not care very much about the details of other people's lives unless we love them.

We are not deeply interested in hearing more of those individuals whom we meet in the subway and in the street and on the highway. But as soon as we begin to know and love any of them, then we become more and more interested in their lives; we have a greater care for them. As we bring them into the area of our love, both our interest and their happiness increases. It is like this when we bring ourselves into the area of God's love: there is an increasing Divine guidance of the details of our life, and we are ever being made more sure of the depth and reality of His Love. To the extent that we abandon our personality to Him, He will take possession of our will and work in us. We are no longer ruled by commands coming from the outside, as from a cruel master, but by almost imperceptible suggestions that rise up from within. We feel as if we had wanted all along to do those things He suggests to us; we are never conscious of being under command. Thus our service to Him becomes the highest form of liberty, for it is always easy to do something for the one we love.

And God, of course, wishes us to seek the happiness. He can give if we will let Him. A mother who has a wayward daughter desires nothing more than to penetrate into her mind to inspire her will; her greatest sorrow is her inability to do this. The happiness of both is conditioned upon the daughter's allowing the mother's love to operate, for no parent can ever guide a child who wars against the parent's will. Neither can God guide us if we allow the animal in us to direct our will, demanding the satisfaction of each of its rebellious claims. As the whole order of the universe rests on the surrender of the chemicals to the plants, of the plants to the animals, of the animals to man, so the peace of man comes only in the surrender of self to God. Psychologists teaching that the needs of the id are more important than the ideals of the superego, that a discipline of sex ends in a tension and neurosis that can be released only by carnal abandonment - these individuals have increased the world's selfishness, egotism, and cruelty.

The principal cause of all unhappiness is unregulated desire - wanting more than is needed or wanting what is harmful to the spirit. The modern world is geared to increase our desires and our wants by its advertising, but it can never satisfy them. Our desires are infinite; the supply of any good on earth is finite. Hence our unhappiness and anxieties, our disappointments and our sadness. The only exist from this state is by control of the sense through mortification. This is what Our Lord Jesus meant when He said, "And if your hand or your foot scandalize you, cut it off, and cast it from you. And if your eye scandalizes you, pluck it out, and cast it from you." - Matt. 18:8-9 - Because, in our modern civilization, the biological is divorced from the spiritual, because freedom is isolated from dependence on God like a pendulum cut off from a clock, because liberty is interpreted only as freedom from something and not as freedom for something, it is especially necessary to revive the Christian practice of self-discipline.

As Rom Landau, rightly observes; Nothing short of religion will inspire self-detachment. A person will refuse for the sake of himself or herself as a finite human animal to undergo the discipline to which he will gladly submit, once he is brought into conscious relation with God. This is the crux of the entire problem. Separate a man from his spiritual nature, let him talk of himself merely as a physical organism, and his respect for himself will not be such as to induce him to make a sacrifice for anything that he considers essential to his material well-being or enjoyment. Once he faces God and becomes aware of the divine nature of his personality, he will recognize that more is involved than what constitutes his physical being. He will do for himself as related to God what he would not dream of doing otherwise.

Christian self-discipline is really self-expression - expression of all that is highest and best in self; the farmer plows under the weeds for the completest expression of the corn's desire to grow. Self-control, through mortification or asceticism, is not the rejection of our instincts, passions, and emotions, nor is it  thrusting these God-given impulses into unconsciousness, as the materialists accuse the Christians of doing. Our passions, instincts, and emotions are good, not evil; self-control means only curbing their inordinate excesses. To take a little wine for the sake of one's stomach, as Saint Paul told Timothy, is to obey an instinct; but to take so much of it as to forget that one has either a head or a stomach is to abuse wine as a creature of God.

Once the instincts and passions are subject to the will, they can be controlled and guided. The Church does not repress passions when it restrains their unlawful expression. It does not deny emotions, anymore than it denies hunger; the Church only asks that, when a person sits at table, he shall not eat like a pig. Our Lord Jesus did not repress the intense emotional zeal of Paul; He merely redirected it from hate to love. Our Lord Jesus did not repress the biological vitality of a Magdalene; He merely turned her passion from love of vice to love of virtue. Such a conversion of energies explains why the greatest sinners - like Augustine - sometimes make the greatest saints; it is not because they have been sinners that they love God with their special intensity, but because they have strong urges, violent passions, flowing emotions which, turned to holy purposes, now do as much good as they once did harm.

Strong passions are the precious raw material of sanctity. Individuals who have carried their sinning to extremes should despair or say, "I am too great a sinner to change" or "God would not want me." God will take anyone who is willing to love, not with an occasional gestures, but with a "passionless passion" a "wild tranquility." A sinner, unrepentant, cannot love God, anymore than someone on dry land can swim; but as soon as a person takes his errant energies to God and asks for their redirection, he will become happy, as he was never happy before. It is not the wrong things one has already done that keep one from God; it is present persistence in that wrong.

Someone who turns back to God, as the Magdalene and Paul, welcomes the discipline that will enable him to change his former tendencies. Mortification is good, but only when it is done out of love of God. Asceticism for asceticism's sake is actually a form of egotism, for self-discipline is only a means, the end of which is a greater love of God. Any form of asceticism that disrupted charity would be wrong - this was the mistake of the monk who decided to live only on crusts and upset the whole monastery, turning it into one vast crust hunt to satisfy his idiosyncrasies. Asceticism that makes us less agreeable to our neighbors does not please God.

Mortification of the right sort perfect our human nature; the gardener cuts the green shoots from the root of the bush, not to kill the rose, but to make it bloom more beautifully. As the perfection of the rose and not the destruction of the bush is the purpose of pruning, so union with God is the purpose of self-discipline. God deeds are done for human ends, such as to perpetuate one's name, receive nothing but a human reward; only deeds of mortification, done out of Divine Love, perfect the soul.

But they must be done from the right motive, and they must sacrifice the very things to which we wish to cling. Saint Paul reminds us powerfully that the most intense mortification done without love of God is useless: "And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profits me nothing." - 1Cor. 13:3 - Archbishop Francois Fenelon shows how reservations in our willingness to accept self-discipline impede spiritual progress.

"People often hover around such reservations, making believe not to see them for fear of self-reproach, guarding them as the apple of the eye. If you were to break down one of these reservations, you would be touched to the quick...a very sure proof of the presence of evil. The more you shrink from giving up on any such reserved point, the surer it is that it needs to be given up. If you were not fast bound by it, you would never make so many efforts to convince yourself that you were free. Why is it that the vessel does not make way? Is the wind wanting? Nowise; the spirit of Grace breathes on it, but the vessel is bound by invisible anchors in the depths of the sea. The fault is not God's; it is wholly ours. If we will search thoroughly, we shall soon see the hidden bonds which detains us. That point in which we least mistrust ourselves is precisely that which needs most distrust."

Mortification is based, not on hatred, but on preference. The mother sacrifices the bloom in her cheek to put it on the cheek of an infant daughter; the scholar surrenders any hope he held for the development of his muscles; the moral life demands our saying "No" to false ideals that glorify power and egotism. It is quite a wrong thing, therefore, to say that you "give up" something during Lent. Our Lord Jesus never asked us to give up anything; He asked us to exchange: "What exchange shall you give for your soul?" When someone is in love with God, he finds that there are some things he can get along without, namely, the peace of soul that comes from obeying God's Will. So he exchanges the one for the other, surrender the lesser good to gain a Kingdom. He makes such a series of profitable exchanges everyday he lives.

Love of God thus becomes the dominant passion of life; like every other worthwhile love, it demands and inspires sacrifice. But love of God and man, as an ideal, has lately been replaced by the new ideal of tolerance that inspires no sacrifices. Why should any human being in the world be merely tolerated? What human has ever made a sacrifice in the name of tolerance? It leads people, instead, to express their own egotism in a book or a lecture that patronize the downtrodden group. One of the cruelest things that can happen to a human being is to be tolerated. Never once did Our Lord Jesus say, "Tolerate your enemies!" But He did say, "Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you." - Matt. 5:44 - Such love can be achieved only if we deliberately curb our fallen nature's animosities.

Self-discipline does more than this for us, however; it gives our lives a steady goal. The form of self-discipline most valuable in helping us to know where we are going is meditation, which will finally give us self-control through self-realization. Most tragic of all modern souls are those self-imprisoned in their own minds; meditation alone can break that maddening self-centered circle with an invasion by the Divine.

There are many men and women today who never meditate or discipline themselves in any other way. They find that they are cloyed with what they thought would satisfy; they try to make up for each disillusionment with a new attachment; they try to exorcise the old disgusts and shames with febrile new excitements. They change their partners in love, but their boredom and ennui remain. Their disorders become habit, and a seeming necessity; they allow open wounds in their souls because they deny that there are wounds, or even souls.

The chains of their slavery to despair are forged; their past sufferings still persist in their remorse; their future is dark with fear; their pleasures are less keen that they used to be, their anxieties more permanent; their excitements follow more rapidly, and their conscience is less in repose; their minutes in sin become nights of fear. They are a burden to themselves, a bore to their friends, disgusted but never satiated, made more hungry but never satisfied; in the end they pay charlatans handsome fees to be told that there is no sin and that their sense of guilt is due to a farther complex. But their moral cancer remains, even then; they feel gnawing at their hearts.

What shall these poor, frustrated, psychotic, and neurotic millions in our midst do to escape a creeping insanity and a growing madness? The only answer for them is to enter into themselves, to lift their eyes to the Divine Physician and cry, "Have mercy on me, O God!" If they only knew it, a single confession would rescue them by helping them to have their sins forgiven; it would also save them the small fortune spent in having their sins explained away.

God has promised us pardon if we are penitent, but not if we procrastinate. Sin will wear out mind, heart, and soul, but it will not wear itself out - it will have to purged out. The secret of peace of soul is to combine detachment from evil with attachment to God, to abandon egotism as the ruling,determining element in living and to substitute Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ as the regent of our actions. What is anti-God must be repressed; what is Godly must be expressed. Then one will no longer awaken with a dark brown taste in the mouth or a feeling of being run down at the heels. Instead of greeting each day with the complaint, "Good God, morning!" one will say, from the happiness of a soul in love, "Good morning, God!"


BY ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN  ( 1895 to 1979 )

                                                                    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 -