Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Trinity in the Book of Genesis (first book of the Old Testament) and how it relates to our lives here

Question:
If God is love, how do we know that's true?

Answer:
God has given so much proof that He is out there, from miracles, to the truth of the old and new testament, to how they literally support the other, even though they were written at least hundreds of years apart (which requires someone who ...is not limited by time to inspire the entire bible), through its perfect truths that have no flaws, and the fact that everything that seems to hurt or upset or anger us in life, is somehow warned against in scripture, especially through Christ; the bible has all the answers to create a world of perfect peace among 6 billion+ DIFFERENT people, time after time, after time again... that is not being inspired by men, but rather, again, one who knows each of us so intimately on a level where He seems to know exactly how to keep order, peace and happiness both externally (among one another) and internally (within ourselves) for each person, time after time again. Considering we cannot create peace in our own daily lives even when we try to, it makes sense that other human beings cannot either, which means, the Church and its teachings, the bible and the Church's interpretation of the bible, can only come from a loving Creator; God, who Christ taught us about. At the end of the day, those struggle with faith can do one simple thing: sincerely ask God to help them acquire faith in Him, so that they can be sure He is truly there. I know of no one who has done this and been left unanswered/disappointed.

I'd also like to point out that in Genesis, we read "let US create man in OUR image"... the fact that the Trinity consists of the love between God the Father + God the Son = the Holy Spirit, and how human beings are created through the love... between Father + Mother which = their children/their child... and, of course, recognizing that the Church's teachings on this revelation came thousands of years after Genesis was written... is enough to reveal to us that Christ was, is and always will be trustworthy, and so is His Church, who is being run not by men, but men who are vessels of God's Divine Providence.

God is love because God is a union of "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" = the love between Father & Son is the Holy Spirit, which means, God is love itself, through the three unique persons in the Blessed Trinity, which is who God is. I should ...mention that I'm not speaking on my own wisdom, obviously (I couldn't make this up if I tried :-)), but between the Pope's book titled "God is love" and many other sources like the Catechism, this is all explained, and it is all rational, and it simply just couldn't be inspired by anyone except for a being unlimited by time: our loving God.
______________________________________________
God revealed that "the law" (that is, conduct that creates love, instead of heartache, and hate, jealousy etc.) is written on the "human heart" - in other words, we are created in such a way where deep down inside, although we are easily fooled, we know right from wrong, though it helps to have a model to see it lived out and it helps to have someone explain it further to us (The same way the law of the US has legal commentary to explain a simple law for us, and how there is case law, which are real life people with real life situation that the law is applied to for us to further understand how the law is to be lived out in order to spread peace.

Christ is the equivalent to a "legal commentator" ... on God the Father's law. Christ explains it for us, and we quickly see that peace is what would result if we choose to cooperate with God and follow that law.... and (2) he is also "real life case law" in that Christ followed God's law, which is truly "love all people, no matter what they've done, and no matter who they are) perfectly. Without these things, it is difficult to discern good and bad without being misled or confused.

Considering Catholic beliefs are rooted in the fact that this life is a spiritual battle between good v. evil, it makes sense that because everything the Church teaches tends to eliminate everything that we enjoy doing, but that proves to cause some sort of pain or negative emotions down the line, it makes sense that following its teachings and using the Sacraments (Which are sources of grace that we can choose to use with our free will, in order to receive the strength not to engage in conduct we enjoy doing (from pre-marital sex, to gossiping, to being spiteful, to seeking revenge, etc.), will leave to an all loving God who is not the cause of such negative emotions in us - the opposite of a loving God, would be that influence (Which, again, Christ, and thus, His Church, and Christianity as a whole, recognize as "the enemy" (Satan; the one who hates God, and thus, hates God's creation and God's children; every human being in creation)

Monday, October 11, 2010

We are "Created in God's Image"/The Holy Trinity

“God said, ‘Let US make man in OUR own image" - Genesis 1

God, here, is revealing himself, as we learn later through Christ in the New Testament:

(1) The love between God the Father + God the Son = The Holy Spirit

(2) The love between a father + a mother = their child/children

God = 1 GOD, but three distinct persons make up GOD; all three of them are UNIQUE, though they are cosubstantial. This is what is meant when we say "God is love."

Thursday, October 7, 2010

The Reality of Suffering in Life, Taught to Us Through Genesis

________________
In the Beginning (Taken from Catholic Online)
________________

The Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, provides an extraordinary account of “the beginnings” of the created order and most particularly the origin of man and woman. The name itself means the “Book of the Beginnings.” However, this book provides much more. It presents us with deep insights into the very reason we human beings are the way we are and reveals how we can change.

This first Book of the sacred text was a reference point for the Lord Jesus Christ in His authoritative teaching on the absolute prohibition on divorce (See, e.g. Matthew 19). It has, throughout Jewish and Christian tradition, become the reference point for explaining the deeper meaning of God’s relationship with his creation and the crown of his creation, humankind.

The story of the fall of the human race, recorded in the third chapter, is a profoundly insightful account of the wrong choice made by our first parents after they were invited into a relationship with the Creator and the results of that choice – in the lives of all of those who would be borne from them.

After having been fashioned out of love by Love and for love, having been given the capacity to choose to love in return, they chose against love. In so doing, they suffered the consequences of their errant exercise of freedom. In the wake of that rupture of relationship all of creation was deeply affected. They committed this “original sin” precisely when they used their freedom (the very essence of what reflects the “Image of God” within each of us) to reject God’s invitation to participate in a relationship of love.

What makes us human beings different than all the other creatures (which God fashioned out of His love for us) is our capacity to make choices. God was not (and still is not) interested in the rote response of robots. He wants the loving response of sons and daughters. He invites us into communion with Him. He wants the free gift of men and women who choose to love Him.

Ah, the extraordinary power of our capacity to choose. It opens up either heaven or hell. In the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself.” (par. 1861)

The results of this wrong choice had generational repercussions.

_________________
The Mark of Cain (Taken from Catholic Online)
_________________

One of the other accounts in the “Book of the Beginnings”, the “Book of Genesis” in the Old Testament of the Sacred Scriptures, also packed with deep insight, is the story of Cain and his brother Abel:

“The man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, "I have produced a man with the help of the LORD. Next she bore his brother Abel. Abel became a keeper of flocks and Cain a tiller of the soil.

In the course of time Cain brought an offering to the LORD from the fruit of the soil, while Abel, for his part, brought one of the best firstlings of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not. Cain greatly resented this and was crestfallen.

So the LORD said to Cain: "Why are you so resentful and crestfallen? If you do well, you can hold up your head; but if not, sin is a demon lurking at the door: his urge is toward you, yet you can be his master."

Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let us go out in the field." When they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the LORD asked Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" He answered, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?"

The LORD then said: "What have you done! Listen: your brother's blood cries out to me from the soil! Therefore you shall be banned from the soil that opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

If you till the soil, it shall no longer give you its produce. You shall become a restless wanderer on the earth." Cain said to the LORD: "My punishment is too great to bear. Since you have now banished me from the soil, and I must avoid your presence and become a restless wanderer on the earth, anyone may kill me at sight."

Not so!" the LORD said to him. "If anyone kills Cain, Cain shall be avenged sevenfold." So the LORD put a mark on Cain, lest anyone should kill him at sight.

Cain then left the LORD'S presence and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

Genesis 4:1-16
________________________________________

This story provides a framework within which we can more fully understand our relationship with God and our obligations to one another. The question “Am I my brothers’ keeper” still echoes in our day.

How we respond to this question will have implications for our personal and family life, our social and international relationships, and indeed the very future of the world in which we live. The story of the offspring of Adam and Eve is a story about the obligations of human solidarity.

We are our brothers’ keeper. The sin of Cain was a sin against solidarity.

So much about the story is rich with deeper meaning For example; it is interesting to note where Cain settled after this horrible act of fratricide. Following his attempt to “cover up” and his pronouncement of his “independence” from God (the root of every false understanding of freedom) he was banished to the “Land of Nod.”

“Nod” literally means “to wander.” Since that dreadful act of fratricide, it seems that the entire human race, born bearing this mark of Cain, has wandered aimlessly- searching for both the God whose fellowship they rejected and for the brother they killed.

God’s response to Cain’s choice to murder his brother revealed both the consequences of every wrong choice and His extraordinary mercy in spite of our errant exercise of our capacity to choose.

Cain lost his very identity and wandered through life with no purpose. Yet even in all of this, God “marked” Cain for protection. He never stopped loving him.

The fruit of that first sin, committed at that tree in the garden called Eden, was now playing itself out in the offspring of Adam and Eve.

Two brothers who were born of the same parents made two very different choices. This dichotomy plays itself out throughout human history.

There is also the deeper meaning behind the two offerings the brothers brought to the altar. What was it about those offerings that either pleased or displeased God? Did God prefer meat to grain? Of course not-he had created both and needed neither. He looked at the order of love that the sacrifices revealed.

Cain “in the course of time” brought some of his grain. The sacrifice was only an afterthought to him. This response revealed a relationship with God that was not integral to his life but rather was itself an afterthought. On the other hand, Abel brought the “first of his flock”, revealing in his actions the centrality of his relationship with God, a life surrendered in love.

Two men, each with the same parents, each exercised their own freedom to choose — one to life and love (in spite of suffering physical death at the hand of his brother) and the other to an aimless existence as a member of the living dead.

Ah, the bitter fruit of that tree in the garden … and the sweet fruit of the second tree that would be planted thousands of years later to undo its bitter effects.

______________________________________
The Sign of the Cross and Our Mission (Taken from Catholic Online)
______________________________________

Now, in an age that has all too often chosen the way of Cain, we who follow Jesus Christ are called to both proclaim and demonstrate the obligation of human solidarity and more-we are called to live “redemptively” to bear the fruit of the second tree. We have been marked with a new sign, the sign of the Cross.

In our “post- September 11” world, we who are Christians in America have been presented with a “missionary moment”. Something extraordinary has happened. That event that rightly shocked our world, revealing again the horror of fratricide, has also become a moment for grace. Millions of people, in response to that fateful day, have paused to reconsider the question of Cain “Am I my brothers’ keeper?”

In his infinite mercy, the God of both Cain and Abel still extends the invitation to love. He also shows us the way. We were given real examples of lives poured out in sacrifice for others.

All of this has opened so many hearts and minds to discover the deeper truths of human existence. It may in fact be a new beginning, one whose story has yet to be written.

Those of us who bear the sign of the cross in this moment are members of a race who still bear the mark of Cain. They are being “protected” by a loving God who is inviting them to the new way of love. They need to see this path with their own eyes. We are called to show them the way. We are called to reveal the life of heaven on earth.

Christians are the ones who now have the greater obligation, to walk the way of human solidarity and more – to lead all those with whom we interact every day from the “land of nod, East of Eden” to the beauty of the new creation revealed in the One who stretched His arms out on that second tree and brought heaven to earth and earth to heaven.

That is the sign of the Cross. We reveal its deeper meaning when we respond to the invitation so aptly and simply stated by the Apostle John: “Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.”

This is the Christian Mission.

The Tree of the Cross and the Christian Vocation (Taken from Catholic Online)

The entire drama of human history has been played out between two trees.

First, there is the bad fruit still falling from the one in that garden where the dreadful choice was made to reject the invitation to love.

Then there is the second, planted from heaven itself on Calvary’s Hill, where the living God, in the person of His beloved Son, both paid the price of the sin of the human race and offers us the path to authentic peace through the choice to love as He loves.

The choice that we are Christians are now called to make, at the foot of the Cross, is to be “our brothers keeper” and so much more. Those of us, who would stand under that tree, eat its fruit and respond to the great invitation of Jesus Christ, Love Incarnate, are now called to live “redemptively”- loving even our “enemies.

The disciple John in his first letter to the nascent Christian community provides great insight into solidarity, the mark of Cain and the Christian vocation:
_________________________________________________

“For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: we should love one another, unlike Cain who belonged to the evil one and slaughtered his brother. Why did he slaughter him? Because his own works were evil, and those of his brother righteous.

Do not be amazed, (then,) brothers, if the world hates you.

We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. Whoever does not love remains in death.

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him. The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him? Children, let us love not in word ...

The choice of Cain was to reject his very purpose in life - to love his brother and to go beyond that – to recognize that all men and women are “his brother”. In doing so he rejected the human obligation of solidarity.

The mark that he bore he passed on to the entire human race. It was a mark of aimless isolation but also protected him from further harm, so that he could find the path to redemption. This was the only way to undoing the consequences of that dreadful choice of fratricide.

The choices that we make not only affect the world around us –they actually make us. We become what we choose. The way to overcoming the wrong choice of selfishness is selflessness, choosing to love the “other” as another self.

The answer to the fundamental “question” that Cain mockingly posed to the living God is a resounding “Yes”—we are our brothers’ keeper. The God who is love hoped for so much more from His creation. Throughout the unfolding history of His relationship with the human race He would continue to love and to invite, through the giving of the Law, the prophets and the giving of a Covenant.

In the “fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4 and 5) God himself would come among us as a man “like us in all things but sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) Because He was Divine, He alone could redeem us; pay the price for all the wrong choices made by all men and women.

Because He was human, through His sacred humanity, He would show us a new way, the way of sacrificial love. The depth of that love would be revealed at the second tree where he would stretch out His arms and give Himself fully to those whom He had created and who had turned against the invitation to a communion of love.

Now, we who follow this “new Adam” (whom both the Christian scriptures and tradition reveal is Jesus Christ, in and through whom the new creation is borne) and are reborn through baptism, are given the chance to both make the right choice and invite others to do the same. We are invited into an even greater obligation of solidarity, the continuation of the creative and redemptive work of Jesus Christ, the Christian vocation.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of solidarity:
____________________________________________________________
“The principle of solidarity, also articulated in terms of "friendship" or "social charity," is a direct demand of human and Christian brotherhood. An error, "today abundantly widespread, is disregard for the law of human solidarity and charity, dictated and imposed both by our common origin and by the equality in rational nature of all men, whatever nation they belong to. This law is sealed by the sacrifice of redemption offered by Jesus Christ on the altar of the Cross to his heavenly Father, on behalf of sinful humanity." …respect for the human person considers the other "another self." It presupposes respect for the fundamental rights that flow from the dignity intrinsic of the person….The equality of men concerns their dignity as persons and the rights that flow from it….The differences among persons belong to God's plan, who wills that we should need one another. These differences should encourage charity.

Monday, October 4, 2010

How Old Is Your Church?

How Old Is Your Church?

If you are a Lutheran, your religion was founded by Martin Luther, an ex- monk of the Catholic Church, in the year 1517.

If you belong to the Church of England, your religion was founded by King Henry VIII in the year 1534 because the Pope would not grant him a divorce with the right to remarry.

If you are a Presbyterian, your religion was founded by John Knox in Scotland in the year 1560.

If you are a Protestant Episcopalian, your religion was an offshoot of the Church of England founded by Samuel Seabury in the American colonies in the 17th century.

If you are a Congregationalist, your religion was originated by Robert Brown in Holland in 1582.

If you are a Methodist, your religion was launched by John and Charles Wesley in England in 1744.

If you are a Unitarian, Theophilus Lindley founded your church in London in 1774.

If you are a Mormon (Latter Day Saints), Joseph Smith started your religion in Palmyra, N.Y., in 1829.

If you are a Baptist, you owe the tenets of your religion to John Smyth, who launched it in Amsterdam in 1605.

If you are of the Dutch Reformed church, you recognize Michaelis Jones as founder, because he originated your religion in New York in 1628.

If you worship with the Salvation Army, your sect began with William Booth in London in 1865.

If you are a Christian Scientist, you look to 1879 as the year in which your religion was born and to Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy as its founder.

If you belong to one of the religious organizations known as 'Church of the Nazarene," "Pentecostal Gospel." "Holiness Church," "Pilgrim Holiness Church," "Jehovah's Witnesses," your religion is one of the hundreds of new sects founded by men within the past century.

If you are Catholic, you know that your religion was founded in the year 33 by Jesus Christ the Son of God, and it is still the same Church.