20110516 New (Lord's Prayer 3)

The Priest's Embolism (expansion of a petition) after the Lord's Prayer

Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Evil is real. There’s two main sources of evil: demons and us. Evil is when things are not the way God made them to be. If your leg breaks, that’s evil because you count on your leg to be stable and help you move about. But it’s not as bad as when we choose to do evil. Something bad may have happened to your leg, but when we choose to sin and do evil, we are freely choosing to break our relationship with God. Demons will work hard on us sometimes to push us to sin. They do this because they hate the fact that God chose to become one of us and because we have the freedom to return to God and be forgiven by Him. They are stuck in their evil and hatred and therefore resent us, even though they hate God.

It is important to remember our lesson of justice. Justice is treating each person or group of persons as they should be treated. It is also important to remember that it is justice that leads to peace and not the other way around. You cannot create justice simply by avoiding conflict. Justice is an exercise of love conquering fear. We seem to have an evolutionary push to try and get all we can out of everyone we can. Love for others helps us to get past the fear that we might get hurt or go without and take care of others first. In loving others first, we work to bring justice into our homes, communities, and society.

Only by grace can we do all of these great things. Grace is the life of God shared with us. Grace is God giving us His strength. God is able to give us all the grace we need to love others as we should and avoid sin because God IS Goodness and Love.

It can still be hard to trust in God, though. We know how weak we are, and it’s hard to accept that even God can make us strong enough to be a saint. Even so, it is never good to spend time worrying about something difficult in your life and whether you will be able to overcome it. Rather, take that anxiety and channel it into preparing for trials and struggles. Prepare for the hard things in life like Noah prepared for the flood, but know that God is your strength and protector like David did when he faced Goliath.

Faith, hope, and love are what we call the “theological virtues.” We call them this because they deal with God. We have faith in the one true God. We hope in Him to deliver us from evil and into the heavenly kingdom. And we strive to love Him and love our neighbor as Jesus commanded.

20100707 New (Nicene Creed 1)

Nicene Creed Part I

"We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen."

Unlike most ancient belief systems, we do not believe in multiple gods, nor do we believe that God has only specific domains over which He has power. God is also not distant or uninterested in the world. Rather, we know God to be the One who created both the whole physical universe and the heavenly realities that we cannot see. Even more than that, He lovingly cares for His creation and actively works for the salvation of His prized creation, mankind, whom He made in His own Image.

Being made in God’s Image does not mean that God the Father looks like us, rather that we are made to resemble Him. We are made to resemble Him in His Essence, that is Love. We have intelligence, free will, memory, and the ability to love. In all of these things, we reflect God’s Nature and are meant to demonstrate His goodness to the world.

God is all-powerful, that is to say that everything in the universe is completely within His power. The only thing He never directly changes is human freedom. Rather than take away part of what makes us so special, He chooses to act in other ways that draw greater good out of the evils that we do.

God is all-knowing, that is to say that He perceives all aspects of all things in the whole universe through all time at all times. God is also eternal, that is not just to say that He has been in existence forever, but also to say that His existence has no reference to time. He created time and space for our world, not for Himself. He perceives all time already laid out before Him.

God is Loving, Merciful, and Just. Even though mankind sinned against God, He still reached out to us time and time again. That is not to say that He does not punish our offenses, but rather to say that He forgives far more than we deserve. God has a deep, abiding and passionate love for mankind that we have not nor can do anything to deserve. Rather, He has asked simply that we accept a loving relationship with Him, accepting Him as our God, and we shall be His people.

20100503 Question: The Final Battle

9: In the final fight portrayed in Revelation, who would be the soldiers on each side? I figured for God, he would have all his angels and his saints fighting with him. But, if the angels aren't really alive, how can they die? So will the fight just go on forever, because angels can't die? I was also wondering, regarding Guardian Angels, do they feel our pain? That is, if we get hurt, in anyway, can they feel it?

9. The references in the book of revelation to the angels waging war are actually referring to two different times. some of it is referencing the original fall of the angels who refused to love and serve God. Then, partially in reference to the end of the world, there is a lot of eschatological imagery (images used to talk about future events, mostly symbolic).

It is true that angels are not alive like we are (we are souls that animate, or "make alive" human bodies). When we die, our souls are separated from our bodies, and we await the resurrection when our bodies will be restored and glorified. Angels experience none of this. They do not have senses in the same way we do. They do not suffer death like we do. They do not suffer pain in the same way we do.

But they are alive in that they are able to chose their own way. Inanimate objects have no power of choice, nor of knowledge, nor of love. We know that angels can learn and do have knowledge and can sense things, though in a different way from us. We even know--in the case of demons at least--that they can feel pain, but it is a spiritual pain, whereas ours is usually a physical pain.

But the battle we are concerned with primarily is the war for men's hearts. The angels, saints, and we members of God's church here on earth are constantly at war with the forces of evil in men's hearts as well as those powers possessed by the devil and his angels. the message of Revelation is primarily that the end of time comes for each of us at different times (often without notice) and that we need to be on the right side of the battle whenever that time comes...

I do not know if they feel pain that corresponds to our pains... I know that the life of God, His grace, His blessing, is painful to the demonic angels that truned away from God... I have not found a reference anywhere as to whether God's angels feel pain, but I am thinking about how Heaven is to be devoid of suffering and sadness... I'm going to present the opinion that angels probably look on things with God's perspective: rather than suffering and sin being things that cause them pain, they probably perceive them as obstacles to overcome for the greater glory of God...

20100426 Question: Miracles

7: Does God still work miracles of the supernatural sort today (in much the same way as in the book of Acts?)?

7. The Lord certainly still works miracles. There are several miracles verified every year. Most of them are medical in nature, spontaneous and complete healing upon petition. Most verified miracles are specifically examined as a part of the canonization process for a saint, which requires two separate miracles to occur by their intercession to God on behalf of the petitioner. These miracles are considered to be God's approbation of the sanctity of the saint's life as an example for His people. Others, of course, take place, such as the levitation of St. Joseph Cupertino or the bilocation of Padre Pio, but miracles during the course of the saint's life do not count toward their canonization. Only those after their death can demonstrate the special relationship they have with God.

On a different note, the theophanies of God (the manifestations of God in the burning bush, pillar of cloud, wrestling with Jacob-Israel, etc.) are a thing of the past since the Lord God has appeared fully and finally in the person of Jesus the Christ.

There are some warning signs to look for as pertains to charlatans that we could also discuss...

20100426 Question: Blood of Christ

2: In Leviticus it says not to drink blood for church rituals and yet Catholics have Jesus's Body and Blood every mass. Why is it consumed if the Bible says it is wrong?

2. That's a really insightful question. I will answer it three ways: 1) The Hebrews believed that the life of the animal was in its blood, so it would lower the human that drank it ("so far as you drink of it, so far shall it separate you from the people" Lev. 17:10), but the life of God (typically referred to as "grace") is specifically what we desire to gain by worthily partaking of Communion (joining together with Jesus the Christ). 2) The Lord's Supper was a transformation of the Passover feast (Exodus 12), where in lieu of a yearling lamb, Jesus offered himself as the Lamb of God (John 1:29) that the Lord Himself shall provide (Gen. 22:8). The Passover necessarily entails the eating of unleavened bread and the drinking of wine, which Jesus says are His Body and His Blood and commands us to take and eat and drink. Given the approbation given later on to consuming what was previously considered unclean (Acts 10:9-16) we can accept the apparent contradiction to have been resolved by the command of the Lord at the Last Supper. 3) There is a difference between Communion and cannibalism. Cannibalism is eating the physical body or blood of someone, wherein each portion consumed reduces the physical quantity remaining. In Communion, we are partaking metaphysically of the Christ's body and blood, that is, it is not a portion of His physical body or blood, but rather, the bread and wine are substantially changed to also be His Body and Blood expressly for the Communion of the people of God.