Fruits of the World

Galatians 5:22-23 "... The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such there is no law."

Against the fruit of the Spirit, there is no law, but the World produces its own fruit. And it labors hard to usurp the Spirit's place in the soil of our hearts.

The fruit of the World is fear, envy, timidity, ambition, flattery, power, cowardice, agression, and comfort.

Momma Mary and Birthday Parties

"Happy Birthday!"

It's something we have all exclaimed at one point or another. Most of us have also joined into a sung chorus of "Happy Birthday to you!" many times throughout the years. It's simply a normal thing we do for one another. We celebrate that our friends and family have spent another year with us. We celebrate them as persons who are irreplaceably unique and precious to us. Singing to or about our loved ones is a rare but precious tribute to all that they mean to us. It is a pearl necklace, brought out on special occasions, when normally we just adorn our relationships with scattered photographs and idle conversation.

Perhaps it is our readiness to sing to and about Mary that leaves so many people ill-at-ease with our love for her. I imagine that if I went to a friend's home and found him singing to his mother about how wonderful she is, I do believe that I might find it off-putting. But even more that that, we speak about our Mother Mary in supernaturally glowing tones and turn to her so readily in times of trial that a Catholic man must be a momma's boy indeed!

What might be my response to all of this perfectly understandable discomfort and unease? "Y'all just don't understand." If you understood how wonderful my Momma is, you would know why I can't stop talking about her. When I think of my Momma Mary and how she gave me my Savior the Lord Jesus, how can I not want to sing to her? When I think about my Momma Mary and how she lived her whole life chaste and pure, how can I not want to sit and talk with her? When I think about my Momma Mary and how she had to watch her most beloved Son die but never left Him, how can I not talk about her nobility and grace to everyone I meet?

More than all of the wonders of Mary's holiness and loveliness that we know from times past, the reason that we hold her in the highest of regards even today is that she never ceased to be that preternaturally loving mother. "Never was it know that anyone who fled to [her] protection, implored [her] help, or sought [her] intercession was left unaided." (Memorare) Our Momma Mary brings additional light to our lives, not a light that replaces or competes with that of her Son, but one that nonetheless adds something to counteract that darkness which always sits ready to invade our hearts. Our Lord said to us truly that He "came that [we] might have life and have it more abundantly." (John 10:10) I have to believe that part of His plan from the beginning was to give us so wonderful a Mother, who gave us so great a Redeemer.

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 (Lord's Prayer 1)

Lord's Prayer Part I

"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

God created us to love and serve Him and to be happy with Him in Heaven. At the end of our lives, we hope that is where we shall go. We only know a few things about Heaven, but we know that God loves us and knows what is best for us, therefore we trust that Heaven will be the greatest thing possible for us.

To be able to go to Heaven, however, we must observe God’s law on Earth. God created the whole universe good. In the beginning, some of the angels rebelled and thus were expelled from Heaven. We recognize therefore, that following God’s will is necessary for us to enter Heaven.

Thankfully, we can recognize God’s law, not only in Scripture, but also, using our God-given intellect, in the world around us. This is what we call the “natural law.” Everyone, whether Christian or not, is required by God to observe these laws because they are available to all of us.

As persons who long to be with God in Heaven, we must do all we can to love God and one another on Earth. We must also do what we can to make sure that people treat one another as they should be treated. This is called “justice.” While we cannot make people love each other, we can do things to help make sure that they do not treat one another with injustice. This is part of what we must do to bring a little bit of Heaven’s ways to Earth.

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.