20110416 New (Nicene Creed 3)

For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; He suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day, He rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures; He ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.

Even though He was betrayed, tried, convicted, and executed by earthly authorities (the Romans, Pontius Pilate specifically, King Herod, the Jews of Jerusalem in general, and the Sanhedrin and Judas Iscariot in particular), these parties are not the only ones involved in the death of Jesus.

Firstly, Jesus freely offered Himself. Jesus had within Himself the power to escape, but He chose to endure His sufferings so that He might redeem us. It is in this that the awesome power of God becoming man is shown. As a man, Jesus is able to be truly obedient and sinless but is able to suffer the evil and die the death that all of us sinners are due. As God, His self-sacrifice is an infinite gift: to all men in all places at all times.

If sacrifice is the main principle of worship, then the main principle of priesthood is offering the sacrifice for the people and sharing the grace of the sacrifice with them. Jesus is our great highpriest. He is our greatest teacher, He is our greatest king, and He offered the greatest sacrifice, His own life, and continues to share with us the grace of that sacrifice.

When Jesus appointed His twelve disciples (Apostles) to continue His ministry on Earth, He did so at the Last Supper. In blessing the bread, He said that it was now His Body, given up for us. In blessing the wine, He said that it was now His Blood of a new covenant. He then told His disciples to do the same. Jesus sacrificed His Body and Blood to make a new covenant with us. The Eucharist that we celebrate at Mass is that sacrifice brought into our lives, to each one of us in churches throughout the world for the last two thousand years and on into the future.

Even despite all the miracles Jesus worked, we might still doubt Him if not for one thing. Jesus rose from the dead. He showed us that He is truly from God, and, then, at His Ascension into Heaven, He showed us where He is going. Remembering that Jesus is man, we see as well that if we accept that He died in our place, we can rise to new life with Him and find our destiny in Heaven as well.

We must commit ourselves to Him and to righteousness, however. We all have some guilt for His death because He died for all our sins. As such, our lives are His alone to judge.

20100723 New (Lord's Prayer 2)

"Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

God is the source of everything we could need or want because He is the source of the whole universe. Asking God to give us our daily bread is recognizing that even our basic needs for life are from Him. This is what we recognize when we worship God. By making choices to live for Him, by faithful worship, and by giving things up to Him we recognize that He is our Lord in every sense.

Throughout time, mankind has struggled to live up to the goodness we were created to have. Even with the first man and woman, we wound up sinning and hurting our relationship with God. In every generation after, sometimes better, sometimes worse, we have continued to sin and to forget how much God has done for us.

Yet in every age, God has continued to reach out to us. He has given us covenants to try and help us to live out our relationship to Him, revealed Scripture to us to guide us, and has worked miracles to strengthen our faith. The fullness of all these outreaches is Jesus. He and His message are the final public revelation of God’s Word. He worked great miracles and still does even today. And He gave us a new covenant in His blood.

Jesus has given us true forgiveness for our sins. In dying on the cross for us, He accepted the death that would only be fair punishment for our sins. He died in our place to give the opportunity for new life to all mankind through all time. He even descended unto the dead so that He could raise the righteous of the past up to life with God in Heaven. He died for each one of us as if we were the only one. This is the example of the kind of love we are supposed to try to live out in our lives: to give your life for your friends.

20100510 Question: Mary

10: Mary...

10. Concerns regarding the relationship between Catholics and Mary generally revolve around a few key issues: 1) Do Catholics worship Mary? 2) Why do Catholics believe that Mary never sinned? 3) Is it not better to give attention to Jesus rather than Mary?

These are all very good questions. With regards to the first question, the simple answer is "No."

1) Catholics do not worship Mary. All aspects of religion are not necessarily worship. Many Christians, for example, choose to abstain from work on Sunday in order to observe the Lord's command to keep the Sabbath holy. Also, studying Scripture and leading a moral life are aspects of Christian life that are not worship per se. For many Protestant communities, the meaning of worship has been distorted so as to be roughly equivalent to prayer, singing, or listening to a sermon. Catholics remember the history of our Salvation from the beginning of time and what Christ showed us upon the Cross: "worship" means "sacrifice." The word "prayer" bears the meaning "asking for a favor," which does not of itself entail worship, otherwise, we would be worshiping our neighbors whenever we are in need of a cup of sugar. Singing does not of itself entail worship; otherwise we would be worshiping every child to whom we ever sung "Happy Birthday." Study or listening to lectures certainly does not of itself entail worship; otherwise most of us would have spent a fair portion of our lives worshiping dinosaurs or ponies. We, as Catholic Christians, ask Mary to pray for us to God, to join us in worshiping Him, and to lead us into a deeper imitation of His Ways. We sing of the holiness and virtue of Mary because, as the first and most loyal disciple of Jesus, she provided for us such a great example. We study and seek to know more of Mary because, after all, it is from her that Our Lord drew His sacred humanity. For us Catholic Christians, no matter how much we may admire Mary, we offer spiritual sacrifice to one God alone--the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

2) God the Son received His human nature from Mary. That nature needed to be without stain of sin, Original or personal. We know that the merits of Christ's sacrifice (i.e. forgiveness of sin) could be applied to points earlier in history because we saw just such a thing with the prophets Isaiah, who was purified from sin by a heavenly ember, and Elijah, who was assumed into Heaven. Given the angel's greeting to Mary in the Gospel according to Luke, "Hail, she-who-has-been-graced," which is absent her name and wholly unique in all of Biblical history, we are led to see that she must have been blessed in some way that separates her from the rest of humanity. What might this singular grace have been that she had even before conceiving the Lord? Once we recognize that Mary was uniquely blessed among all humanity and remember that she is the source of Jesus' sinless human nature, it becomes obvious that the two are related and that that singular blessing is that the forgiveness won by Christ on the Cross was applied to Mary at her conception that she might be forever without sin, a new Eve who can remain sinless next to the new Adam who would die for our sins rather than sin Himself.

3) Lastly, of course, worshiping Jesus the Christ is better than speaking about Mary. The real question is, "Why do you have to choose?" Worshiping God is better than hugging your Grandma, but that doesn't mean it's not good to do both. Like it or not, if Christ is the head of the Church and we are members of His Body, Mary is also our mother. While she can never replace Our Lord, not by a long shot, she does deserve a great deal of respect and love, and we would be doing wrong by her and by Jesus to ignore her or speak ill of her.

20100426 Question: Incense

5: What is the ball with smoke in it that you use during some masses? What is it used for and why?

5. The device you're referring to is called a thurible. It is essentially a means of carrying (and employing in worship) a censer, a bowl used for the burning of incense. Incense is a sweet-smelling resin made from sap that makes a pleasant-smelling smoke when burned. Typically, charcoals are lit and placed in the thurible, then, when incense is desired for the ceremony, some of the incense will be spooned out onto the coals by the priest and then blessed. Therefore the smoke is seen as blessed, in the same sense as holy water, though for different purposes. The thurible is then used to incense the altar, blessed object, or the people of God, all things seen to have the blessing of God on them. Incense is most prevalently used in Mass and at Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, times when we are most directly worshiping our God.