I am quite aware that there has been a couple of people’s lives celebrated in Rome, and that two popes of last century are now sanctified. Among the reformed, there are no saints — instead there are those who are with God. This means that I have less distress than the really traditional, who see this as sanctifying the last conclave of the church (Vatican II).
What I was taught is that we should praise God for those men and women of faith who have gone before us, and that the company of the saints looks at what we do: and by the work of the holy spirit we may be able to join them. I was also taught that a man came to Christ as he was crucified with him.
I have no dog in this discussion around Roman legalities. What I do know is that the Church is not Roman, but Christ’s.
No. The Holy Ghost is in control. If he allows Francis to say to the planet what the Christian has generally believed infallible these two thousand years, then in my humble mind it means he has not waited until 2014 in order to suddenly teach us to properly understand infallibility; on the contrary, he is asking us to continue to believe what has been generally believed in these two thousand years. Oh what a man of little faith, the one who doubts what the Church has encouraged the faithful to believe, has implicitly given for granted for these 2000 years, merely because the seal of formal infallibility has not been given. What sixty of generations of Christians have believed is good enough for me. I trust God would not allow a mistake of such magnitude.
Still, this is a day of infamy, in which not only V II is factually extolled as the way to go, but Francis himself is actively pushing toward his own beatification, because it is clear by now no V II pope should be considered below at least that.
Of course, these canonisations will be used to push all kind of nonsense. Of course, none of the nonsense will make sense, after the canonisations as well as before. Yes, there can be no doubt a tambourine offensive is upon us, and it will be fueled – among many other things – by these canonisations. But in my eyes the most important thing now is that we do not lose faith in the minimum meaning of canonisation, and my greatest fear is not that thinking people may be swayed toward acceptance of V II because of the canonisations (thinking and properly instructed people would find the thought hilarious), but that they may be tempted by Sedevacantism.
Now, having offended almost every Catholic I know, let’s turn to today’s passage. Peter wrote a letter to those who had been dispersed (the implication of the phrasing is that these were Jewish Christians) and he wrote to them as they were struggling. There had been a great persecution of the church during the time of Acts, and there was a greater persecution following this during the reign of Nero — when the Jews and Christians were martyred.
To say nothing of the winnowing of Palestine by Vespasian and Titus, when the temple was destroyed, and the Maccabean theocracy broken. Peter is writing to a church that is hurting: as they are literally perishing he talks about the imperishable.
1Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood:
May grace and peace be yours in abundance.
3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, 7so that the genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, 9for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
10Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, 11inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory. 12It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven – things into which angels long to look.
When one blogs you do so in a context, and the current situation is that within the small cybernetic community there is considerable suffering. We need to pray for each other. For we are the witness to this world, we are the only light and the only salt this world has, and the world moves to break us on a regular basis. And we can praise God that we have doctors, and medicines, and we are not running for our lives, as our brothers and sisters are in Africa and the Middle East, where there are (again) Islamic progroms against Christians.
I would add, and Jews, but the Jews have all gone to either Israel or the West.
We need to hold to the fact that our inheritance is imperishable. If we are of Christ, we have his spirit, and that is something that the prophets of old longed for. Longed for.
And this is why being a Christian matters. It is a high calling. What we do in this life, in our jobs, in our family is seen as how Christ is in this world. This matters more than some ceremony in Rome.
Being a Christian in this time is overtly countercultural. Much of being a missionary is merely living in a righteous manner in a community — we witness without words.
Those of us who understand where bad boys really belong in the social hierarchy are few and far between, because liberalism doesn’t allow social hierarchies and liberalism is the context which dominates the thought of most modern people. So the pervasive social hierarchy is still there: it is just sociopathic, as becomes the case, under liberalism, for all unavoidably hierarchical and discriminatory aspects of the human experience.
Our understanding is irrelevant to the experience of most women, who have never met/read us and instead are formed by their lying eyes. This includes the ‘red pill’ women who read the manosphere and see all the men fawning over Heartiste, Tomassi, et al.
We need to realize that what we have is precious, and that we will be heading for a place where our reward lies untarnished. Our father loves us: far more than this fallen man loves his sons. We are valued, including the smallest and most broken of us. We are the people of whom the prophets spoke.
And we need to remember that God is in control. He will punish the unfaithful nations, and prune heresy from his church. It is not a time for despair, but for steadfastness. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, it may be at the times when we cannot feel the presence of God and that the earth is like iron and the sky like brass that we honour God the most, simply by being faithful.