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Posts Tagged ‘Church Fathers’

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Correct viewpoint

In 06 Scripture & Theology on 2011/05/09 at 9:53 AM

“All around us there is a constant movement, and ebbing and flowing of currents of opinion, of doctrines, of ideologies, of very distinct interpretations of man and of life….In the midst of all this doctrinal confusion there is a need for a norm of discernment, a clear, steady and profound criterion which allows us to see everything with the unity and consistency of the Christian view of life which knows that everything derives from God and is ordained to God.

The Faith provides us with a stable criterion of guidance and the firmness of the Apostles in putting it into practice.  It gives us a clear vision of the world, of the value of things and of people, of true and false goods.  Without God and without knowledge of the ultimate end of man the world ceases to be intelligible or is seen only from a partial and deformed angles.  ‘Precisely the most pernicious typical aspect of the modern era consists in the absurd attempt to reconstruct a solid and fruitful temporal order divorced from God, the only foundation on which it can endure.’ 1 The Christian should not leave his faith aside in any circumstance.”

1 John XXIII MATER ET MAGISTRA, 1961 cited by Francis Fernandez IN CONVERSATION WITH GOD, Vol II, 58.2.

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Resurrection of Jesus

In 06 Scripture & Theology on 2011/04/25 at 1:39 PM

    The most concise definition/explanation of the Resurrection can be found in the Glossary  of Joseph Ratzinger’s (Pope Benedict XVI) JESUS OF NAZARETH, Part Two) Ignatius Press

“The entrance by Jesus, following his death on the Cross, into an entirely new form of life that lies beyond the order of natural biological generation, resuscitation, and  dying and that includes a transformed bodily dimension of existence, possessing physical and spiritual aspect. (Mt. 22:30; 1 Cor. 15:42-44, 50-54; Luke 24:39; Jn 20:24:24-27)

“The Resurrection is the Father’s vindication of Jesus’ divine sonship and validation of the believer’s faith in Jesus’ redemption of sinful humanity.”  (Acts 2:24; Rom.1:4; 1 Cor. 15: 14, 17)

“It is also the pledge of  ‘first fruits’ of a general resurrection, the beginning of a new kind of humanity to be realized in the age to come.”  (1 Cor 15:23)

“The Resurrection of Jesus in not the mere passing of a spirit into the next life or a miraculous resuscitation to mortal existence, as with Lazarus.  It is an entirely new mode of bodily existence.”

For a spiritual and scholarly expansion, see chapter 9, Jesus’ Resurrection from the Dead.

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The Risen One, the New Temple

In 06 Scripture & Theology on 2011/04/12 at 5:34 PM

The Apostle John records a three word powerful sentence concluding the Prologue:  He explains Him. John 1:18.  He (Christ) explains Him (the Father).

In this theological Gospel, John reveals the person of Jesus intimately, perceiving His inner most thoughts and emotions. If you want  to understand the true meaning of life, if you seek eternal life, if you long to know God, you will find all those desires fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ as revealed in all the Gospels.

Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to enlighten the apostles so that they recorded, with divine authority, God’s truth.  Imagine the power that inspired a teenage fisherman to later write: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” John 1: 1. And, later in an epistle:  “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.” I John 1:1.

Each Gospel writer had a goal and specific audience in mind, which  guided him to select certain miracles or signs to point to the different aspects of eternal truth. The Synoptic Gospel were recorded much earlier than John’s Gospel.  Matthew, Mark and Luke simply recorded what Jesus did and what He said. It is the beloved disciple, John, who  gives a special emphasis on what Jesus meant. All four portrait painters of Jesus had one goal, expressed by John: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.”  John 20:31

Jesus is divine; He is also human.  He is now in heaven in His human resurrected body which although invisible to us, is nonetheless is as real as you are. Peter knew what was what when he said to our Lord: “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” John 6: 66-69. The doubting disciple,  Thomas who as a Jew was strictly monotheistic, recognized the divinity of Christ when he exclaimed in faith: “my Lord and my God.”  John 20:28.

Christ is a living person, who has come to make knowledge become light and life in you.  Trust Him and as you read the Gospels, expect Him to show you He can help you now.  Seek to find  in the heart of Jesus, the meaning  of His words and miracles. Look  into your own heart.  Expect Him to enable you to see whatever changes you can make in your life for your own good.

In his recent book, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two, Pope Benedict XVI states: “God revealed his ‘name’ to Moses.  That ‘name’ was more than a word.  It meant that God allowed himself to be invoked, that he had entered into communion with Israel….God’s name means: God present among men.”

“The revelation of the name is a new mode of God’s presence among men, a radically new way in which god make his home with them.  In Jesus, God gives himself entirely into the world of mankind: whoever sees Jesus sees the Father. (cf.Jn 14:9)”

“In him God is truly ‘God-with-us’….As the Risen One, he comes once more, in order to make all people into his body, the new Temple.”

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Scripture Defiled

In 06 Scripture & Theology on 2011/04/11 at 5:56 PM

St. Paul,  as recorded in Acts 20: 29-30, warns the believers to be on guard against “fierce wolves who will invade” and “even from your own ranks there will be men coming forward with a travesty of the truth on their lips to induce the disciples to follow them.”  There have been problems in each age but  the Catholic Church has always taught, what Christ taught.  Jesus Christ commanded His apostles to “Go teach whatsoever I have commanded you.”

The Early Church Fathers, following the Apostles, did just that: when heresies arose, they countered them with the Truth.  Councils were called to deal with them definitively.  Essentially, all the problems were the result of misinterpretations of Scripture. The most damaging was Luther’s introduction of “personal interpretation of the Bible” which led to more misinterpretations.  Luther  discarded  the books of the Canon of the Bible that he did not agree with because they did not suit his interpretation.

The so-called Protestant Reformation did not give the world a new and better version of Christianity. ” It gave the world a new false religion. It has not been guided by the Holy Spirit as proven by its negative effects and  its evolution in 30,000 denominations (1000 plus Baptists groups alone!)

Protestantism is not an alternative to the Church as many who have left the Church tell themselves. It is an empty organization based on the bad judgment of Luther.  Every denomination has split into divisions and factions to the point that their founders would not even recognize them.The  Catholic Church, in all its Rites, is by the divine decree, the only Church Christ founded, whether you believe it or not, whether you accept it or not, or whether you like it or not.

If you look at the 2000 year history of the Roman Catholic Church, only divine protection and guidance can explain why it is still around with the original teaching Christ gave it. Of all the religious founders in history: Mohammed, Buddha, Luther, Mormonism’s Joseph Smith….only Jesus Christ claimed to be divine and proved it by fulfilling the over 600 prophecies in the Old Testament and the miracles he performed while on earth. Jesus Christ set up a Church to last to the end of time. He promised to be with it to the end of time. He promised that the gates of hell would not prevail. However, He did not say it would be problem free (as we have seen); on the contrary, He warned us to beware of false teachers.

Hilare Belloc, in his book: THE GREAT HERESIES demonstrates how the “The spiritual basis of Protestantism went to pieces through the breakdown of the Bible as a supreme authority. ” This breakdown was the result of that very spirit of skeptical inquiry  upon which Protestantism had always been based. It had begun by saying: “I deny the authority of the Church: every man must examine the credibility of every doctrine for himself.” “In modern times, the Protestant culture has gone from having worshipped the very text of the Bible as something immutable and the clear voice of God to doubting almost everything the Bible contains. We can say that all the seeds sown are now in full bloom: Rationalism, Modernism, Secularism, Relativism, New Age, and list goes on. The ultimate victim has been Truth.

So what began with the idea of subjective evaluation and personal judgment, as opposed to objective/realistic evaluation and judgment, has resulted in that, today, except in the physical sphere, there is no truth; it’s all just opinion – no one religion is better than another.

Today, as Protestant theologians study the Fathers of the Early Church, they are finding the truth of Blessed John Henry Newman’s conclusion: “You cannot study the Fathers and remain a Protestant.” Today in Protestant Churches  the membership is at least one third or more former Catholics. You may be in contact with some of them. The point is, they are in the wrong church: whether they know it or not, whether they want it or not, whether they believe it or not. The Apostolic Fathers died for the Truth of Christ, the Doctors of the Church defended the Truth of Christ, the Popes preserved the Truth of Christ, and the Founders of Religious Orders enabled the Truth of Christ to be spread throughout the world.

We too are commissioned by our Baptism and Confirmation.   We must be confessors of the Faith upholding the Truth of Christ with fortitude and confidence,  without compromising of belief, and not conforming with anything that goes against faith or moral. We should pray that Jesus Christ will make us be faithful to Him so that we be among those of whom the Book of Wisdom says: “God, You manifest Yourself to those who do not disbelieve You, and truly trust in You and do Your will.”

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Parables Unravelled?

In 06 Scripture & Theology on 2011/04/04 at 12:32 AM

Following the custom of the Orient, Jesus often employed parables, that favorite form of speech among people who think figuratively.  The parable stimulates the imagination, which in turns illumines the sense behind the suggested image.  However, that sense is not necessarily univocal, as is the abstract teaching, but complexly interwoven into life and the situation of the moment.  Vital truth speaks here in a homophony of many voices, theme, and accompaniment.  In this for it is flexible, now stressing one note, now another.  Thus the parable is a fluctuating, mobile thing and difficult to pin down.  In a barren hour it remains dumb; indeed, it may even be an obstacle to understanding, serving that dark mystery touched upon in Matt.13: “Hearing you will hear, but not understand; and seeing you will see, but not perceive.”

We have heard most of the parables of the New Testament many times, usually so enveloped in the Lord’s authority that unconsciously we accept them without giving much thought to our personal reaction….Only in the clash of thesis and antithesis, is its full clarity released.  (The author, Romano Guardini, goes on to a fascinating analysis of the Prodigal Son and the Last Hour Laborers.)

In a sense, Msgr. Guardini’s writings are meditations.  They are replete with verbal imagery in elegant spiritual prose.  One beautiful example: Jesus looms like a rescuing cliff above the tides of human suffering.

This excerpt is from Romano Guardini’s  THE LORD.

/www.amazon.com/Lord-Romano-Guardini/dp/0895267144/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1307417186&sr=8-1