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1.
God: Unity & Trinity Part 1
We are made in the image and likeness of God. That is what is on
the first page of Scripture. Right there, on the first page of the
Bible, we see one of the most important of all the truths that we can
understand, that is, that we are made in the image and likeness of God.
God is infinitely intelligent, and He knew our problems very well even
before He created us. He knew that all of us at some point, in a moment
of zeal, would say, “You know what, I’m going to read the Bible.” If we
are going to read the Bible, where are we going to start? The first
page. So what does He do?
He takes the very first chapter on the first page and puts one of the
most important truths that we need to know, that God exists and that we
are made in His image and likeness. Well, we read a few pages into it,
and we say, “This is a pretty long book. I think I’ll just read the New
Testament.” So what do we find on the first page of the New Testament?
That God became man, the other most important truth we need to know.
First, we are made in His image and likeness; secondly, He became one
of us. And so when we are tempted to think we are trash and we are junk
and we are no-good and everything else, we have to look at Jesus and
say, “Are we going to say that about Him?” He became one of us, and He
elevated our nature to an almost infinite level.
2. God: Unity & Trinity Part 2
Are the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit identical? The answer is
“yes,” because, as we said, God is perfectly simple, so there cannot be
any kind of division. Yet, at the same time, they are distinct as
persons. What I just said sounds like a logical contradiction, but it
is not and we will explain that. What we have in God are three Persons
and one God. There is only one God. We have already seen that there can
only be one. Remember that when we were talking about God as a Supreme
Being, we said if there were two of them who were Supreme Beings they
would have to be identical, and if they are identical then they can
only be one. That is what we are dealing with. We are talking about
three Persons but only one God. There are three Persons subsisting in
one God.
3. Creation & Original Sin
Part 1
We have to ask: Why did God create the world? Well, He made the world
to manifest His perfection, and that is done through the benefits He
bestows upon creatures. What is very important is that we understand
that God does not get anything out of creation. It does not intensify
His happiness in any way, and He does not acquire any perfection that
He did not already have. We talked about that last week when we said
God is the Supreme Being, “Supreme Being” meaning that He is perfect
and there is nothing lacking. We do not add anything to God; we do not
give Him something that He did not already have.
So it was not to get anything out of it for Himself, yet at the same
time we can say that the world is made for the glory of God. That is
the purpose of creation. Having said that, again, keep in mind what we
said a moment ago, that God does not get anything out of creation. If
He did, it would imply that He could change. And if He could change, it
would mean He is not perfect. As I said last week, if He is not perfect
then you may as well worship yourself, because why would you worship an
imperfect being? An imperfect being is clearly not God. So why did God
create the world? First of all, for the revelation of the divine
perfections and the glorification which flows from it. Secondly, for
the communication of good to creatures, especially to those with
intelligence. In other words, God created the world for us. It is a
pretty wonderful thing when you think about it. Just look around at all
the things that were created –they were created for us. That is the
reason God made it. But He made us for Himself. Everything out there
God made for you, but He made you for Himself.
4.
Creation & Original Sin Part 1
What is it then that sets our souls apart? In other words, what makes
our souls immortal? What makes our souls immortal is the mind and the
intellect, the mind and the will. Once the data is present, thinking
and willing can continue without the body. We get everything in through
the senses. Everything that we have comes through the senses, through
what we have felt, touched, heard, etc. But once we have the data
there, we can think without having anything go through the senses. We
can put together divergent concepts that we have never experienced
before. That is how we know that thinking and willing can continue
without the body. For instance, we have all seen pictures of elephants.
We all know what elephants look like, and they are all gray. Have you
ever seen a blue elephant before?
No. But if I asked you to imagine what a blue elephant would look like,
you know what blue is and you know what an elephant is, so in your mind
you can put those two concepts together and make a picture of a blue
elephant. You have never experienced it with your senses, but you can
still make the picture. Once the information is there, your mind and
your will can continue to work even without the necessity of the
senses. That, in a very small nutshell, is how we can demonstrate that
the soul is immortal. Actually, the immortality of the soul was proven
by the pagan philosopher Aristotle a couple of hundred years before
Jesus lived, and that is the essence of it, that thinking and choosing
can continue on without the body. What we are able to do is relate
things, that is, we are able to look at causes and effects, and that is
how we can reason to the fact of the immortality of the soul.
5. Jesus Christ – God
and Man (Part 1)
What is it then that sets our souls apart? In other words, what makes
our souls immortal? What makes our souls immortal is the mind and the
intellect, the mind and the will. Once the data is present, thinking
and willing can continue without the body. We get everything in through
the senses. Everything that we have comes through the senses, through
what we have felt, touched, heard, etc. But once we have the data
there, we can think without having anything go through the senses. We
can put together divergent concepts that we have never experienced
before. That is how we know that thinking and willing can continue
without the body. For instance, we have all seen pictures of elephants.
We all know what elephants look like, and they are all gray. Have you
ever seen a blue elephant before?
No. But if I asked you to imagine what a blue elephant would look like,
you know what blue is and you know what an elephant is, so in your mind
you can put those two concepts together and make a picture of a blue
elephant. You have never experienced it with your senses, but you can
still make the picture. Once the information is there, your mind and
your will can continue to work even without the necessity of the
senses. That, in a very small nutshell, is how we can demonstrate that
the soul is immortal. Actually, the immortality of the soul was proven
by the pagan philosopher Aristotle a couple of hundred years before
Jesus lived, and that is the essence of it, that thinking and choosing
can continue on without the body. What we are able to do is relate
things, that is, we are able to look at causes and effects, and that is
how we can reason to the fact of the immortality of the soul.
6.
Jesus Christ – God and Man (Part 2)
What about the miracles that Our Lord worked? Did His human body
possess the power of God to do such things? In other words, was there
something different about His human body that when people touched Him
the power of God was there? Well, recall that God gives certain powers
to the nature of the things He has created, and once in a while He goes
beyond the nature of a thing for a spiritual purpose. That is what we
mean by a miracle, something which is beyond the nature of the being.
Christ’s human nature was endowed with certain powers and grace, just
like us, but His human nature was still finite. The human nature of
Jesus is not omnipotent. As God, Jesus is omnipotent; in His human
nature, He is not. Omnipotence is a perfection which pertains only to
the divinity. So with regard to things like miracles and prophecies and
so on, Jesus’ human nature functions as an instrument of the Word. In
other words, His human body by itself did not contain some sort of
extraordinary power to do things, but rather God worked through His own
humanity. The Word (the Second Person of the Trinity) united to His
humanity worked through His humanity to perform miracles. It is not
that His humanity contained this ability all on its own, but rather God
has that power and God worked through His humanity to do that. He has
instrumental power, then, to produce supernatural effects in the
physical and moral order which serve the purpose of redemption.
7.
Mother Mary Part 1
As we will see, she is the Mother of God. When Jesus asked, Who are My
mother and My brothers and My sisters, He said, The one who hears the
Word of God and keeps it. Who is it that kept the Word of God most
perfectly, but Our Lady? If we are blessed in our discipleship, she is
more so. But she is more blessed because of her union with Christ
spiritually than she is being the mother of Christ, which is obviously
the greatest gift anybody could ever be given.
Since all of these things that we can say about Mary are ultimately
gifts from God, the ultimate purpose for devotion to Our Lady is to
glorify God. We said that everything God does outside of Himself is for
His own glory. For us, then, the ultimate purpose of Marian devotion is
to give greater glory to God. It is to lead us to commit ourselves to a
life which is in absolute conformity to the Will of God; in other
words, to go to the one human person who lived her life in absolute
perfect conformity to the Will of God and imitate it. That is the
easiest thing to do. All you have to do is look at it and say, “You
know what, God chose her. Who am I to reject what God has chosen?” That
is something we can ponder. Why would we not have a devotion to Our
Lady when Jesus did and still does? If we want to say that we are true
followers of Jesus Christ, it means we have to imitate Christ in all
things, and Jesus had a perfect devotion to His mother. Just think
about the commandments. The Fourth Commandment says: Honor your mother
and your father. If we translated it truly, what it really says is
Glorify your mother and your father. Jesus never sinned. That means He
glorified His mother perfectly. We are to imitate Christ in all things,
so we are to glorify our mother perfectly. We glorify God in heaven,
and we also give glory and honor to our Blessed Lady. That is just part
and parcel of what it is to be a Christian person.
8.
Mother Mary Part 2
The easiest thing is to see it as it is, that Our Lady had no other
children. She is a perpetual virgin. You can see that very clearly when
the angel comes to Our Lady and tells her, “You are going to bear a
son,” and she says, “How can this be since I know not man?” In Galilee
at the time of Jesus, marriage was a two-step thing. We are told that
Joseph was betrothed to Mary. Betrothal was marriage, but there was a
six-month betrothal period. You would make your marriage vows, but you
did not live together for six months. Then you would move in together.
Mary was betrothed to Joseph; they were already married. That is why it
says that Joseph was going to divorce her. It was not just being
engaged. You can break off engagements and say, “Give me back the
ring,” but that was not the case.
He would have had to divorce her. They were married. If you were to say
to a young woman, even in her engagement, “You’re going to have a
child,” is she going to say, “How is that going to happen?” It does not
take a rocket scientist to figure out how a woman is going to have a
baby. She is engaged to be married, and she is going to have a baby. It
is obvious how it is going to happen. Our Lady was betrothed, and she
is saying to the angel, “How can this be?” The angel did not say,
“Well, you’re married already. You’re going to move in with Joseph
pretty soon. What do you think is going to happen?” No, because they
had a virginal marriage, which was known at that time among the
Essenes. It was not something unheard of in Jewish culture at that
time. In fact, there are contracts that have been found by
archaeologists where the father had drawn up the contract that his
daughter would be married to a particular man but that she had made a
vow of virginity and she would maintain that virginity. The man
understood that, so they were married, but it was a non-consummated
marriage. That is the way it would have been with Our Lady and Saint
Joseph. You have it right there in Scripture very clearly that not only
was she a virgin but their marriage was going to be a virginal
marriage.
9. The Church Part 1
This assembly of people is some kind of society which is universal in
character and spiritual in nature. This includes all those who are
baptized into Jesus Christ and profess their faith in Him. I should
point out that when they translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek,
they translated the word kahal as “ekklesia.”
Kahal is a Hebrew word that is translated as “the people of God,” the
whole community of the Israelites. So what we are talking about is this
new people of God. Just as God had chosen for Himself a people in the
Old Testament times and in that people one could speak on behalf of all
(as Moses was able to do) or all could speak together, that is what
this kind of group is all about. God has founded a new people of God.
When we look in Sacred Scripture, Saint Paul talks about the New
Israel, and we hear about the New Jerusalem and names like that for the
Church. What we are dealing with here are the new people of God that
Jesus Himself has chosen because in Matthew 16 it is the word He
Himself uses: You are Peter, and on this rock I will build My
“ekklesia.” There is a new people of God that is formed. There is a
head and there are members. One can speak on behalf of all, which is
what the Vicar of Christ is all about, or all can be united as one,
either way.
It is an article of faith that Jesus Christ founded the Holy Roman
Catholic Church. To say that He founded the Church means that during
His earthly life He personally laid down all the essential elements for
Her teaching, Her sacraments, and Her visible structure. Now there are
some who will deny the institution of the visible structure. Others
accept that but they might deny the papacy. There are differing groups
of Christian people who fall into different categories with regard to
that, and we need to be able to address all of those issues.
10.
The Church Part 2
The Pope has full episcopal power over the whole Church in matters of
faith and morals, as well as in the government of the Church. Episcopal
power means the power of the bishop. "Episkopos" is the Greek word for
bishop. Interestingly, if you translated that directly into Latin or
English, it would be “supervisor.” So it is the one who is the
overseer. That is the role of the bishop, to oversee the life of the
Church. For the Pope, it is for the whole Church and not just a
diocese. The Pope’s power is called ordinary, which means it comes
directly from the Lord and is something he exercises of his own
authority. It is not an extraordinary thing where he needs permission
from someone else, but he has it in and of himself. He is not, then, a
delegate of a council; he is not a delegate of another group; he is not
even a delegate of the cardinals who elect him. Once he is elected, he
is the Pope, pure and simple, and he exercises this power of his own
right. His power is also immediate, meaning he can deal directly with
anyone without having to go through their bishop. If the bishop of one
diocese gets upset with something that is going on in another diocese,
that bishop must contact the bishop of the diocese where the other
person lives to be able to address the situation; he cannot do it
directly. The Pope, on the other hand, can. So if the Pope was upset
with you, he could call you up himself and deal with the issue without
having to go through the archbishop. But any other bishop would have to
check with your own bishop first.
We say that the Pope’s power is also supreme, which means there is no
jurisdiction in the Church equal to or greater than that of the Holy
Father. The power of the Pope exceeds that of individual bishops and of
all the bishops collectively. As the supreme lawgiver, the Pope can
also change ecclesiastical laws. Those would be laws like fasting and
abstinence laws, the use of vernacular in the Mass, things like that.
Any of the laws that the Church Herself has put into place can be
changed. However, like the rest of us, the Pope is obviously bound by
divine law. He cannot change the Ten Commandments. Those are God’s laws
and the Pope does not have any authority over those. Any of the laws
that the Church has put into place, the Pope has complete authority to
change them as he wills, but that stops with Church law
11.
Divine Revelation Part 1
How did Jesus reveal truth? If we are going to say that He revealed
truth, how did He do it? By the way He lived and by what He taught. It
is very simple: by words and by example. He taught us revelation in a
particular, historical, and cultural context. If we are going to truly
understand what the New Testament is about, it means we have to
understand something about Jewish culture at the time. We also have to
understand things about Jewish theology and the way the Jewish people
would understand God. And in order to understand the Old Testament, not
only do we need to have the theological grasp of things, but we also
have to understand some of the cultural things that were going on at
that time. Reading Scripture is not a simple task; there is an awful
lot that goes into it.
We saw in the last lesson that the Church is the Mystical Person of
Christ, and as such She never ceases to reflect upon what is in the
Sacred Scriptures. The Church is constantly looking at this truth,
meditating upon this truth, and revealing it anew to each generation in
Her own words. That is what is known as Sacred Tradition. It is the
Church’s continuing effort to reflect upon Scripture and state it anew
for each generation. It is constantly presenting the same truth, but
with deeper understanding, with new insights. It is not a new truth,
but rather it is a more profound insight into the same truth. That
happens constantly in our own lives. Those of you who have been married
for many years can look at that. It does not matter how many years you
have been married, every once in a while the light bulb goes on and you
realize something about your spouse that you never realized before. It
is not anything new; it is just a new insight for you. And you can love
that person even more deeply and more profoundly because you know the
person even better now with the new insight. That is the same thing
here. We are able to love God even more because of the insights that
come.
During this session, Fr. Corapi will explain the Passion and death of
Christ; how it cannot be separated from the Resurrection. We are
"resurrection people" because we are united under the cross of Christ.
It is at the cross of Christ where all roads cross and at the
intersection of the beams of the cross where wisdom is to be found. It
is there that incarnate Wisdom, Jesus Christ, is "lifted up." It is
there that we come to know both God and man, for Jesus Christ is true
God and true man.
12. Divine Revelation Part 2
We say that the Scriptures are divinely inspired. What does divine
inspiration mean? Divine inspiration means that the Scriptures say what
God wanted said. In doing this, however, God did not suspend the minds
and the wills of the human authors, nor did He take away their
personalities. All you have to do is read the prophets and you will see
their personalities shining through all over the place. God clearly did
not take that away. You will see some of these paintings, for instance,
of the evangelists, the Gospel writers, and it will show them with a
little bird sitting on their shoulder whispering into their ear. Well,
it is true that the Holy Spirit inspired the Scriptures, but He did not
dictate the Scriptures in that way to the evangelists. Rather, through
their own thoughts and choices, the authors wrote down what God wanted
them to write. These human authors then received a specific and
extraordinary gift from God. This gift, which is the grace of divine
inspiration, is a movement of the Holy Spirit, which extended the minds
and the wills of the authors, as well as the other faculties necessary
in order to compose the sacred texts. Here is an easy way to think
about that. Let us say you wanted to explain a point that you learned
in this lesson. Unless you have this lesson text, you are not going to
be able to explain it exactly word for word the way I did. But you can
tell whomever you wish what you read in your own words. You take the
same truth and present it in your own words. So what God did was to
enlighten the minds and the hearts of these men to be able to
understand the truth, then in their own words and with their own
personality and style, they wrote it down. It says what God wanted to
have said, but He just made use of these individuals to do it. It is
all the truth, but it is in the way that God chose to have it
presented.
All Scripture is inspired by God. That means every single word, not
just certain words and phrases. That means every single word has God as
its author and is inspired by Him – even the parts that you might not
personally like. That is very important. We cannot gloss over things in
the Bible and say, “I don’t go for that.” It is the Word of God, and if
we are going to ignore the Word of God because we decide that we do not
want it, we are going to find ourselves in a lot of hot water because
we are saying that we know better than God. That is not a real smart
thing to do.
13.
Grace and the Divine Life Part 1
Anyone who was raised Catholic will remember that grace is
defined as the supernatural life of the soul. Grace makes us children
of God and heirs of heaven. Grace is God’s life that He infuses into
our soul, and it is precisely the sharing in His life that makes us
partakers of the divine nature. It raises us to a supernatural level of
acting and being. It makes us children of God, and because we are
children of God, we are members of the one Son of God. His inheritance
becomes our inheritance, and therefore heaven – God Himself – becomes
our inheritance.
We remember from the third lesson that Adam and Eve were created with
sanctifying grace but they lost it when they sinned. This means that
humanity originally had everything necessary to enter into the Beatific
Vision, the blessed vision (which is what “Beatific” means), the face
to face vision of God for eternity, so we would have been able to go
straight to heaven. But they lost that. We also saw that Christ’s death
on the Cross reconciled humanity with God, but we also said that that
objective redemption must be accepted and appropriated to each person
individually. The application of the fruits of the Redemption is called
“justification” or “sanctification.” Because we have a mind and a will,
the Church teaches that the process of justification requires the free
cooperation of each person. God will not force anybody to cooperate; it
requires our free will. Each of us has the freedom to choose. Grace,
then, is a supernatural gift of God which He bestows freely on rational
creatures so they can obtain personal union with Him.
There are two ways our soul can be. We are either in the state of
sanctifying grace or we are in the state of mortal sin; it is one or
the other. We can have venial sins, the smaller sins, on our souls, but
that does not remove God’s grace entirely. The reason a mortal sin is
called “mortal” is because it causes a supernatural death, that is, the
death of the life of God in the soul. If we are in the state of
sanctifying grace, we have God’s life and we partake in the divine
nature and we have union with God. If we do not have sanctifying grace,
then we do not have the divine life in us and we do not have union with
God.
14.
Grace and the Divine Life
Part 2
Why does God allow evil? In order to bring about a greater
good. He allows the fact that some people will go to hell in order for
the free acts of love which merit the Beatific Vision to take place. In
other words, if we were puppets on His string, heaven would mean
nothing. If we do not have a choice about getting there, it is not
going to be an issue: “So what? It’s just heaven.” No, it means
everything when you have to make the choice to be there. If you did not
have a free will, heaven would not mean a thing. But when you have a
free will and you could have chosen the opposite, when you have
rejected all the devil’s lies and all the things he is offering you in
this world so that you can be united with God, heaven is going to mean
everything to you. That is exactly what the Lord wants from us. And
this does not in any way contradict God’s desire for the salvation of
all. He offers His grace to all, but some people will misuse their
freedom and they will say “no” to God, and He allows these to go their
own way. Their reprobation, then, is conditioned on their foreseen
future sins.
That is a point I think I made before. We look at some people whom God
allows to do all kinds of bad things and we say, “It’s not fair. If I
step one inch out of line, God’s right there to whack me. But look at
what these people are doing. He just lets them do whatever they want.”
The worst possible thing that could happen to somebody is for God just
to say, “Go ahead, do what you want. You don’t want to do it My way?
Then go do it your way.” If you are trying to do it God’s way, He is
going to help you. If you step a little out of line, He will straighten
you right back out. That is because He knows you are trying to do it
His way and you want to do it His way. So it is not an unfair thing of
saying, “Why doesn’t God let me get away with anything?” What we should
do is thank Him that He does not let us get away with anything.
15.
Sacraments Part 1
Our word “sacrament” comes from the Latin word sacramentum. Sacramentum
is a translation in the Latin of the Greek word musterion. You can see
that is the root of our word “mystery.” Sacramentum simply means “a
holy thing,” and you can see our word “sacred” in there. When we are
talking about this idea of the musterion, it is something which is
hidden, something which is secret. That is what it would imply in the
Greek.
It is interesting to note that in Latin sacramentum is also the Latin
word for “oath.” The Hebrew word for oath is the word sheba, which is
“seven,” and so the Hebrew idiom to swear an oath is actually “to seven
oneself.” If that is what this is about, then it is a very interesting
point to recognize that there are seven sacraments, seven things God
has done to be able to save His people. They are oaths that God has
sworn. In fact, it even says that with regard to the priesthood of
Christ in Psalm 110: The Lord has sworn an oath He will not change. You
are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Well, the
amazing thing is that God swears an oath. God Who cannot lie, God Who
cannot deceive, in order to be able to demonstrate to us and having no
one greater to swear by, swears by Himself; He swears an oath to us!
Saint Paul makes this clear in his Letter to the Hebrews. The simple
pondering that God would have to swear an oath to humanity is
mind-boggling, but that is what the sacraments are – they are the oath
of God.
Also, it is the idea of covenant. Again, that is where the concept of a
covenant comes from. God has entered into seven covenants with His
people. He enters into smaller ones, but as far as a covenant with all
the people, there are seven that God has entered into; and all of the
covenants remain intact because the three elements of a covenant is
that they are permanent, faithful, and life giving. And so we enter
into the covenant. You can look at the old covenant, for instance, with
Moses and the Ten Commandments, but there is a covenant with Abraham
and a covenant with Noah and with different people along the way.
16. Sacraments Part 2
The first sacrament we will consider is baptism because it
is by baptism that a person becomes a member of the Church and
participates in the divine life of Jesus Christ. Baptism is the
sacrament of spiritual regeneration conferred by the application of
water while consecrating the person to the Holy Trinity. Baptism, then,
confers with it a spiritual regeneration, divine adoption, the
beginning of eternal life, and conformity to Jesus Christ in His death
and resurrection. By baptism we become children of God and heirs of
heaven. We participate in the divine life by the sanctifying grace
which is poured into our souls at that moment. We are also incorporated
into the Church, which is the Mystical Person of Christ, so baptism is
not just an individual sacrament, but it is also a communal act. It is
something which affects all of us.
Baptism must be done with water, but there are three different ways
that a person can be baptized. There can be baptism by immersion, where
you dunk the person all the way into a tank or a river or whatever it
might be; there is the pouring of water over the forehead of the
person; or there can be baptism by sprinkling. Let me explain those.
The pouring of water over the forehead is the most common way that
baptism is done with babies, but the others are okay. If a baby is in
an incubator at the hospital, for instance, then it is simply done by
sprinkling. For the baptism to be valid the water must run across the
skin, so all you have to do is put a couple of drops of water and let
it run. You catch the baby when their head is turned a little bit, put
the water on the forehead, and let it run across the forehead. As you
put the three drops, you say, I baptize you in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one drop with each. That is
actually all you need, provided it runs. It is a minimalist way, but
when a baby is in an incubator you do not want to soak the whole thing,
and that is what you have to do to make sure you get it done. The
immersion can also be done. There are all kinds of interesting stories
about that. There is a church out in the suburbs and they built one of
these immersion pools. The priest was climbing in there with his alb
on, and it came up to his chest. He got out and his clothes were
soaking wet, so he went to the Baptist minister down the road and
asked, “What do you guys do? How do you keep all this from happening?”
The Baptist minister said, “I wear chest waders, and I put lead in the
hem of my alb so it stays down.” So that is what the priest started to
do. Imagine crawling into this immersion pool with chest waders on and
everything else. There are easier ways.
17. The Eucharist
When we talk about the Eucharist, we have to consider it in three
different ways: the Real Presence, the sacrament, and the sacrifice.
The word Eucharist comes from the Greek word eucharistein, which means
“to give thanks.” Eucharist literally is thanksgiving. When it says in
Scripture that Jesus took the bread and He gave thanks, that is
eucharist; that is the word which is there. Remember that the Last
Supper was the Passover meal, and there is a part of that meal which
the Jewish people call the todah. Todah is the Hebrew word for
“thanksgiving” or “thank you.” It was in that context that Our Lord
consecrated the bread and wine and changed it into His own self. So you
see the symbolism of what is there.
If you think about the fact that this was at the Passover meal, it puts
it all in context for us. The Jewish law said that if somebody could
not celebrate the Passover on its actual day then they could celebrate
it early. Knowing that He would not be able to celebrate the Passover
completely on the proper day (which would be the sabbath, on Saturday),
Jesus celebrated early with His apostles. On Thursday evening, He and
His apostles went to the Upper Room to celebrate the Passover feast.
The Passover was the event that took place in ancient Egypt at the time
when the people of Israel were enslaved to the Egyptians, and after
nine of the plagues, the very last plague was the death of the
firstborn of the Egyptians. But God told them that they had to take a
lamb, a male lamb without blemish, and sacrifice the lamb at the
evening twilight. Then they had to take the blood of the lamb and
sprinkle it upon the doorposts and the lintel of the door, and the
angel of death would pass over the houses where they had done that. So
that is what happened. From that point on, the Hebrew people had to
offer their firstborn son to God. They had to redeem the firstborn
because of the death of the firstborn of the Egyptians.
Well, have you ever thought about the passage in Saint John’s Gospel
where Jesus is walking along and Saint John the Baptist points out Our
Lord to his disciples (who happened to be Andrew and John), and says,
Behold, the Lamb of God? We are so accustomed to the language that
maybe we have not stopped to think about it. But imagine standing there
with Saint John the Baptist and having him point somebody out and say,
“Look, there’s the Lamb of God!” What a dumb thing to say. Why did he
not say, “Behold, the Son of God,” or, “Behold, the Second Person of
the Blessed Trinity,” or, “Behold, God made man”? Rather he said,
Behold, the Lamb of God. Why? It is because he was pointing out exactly
Who Jesus was – He was the sacrificial lamb.
18. The
Eucharist Part 2
When we talk about the Real Presence, what is meant by that term is
that the true Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ are
really and substantially present under the appearances of bread and
wine. It looks and tastes like bread and wine. The accidents of bread
and wine remain, but the substance has changed. That which makes a
piece of bread a piece of bread has changed to become that which makes
Jesus Christ Who He is. In this, the glorified Christ is present by
means of a miracle. That is, the substance and the reality of the bread
and wine have been changed into the substance and reality of the Body
and Blood of the resurrected and ascended Lord.
One thing to understand is that Jesus is present in the Eucharist in
the form that He is presently in. In other words, at the Last Supper,
when He gave Himself to the apostles in the Blessed Sacrament, He was
present in the Eucharist exactly in the form that He was as He stood
right before them. They received Him as He was. Now this did not
happen, but if Peter or Saint John would have had the wherewithal to
think about it, had they said Mass in those three days that Jesus was
in the tomb, they would have received the dead body of Jesus. His soul
and His divinity were alive, of course, but His body and blood would
have been postmortem. If they would have said Mass in the 40 days after
the Resurrection but before He ascended into heaven, they would have
received the resurrected Christ. But now that He has ascended into
heaven and is glorified, when we receive Him, we receive Him as He is
now, that is, glorified and seated at the right hand of the Father. We
receive Him as He is presently.
Jesus is God, and God is worthy of all worship and adoration, so it
follows that Our Lord under the forms of bread and wine is worthy of
all worship and adoration in the Eucharist. That is why we spend time
praying to Him. It should also be noted that the doctrine of the Real
Presence was never called seriously into question until the 16th
century with the Protestant Reformation. The Protestants were unanimous
in rejecting transubstantiation and the sacrificial character of the
Eucharist. However, there was some disagreement among the Protestants
about the question of the Real Presence. Martin Luther believed in the
Real Presence, but he said that it occurred only during the reception
of Holy Communion. All of the others rejected it outright.
19. Confession Part 1
Throughout history, people have denied that the Church can
forgive sin, that is, they have rejected and denied the reality of this
sacrament. The reformers said that sin is forgiven only through
baptism. The Montanists and the Donatists said that the Church could
forgive venial sin but could not forgive mortal sin. Interestingly, the
Church teaches us that the only sins which absolutely must be confessed
are the mortal sins. You have some people saying that the Church does
not have the authority to forgive serious sin. The spiritual backing
for this comes from a couple of different places. We can look, for
instance, at Matthew 16 where Jesus says, You are Peter and upon this
rock I will build My Church; whatever you hold bound on earth will be
held bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in
heaven. Then in Matthew 18, Jesus also extends the ability to forgive
sin to all of the apostles, not just to Peter with the binding and
loosing, but all the apostles. Most clearly, in John 20 after the
Resurrection, Jesus breathes on the apostles and says, Receive the Holy
Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven, and whose sins you hold
bound are held bound. There is the authority for both, to forgive or to
refuse forgiveness. We see that God Himself is the One telling us that
whatever you hold bound or forgive on earth will be held bound or
forgiven in heaven. Therefore, we see that Our Lord Himself invested
the apostles with the authority to forgive sins, but again it can also
be used to refuse forgiveness. We will address why that would happen
further on.
We see that this conferral of power to forgive sins is not a personal
gift to the apostles, but rather we believe it was transferred through
them to the Church as a permanent institution. All you have to do is
think about it and say, “If Jesus gave the apostles authority to
forgive sin but that authority died with the apostles, the rest of us
are up a creek because it means there is no forgiveness of sin.” Unless
sin ended with the death of the last apostle, there would be no more
need to forgive anybody; and we know that is not the case, because we
know that we live in the most sinful society the world has ever known.
God also said, Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. So we
know that His will to forgive and the grace of forgiveness is available
to us, but it is a matter of availing ourselves of that grace. The
power, then, was transmitted by the apostles to their successors in the
same way that the power to say Mass and to preach was passed on to
their successors. And it is obvious why. Sin is going to continue for
all time; therefore, the forgiveness of sin is necessary for all time.
20. Confession Part 2
One of the tricks of the devil, and it works very well, is
that he tries to shame you with it. He brings things up in front of you
and says, “Look at what you did. You rotten thing, you, look at this
sin! Can you believe you are such a disgusting creature as to do
something like this?” Then we start falling into the self-pity and all
the other stuff. Do not play his game. The thing to do is very simple;
just say, “I have already confessed it and God has forgiven me.” If it
has not been confessed, then say, “Thank you for bringing that to my
attention. I will confess it next time I go to confession.” Either way,
you pull the rug out from underneath him. In the first one, you are
acknowledging that you did it. What he wants is for you to either say,
“I never did it,” or to say, “God hasn’t forgiven me.” So you are
acknowledging both: “I have already confessed it and God has forgiven
me.” I always like to add: “You lose, Satan.” You do not have to do
that if you do not want to, but it is the truth. With the other one, it
pulls the rug out from under him. He is trying to shame you with
something, so if you stick it right back in his face and say, “Thank
you. I will confess that as soon as I can,” what is he going to do? His
attempt to shame you has failed because you took it and made it into
something positive instead of the negative thing that he wanted to do
with it. That is the way to handle it.
Do not play his game. The more we play around with the devil, the worse
trouble we get ourselves into. So recognize how he works and tell him
to get lost. Since his name is Lucifer, I like to call him “Loser-fer”
because he is the ultimate loser. He has chosen against God and he is
spending eternity in hell. That is what a loser is all about. As Mother
Teresa said, the only ones who are a success in this life are the ones
who succeed in getting to heaven, and the only ones who are a failure
in this life are the ones who fail to get to heaven. It does not matter
if you die with ten billion dollars. If you go to hell, what difference
does it make? What profit is there for a man if he gains the whole
world and loses his soul in the process? What good does it do? The only
thing that matters is getting to heaven, so do not play footsie with
the devil. It does not do us any good at all.
21. Marriage
Marriage, from the point of view of the Church, is not merely
natural. There is a natural element to it, so we have to recognize the
civil aspect of the marriage, but it is a sacrament. Therefore, it is
something which is spiritual; it is holy. It is not merely a contract.
Marriage is a covenant. A covenant is an agreement between God and His
people, with God making promises on one side and the people making
promises on the other. All covenants have three elements. They are
permanent, faithful, and life giving. That is precisely what the couple
promises right before they make their vows, that it is for life, it is
permanent, and there will not be a third in there. It is only two, it
is for life, and it is to give life. You are open to the possibility of
children. That is precisely what a couple enters into. And this builds
upon the covenant you have already entered into on the day you were
baptized, because baptism is entrance into the covenant. Now you enter
into another covenant which builds upon the baptismal covenant, and you
cannot enter into this covenant unless you are already a baptized
person. That is why it is between a baptized male and a baptized
female. You have to be a member of Jesus Christ before you can enter
into a sacramental marriage. It cannot be a covenant if there is not
baptism already.
The purpose of this is to make you holy. This is how most people are
going to become saints or fail to become saints: by the way they live
their married life. People need to understand that in this day and age
where divorce is so common. You have made a vow to God, and a vow is
binding under the pain of sin. It is a vow to love this person every
day for the rest of your life. You did not vow to love this person as
long as you feel like you are being loved: “As long as I’m happy, as
long as I’m being fulfilled, as long as I’m getting what I want, then
I’ll love you.” That is not what you said. It is an unconditional vow
to Almighty God, as well as to this other person, that you will love
that person every day and every moment of every day for the rest of
your life regardless of what that person is doing toward you. To be
married requires that you be a saint, and any married person
understands that.
The point of marriage, then, is to become holy. You are to help one
another become saints, and that can be done in one of two ways. There
is the positive way in which two people truly loving one another in a
selfless manner seek to build one another up by pointing out in charity
the faults of the other, by helping the other to grow, by praying
together, by building up the unity that is there, and helping one
another to reach higher and higher in the spiritual life. That is what
matrimony is supposed to be. I suspect in most marriages the way that
you become a saint is the negative way, that is, by living with
somebody and being such a pain that the only way they can live in the
same house with you is by being a saint. Well, that is one way to
become a saint. However, you did not make a vow to be a hairshirt for
the other person. You made a vow to love that person.
22. Morality Part 1
For Catholics, morality is more than just common sense. It is more than
the results of philosophical or anthropological studies. And, thanks be
to God, it is more than the results of opinion polls. That is what
Americans like for deciding what is moral and what is not. “Let’s take
a poll and see what the majority of people think.” It does not matter.
In the first lesson we asked, “Why were the people of Israel right and
everybody else was wrong when it came to the fact that there is only
one God?” The whole world said there was a multiplicity of gods and
this one little group of people said there is only one God. They were
right and everybody else was wrong. It is not about opinion polls. It
is not because everybody else is doing it. It is about what is right.
The wonderful thing is that when you know you are right, you know you
cannot be wrong. It is not an arrogant statement because the truth is
objective, not subjective. If we can conform ourselves to the truth of
God as the Church teaches us, then we know we are doing what is right
because it is not “my own opinion” and it is not “my own idea.” It is
God’s teaching, it is His truth, and that is what sets us free. Jesus
said: The truth will set you free. You were made for the truth and the
truth will set you free. If we live according to the truth, we will
have the freedom we are seeking and we will have happiness. On the
other hand, He tells us that if we sin we become slaves to sin and we
are unhappy. What does the devil tell us? “All these sinful things are
going to make you happy.” They have never made anybody happy. All they
do is lead to misery.
We think that if we do it God’s way we are going to be so miserable and
unhappy and lonely, but it is just the opposite. When you are with God,
you are never alone; you cannot be because you are with Him. The hermit
who wrote the book The Hermitage Within had a profound statement when
he said, “You’re never less alone than when you’re alone with God,”
because you are with Him Who is all in all. If we do it His way, we are
happy.
And it is an objective thing; it is not about opinions. Morality for
Catholics flows from our faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus taught us about
many things, but He also taught us how to live a good life. If you want
to see it encapsulized, it is in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).
That is where He brings it all together. There are lots of teachings
all over the Gospels, but He brings it all together right there for the
moral teachings. Not only did He teach His disciples how to live a good
life, but He did it Himself first. He lived a good life, and He becomes
for us the model for all Christian living. Morality is based on the
words and the deeds of Jesus Christ.
23. Morality Part 2
On the human level, not only do we need good laws, but those laws must
be in conformity with the divine law in order to be good, and they must
be framed and promulgated by good and wise legislators. That, of
course, brings one to an obvious point of concern: to have good and
wise legislators making the laws. It is rather interesting to see some
of the twists that are there. We have the interest groups with all of
their things, but the important point here is that it must be in
conformity with divine law. If it is not, it is an unjust law, and an
unjust law does not have to be followed. In fact, if it is an unjust
law, it must be disobeyed. That is a point people do not always
understand. For instance, people would say it is okay to kill babies
because the Supreme Court said it is. Well, it goes directly against
the Fifth Commandment; it goes against what God has made clear in
Scripture and through His Church, and therefore we have an obligation
to disobey the law. We cannot hide behind the law and say it is okay
because the Supreme Court said it is okay. We actually have a moral
obligation to be disobedient in that case, to obey the higher law and
disobey the lower law, because the lower law is not in conformity with
the higher law. We need to also be careful that we do not try to pick
and choose the laws we like and do not like. They have to truly be
unjust laws in order to be disobeyed. They cannot be something that we
simply do not feel like doing, or that we do not like ourselves. It has
to truly be an unjust law.
One thing I have noticed with some of the laws is that the more
ridiculous and unjust the law is, the more severe the penalty is for
disobeying it – because that is the only way they can get anybody to
obey it since it is unjust. I have found it to be an interesting
pattern the way these guys operate. They know the thing is a worthless
law, and the only way they can make anybody conform to it is to make
the penalty for disobeying it so ridiculously severe that you have no
choice, even though it is not just.
As I mentioned, there was the obedience of Jesus to the will of His
Father that accomplished our salvation; therefore, we in our turn have
to follow His example. And if we are going to follow His example, it is
to be obedient even if it means going against our own will. Obviously,
Jesus never had to do anything against His own will because His will is
the will of God and that was not an issue. For us, sometimes it is a
problem.
On the subjective end, the conscience is the supreme subjective norm of
morality. In our day, the conscience is frequently appealed to as an
absolutely autonomous principle within the person, almost something
which is not supposed to be challenged by anyone, including the state
or the Church. In order to know how to deal with this, we need to know,
first of all, what the conscience is and what it is not.
24.
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