What is Hard to Understand "Most of us understand anger more readily than mercy, judgment more readily than compassion, and fear more readily than trust. The journey of faith is the gradual movement from what comes naturally to what comes supernaturally. We spend our lives learning to believe that God's love is more real than our fears. Every act of trust, no matter how small, enlarges the heart and leads us toward the freedom of the children of God." The freest people are often not those who have mastered life, but those who have learned to trust Love.-Br.MD
Proverbs 9:10 10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. I don't know. My take on the Church in general at the moment is that it is being buried under a False, Presumptious sense of the Mercy of God. A False Mercy that does not take into account the Justice of God. A False Mercy that denies the reality of Sin and Hell. People have totally lost the Fear of God and of Hell. The attack on Catholics who still hold to the Faith, the Faithful Remnant is precisely that they are rigid, Judgemental and Pharisees. The worst loss of Freedom is to loose the sense of God's Justice because it leaves us wandering in the desert of our own sins with no idea how to escape. People who are told that their sins do not matter before God have no idea how to escape the consequences of their own sins. Everlasting Fire. There is a kind of urban myth that the Church has been too harsh, rigid and judgemental and needs to stop it. My own experience has been quite the reverse. In my own lifetime the Church has more and more abandoned all discipline and sense of Justice. As to individuals . The strong impression I get is that people no longer believe in Hell and Sin and can do whatever suits them. https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-is-the-sin-of-presumption 'This is how the old Catholic Encyclopedia defines the sin of presumption: It may be defined as the condition of a soul that, because of a badly regulated reliance on God’s mercy and power, hopes for salvation without doing anything to deserve it, or for pardon of his sins without repenting of them.' Psalm 85:10 Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
This brought to mind the words which Bl. Alexandrina wished to have inscribed on her tomb, as her final plea to sinners to repent. "On her tomb are these words, as she requested: “Sinners, if the ashes of my body can be useful to save you, come, pass over them, trample them until they disappear. But sin no more: do not offend our Beloved Lord any longer. Repent. Do not risk losing Jesus for all Eternity. He is so good!”
Padraig, I also hope that those of us who make regular posts on MOG grasp the important distinction you make above in post 2! If it were not true, the final judgment scene in Matthew 25 would have to be reduced to a mere coming home party. But this must only urge us to set good example, to share the Good News with others, and, of course, to practice the spiritual Work of Mercy, admonish the sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, be merciful to me a sinner! To encounter God is the first step to embracing His Mercy. May I better point the way each day by word and example!
Future Saint Bishop Sheen spoke so often of false compassion and as I read your words, I couldn't help thinking of him. No one wants to hurt feelings, or rumple any feathers it seems. Everything is fine. Look this way, ignore that. But it's pretty bad and people have no idea how bad it can get. Fear of the Lord seems nonexistent right now. After losing so many loved ones to accidental deaths, I know that anything.can happen in this world. It keeps me on my toes prayer wise and trust wise, when it comes to our Dear Lord and Savior. May our Lord and Blessed Mother watch over us all and our loved ones today and everyday
You made some very valuable points. One reason the Lord does appear and talk about his mercy is that it is needed. I believe that some people will use mercy as a way not to face their need for conversion, which is something done daily. Scruples can be a problem, not just for Catholics but for all walks of life. We need to learn that we are called to conversion 'now', Also that God's love and mercy are always open to the sinner. Finding the right balance is a problem for many.
Yes there is balance between Mercy and Justice. What is it? mmmm.. I would guess it lies in repentance and genuine conversion. It reminds me of what the priest says in Ash Wednesday giving out the ashes, 'Repent and believe the Good News'. The problem is a teaching that suggests mercy without conversion and repentance.
Many people do not understand how important their actions and thoughts are. We create ourselves with or without grace. Without grace, we become monsters for eternity. We choose; God gives us the freedom. I judge actions, but the soul which is God's domain only. We must pray for all.
The whole of the Spiritual Life could be said to be about us learning and relearning that we constantly need grace. As St Phillip Neri said, 'My pride will die half and hour after I do!'. We are like little clockwork mice that constantly run into the wall of our pride and bouncing of it turn again and again and again to God for help. It is a lesson we have to keep relearning over and over until we die. It is here I think the great sinners have the advantage, we have to hit the bottom before we hit the top and great sinners have indeed touched bottom and in doing so their pride gets a huge kicking. As Jesus said: Luke 7:47 Therefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.”
One of the things that seems to happen over and over again in the lives of the saints (and maybe us all) is that people from the outside misjudge their inner state. I was reading last night about a nun who was supposed to be a mystic who told people that Padre Pio was deluded and possessed by the devil. Many people believed her. It was the same in the life of Jesus where for instance it was said that He was able to exorcise devils through the power of devils. I suppose the antidote to being spiritually misjudged is a Spirit of Detachment. Of not caring one way or another about such misjudgements but only about how God Judges.
The example given by many in The Church during the appalling abuse crisis (which was effectively a crisis of sodomising young boys) was one of excessive mercy, wickedly reckless of the consequences, where Freud was given greater regard then the words of Christ (the millstone comment) and abusers were sent for ‘treatment’ instead of being immediately defrocked and handed over to the judicial authorities. I don’t think one can over-estimate the damage this did to the credibility of The Church among many of the faithful, notably in Ireland.
I think under natural human instincts certain human misbehaviours produce feelings in intense disgust, revulsion and even horror. Perhaps none so intense than abuse of children. This perhaps more than anything was the cause of outrage amongst the Catholic faithful that it bounced of these coverup Bishops, Cardinals and Vatican officials like a they were minor traffic offenses. People knew the whole thing stunk to high heaven. That something was really, really rotten in the Sate of Denmark. They did not need to be drawn pictures. The same thing with the love affair between may higher clergy (including the last two Popes ) with Sodomy. This all being well within their comfort zone is not normal for normal male. They were comfortable with child molestation because they themselves were very often homosexuals.
Which leads on to the question of how many Bishops and Cardinals did deal appropriately with these priestly monsters? In other words how many referred them to the police to be locked up for a long time? Did any of them? Ever? Or was it always this False Mercy? And more troubling still is it still going on today?
I think this happens, in part, because we gain a better understanding of the greatness of God's mercy when we realize how undeserving of it we are in light of the gravity of our sins. Small, everyday venial sins can give us a sense of proportion between sin and penance almost daily, while mortal sin, when met with a contrite and humbled heart, gives us a deeper awareness of our spiritual wretchedness and of what grace truly represents: an undeserved gift. This teaching is not an encouragement to sin, but rather a demonstration of how much God delights in reaching out to great sinners and how the process of salvation often lies beyond our control and our own notions of probability.
For those who love God all things work together unto the good. Even our sins. That sounds incredible, but it's true.
Haven’t many saints expressed gratitude for Adam and Eve’s fault? Despite the horror of the Fall, it has been the cause of the Incarnation and all that stems from It.
