Some beautiful quotes of saint Mother Theresa on sanctity..... #Holiness is not the luxury of the few! Holiness is a simple duty for you and for me! #You have to be holy where you are – wherever God has put you, the acceptance of God with a smile, at all times, anywhere and everywhere.” #God does not demand that I be successful. God demands that I be faithful. When facing God, results are not important. Faithfulness is what is important.”
I don't believe anyone anters heaven until they obtain the , 'Entrance Ticket". What is that entrance ticket? I belive the Ticket is when we say, 'Yes' to God. Aperct example of this yes, this Fiat was Mary at the Annuciation when she said , 'Yes' to God/ the Arcangel Gabirel and so, 'The Word was made Flesh and Dwelt among us'. John 1:14 14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. As St Athansius tells us; 'God became man that man might become God'. When we too say the perfect Fiat of Mary God comes dwell in us. This is the fulfilment of Christ's promise: John 14:23 Jesus replied, "Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. This perfect , 'yes', is the Entrance Ticket to heaven. We will nto enter heaven without it. Either we purchase it in this life or pay for it in the next in far more strnous and painful circumstances in the next; in Purgatory Matthew 18:21-35 Parable of the Unforgiving Debtor 21 Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someonea]">[a] who sins against me? Seven times?” 22 “No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven!b]">[b] 23 “Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. 24 In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars.c]">[c] 25 He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt. 26 “But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’ 27 Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt. 28 “But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars.d]">[d] He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment. 29 “His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it,’ he pleaded. 30 But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full. 31 “When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened. 32 Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ 34 Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt. 35 “That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisterse]">[e] from your heart.”
The soul can be considered as a Great Castle. Thus, like Satan we can say, 'I will not serve', or like the Blessed Virgin we can say, " iam the handmaid of the Lord be at done onto me according to thy will'. Love is freely given if not freely given it is not love. But in this life our , 'I will ', is faulty. Whenwe say , 'I will', our Fiat is hedged about by a thousand hedges. We mean bu saying, 'I will', exept for a thousand circumstances and for a hundred material possesions. What we really mean by, 'I will', is, 'I will ..except'. Onyl when we can say like Mary, 'I will ', without exception or hedging do we get the heaven ticket. This perfect , 'I will', is what mystical theologians in the West call , 'Mystical Marriage, or in the Eastern Church, 'Divinisation.' Consider a Great Eagle who wnats to fly in the heavens but is tied down to Earth by a hundred iron chains. He cannot fly. But with much prayer and suffering he is tied to the Earth by a single rope. But, though it is a single rope ; still he cannot fly. After a great deal more prayer the single rope is reduced to a bare thread. But still the thread ties the Great Eagle to the Earth. Only at last when the single thread that ties him to the Earrth is finally severed does the Eagle soar. So it is in this life with the souls who fly straight to heaven after death. There is already no ropes to bind them . They have already in a real sense entered heaven ebfore death. Death is only the casting off off a veil that has already been cast off by their perfect Fiat. "thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven'. But this rpayer said not simply with the tongue but with all the heart.
I think this is one of the key diffenrecnes from the Spiritual Culture of Catholicsim as compared to , say mainline Protestantism of Modernist Catholicsm. The Protestant. /Modern Catholic approach is to say that we're all equal, all in the boat so to speak. A kind of Spiritual Socialism that places everyone and everything on the one same level. So ,for instance we don;t talk of Our Lady as Queen of Heaven but as mary. We don't talk of the Virgin ity of Mary but her social class as a peasant. This Spiritual Socialism is the very death of mysticism. Mysticsm being a journey, a pilgrimage, cliimbing the mountain, so to speak. In search of the dream, if you like. The Protestant approach is , rather , we've got it made. We're saved. or the Modernist Catholic approach , 'God's got your back , don;t worry he'll straigthen things out', kinda false mercy, as though God was running a Welfare State from the Pink Clouds. But look, for instance at the nine choirs of angels. They are a specific Heirarchy. So much so in fact that St Thomas Aquinas comments that each choir is as different from each other in power and might and splendour as as to be a different species. When we die we are each of us to join one of those choirs of angels. Not all of us in the same choir, but each of us in one of the nine choirs. Why is this? Becuase we are all of us different. We are not all the same. For this we where born. Before we were even in our mother's womb God knew us and in creating us created us to join the choir of angels to which at the end of times we will be assigned. The modern Cathoic/ Protestant cannot accpet this because he or she does not think it , 'fair'. Whcih , really is just another way of saying it does not conform to the modern Liberal outlook. Of which Protestantism forms such a substantial part. St Therese of Liseaux wrote on this better than anyone I have read, I must find the passage she wrote which describes all this. “The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of it’s scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.” ― Thérèse de Lisieux
Actually you know I was watching a film last night as I worked on the Night Shift. If you want to know what , 'Heroic Virtue', means in terms of the Church raising someone to the altars, watch this.
Well said. If there is one thing I would point out it is the mind boggling fact that following the perennial philosophy of Aquinas et al each individual Angel is as distinct from each the other as apples and triangularity.
I heard a preist recently tell a story. he was attending an old lady as she lay dying in a nursing home. Wanting to give the woman the Last Rites he approached her bed but one of the dughters intervened saying that he would give her mother the, "wrong idea', that she was dying. But the priest insisted and gave her the Last Rites anyway. On attedning the dead ladies wake he heard members of the family informing him how holy their mother had been. On further inquiry he discovered the deceased lady had not atteneded Church for the last 17 years. At her mass he also heard he Parish Priest tell the congregation with great assurance that the lady in question was most certainly in heaven. I think this is what I mean by Spiritual Socialism. ..We're all just fine and everything is just fine and everything will turn out fine. No matter what. They have forgotten that while grace is free, it is not cheap. Thet we're not all sailing along on the same boat. No not at all. We are all in the smae journey. But not all to the same place.
Yes, thank you. That is something absent within Protestantism. We're already saved by faith, so no worries! Just "go back to grace", don't worry about your sins, Jesus already has that covered! So deeply wrong. And sad. Not that some Protestant Christisns don't get it and latch on and aspire to be holy, some do. But understanding our mission as Christians and grasping something of the weight of that mission is tough in a theologically Protestant environment. Possible, but difficult.
I also like what you said, Padraig, on "false mercy". Well spotted. This has become the Sola Fidé of modern Catholic thought.
The aunt of someone I once knew had died. She was unmarried and had been something of a problem in the family (a good enough woman in some ways but with a reputation for gossiping and someone who liked to interfere and had caused trouble in the family etc.). The nephew said that he told the officiating priest that he was concerned for her soul and requested that the mourners be asked to have Masses and prayers said for the repose of her soul. The priest smiled and nodded and he thought that he could expect that the priest would do as asked. The priest opened proceedings by telling the mourners, 'Have no doubt that our beloved sister Martha (who he hardly knew) is now in heaven...' I recall the funeral of the (post-mortem exposed) deviant predator, Jimmy Savile, buried in a Catholic Cathedral with the smiling assurance of the presiding priest shown on national TV, that he was in heaven. Even without the subsequent exposure of his vile crimes, how on earth could he possibly know what the eternal fate of another person could be? I actually emailed the priest concerned when the truth came out and he said that he had not done any more than he would for any ordinary person!!!!! That is ensure anyone who would listen that the deceased is happy even if we are unhappy because we miss them. Lord, help us. I was close to entering the seminary (I mean weeks away) when I was a teenager, I would have gone mad by now if I had gone ahead.
True. Seminaries need more good guys like you, though, Steve. Just saying. God may not have willed for you to become a priest, but I have the feeling you would have made a solid one.
God protected you. My cousin entered the seminary and left because of the deviancy. He left the Church for many years. Thank God he has returned. I just thought of a line from Casablanca (movie) captain Reynard says to Rick after finally choosing the right side “I hope you know this isn’t going to be very easy for either one of us.” I am thinking I suppose of the purging and cleaning that is beginning in the Church. It isn’t goi ng to be easy for any of us. The rot has gone so deep. Jimmy Savile and your aunt are just an outward symptom of so much that has gone wrong.
