A Christian without the Church is purely idealistic, Pope says

Vatican City, May 15, 2014 / 07:43 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis reflected in his daily Mass on how the apostles evangelized by first telling the history of God’s people, explaining that it’s impossible to understand a Christian without this association.

“You cannot understand a Christian outside of the people of God. The Christian is not a monad,” but “belongs to a people: the Church,” the Pope observed in his May 15 homily.

“A Christian without a church is something purely idealistic, it is not real.”

Beginning by looking to the first reading, taken from the Acts of the Apostles, the Roman Pontiff addressed those gathered in the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse by recalling how when Paul preached in Antioch, he did so by first recounting the whole of Israel’s salvation history.

“Jesus does not make sense without this history” because he “is the end of this story, (the end) toward which this story goes, toward which it walks,” he noted, so “you cannot understand a Christian outside of the people of God.”

“You cannot understand a Christian alone, just like you cannot understand Jesus Christ alone” the Pope went on to say, explaining that “Jesus Christ did not fall from the sky like a superhero who comes to save us.”

“No. Jesus Christ has a history. And we can say, and it is true, that God has a history because He wanted to walk with us. And you cannot understand Jesus Christ without His history.”

Pope Francis then described how a Christian without a history, a nation or the Church “is incomprehensible,” saying that it’s “a thing of the laboratory, an artificial thing, a thing that cannot give life.”

Drawing attention to the importance of remembering this “dimension of history,” the Bishop of Rome observed that a Christian is “a living memory of his people’s journey, he is the living memory of his Church.”

“Then, where is this people going? Toward the ultimate promise. It is a people walking toward fullness; a chosen people which has a promise for the future and walks toward this promise, toward the fulfillment of this promise.”

In order to do this Christians within the Church must be men and women “with hope: hope in the promise,” the Pope went on, noting that “It is not expectation: no, no! That’s something else: It is hope.”

“Right, on we go! (Toward) that which does not disappoint.”

Explaining how a Christian is also someone who remembers, the pontiff encouraged all present to “seek the grace of memory, always” so that by doing so and also looking forward with hope they might be a Christian who “follows the path of God and renews the covenant with God.”

This type of Christian constantly tells the Lord “Yes, I want the commandments, I want your will, I will follow you” he continued, adding that “He is a man of the covenant, and we celebrate the covenant, every day” in the Mass, therefore a Christian is “a woman, a man of the Eucharist.”

Concluding his reflections, Pope Francis encouraged all present to “think about our Christian identity,” stating that “Our Christian identity is belonging to a people: the Church.”

“Without this, we are not Christians” he observed, noting how “we entered the Church through baptism: there we are Christians.”

“For this reason, we should be in the habit of asking for the grace of memory, the memory of the journey that the people of God has made,” the pontiff said, and “also of personal memory: What God did for me, in my life, how has he made me walk…”

Praying, the Roman Pontiff asked “for the grace of hope, which is not optimism: no, no! It's something else,” and asked “for the grace to renew the covenant with the Lord who has called us every day.”

“May the Lord give us these three graces, which are necessary for the Christian identity.”

TXnMA's cosmic narrative rests on 3 pillar assumptions: 1.That either God did not speak or we cannot know what He said. 2. Pragmatic reasoning which assumes that if something appears to work it is okay. 3. Evolutionary transformism of one kind of lower thing into another higher kind of thing over vast ages. Beginning with #3, evolutionary transformism is an ancient magic doctrine originating in Jewish Kabbalah and Hermetic magic. Jewish Kabbalah teaches the gradual condensation or evolutionary progression of a primal substance into visible matter. This is a fundamental, "... doctrine of the Cabala (and) is the ancient Semitic conception of the ‘primal ocean,’ known to the Babylonians as ‘Apsu’ and called by the Gnostics βύθος = (Anz, ‘Die Frage nach dem Ursprung des Gnostizismus,’ p. 98). Chaldean occult science and pagan Mystery Religion was embraced by apostate Jews during their captivity in Babylon and delivered to subsequent generations of initiates by word of mouth. According to Helena Blavatsky, these initiates of the Chaldean tradition in the centuries before Christ were known as Tanaim: "The kabalist is a student of ‘secret science’, one who interprets the hidden meaning of the Scriptures with the help of the symbolical Kabala… The Tanaim were the first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the beginning of the third century before the Christian era… This secret doctrine is identical with the Persian wisdom, or ‘magic’.” (Ibid. p.167) Hermeticism is an ancient Egyptian secret magic tradition based on a set of fourteen books known collectively as the Corpus Hermeticum attributed to a mysterious figure known as Hermes Trismegistus. Implied in Hermeticism is an evolutionary process of magical transformism moving from one kind of lower thing to another kind of higher thing: "Human beings are themselves the product of a long spiritual evolutionary process that moves from 'creeping things' to fish, mammals, birds and then people. Humans can---through occult knowledge and extraordinary ability---continue this evolutionary process and become daemons, then gods, and finally planets or stars." (The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition, James A. Herrick, p. 40) This is affirmed by G.H. Pember in his classic work, "Earth's Earliest Ages." In his book Pember thoroughly examines the explosion of spiritism, astrology, Mysteries, Buddhism, evolution/reincarnation and other occult traditions sweeping over Christendom. Pember writes that the Mysteries are no longer veiled in mystery but boldly presented by the powerful occult brotherhood that emerged out of the Renaissance as the fruit of modern science, especially evolutionary philosophy, which the brotherhood assert was included in the instructions given, "...to the initiates of the Hermetic, Orphic, Eleusinian, and Cabbalistic mysteries, and were familiar to Chaldean Magi, Egyptian Priests, Hindu Occultists, Essenes, Therapeutae Gnostics, and Theurgic Neo-Platonists." (Pember, pp.243-244) With respect to #1, Kabbalist pagan Jews rejected the Authority and Revealed Word of God, especially the literal and historic aspects of the first three books of the Genesis account in favor of their own traditions. One of the primary tactics they employed is the same one employed by their modern evolutionary counterparts. It involves the reduction of the Genesis account, particularly the first three books, to allegory and myth, a ploy that eliminates the physical Adam from which all people descended and the sin that he transferred to the rest of the human race. This strikes directly at the heart of the Gospel: the need for the ‘last Adam’ to provide for us an escape from the wrath of God against sin incurred by the first Adam. In this way, not only is the work of Christ on the cross rendered superfluous, meaning the heart of the faith is ripped out, but God is made responsible for sin and evil. (1 Peter 3:18-22; 1 John 2:22) Long ago, the teachings of some of the early Church Fathers regarding the apostasy toward the end of the church age predicted the reappearance of this tactic. The fathers categorized it a Gnostic pagan heresy. In "Heresies 6.10" Hippolytus writes that the Gnostic pagan Simon Magus feigned faith and allegorized much of Scripture, especially Genesis, to support his evolutionary Hermetic and Gnostic occult pantheist teachings. Church Fathers Ireneaus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria reveal that Gnostic cult leader Marcion rejected the Old Testament, taught that the God of the Old Testament and his prophets are evil, made God the author of sin and removed all references that Christ was Creator (John 1:1) (Ireneaus, "Against Heresies 1.26, 5.1,"Tertullian "Against Marcion 2.17," Clement of Alexandria, "Against Heresies 4.29) More than 600 times the Bible says of itself that it is the VERY WORDS of God Himself (i.e., 2 Tim. 3:16) The Bible also says of itself that it cannot be changed or tampered with, see Mt. 5:18, 1 Pet. 1:25, Is. 40:8, Ps. 119:89; 12:6-7; 19:7-8; 11:7, Lk. 16:17. Two choices lie before us: our own way, which leads us farther and farther away from Him, or His Way.

TXnMA's cosmic narrative rests on 3 pillar assumptions:

1.That either God did not speak or we cannot know what He said. 2. Pragmatic reasoning which assumes that if something appears to work it is okay. 3. Evolutionary transformism of one kind of lower thing into another higher kind of thing over vast ages.

Beginning with #3, evolutionary transformism is an ancient magic doctrine originating in Jewish Kabbalah and Hermetic magic. Jewish Kabbalah teaches the gradual condensation or evolutionary progression of a primal substance into visible matter. This is a fundamental,

"... doctrine of the Cabala (and) is the ancient Semitic conception of the ‘primal ocean,’ known to the Babylonians as ‘Apsu’ and called by the Gnostics βύθος = (Anz, ‘Die Frage nach dem Ursprung des Gnostizismus,’ p. 98).

Chaldean occult science and pagan Mystery Religion was embraced by apostate Jews during their captivity in Babylon and delivered to subsequent generations of initiates by word of mouth. According to Helena Blavatsky, these initiates of the Chaldean tradition in the centuries before Christ were known as Tanaim:

"The kabalist is a student of ‘secret science’, one who interprets the hidden meaning of the Scriptures with the help of the symbolical Kabala… The Tanaim were the first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the beginning of the third century before the Christian era… This secret doctrine is identical with the Persian wisdom, or ‘magic’.” (Ibid. p.167)

Hermeticism is an ancient Egyptian secret magic tradition based on a set of fourteen books known collectively as the Corpus Hermeticum attributed to a mysterious figure known as Hermes Trismegistus. Implied in Hermeticism is an evolutionary process of magical transformism moving from one kind of lower thing to another kind of higher thing:

"Human beings are themselves the product of a long spiritual evolutionary process that moves from 'creeping things' to fish, mammals, birds and then people. Humans can---through occult knowledge and extraordinary ability---continue this evolutionary process and become daemons, then gods, and finally planets or stars." (The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition, James A. Herrick, p. 40)

This is affirmed by G.H. Pember in his classic work, "Earth's Earliest Ages." In his book Pember thoroughly examines the explosion of spiritism, astrology, Mysteries, Buddhism, evolution/reincarnation and other occult traditions sweeping over Christendom. Pember writes that the Mysteries are no longer veiled in mystery but boldly presented by the powerful occult brotherhood that emerged out of the Renaissance as the fruit of modern science, especially evolutionary philosophy, which the brotherhood assert was included in the instructions given,

"...to the initiates of the Hermetic, Orphic, Eleusinian, and Cabbalistic mysteries, and were familiar to Chaldean Magi, Egyptian Priests, Hindu Occultists, Essenes, Therapeutae Gnostics, and Theurgic Neo-Platonists." (Pember, pp.243-244)

With respect to #1, Kabbalist pagan Jews rejected the Authority and Revealed Word of God, especially the literal and historic aspects of the first three books of the Genesis account in favor of their own Mystery traditions.

One of the primary tactics they employed is the same one employed by their modern evolutionary counterparts. It involves the reduction of the Genesis account, particularly the first three books, to allegory and myth, a ploy that eliminates the physical Adam from which all people descended and the sin that he transferred to the rest of the human race. This strikes directly at the heart of the Gospel: the need for the ‘last Adam’ to provide for us an escape from the wrath of God against sin incurred by the first Adam. In this way, not only is the work of Christ on the cross rendered superfluous, meaning the heart of the faith is ripped out, but God is made responsible for sin and evil. (1 Peter 3:18-22; 1 John 2:22)

Long ago, the teachings of some of the early Church Fathers regarding the apostasy toward the end of the church age predicted the reappearance of this tactic. The fathers categorized it a Gnostic pagan heresy.

In "Heresies 6.10" Hippolytus writes that the Gnostic pagan Simon Magus feigned faith and allegorized much of Scripture, especially Genesis, to support his evolutionary Hermetic and Gnostic occult pantheist teachings.

Church Fathers Ireneaus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria reveal that Gnostic cult leader Marcion rejected the Old Testament, taught that the God of the Old Testament and his prophets are evil, made God the author of sin and removed all references that Christ was Creator (John 1:1)

(Ireneaus, "Against Heresies 1.26, 5.1,"Tertullian "Against Marcion 2.17," Clement of Alexandria, "Against Heresies 4.29)

More than 600 times the Bible says of itself that it is the VERY WORDS of God Himself (i.e., 2 Tim. 3:16) The Bible also says of itself that it cannot be changed or tampered with, see Mt. 5:18, 1 Pet. 1:25, Is. 40:8, Ps. 119:89; 12:6-7; 19:7-8; 11:7, Lk. 16:17.

Two choices lie before us, each of them requiring an act of will: our own way, which leads us farther and farther away from Him, or His Way that takes us to Him.

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