Pope Francis speaks to pilgrims during his Wednesday General Audience on April 23, 2014 Credit: Kyle Burkhart/CNA
Posted on 05/15/2014 2:15:20 PM PDT by NYer
.- 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.”
Sure there is!
We PROTESTants just don't cotton too well to stuff that your church REQUIRES that cannot be found in Scripture.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
I agree. Thanks for the ping.
Not exactly. You don’t believe my “words” include the immediately preceding remark, “one of the chief issues with Protestantism is that the Protestant movement and the Protestant bibles (especially the KJV)” have anything to do with what you quote (#120) “....lessen the role of the Priest by eliminating him as a necessary conduit between a Christian and Christ”?
When the two are not separated by even so much as a comma?
Go back and look!
I don’t know that you are missing anything. Probably not. You seldom do.
Bluntly (as you noted) Jesus Christ does not deal with divisions and denominations. He clearly stated this:
John 10:KJV
25 Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me.
26 But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you.
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
29 My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.
So which is it? Eating gives you life or the Holy Spirit?
Jesus said the Spirit gives life.
“Whether or not the Clergy are described as a form of “lawyer,” one of the chief issues with Protestantism is that the Protestant movement and the Protestant bibles (especially the KJV) lessen the role of the Priest by eliminating him as a necessary conduit between a Christian and Christ.”
NOW, I ASK AGAIN, as I asked in my post #120, Kindly show me the exact verse in the Bible that says that a Priest is a necessary conduit to Christ.
Very true, good quote. But you perhaps think that this verse means all you need is Scripture --- Scripture and nothing else --- but that's not what it says.
They also had the example and the oral preaching of the Apostles, and the actual practice of worship and governance of the first (apostle-founded) Churches, which sustained the whole Church for several generations before the whole NT was written, collected and and canonized.
Otherwise, you'd be an a position of saying there was "no Church" before the NT Scriptures were completed, which would leave you with "no Church" until about 90-95 AD, when the epistles of John were completed. This is obviously untenable. There were hundreds of local churches scattered all over the Middle East, Turkey, Greece, northern Africa, etc --- founded on the preaching, teaching, and example of first and second generation missionaries, in the absence of the NT canon.
St. John says, several times, that a whole lot more was said and done, than got written down; and St. Paul says to be guided by the preaching and by his example and that of the other apostles and evangelists in their midst.
" Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”Read it out loud, and I think you'll be on your way to "getting" it. He could hardly say, "Eat My Flesh, it avails nothing!" or... "Don't bother eating My Flesh, it's not good for anything!"
When He says "the flesh" avails nothing, He means YOUR flesh, an earth-bound understanding, unaided by the Grace of God. He often uses "the flesh" this way, to mean a narrow, materialist mind-set, un-illumined by faith. It's like saying "You meat-head!"
If HIS Flesh meant nothing, it would mean His coming in the flesh (incarnation) was useless, as well as His dying in the flesh (the atoning sacrifice) and His rising in the flesh. This obviously means a great deal, HIS Flesh. It means everything.
Jeepers dear spirited, but I very strongly doubt that my dear brother in Christ, TXnMA, would embrace any of these statements, these "assumptions." Methinks that you are attributing things to him which he never said, or even suggested.
I vouch for the following, based on my knowledge of his public and private writings: (1) He definitely knows that God does "speak" — through the Holy Scriptures and His other divine revelations to us. (2) He is a systematic, logical thinker. I don't know what this has to do with "pragmatism." (3) He can't stand Darwin's evolutionary theory.
FWIW.
And, I ask again, as I have before, Kindly show me the exact statement where I have even suggested what you allege.
If anything I have suggested contrarily. What doctrine do you believe you are defeating (or defending)?
“Whether or not the Clergy are described as a form of “lawyer,” one of the chief issues with Protestantism is that the Protestant movement and the Protestant bibles (especially the KJV) lessen the role of the Priest by eliminating him as a necessary conduit between a Christian and Christ.”
COMPLETE means something different to Rome; eh?
I agree with our brother in Christ, TXnMA, you, Jewish Physicist Gerald Schroeder and others, the universe is approximately 14 billion years old from our present space/time coordinates and also approximately 6 days old from the inception space/time coordinates. This is due to relativity and the inflationary model.
We mortals are the observers from our present space/time coordinates. God alone was the observer inception space/time coordinates - Creation ex nihilo.
“That you consider Madame Blavatsky a reliable source says far more about you than it does about the subject at hand.”
Spirited: If one wants to know what Dialectical Materialism really means, and to gain understanding of its’ inconsistencies, fallacies of logic, et al, what better source than dialectical theoreticians themselves. The same is true of serial killers and occultists. It is your lack of understanding that is at fault.
I very strongly doubt that my dear brother in Christ, TXnMA, would embrace any of these statements, these “assumptions
Spirited: Either God spoke everything into existence in six instantaneous acts (days) of creation (Special Creation), meaning that Adam was a living soul/spirit embodied within physical matter (body) right from the start, or Adam is a myth, the meaning of which men of our age are at liberty to interpret according to their cosmic narratives.
As soon as Special Creation is rejected in favor of cosmic narratives, evolutionary transformism over billions of years becomes necessary.
When men reject what God Said in favor of their own interpretations, then God MUST BE MADE submissive to the laws of science. He must act according to the requirements of man’s science in the same way as apostate Kabbalist Jews “killed” God in order to take control of His Divine powers.
Does TXnMA embrace the statements outlined in my post? Obviously he does, whether unwittingly or wittingly cannot be known by other people. However, our Lord knows our heart. He knows what is really there. We cannot fool Him.
Ideas have consequences because our actual thinking takes place in what Francis Schaeffer calls the “thought-form” realm whence ‘unseen’ spirits are at all times. Fyodor Dostoevsky knew this to be true, which is why his penetrating analysis of Rennaissance/Enlightement ‘isms’ including the science of evolution revealed to him the face of the devil at the lowest substratum of meaning. While spirits cannot force the will of man to submit to them they know how to seduce wills to their ends.
My purpose in this thread is not to argue and quibble with wills bent and determined on cosmic narratives, a fruitless exercise imo, but to deliver a message found in John 10:1-14.
exempli gratia
It’s not what we do physically, in the body or by the actions of our body, that saves us.
That becomes works and works do not save.
Abraham was saved by faith, it was counted to him as righteousness, and all who are of faith are the sons of Abraham.
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