Posted on 10/27/2004 1:25:44 PM PDT by A.A. Cunningham
All Souls Day and final destinations
What really hangs in the balance
Next Tuesday, Nov. 2, is more than Election Day. It’s also All Souls Day, a day of prayer for all those faithful who have died in God’s friendship but still face the purification of Purgatory.
The Church sets aside November so we can reflect on the Four Last Things: death, judgment, heaven and hell. We can predict very little in our daily lives. But we do know that we’ll die. We’ll face God in judgment. And at the end of time we’ll find ourselves in one of two states: eternal joy with our Creator, or eternal bitterness in the prison of our own sins.
Every year at this time I reread the Prophet Amos. The word “Amos” in Hebrew literally means “one who bears the burden.” That’s what the prophets did. They were men who bore the burden of speaking God’s truth to people who didn’t want to hear it. And even today, when we read Scripture, the prophets continue to speak to us. They always give us a new burden — a new awareness that affects our lives. We find that burden summarized in a great warning the Prophet Amos gave the Jewish people: Thus says the Lord, God of hosts, “Woe to the complacent in Zion” (Am 6:1).
Our English word “complacent” comes from two Latin words; cum which means “with” and placere, which means “to please.” To be complacent means to be “pleased with,” and that usually means pleased with ourselves. Complacency has nothing to do with being lazy. It’s not about sloth. It’s about being self-satisfied. Being pleased with oneself, for a Christian, is a form of idolatry. We should only be satisfied with God.
Being pleased with themselves was the sin of the Jewish people that Amos attacked. According to Scripture, they were lying on beds of ivory, stretched out comfortably on their couches. They ate lambs taken from the flock and calves from the stall. They had more food than other people while the poor starved.
“Zion” is a word that the Old Testament sometimes uses to describe Jerusalem. Not the earthly city of Jerusalem, but Jerusalem perfected at the end of time. America today probably comes closer to that understanding of Zion than any nation in human history. We are a rich country. Our people are wealthy; even our poor are well off compared to the poor in other countries. We’re powerful in ways that no other nation has ever achieved, and compared to most places we enjoy peace. That’s why Sept. 11 was such a shock. We thought we were invincible and that we’d be at peace indefinitely. Thus, we’re a privileged nation, and so in a special way Amos’ warning is directed to us.
“Woe to the complacent in Zion.” The Jews of Amos’ time were not made ill by the collapse of Joseph. Joseph was the father of the northern tribes of Israel. Amos issued his warning because they were not made sick by the misfortune of their brothers and sisters. Likewise, if we are not made sick by the suffering of the poor, the crucifixion of other countries like Sudan and the persecution of fellow Christians around the world; if we are not somehow moved profoundly by those terrible things happening around the globe, then we deserve the same bitter judgment about which the Prophet Amos warned.
On Nov. 2 and throughout the coming month of prayer for the Poor Souls, we need to remember that we are citizens of God’s kingdom first, America second. God won’t ask about our political party when we stand before Him in judgment. He’ll ask what we did to protect the unborn child; to feed the hungry; to help the poor. And much more than a national election hangs on our answer.
Archbishop Chaput adapted his column this week from his homily at the Sept. 25 Sunset Mass at Red Rocks.
You are ignorant of Scripture.
Necromancy is conjuring up dead people's ghosts for the purpose of fortune-telling. I have no idea why you think that has anything to do with praying to God on behalf of a dead Christian brother or sister. Do you?
"To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord"
Nice of you to invent "Scripture," but that isn't what the verse says. Paul says he would rather be absent from the body and present with the Lord, but he makes no claim that the first necessarily implies the second, not even for himself.
Necromancy is conjuring up dead people's ghosts for the purpose of fortune-telling. I have no idea why you think that has anything to do with praying to God on behalf of a dead Christian brother or sister. Do you?
"To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord"
Nice of you to invent "Scripture," but that isn't what the verse says. Paul says he would rather be absent from the body and present with the Lord, but he makes no claim that the first necessarily implies the second, not even for himself.
Necromancy is conjuring up dead people's ghosts for the purpose of fortune-telling. I have no idea why you think that has anything to do with praying to God on behalf of a dead Christian brother or sister. Do you?
"To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord"
Nice of you to invent "Scripture," but that isn't what the verse says. Paul says he would rather be absent from the body and present with the Lord, but he makes no claim that the first necessarily implies the second, not even for himself.
Where does the Blessed Mother acknowledge she is a sinner?
The Magnificat
My soul doth magnify the Lord:
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
Because He hath regarded the lowliness of His Handmaid:
for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For He that is mighty hath done great things to me: and holy is His Name.
And His mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear Him.
He hath showed might with His arm:
He hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the lowly.
He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich He hath sent empty away.
He hath received Israel His servant, being mindful of His mercy;
As He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever.
"My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior."
To rejoice in her Savior, means she acknowledges she is a sinner in need of salvation, i.e. needs a Savior to save her from her deserved destination -- Hell. (Where we all would be BUT for the saving Blood of Christ.)
To be saved implies there is something she needs to be saved from. If she was sinless, she would not need the Savior and therefore her spirit would have no need for rejoicing.
You are really stretching it here. You make me laugh.
Call me a cynic, but I believe Christ's sacrifice was "purification" for believers.
Next Tuesday, Nov. 2, is more than Election Day... <<<
Think carefully about your logic. How do Catholics think Mary became sinless? By her own effort? Because she was so good-looking? No, by the foreseen application of the merits of her crucified Son. That's dogma, a Catholic who denies it is properly called a heretic.
So, if she calls God her savior, it follows that she needed saving and was in fact saved. It does not follow that she had necessarily committed personal sins. Babies haven't committed personal sins, yet none of them can get to heaven on their own merits (to say otherwise is the heresy of Pelagianism). Catholics are required by their faith to believe precisely that her sinlessness was a gift from God, that is, that it was part and parcel of the grace that saved her.
And none of that has anything to do with praying for the Poor Souls in purgatory, which was the original topic of this thread.
Keep in mind that Scripture says that nothing unclean can enter heaven and that our God is a consuming fire. No attachment to sin can survive in his presence, can it?
Praying to a dead Christian - i.e. the dead in Christ or a dead "Saint" - as if they had more power or a different power than God to intercede for us
... is simply something that no Catholic knowledgeable in his faith does. It's a red herring. The saints are powerful because they are in the presence of God and filled with his divine life and charity. Their intercession flows through the mediation of Christ, just like the intercession of the (then biologically) living Christians Paul asks to pray for him in his letters. If what we do is wrong, what he did is wrong also.
Don't bother saying "but he didn't pray to dead people"; I'll just point you back to Jesus telling the Sadducees, "Why does God say to Moses, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob' ... he is not the God of the dead, but of the living."
And how could the prayers of any Christian affect the status of the dead, whose acts on earth are affixed forever in time? You mean to say if I pray hard enough for Hitler, I can change his eternal destination?
If you mean can you dig Hitler out of hell and get him to heaven, no, you can't. Purgatory is only for the saved.
You really seem determined to attack a caricature of Catholicism. Why don't you try actually coming to some sort of understanding of the real thing, instead of throwing up and shooting down these strawman arguments?
"Keep in mind that Scripture says that nothing unclean can enter heaven and that our God is a consuming fire. No attachment to sin can survive in his presence, can it?"
Of course. Our sins are covered by the blood of Christ. Blood is required for the remission of sins. Once and for all it was done on the Cross. That is faith -- trusting that all of our sins are pardoned by God.
You haven't proved that Mary committed any sins, nor have you refuted my objection to your logic.
How about the time she and Jesus' brothers came to Him and tried to get him to stop healing all those people?
I think you're inventing another "Scripture" that doesn't exist. None of the three Gospels that mention this episode say anything about Mary or anyone else trying to "get" Jesus "to stop healing" anyone. It just says that they wanted to see him. No sin in that.
The moment Christ died, he took ALL the sins of the world on Him -- not some of them.
It is up to us whether we accept His "grace."
As He said to His Father according to Scripture: "It is done."
"Keep in mind that Scripture says that nothing unclean can enter heaven and that our God is a consuming fire. No attachment to sin can survive in his presence, can it?"
Hear ya...
Again, through the Lord's mercy, that was the reason for the sinless Christ's sacrifice. NO man was/is sinless but by and through the redemption of the Savior....
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