Posted on 12/28/2016 6:29:13 PM PST by marshmallow
At today’s General Audience Francis said “faith is not just silence that accepts all without answering back, hope is not a certainty that safeguards you from doubt and uncertainty”
Complaining to the Lord is a form of praying. This was Abraham’s lesson, which the Pope reminded faithful of at the last General Audience of 2016, underlining that “so often, hope is hidden in the dark but helps us go on”. “Faith is also fighting with God, showing him our bitterness without any pious pretence,” because, Francis said continuing a series of catecheses on Christian hope, “faith is not just silence that accepts all without answering back, hope is not a certainty that safeguards you from doubt and uncertainty”.
Abraham, “believed, maintaining a steadfast hope against all hope, thus becoming the father of many peoples,” St. Paul wrote in reference “to the faith with which Abraham believed in the word of God,” the Pope added, “who promised him a son. This really was hoping “against all hope” as what the Lord had announced was highly unlikely given that the elderly man was almost 100 and his wife infertile. There was no way out but God said there was so he believed Him”.
Trusting in this promise, Abraham “sets on his way, agrees to leave his homeland and become a foreigner, hoping in this “impossible son which God was supposedly going to give him even though Sarah’s womb was as good as dead. Abraham believes, his faith opens up to a seemingly unreasonable hope; it, Francis said, is the capacity to go beyond human reasoning, beyond worldly wisdom and prudence, beyond what is normally considered good sense and to believe in the impossible. Hope opens new horizons, it gives us the ability to dream the unimaginable. Hope allows us to......
(Excerpt) Read more at lastampa.it ...
Well, frankly the Holy Spirit doesn’t seem, to me, to want to take any other view.
I’m a sinner still, and I might not have everything right. I have for a long time accepted that being in the church is a matter of the promise of the Lord, rather than a matter of the choice of men (except the initial acceptance of salvation). Yes that is a very evangelical, Baptist-looking view, no surprise. That’s the circle in which I have been most of my Christian life. But this also tells me that no matter HOW bad a set of official doctrine might get, it does not nullify the promise if the beliefs unto salvation are still there. But if the situation gets too bad, it can knock out the lampstand, so to speak. So I can’t be going around ranting that the Roman Catholic church has no Christians, or even that if a Roman Catholic is a Christian, that person is fated to walk out of the Roman Catholic church. When pride of denomination engulfed the Protestant movement and other sectors of earthly Christendom, this put a brake on any possibility of reconciliation. This will have to go away, and a colossal blessing of the Lord which clarifies that it really is all about Him seems to me the only thing that will make it go away.
Francis may be the last pope. Reconciliation may be that close. We need to hang onto our hats because the spiritual winds will be quite intense.
I wasn't looking for a blessing. I was reacting to the death of my 15 year old son. It has been a hard road, but I am finally able to thank Him for letting me have him as long as I did.
There is nothing more difficult than to be thankful to a Lord who let your child die. I choose to believe that God loved my child more than I did, and therefore did what was best for him. That means it must be the best for me as well.
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