Do We Want Comfort or Do We Want Christ?

Do We Want Comfort or Do We Want Christ?

What comforts in our lives could lead us to deny Christ under the right circumstances? All of the Apostles fled from Jesus upon his arrest and crucifixion, except for Judas, who betrayed Him and St. John, who stayed with Him and Our Blessed Mother. These Apostles, who just hours prior sat with Him at the Last Supper where He instituted the Holy Eucharist and Holy Orders, abandoned Him.

His closest friends and followers. Those men were chosen to be the first bishops of His Church. The men chosen to follow Him on the Way of the Cross. The same men who repeatedly could not understand the fact that Jesus had to be crucified, die, and rise from the dead in order to bring about the work of redemption.

We can easily make the mistake of believing that we would never do any of these things; that we would never abandon Him, betray Him, or flee. Every time we sin, we do exactly that, and in a world marred by darkness, sin, temptation, power, and the lures of comfort, the danger for each one of us is that we will abandon Christ when our hour comes and we too must undergo the test.

St. Peter boldly proclaimed—through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit—that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that there is nowhere else to go except to follow Him. Later, when the time of testing came, St. Peter denied Jesus. Here’s what John’s Gospel says:

Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus. Now the
other disciple was known to the high priest, and he entered
the courtyard of the high priest with Jesus.

But Peter stood at the gate outside. So the other disciple, the acquaintance of the high priest, went out and spoke to the gatekeeper and brought Peter in.

Then the maid who was the gatekeeper said to Peter, “You are not one of this man’s disciples, are you?” He said, “I am not.”

Now the slaves and the guards were standing around a charcoal fire that they had made, because it was cold, and were warming themselves. Peter was also standing there keeping warm.

John 18:15-18

This is the first time St. Peter denies Jesus. Notice how he enters the courtyard through the help of another disciple. He isn’t completely alone. He is with a fellow follower of Christ. Rather than seek to stay close to Jesus, St. Peter stays at a safe distance, denies Jesus, and stays at a charcoal fire where others are warming themselves. St. Peter’s distance from Jesus is felt in the description of how cold it was that night. St. Peter chooses to warm himself by the fire in the things of this world, rather than embrace the cold, isolation, and persecution Jesus is experiencing at the hands of the high priest and his men.

St. Peter refuses to accept the path. He refuses in this moment to embrace and accept the Cross. While Jesus is being interrogated and struck inside, St. Peter continues to keep warm from the cold of the events taking place. This is not just a physical cold, but a spiritual cold. He chooses the false flame of a worldly fire over the fire of God’s love. He keeps Jesus at arm’s length, at a safe distance. This leads him to deny Jesus three times.

Now Simon Peter was standing there keeping warm. And they said to him, “You are not one of his disciples, are you?” He denied it and said, “I am not.” One of the slaves of the high priest, a relative of the one whose ear Peter had cut off, said, “Didn’t I see you in the garden with him?” Again Peter denied it. And immediately the cock crowed.*

John 18:25-27

One of the essential reasons why we should meditate on this passage of Sacred Scripture is because it is not only about St. Peter’s denial. It is about our own. Like St. Peter, we often want to be comfortable and secure in the world, warming ourselves by the fire, and keeping the company of those in power. If St. Peter defended his relationship with Jesus, the servants would report him to the high priest and the officials would have taken him into custody.

In our daily lives, we tend to betray or deny others for much less than to protect our lives. We participate in office or parish gossip, rather than defending innocent victims, because we’d rather not be called out for defending someone. We want our comfort and security. Certainly, we don’t want to be disliked or hated, so we warm ourselves by the fire of gossip or inaction. We betray those innocent people who are not present in order to be liked by people who would turn around and do the same thing to us under different circumstances. We don’t want to be weird, questioned, accused, or cast out by the group.

There will come a day very soon when we will have to give an account for our faith, even to the point of sacrificing our jobs, livelihoods, relationships, and our lives. That is how bad things are getting in our culture. Persecution is here and it will continue to grow in the years to come as our culture becomes more and more radically secular. How we live now will prepare us for when the Cross comes for us. If we cannot be trusted in small matters, how can we expect to be trusted when we are outright threatened for our faith? If we do not boldly live as disciples of Jesus in this life, we will give an account to Him when we die.

All of us have areas of our lives where we have placed comfort, security, and power ahead of Christ. We don’t want to faithfully live the truths of our Catholic faith, so we deny them or hide them. It may be in how we treat other people, our lack of focus on God, or maybe we are addicted to the comforts of food, pleasure, television, sex, social media, status, honor, money, possessions, reputation, and success. Clinging to these things makes us spiritually vulnerable and weak. In our human frailty, it does not take much for us to deny Christ when asked if we are one of His followers. Comfort is the enemy of holiness.

It is only through a life of prayer, the Sacraments, sacrifice, mortification, serving others, and the virtues that we can prepare for these moments in our lives. We must submit to the Cross and embrace it as the ultimate path to joy. If we flee or shirk the Cross, then we will be like St. Peter and deny Our Lord, or worse, we will become Judas and betray Him for thirty pieces of silver. This is why St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day was this past Monday, taught the following about true joy:

Brother Leo wondered much within himself; and, questioning the saint, he said: “Father, I pray thee teach me wherein is perfect joy.” Saint Francis answered: “If, when we shall arrive at Saint Mary of the Angels, all drenched with rain and trembling with cold, all covered with mud and exhausted from hunger; if, when we knock at the convent-gate, the porter should come angrily and ask us who we are; if, after we have told him, “We are two of the brethren”, he should answer angrily, “What ye say is not the truth; ye are but two impostors going about to deceive the world, and take away the alms of the poor; begone I say”; if then he refuse to open to us, and leave us outside, exposed to the snow and rain, suffering from cold and hunger till nightfall – then, if we accept such injustice, such cruelty and such contempt with patience, without being ruffled and without murmuring, believing with humility and charity that the porter really knows us, and that it is God who maketh him to speak thus against us, write down, O Brother Leo, that this is perfect joy.

St. Francis of Assisi, “Perfect Joy” St. Francis goes on to describe this type of treatment occurring again and again, but that perfect joy is being able to overcome one’s self by God’s grace rather than falling into anger or despair. True freedom and joy rests in sharing in the Cross of Christ, not comfort and security:

But in the cross of tribulation and affliction we may glory,
because, as the Apostle says again, “I will not glory
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

As Christians, our ultimate joy can only come from sharing in the Cross of Christ. If we flee from the Cross, avoid the Cross, or put our Cross down, then we will never find perfect joy. Instead, we will deny or betray Jesus. Thankfully, all of the Apostles who fled from Christ’s Cross eventually embraced it and were given martyrs’ crowns because they came to understand that they could not live in comfort. To be a disciple is to follow the Crucified One wherever He may lead.

Mary was not an apostle, but it certainly is consistent with the Catholic practice of exalting "mortals far above what is written" (1 Co. 4:6) and especially Mary to list her as an apostle - whether intentional or not - , though no where is she said to be one and they were all men.

" No, you’re still being deceptive. The text you quoted, about the Last Supper, doesn’t square with your false assertion of Catholics believing the Virgin Mary to have been an apostle. You can’t weasel out that. Try as you might. Was Mary at the Last Supper, Daniel? Yes or No? "

Rather, it is you who is being deceptive by misconstruing my allegation of the author listing her as an apostle "whether intentional or not" as consistent with the Catholic practice of exalting "mortals far above what is written" (1 Co. 4:6) as teaching that this is Catholic doctrine, which is not what I said, any more than that is true of the multitude other examples of such*. That some would "whether intentional or not" is the allegation.

"Was Mary at the Last Supper, Daniel? Yes or No?"

Of course not, and again, this was not my allegation but that some Catholics would place her there, beyond being one of the servers coming in and out which some surmise women did.

*such as being a sinless perpetual virgin, who "had to suffer, as He did, all the consequences of sins," [De Maria Nun quam Satis] "in exact duplication," [Mary of Agreda] and was bodily resurrected and crowned as an omnipotent (by God's grace) Queen of Heaven, whose command all obey, even God [Alphonsus Liguori], as "the greatness of the power which she wields over one who is God cannot be conceived," with angels "begging her as a favour to honour them with one of her requests," [Montfort] ...and the dispenser of all graces, with there being "no grace which Mary cannot dispose of as her own," [Manteau-Bonamy] that "through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation...we obtain everything through Mary," [Pope Pius IX] with "all the treasures of the mercy of God" being in her hands, [St. Peter Damian] without whom the Holy Spirit does not act, and who is actually “like unto Him” "when she acts, it is also He who acts; and that if her intervention be not accepted, neither is His," who is the "Mother of her Creator," [Cardinal Newman] who is is a debtor to her, [St. Methodius] and who "could not be more closely united to God without becoming God," who alone is solicitous for us in Heaven, [Liguori] thus “sometimes salvation is quicker if we remember Mary's name then if we invoked the name of the Lord Jesus" [Eadmer] "therefore we have recourse, to thee alone" [Liguori]. Sources and more http://peacebyjesus.net/MarySC.html#ascriptions.

"false religion has elevated the Mopther of Jesus above the Apostles."

Just what would give you that idea?

Do you see a Catholic quest to almost deify Mary, it is taught by Catholics*,

As the the Son of God has a unique unique relationship with the Persons of the Trinity, so also Mary is said to have a unique relationship with all three Persons of the Trinity;
As Christ is the express image of God, and highly exalted above all under the Father, having the primary position among all creation, so Mary is declared to be the greatest saint of all, and the first of all creatures, and as having a certain affinity with the Father, with a pre-eminent resemblance which she bears to the Father;
As Christ was called the Son of God, indicating ontological oneness, so Mary is called the Mother of God (which naturally infers the same, and is not the language of Scripture, which even clarifies Israel birthed Christ "according to the flesh, God blessed for ever": Rm. 9:4,5);
As the the Son of God supernaturally, spiritually makes believing souls into children of God, Mary is said to be the mother of Christians in "supernatural and spiritual generation."
As Christ was sinless, so Mary was;
As the Lord remained a virgin, so also Mary;
As the Lord was bodily ascended into Heaven, so Mary also was;
As the Holy Spirit directs believers to be "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith," (Hebrews 12:2) in whom believes are accounted a holy nation, (1 Pt. 2:9) so Catholicism teaches that believers are to "turn their eyes to Mary" in whom "the Church is already the 'all-holy." (CCC 829)
As the Father made Christ Lord over all things, so Mary is said to be enthroned above all creation (all other believers have to wait for their crowns) and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things;
As Christ is given all power in heaven and in earth, so Mary is “surpassing in power all the angels and saints in Heaven.”
As Christ is given all power on Heaven and on earth, so Mary is said to have (showing some restraint) “almost unlimited power;” and showing less restraint, to be "omnipotent" (by grace);
As God the Father made His Divine Son functionally the Lord over the universe, so Mary states, "I command what I will, and introduce whom I will."
As no man comes to the Father but through the Son, so it is taught that no one can come to the Son except through Mary in Heaven;
As no one can obtain mercy, be saved/redeemed or be delivered and know the Father but through the Son, so the same is said of Mary;
As those whom God has chosen will come to Him, so it is said that if Mary wills our salvation, and then we are sure to obtain it.
As the emphasis is upon Christ as the Creator through whom God (the Father) made all things, including Mary, so it is emphasized that uniquely “to her, Jesus owes His Precious Blood,” shed for the salvation of mankind, (the logic behind which can lead back to Eve);
As Scripture declares that Christ suffered for our sins, so Mary is said to have done so also, even all the consequences of sin;
As Christ redeemed mankind (as many as truly believe) with the Father and the Spirit, so it is said of Mary that "we might rightly say she redeemed the human race together with Christ."
As Christ saves us from the condemnation and death resulting from the fault of Adam, so it is taught that man was condemned through the fault of Eve, the root of death, but that we are saved through the merits of Mary; who was the source of life for everyone.
As all things come from the Father through the Son, so Mary is made to be the dispenser of all grace; that "through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation."
As believers have confidence through Christ, so Mary is extolled as being the foundation of all the believer's confidence.
As the Lord wills all souls to be saved through Christ, so it is said that it is God's will that we obtain everything through Mary.
And as the Lord called souls to come to Him to be given life and salvation, so (in misappropriation of the words of Scripture) it is said of Mary, “He that shall find me shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord;” “that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will, that we obtain everything through Mary.”
As Christ is the King of the saints and over all kings, (Rv. 15:3; 17:14; 19:16) so Mary is made Queen of Heaven and the greatest saint, and that “Next to God, she deserves the highest praise;”
As Christ ever liveth to make intercession for the saints, so is Mary said to be in constant intercession;
as only to God is ascribed the power and privilege of hearing prayer from all flesh, so also is Mary extolled as doing so;
as believers only address God/Christ in prayer to Heaven, including in prostration before Him, so also do Catholics pray to Mary;
as believers only pray to God to have mercy on sinners, so Catholics beseech Mary to do so.
As Catholics (adding error to error) believe Christ gave His "real" flesh and blood to be eaten, so it is emphasized that Mary gave Him this, being fashioned out of Mary's pure blood and even being “kneaded with the admixture of her virginal milk,” so that she can say, "Come and eat my bread, drink the wine I have prepared" (Prov. 9:5);
And as Christ is given many titles of honor, so Mary also is, except that she is honored by Catholics with more titles than they give to the Lord Himself!
Mary was a holy, virtuous instrument of God, but of whom Scripture says relatively little, while holy fear ought to restrain ascribing positions, honor, glory and powers to a mortal that God has not revealed as given to them, and or are only revealed as being possessed by God Himself. But like as the Israelites made an instrument of God an object of worship, (Num. 21:8,9; 2Kg. 18:4) Catholics have magnified Mary far beyond what is written and warranted and even allowed, based on what is in Scripture.
The Catholic Encyclopedia speculates that a further reinforcement of Marian devotion, “was derived from the cult of the angels, which, while pre-Christian in its origin, was heartily embraced by the faithful of the sub-Apostolic age. It seems to have been only as a sequel of some such development that men turned to implore the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. This at least is the common opinion among scholars, though it would perhaps be dangerous to speak too positively. Evidence regarding the popular practice of the early centuries is almost entirely lacking...,” (Catholic Encyclopedia > Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary)
Yet this did not stop Rome from reading into the most early centuries what is not there. For in 1950 pope Pius XII (in Munificentissimus Deus) presumed to declare as a divinely revealed dogma, and require belief, in the Assumption of Mary, that the perpetual 'Virgin Mary, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory." And equally audacious, he even claimed that such was "based upon the Sacred Writings as their ultimate foundation," and forbade any to counter his declaration. However, it is not simply the absence in Scripture of any record or prophesy for this alleged particular event, but also from early history, which is where it belongs, versus being a fable that developed into doctrine latter. Assumption supporter RC Lawrence P. Everett, C.Ss.R., S.T.D. confessed:
In the first three centuries there are absolutely no references in the authentic works of the Fathers or ecclesiastical writers to the death or bodily immortality of Mary. Nor is there any mention of a tomb of Mary in the first centuries of Christianity. The veneration of the tomb of the Blessed Virgin at Jerusalem began about the middle of the fifth century; and even here there is no agreement as to whether its locality was in the Garden of Olives or in the Valley of Josaphat. Nor is any mention made in the Acts of the Council of Ephesus (431) of the fact that the Council, convened to defend the Divine Maternity of the Mother of God, is being held in the very city selected by God for her final resting place. Only after the Council did the tradition begin which placed her tomb in that city.
The earliest known (non-Apocryphal) mention concerning the end of Mary's life appears in the writings of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia,.. in his Panarion or Medicine Chest (of remedies for all heresies), written in c. 377: "Whether she died or was buried we know not." ...And with the exception of a so-called contemporary of Epiphanius, Timothy of Jerusalem, who said: "Wherefore the Virgin is immortal up to now, because He who dwelt in her took her to the regions of the Ascension,"9(After a very thorough and scholarly investigation the author concludes that Timothy is an unknown author who lived between the sixth and seventh centuries (p. 23). no early writer ever doubted the fact of her death.... In the Munificentissimus Deus Pope Pius XII quotes but three Fathers of the Church, all Orientals. St. John Damascene (d. 749)...St. Germanus of Constantinople (d. 733) ...St. Modestus of Jerusalem (d. 634)... Apart from the Apocrypha, there is no authentic witness to the Assumption among the Fathers of either the East or the West prior to the end of the fifth century. (https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=469)
And here is some material on the Protoevangelium of James and the Bible, which Catholicism cites for support of the perpetual virginity of Mary which is related to her hyper-exaltation in Catholicism, contrary to the admonition of 1 Corinthians 4:6 "not to think of men above that which is written" and which one of the many issues that divide faithful Christianity from Catholicism.
But from Cardinal Ratzinger we see the solution to such lack of evidential warrant for making belief in an event over 17000 years after it allegedly occurred. Which is that Rome can claim to "remember" what she wants:
Before Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven was defined, all theological faculties in the world were consulted for their opinion. Our teachers' answer was emphatically negative... Altaner, the patrologist from Wurzburg¦had proven in a scientifically persuasive manner that the doctrine of Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven was unknown before the 5C; this doctrine, therefore, he argued, could not belong to the "apostolic tradition. And this was his conclusion, which my teachers at Munich shared.

But...subsequent "remembering" (cf. Jn 16:4, for instance) can come to recognize what it has not caught sight of previously ["caught sight of?" Because there was nothing to see in the earliest period where testimony should have been, before a fable developed] .." (Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones (Ignatius, n.d.), pp. 58-59; emp. mine).
For history, tradition and Scripture is only conist of and means what Rome says it is in any conflict, which reasoning no less than Manning resorted to:
It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity....Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves...The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour. . — Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation, , pp. 227-228.

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