Posted on 07/01/2023 1:16:17 PM PDT by MurphsLaw
Matthew 8:5-17
Friends, in today’s Gospel,
Jesus celebrates the trust of the centurion who asked him to heal his servant:
“Amen, I say to you,
in no one in Israel have I found such faith.”
We can say with the centurion that the Lord is a rock,
a stronghold, a firm place to stand.
The God who is not one more shifting and indefinite creature
but rather the ground of being itself is a power upon whom we can rely,
a covenant-maker whose word we can trust.
In his very freedom and sovereignty as our Creator,
God is a parent in whose lap we can serenely find our rest.
Undoubtedly, what has made religious belief such an indispensable part of human consciousness and behavior
is just this assurance of safety that it brings.
There is nothing in the cosmos that will not, finally, disappoint us.
There is no place in the universe that will not, finally, be shaken.
But God, the self-sufficient ground of existence itself,
can be trusted not to disappoint and not to betray.
“No storm can shake my inmost calm,
while to that rock I’m clinging,”
says the author of the Shaker hymn,
witnessing ecstatically to this divine faithfulness.
Jesus entered the house of Peter,
and saw his mother-in-law lying
in bed with a fever.
He touched her hand, the fever left her,
and she rose and waited on him.
When it was evening,
they brought him many
who were possessed by demons,
and he drove out the spirits by
a word and cured all the sick,
to fulfill what had been said by
Isaiah the prophet:
He took away our infirmities
and bore our diseases.+++
He whiffed on the doctrine of Holy Mother Church during interviews with Ben Shapiro, Shia Labeouf, and, most recently, Jordan Peterson.
He’s too smart to have done this by mistake, ML.
Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.
His “way” involves error.
Error on the lips of a Catholic priest or prelate, and heard by tens of thousands, is a catastrophe that throws souls into mortal peril.
Now I’ve told you.
You don’t dispute BB’s worm-ridden doctrine.
He must know the faith cold, given his erudition. Yet when push comes to shove, and through outreach he finds himself in a “high leverage” moment or situation with a non-believer, he seemingly won’t piece together anything that might fall hard on that man’s ears, or serve to challenge his intellect.
Yet you happily carry his water for him, MM. Here at FR at least. Gallon after gallon, day after day. Whistle while you work.
This man is a Jerry Sandusky type, so to speak, in terms of damage done under the radar. So many people like you, or who do as you do, are either willfully blind to his faults, or see those faults clearly, and knowing them, nevertheless ignore them. Like Sandusky’s wife was obviously doing for so many years. It’s creepy and wrong.
Sorry: ML, not MM.
Merton hewed to the doctrine and tradition of Holy Mother Church, even as he explored and appreciated other aspects of diverse religions. Bishop Barron should become more like Merton in that respect.
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