“if they are applicable to my faith, I am sure they will let me know.”
Like Martin Luther and everyone who has since joined the “reformation”, I do not sit waiting for “superiors” to translate the scriptures for me.
In the meantime, while I too “perform works of charity, mercy, penitence” I understand that those acts in and of themselves cannot “align myself more closely with the will of my God”; and therefore I do not smugly depend on them to do so.
Again, you misunderstand me if you think that I am “smug”. What I am is simply trying to walk the path of faith as you are, my intent was simply to say that I think that spending as much time as some Protestants do discussing end-time prophecies is as much a chimera as middle age Church scholars disputing on the number of angels that could fit on the head of a pin. Neither one is wrong or evil but strike me as needless discord between those whose aim should always be the same.
As a Catholic Christian I find that there is always a resource that I can turn to which will show me a path through which I might come to an understanding for myself. I don’t need to be Christopher Columbus or Vasco Degamo every time I pick up Holy Scripture. Of course these actions, in and of themselves do not assure anything, I simply cite them as activities that I can perform rather than argue needlessly with fellow Christians. I could just as easily have said watching Nascar, fishing with my kids, etc., all of which, when performed with the attitude of an offering to the Blessed Heart of our Lord serve the same purpose.