Hear and Do, Here and Now.

Dearest brothers and sisters: All good giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no alteration or shadow caused by change. He willed to give us birth by the word of truth that we may be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls. Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

We can spend a lot of time immersed in the Bible, we can study and become fluent in the language of love that we find there. We can become apologists that can debate a Bible Thumper into tears and into a corner but if we do not take the knowledge that we have about salvation and put it into practice, well, it becomes just so much noise and the universe has all of the noise that it needs. 

If we have to push a brother or sister in need out of the way in order to get into the church to pray, then what good is our entrance into the holy place going to do us and will God be listening to us or will He be listening to those that in need that we trampled  over in our haste to prove our love? 

God listens to the prayers of widows and orphans and that is good news for us. Sooner or later we all will be a widow, widower, or orphan. Those that we love will be called home and once we lose both our mother and our father to death, well then, we are orphans.  Once our spouse proves their mortality, well, we are then widows or widowers.  If this is the case then hopefully we will receive help in our need from those not inflicted as yet.  When we care for the widow or orphan, we can do so in anticipation of ourselves becoming needy at some point in time.   

Learning of Jesus and accepting Him as your life partner is an important step on the way to salvation.  The first step on the road to heaven is to accept the Lord Jesus as your personal savior.  Our Protestant brothers and sisters have got that part right.  What they do is they mark that day as the moment of time when salvation and heaven is no longer a gift but a right that cannot be revoked by any action that they take in life.  Be saved on Monday, murder on Tuesday, and if you die on Wednesday go directly to heaven.  Does that make any sense at all?   I am not picking on the Protestants.  The vast majority are good, Godly, faith-filled people who are doers of the word and examples to us faith-filled Catholics of what we are called to do by virtue of our Baptism into the family of God. 

Become learned in the Scripture because ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of Christ.  But what you learn in your studies, do not place on the shelve like a trophy where it will gather dust, don't just love the Word of God, live it through your actions and be not just a hearer but be a doer as well. 

Remember to pray for the Poor Souls in Purgatory.