Taking Root and Growing - The 2nd Step of Knowing

Those on rocky ground are the ones who, when they hear,

receive the word with joy, but they have no root;

they believe only for a time and fall away in time of temptation.

The parable of the sower and the seed is a familiar story to most Christians. The sower goes out and sows the seeds and they land in different places. Some land on the path where there is no soil and the birds come and eat the seeds. Some fall on the rocky ground and they sprout up but have no roots and they die. Some of the seeds fall among thorns and are choked out. Finally, some seed falls on good earth and it provides a good yield. 

I would tell the owner of this farm to sow his seeds more carefully but since the seed represents the truth of the Gospel, it is to be sown near and wide to everyone.  The soil it lands in is how we receive and take the word to heart. Today, we are going to concern ourselves with the seed that landed on the rocky ground.  Jesus says that this seed represents people who joyfully receive the Good News but believe it only for a short time and they fall away. What on earth could cause this?  Surely, the Gospel is news of great joy and paying attention to it will help bring the hearer of it to a joyful union with God in heaven, who would want to lose that?

We Catholics are probably the Christian people most at risk for becoming the seed in the rocky soil.   Many of us have not taken the time to learn more about our faith since we were confirmed.  Our Protestant brothers and sisters tend to be more deeply rooted in the Word of God and are not afraid to let people know that they are Christians, that they love God and Jesus.  Now they have their problems too.  They also tend to believe in the very dangerous doctrine "once saved, always saved" where once you have accepted Christ as your personal God and Savior, you are absolutely and positively going to heaven no matter what sins you commit during your lifetime.   We know, based on Scripture that knowing the Word is not the same as living the Word.  We have to live the Word for it to be effective in our lives.  

The one problem about not being rooted deeply in your beliefs comes at the time when turmoil strikes your life. A person with only a smile and a nod to the teachings of Jesus will look at his or her situation and decide that this Jesus stuff can be favorably compared to the pile of horse exhaust on the horse barn floor.  They will then go off on their own and after forgetting the teachings of Jesus, really make a mess of things.  Those of us who are deeply rooted in Christ will know that the troubles of this world are but temporary and we will know where to turn and the experience will actually make us stronger in Christ. 

How can you stay off of the rocky path?  It is simple. Develop a hunger for truth.  Study the Catholic faith, read the doctors of the Church.  If that is too theological for you, there are dozens of good Catholic books put out by authors grounded solidly in the faith who write in simple and easy to understand ways.  If you don't like to read, buy a Kindle, it will read books to you!  Make it a point to learn one new fact about your Catholic faith each month and soon you will be a brilliant scholar that can help your spouse, children, friends, and family to a better life with more happiness and fulfillment in it than ever before.  I guess the secret is to challenge yourself to be better.  This will help you to grow and growing is always better than withering and dying.  

Matthew Kelly, a wonderful Catholic Christian writer, and speaker says it best.  If you are called home to God after 60, 70, 80 or more years on earth, how are you going to explain to God that you did not have time to read His Book?   

Leave the rocky ground beginning today and transplant yourself and bear lots of fruit!  

Pray for the poor souls in Purgatory. They live with great joy and great hope because they will soon be with God. They cannot help themselves, they depend on us.  A simple Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be said for them takes so little of our time but beans so much for the,.  Won't you pray for them now?  Someone you know might be one prayer away from being freed. Do it now. 

Forgotten ?

I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me,

because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours

and everything of yours is mine,

and I have been glorified in them.

The prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper, for me, is one of the most powerful passages in scripture. In reality, we are made privy to an intimate conversation between Jesus and The Father.  Jesus in this prayer is reporting on His mission to God's people.  He prays in that moment for the assembled Apostles, but he is also praying for you and I as well.  

On the day we were Baptised there was imprinted on our soul the mark that forever makes us the property of God our heavenly Father.  His ownership of us is real and he has the right to compel us to obey He instead gives us the choice to love Him as Father and to obey Him and accept our role as His adopted children and to become his ambassador or if we choose, we can go our own way.  The choice is ours. 

The right to choose is fraught with danger.  When we go our own way we are like ships whose rudder is not connected to the wheel and is subject to the whims of the current and wind.  The current and wind may take us in pleasant directions, at least for awhile. But, eventually, we will be cast upon a reef, our keel will be broken and our ship, as sturdy as it was, will fall victim to the ravages and perils of the sea and as for us, we will taste the saltiness of the sea as it closes in over our head.  As we founder, we still have the ability to cry our for help to the Father that loves us, and He will respond.  But, by this time, our stubborn pride that got us into this mess in the first place, may still our voice as our accumulated errors cause us to continue to depend only on ourselves. 

It is God's will that all of us be saved.  But it is also God's will that we come to Him, not as slaves compelled by law, but more like a young girl who is delighted to see her daddie come home from work.  She immediately drops what she is doing and runs to him and lets him know she loves him.  

God does not expect too much of us. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He loves us as we are right now and He will love us as we mature and grow into spiritual adulthood. God knows that not everyone can be a St. Francis of Assisi, forsaking the stuff of earth completely and living a life totally dedicated to poverty, chastity, and obedience.  But he does now we can treat everyone we meet as if we do possess those virtues.  He realizes that Mother Teresa was a special being who was open one-hundred percent to taking care of the poorest of the poor and that not everyone can do that.  But he does know it is possible for each of us to care for those less fortunate and to share the bounty and riches He has placed into our care.  

In short, we are all, repeat all, called to be saints.  We should not aim to arrive at  Purgatory at life's end, no, we should aim for heaven, aim as high as we can by sharing the Love we have received with those who need it most.  There is no one that is poorer than one who lives without God.  We may not be erudite enough to preach to the masses but we can certainly preach to one person, silently, by showing them the joy we have in serving them tenderly because it is the will of our Father and we live to do His will. 

The Reach of The Catholic Church

The Catholic Church is the one institution that has had the most impact on this world, bare none.  No other organization has lived through so many different world orders.  Many different world orders have seen their sunrise, their flourishing, and their sunset. The Church has been there and has witnessed it all. 

The Catholic Church has been a beacon through many tough periods in history. During the Dark Ages, she kept the light of human knowledge burning through her monasteries and learned monks. She formed the first institutions of higher learning, gave birth to what we call the modern hospital, and through it all she has always taught the truth of the Gospel without change and without bowing to the wisdom of the current trends in secular thought. For the Church, the truth that Christ taught, the truth that the Holy Spirit infused into the Church, the truth that the apostle passed down from the beginning remains the truth that is taught today. She has been a faithful steward of and protector of the Deposit of Faith. 

The Catholic Church alone bears the marks of what the true church should be.  She is one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic.  She seeks to unite all under One Body and One Blood. The denominations by their very nature only serve to weaken the unity that Jesus Himself called for at the Last Supper.  When Martin Luther, filled with sinful pride, to an ax to the root of the one, singular, holy church that Christ founded he began a process that continues until today, the removal of pebbles from the Rock that is the foundation of the Church.  The Church is in no danger of falling as Jesus promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against her.  So despite the miasma of a multitude of "truths" being taught in the name of Christ, the Roman Catholic Church remains today as it was in the beginning, the organization that keeps alive the true teachings of Jesus Christ on earth.  

The Catholic Church reaches deeply into modern society.  She is the voice that will not allow the conscience of man to fall asleep. She is hated by those who would rather give vent to the evil in their hearts.  She is despised by those who want to live in the cold and silent darkness of sin and who perpetuate a culture of death.  

The Church through the centuries has been the first to dispense alms to the needy, to victims of famine, and disease.  She is the only organization who waits for opportunities to be of service. In her charity, she does not ask a man's religion nor does she weigh his wallet.  Where there is a need she gives. 

She is the very Bride of Christ but those that hate her describe her as the whore of Babylon because their eyes are blinded to the good fruit the Catholic Church has brought forth through the centuries. Instead, she is accused of killing more people than were alive at the time of the Inquisitions, while the truth is that few perished because of these courts and many more were brought to salvation.  In our own times, she was accused of working hand in glove with the Nazi government and keeping a sinful silence at the plight of the Jewish people at the hands of Hitler.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Pope Pius, at the end of the war, received and thanks from many Jewish leaders for the people he saved by hiding them in monasteries and in Vatican City itself.  

The Roman Catholic Church is the Church that Christ founded. As such, she is the vehicle of salvation for mankind.  Other denominations cannot say this about themselves.  The fact remains that the very Bible that these denominations, was pulled together under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  The Church decided upon the Canon of Scripture that served everyone for fifteen-hundred years until the reformers led by the arch-criminal Luther removed from the Sacred Pages whole books that did not fit into their novel and unbiblical views of salvation. 

The Roman Catholic Church, the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic organization was firmly built by Christ on the rock that was Peter.  The current Pope can trace his lineage back in an unbroken line to Peter.  Never in two-thousand years has even one Pope taught error from the Chair of Peter and there have been some very bad popes indeed!  In spite of the fact that there were some popes who had only their own pockets in mind, even they did not endanger the purity of God's truth by teaching error. Quite the contrary, the evil popes taught nothing as they lined their pockets and ran roughshod over the commandments of God.  The fact remains that the good popes have outnumbered the bad ones by a vast majority.  It should be noted that the Pope is protected from teaching error, but he is not protected from committing sin. Those that state that the Catholic Church cannot be the church of God because these bad popes ruled forget that these men were just that, men, able to commit acts of great turpitude such as the evil popes did or committing acts of great holiness as the saintly ones did. 

So, reject the Catholic Church at your peril. The Church believes that everyone who calls Jesus "Lord" is a fellow Christian even if they are not in full communion with the Church and they can and will attain heaven if they lead holy lives for God sees no difference in Gentile or Jew, man or woman, slave or free.  However, he has given His Church great tools and powers in the Treasury of Faith to ensure that we come to be with Him in heaven.  The way to heaven is a narrow and sometimes steep road.  The Church provides places in which to place your feet and stepping stones to help ease the journey.  The Church will bring you to the Valley of Peace, where pain no longer exists and we will once again be one flock with one Shepherd who is the Lord.