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Sun and moon are darkened,
and the stars withhold their brightness.
The LORD roars from Zion,
and from Jerusalem raises his voice;
The heavens and the earth quake,
but the LORD is a refuge to his people,
a stronghold to the children of Israel.
You have to admire their pluck. I mean the way that they stick to their spiel when time and time again they have been proven wrong just because the sun rose and set as it had done so many times over the many millenniums. Of course, I am speaking about the Jehovah's Witnesses (JW), an organization that specializes in predicting the end of the world. Each time they predict a date, they have been wrong. They are not a Christian religion as they deny the divinity of Christ stating that Jesus, in reality, is St. Michael the Archangel. You have to admire them in some respects. The believers commit a lot of time to pursuing converts. They go out in pairs and go door to door looking for people ripe for conversion into their strange doctrine. They come prepared with Biblical proof of all they say, of course, the Bible they use, The New World edition has been edited so that their beliefs are proven. They rope in the innocent and uneducated, namely Catholics. While an educated Catholic can point out very easily where the Watchtower Society, based in the religious heart of the world, Brooklyn New York, goes off of the rails. most of the JW converts come from parishes like yours and mine.
The problem we have in the Catholic Church is that we have a lack of Catholics that are able to see through the poorly thought out theology of the Watchtower people or any of the Protestant sects for that matter. Can you imagine that some Catholics who have gone on to get advanced degrees in nuclear engineering or doctorates in any one of a thousand subjects have no more than a seventh-grade education in the most important subject of all, their religion? Why is that? It is a sad but true fact that many Catholics are easy prey to the whiles of the Witness team or Mormon missionaries, or Bible Thumping Evangelists that comes to their door because they left the study of their religion after they were confirmed usually in middle school or high school.
I imagine each of us can come up with a reason or two why it is not possible for us to learn more about our Catholic faith. First and foremost, there isn't enough time in the day for me to get all of the things done that I need to. That's a load of bull droppings. If you had time to watch TV in the evening, you had time to spend learning something new about your religion. The Witnesses, the Mormons, spend hours each week with their door to door ministry and for the JW's each Kingdom Hall reports the hours spent tilling the soil for converts each week. Those that don't spend enough time going door to door or who do not have enough results to show are given a good talking to. And some of us Catholics say we are too busy, right...hand me the potato chips and could you turn on the Notre Dame game?
Okay, here is what I really want to say to you on this Saturday. If a seventh grader knows more than you about being a Catholic, how does that make you feel? Our young people today take their religion more seriously than you might expect. In our parish, every year, we see a class of teens come back from a week-long mission trip, helping the less fortunate and they come back energized with zeal for the Lord and they have seen for themselves how good it feels to follow the ways of God and to help those that need it most. They experience a closeness with the Lord that fills them with the desire to have more and to help more. Then, what happens, they start hanging around the older Catholics, the ones that just put in their appearance, the ones that come late to mass and leave early and they determine by watching you that being a Catholic doesn't really make much of a difference and they slowly either drift away from the church or they are snared by Protestant evangelizers who know how to reel in a healthy catch of Catholic youth and save them from Rome and get them to believe in Sola Scriptura and Once Saved Always Saved, two indefensible doctrines that lull people into a way of life where sin doesn't play a part anymore.
Look, you just have to get up off of your dead sit upon and become more knowledgeable about Christianity, the Church and its history and why it matters that you are a Catholic and not a Baptist or Presbyterian or God forbid a Jehovah's Witness.
Do you understand, have you any idea what-so-ever what a great gift you have been given by being born or converting to be a Catholic? We are part of the Church that was built by Christ to last until He returns for us on the last day when in God's eyes the time of harvest is nigh. There is nothing better on this whole earth than to be part of God's kingdom and that Kingdom is not owned by the Watchtower Society, it is owned by the people of God in the Catholic Church.
We have so many things that other denominations do not have. We have most of all the Real Presence in the Eucharist that we can receive daily in many places. Can you imagine what a JW would do if he or she had that same closeness to Jesus as we have available to us? They would be unstoppable! They would go door to door armed with the love of Jesus and not leave a house until they either converted the person or were physically kicked down the stairs with their New World edition Bible hitting them in the head as they bounced off the curb at the side of the street. If such power would be available to a JW, why does it not manifest itself in us, the heirs and true adopted sons and daughters of the Great King? Light the fire in yourself and watch it spread to those around you. Do it NOW.
To do today: Pray for the poor souls in Purgatory.
