Wake Up Rulers of the World! WISDOM

Hear, O kings, and understand;
learn, you magistrates of the earth's expanse!
Hearken, you who are in power over the multitude
and lord it over throngs of peoples!
Because authority was given you by the Lord
and sovereignty by the Most High,
who shall probe your works and scrutinize your counsels.
Because, though you were ministers of his kingdom, you judged not rightly,
and did not keep the law,
nor walk according to the will of God,
Terribly and swiftly shall he come against you,
because judgment is stern for the exalted–
For the lowly may be pardoned out of mercy
but the mighty shall be mightily put to the test.
For the Lord of all shows no partiality,
nor does he fear greatness,
Because he himself made the great as well as the small,
and he provides for all alike;
but for those in power a rigorous scrutiny impends.
To you, therefore, O princes, are my words addressed
that you may learn wisdom and that you may not sin.
For those who keep the holy precepts hallowed shall be found holy,
and those learned in them will have ready a response.
Desire therefore my words;
long for them and you shall be instructed.

If you want to keep your friends, do not discuss religion or politics.  Well, this blog is about religion, in general Christianity and specifically Roman Catholicism but in general, I do not attack political issues in this blog except in the most general terms.  Today, because the Church has given us the eleven verses from Wisdom that I quote above, I just have to make what will sound like political pronouncements but I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat in this blog and it is a fact that I do not trust most politicians as far as I could throw them against a force five hurricane.  

In America, we pride ourselves on the separation of Church and State. The framers of the constitution meant that to mean that the government would establish no official religion and that we would be free to worship God in any manner that we thought appropriate or we could choose to not worship at all and the state would take no position on it.  That is as far as the constitution goes as it addresses religion.  We, of course, have taken it to an extreme.  There are people out there who are against any kind of religious expression what-so-ever and will take you to court to make sure that no religious statues or displays sully any public land. But these are not the people that Wisdom is speaking about today. 

In our reading, we are told that those in power have that power only because God has given it to them and they are to use it for the good of the people that they are over.  Look how far we as a people, and I mean the world, not just the United States, leaders in many countries have led the fight to legalize things that we know offend God greatly such as abortion and so-called same-sex marriage.  These are two examples of how the leaders of many countries are leading the way to the day when lawlessness becomes the law of the land.   Wisdom says that the powerless will receive mercy but the powerful will receive a powerful judgment against them because they have used their authority for evil and not for the good of their charges. 

But what are the consequences to these great men and women, these princes, and princesses of the earth?  If they follow the principles of God in their dealings with their people God will be there to help and strengthen them but if they do not, well, they will be on their own. 

I do have to make an observation about the United States of America, the land I live in, the land that I love.  Today, our Senators and Congressmen are leeches sucking the very vitality out of the people that elected them to the office.  They have forgotten the very concept of service and hold to principles of the party first and America second.  When they have acted in recent times, their actions took no account of right or wrong based on the morals that America has always followed.  President Obama busied himself with making it impossible for people to follow their conscience when it came to things such as contraception and he spent an awful lot of time making sure that abortion was funded with public money and he spent many hours writing decrees stating which public bathroom we could use.  Today, when it comes to President Trump, I have no idea as to where he is leading the nation.  I can say that he is more protective of the unborn and has proven himself a friend of people of conscience but he willy-nilly plows through things accepting only his version of the truth no matter what the evidence proves.  His world is a looney tuney world that is going to wreak havoc on the prestige of the United States.  What he has going for him is that he is not a professional politician and perhaps this first year or so of on the job training will pay dividends later, maybe, we will see. 

The mighty of this world need to get in touch with God and govern justly and walk in right paths.  If a country ever gets a leader that can do that, they will be unstoppable.  For those of us on the bottom of the food chain, please, pray for our senators, congressmen (women), judges, mayors, councilman, and all those in authority that they might seek and find wisdom from God above and turn this world into what it was meant to be. 

Please pray for the poor souls in Purgatory.  Remember, as they are, perhaps, one day you shall be...

Serve or Serve its Your Choice

It

"You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt.

But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant;

whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave."

Americans are not the type of people that want to be servants.  Oh, we will take a job that at first blush seems beneath us but we will only tolerate it for only the minimum amount of time required to move up the ladder to a position where we can call the shots.  We prefer to be the ones that tell someone else where to move that heavy piece of furniture instead of being the one that moves it.  We go through life not seeing those that have taken the jobs we consider menial. The Latino gardener mowing the grass, the janitor with mop and bucket, the hotel maid, the busboy and waitress, all of these people are invisible people.  They are there, we acknowledge that but then we do not see them anymore, they fade into the background.  Please understand that I am not looking down on these people. This is just how it is. 

Well, here is a news flash for you.  No matter who you are in the world, no matter if you are a CEO of a giant corporation, world famous surgeon, President of the United States, or even the Pope of Rome, you are the servant of someone.  That someone might be your stockholders, your patients, the citizens that elected you or the clerics and people of your church, somewhere you owe service to another person or group of people.  We all have an obligation to fulfill to others. We are all servants and of course, we are all servants of God.  I  do mean all of us are servants of God.  We may be good servants, mediocre servants or bad servants, but servants we are.  

What exactly does God expect of His servants? Let's start with His chief employee here on earth, Pope Francis.  The Pope is the prime minister of the Kingdom of God on earth. The prime minister acts in place of the king while the king is absent.  It is expected that the prime minister will know the will of the king and handle the king's affairs accordingly.  How do we know what that word accordingly means in this case?  It is simple.  The Pope functions as the servant of the servants of God. Jesus washed the feet of His disciples and that is what Francis I is supposed to do.  Here he is, a man that seems to hold unlimited power in his hands, and what is he to do with that power? The Kings says to wash the feet of his fellow servants. 

If we were to realize that our vocation is to be just like that of the Pope, that of foot washing servants to one another, we would be falling all over each other trying to meet the other's needs with charity and love.  Next time you see a person mowing the lawn, packing grocery bags, waiting tables, or mopping floors, remember this, they are not invisible people, they are our fellow servants.  Treat them with the kindness and respect you would give to visiting royalty or better yet, treat them as if they were Jesus and He was performing this service for you.  It will change your life and how you look at people.  God bless. 

Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Aunt, Uncle, Grandmother, Grandfather, who do you know that might be in purgatory?  The Holy Souls in Purgatory cannot pray themselves out of there and into heaven, they need us.  An Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be takes only a few moments of our time but it means so much to those in purgatory.  Remember to pray for the holy souls...do it now!  

  

A New Day In America (?) Let's Wait and See

I was at the doctor's office when Donald John Trump placed his hand on the Bible and took the oath of office making him the forty-fifth president of the United States.  In my sixty plus years on this earth, I have seen presidents come and go.  The first president I remember caring anything about was John F. Kennedy.  Everyone was excited when he was elected president.  Of course, I lived on the Southwest side of Chicago so the fact that he was a Catholic AND a democrat made him the perfect man to be president of the United States.  In Chicago you were democrat and if you lived on the Southwest side of Chicago, you were most likely Catholic.  I remember the day he was killed.  The nuns ushered us into the church where we prayed for him, to no avail, as he died anyway.  Next came LBJ who I think was really glad to take over. LBJ did not work out so well and Nixon next infested the White House.  He did get us out of Viet Nam, the place that Kennedy and Johnson got us into but beyond that, he was a bully and as the tapes revealed he suffered from a potty mouth.  He resigned and Ford stumbled into office, did not do a whole lot and was followed by Jimmy Carter.  In my opinion, Jimmy Carter was the most honest president that served during my lifetime. He was a bit of a bungler and was in the White House during the Iran Hostage Crisis.  He lasted just four years when an actor turned politician Ronald Regan entered the White House.  Many have good thoughts about him but I am still waiting for some of the trickle-down to trickle-down to me. Then came Bush the Elder, followed by Bill Clinton a sex maniac who almost achieved fame at becoming the first president to be impeached. Billy did win reelection and turned his office over to George Bush the Younger who got us embroiled in the Middle East. George moved out of the White House and Barack Obama moved in and for the next eight years presided over a legislative branch that blocked him at every turn.  He did get his health care initiate passed and spent the rest of his time chipping away at religious freedom.  Mandating that religious groups would have to go against the conscience and supply contraception through their insurance plan.  While he was in office it almost became against the law to be a Christian or to support Christian values.  Those that did were accused of promoting hate speech. The democratic policy during the eight years of Obama deserted the working people of the land.  Instead, it pulled its support from those whose agenda contained traditional American values and gave their support whose beliefs included abortion on demand, gay rights, gay marriage, and mandated every sort of thing the Christian working man was against.  Obama was a good orator.  I admired his ability to turn a phrase.  Unfortunately, I believe that that is all he was good at, speaking. I do not think that he had a clue what the working class Americans were thinking.  It was his blindness to the needs of the common person that cast the democrats into the cold at the mid-term elections and finally gave the GOP power in both houses. That brings us up to today.

Today we have a president in office that is different than any other president that we have had in modern times.  He is a president who does not necessarily follow the beliefs of the GOP in full.  He is a man that is used to winning, a businessman who likes the thrill of the deal.  He is not so much of the diplomat but is rather more of a man filled with thunder and bombast.  I have not made up my mind about Donald John Trump yet.  In his first days, he and his vice president have done things to promote Life.  The president himself mentioned the Walk for Life and challenged the press to cover it and the vice president actually gave a speech at the event, the first time that has happened, ever.!  He also has recognized that the Syrian Christians are being slaughtered for their faith and has said that they will receive preference in immigration matters.   In this respect, DJT is a breath of fresh air for those of us concerned with the sanctity of life from conception to natural death and for those of us concerned about the Christians being martyred in the Middle East. For eight years under Obama, we had to watch while abortion was touted under the name "women's health care" and the family and the law of God was trampled upon under the guise of "equality.  Marriage in America will never be the same, it has been changed forever with the legalization of same-sex "marriages."  We saw under Obamacare the mandate that even the Little Sisters of the Poor would have to provide contraception to their employees in spite of their religious views opposing it.  DJT will disable this clause and help build up the right of a Christian to be a Christian.

Donald also has some things on his agenda that are downright silly.  The so-called wall between Mexico and the United States is dumb.  I believe that we should keep illegal aliens out of our nation. My grandparents, on both sides of my family, immigrated to the United States and were admitted legally.  They were honest, hard-working people who obeyed the law.  There was one minor incident when my grandmother was told to stop making bathtub gin, she was turned in by her best friend.  Other than that, they all learned the language and became naturalized American citizens.  For those who are here and are undocumented, DJT proposes to round up the ones who are criminals, are in gangs, who are violent, and to send these illegals back to where they came from.  I support this idea but I do not support deporting families that are here that are working to make something of themselves, who are obeying the law.  These are the types of people we need to have in America.

DJT also wants to make sure that the Muslim immigrants granted entrance to America are vetted to make sure that they pose no threat.  These immigrants are coming from lands that have been traditionally hostile to America.  I see nothing wrong with this. America gathers its strength and power from its diversity. Every one of us here (except Native Americans) are the result of people who left their homes and came to America to embrace life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We do not need people who are radically opposed to our ideals and who would resort to violence to attempt to bring their radical form of Islam to the forefront.

I am not going to tell you whom I voted for in the past election. It is my business and I will allow you to conjecture on your own.  For now, I have to say that I am going to take a wait and see approach to our new president.  I am going to pray for him and our country.  I am going to wish him good health and a clear mind.  To do otherwise would be like wishing the pilot of the airplane you are riding in to crash the plane.  There are interesting times ahead for Americans.  By the way that is an old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."