The Cross

The cross is a very personal thing. Jesus knew this. The cross of Jesus affected his whole body. The pain he was feeling was so severe that the temptation to prove his power by removing himself from the cross had to be running through his head.  Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, it is this fact that makes the cross relevant. If Jesus were just human He could not use the cross to show God's great love for us, He would have been just another sacrifice like those being made at the temple. On the other hand if Jesus was just divine, He would not have experienced life and the dying process as we His creatures do. Both of the elements, humanity and divinity,  had to be and were present.  So the first way the Cross affected Jesus was mentally.  He had to refuse the all too human facility to go against the desires of the Father by using the power that He had as the Son. This required Jesus to put complete trust into God and surrendering Himself as a human to the will of the Father.  

The next way the Cross affected Jesus was physically. Death by crucifixion was a death by inches. The major process was suffocation.  The woulds caused by the nails were just "minor" injuries that the body could healed if the person had been taken down from the cross while still alive. The process that a person goes through while dying on the cross is this. You had to hold yourself up to breathe and that strain on your arms was monumental and the fatigue was cumulative as lactic acid built up in the muscles. The condemned used their legs and the nail that had been pounded through the feet to give some purchase to stay where one could breath. But the pain from the wound in the feet was great and the arms tired and the culprit would sag down into a "Y" formation. The pressure on the diaphragm would make it impossible to breathe and the victim would have to push himself up again.  Depending on the strength of the one on the cross, this could go on for days.  In the case of Jesus, He was already battered and beaten and so his strength was expended in mere hours.  Death on the cross as I said was a death in inches.  The merciless sun beat down upon the criminal and insects of all types alighted on the body. There was the psychological aspect of the punishment as well to consider.  In most of the empire the criminal was exposed naked on the cross. In Israel, the benevolence of Caesar allowed the wearing of a loin cloth because the Jews were scandalized by nudity.  

So for hours Jesus suffered through the dying process. Then near the end he did several things that showed that this was no ordinary execution.  He awarded sainthood to a fellow criminal suffering with Him on that day. On the cross a criminal could be counted on to answer the scorn heaped upon him with curses. Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing." Jesus perfectly fulfilled his obligation to honor His mother and father when he put the Virgin Mary, who had no other relatives to help her into the care of the apostle John for a widow with no relatives would have to resort to begging to meet the needs of the day.  Just before He died, he said, "I thirst."  A sponge was soaked in cheap wine and held up to His lips. He took some and he then said, "It is finished."   What was finished?  Do you remember the last supper? It ended before all of the ritualistic rubrics had been completed. They sang a long hymn. After the hymn there was supposed to be a final cup of wine that would conclude the Passover meal.  It was never consumed and the Passover meal was never completed.  By taking that wine on the Cross, Jesus, the Lamb of God, completed the New Passover and redeemed us,  Then one of the evangelists says "He uttered a loud cry."  A loud cry? From the cross? After being scourged, beaten, bled and bloodied?  The loud cry was followed by Jesus handing over His spirit.  voluntarily for us.  It was very hard to speak at all from the cross. To hear a loud cry come from someone near to death must have been  startling to the onlookers.  The loud cry shows that Jesus handed over His life, that it was not taken from Him, He gave it willingly. 

Today at Mass we read the Gospel where Jesus asks who do the people think I am.  After a few answers he asks the apostles who they think He is. Peter answers "The Christ of God."  He then tells his followers that to be his follower we have to take up our cross daily and follow Him.  What does this mean?  The cross is a very personal thing.  But we as followers of Chris, what we need to do is this,  We need to wake up each morning and pick up our cross and follow Jesus with it.  A cross is a very personal thing.  For many of us it may be a fault we are working to correct and never can seem to conquer it and it is causing us anguish. For some of us it might mean going to a job you hate because you receive no recognition for your contributions and to contribute to the best of your ability anyway.  It may be dealing with any number of things, but we must pick it up, put it on our shoulder and carry it every day for that is what is means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 

Some Random Musings

These are just some random thoughts that are going through my mind on this 17th day of June in the year oi the Lord Two Thousand and Sixteen. 

ORLANDO
I was puzzled by the reaction of the LGBT community at what a certain Catholic bishop said about the killings.  He condemned the killing of innocent people. I read comments by the LGBT community that scorned the bishop because he failed to mention that they were gay.  I am confused. Are people their sexuality or are they people first.  The LGBT community seems to think that their sexual status should somehow make them a higher status.  I am sorry but we are human beings first and our sexual orientation is a secondary characteristic.

ORLANDO 2
My sympathies go out to the family that lost their little boy to the alligator.  They are not to blame for this tragedy.  I pray that the lord touches their family in a very special way and that in spite of the event that they keep their marriage together.  Often times the death of a child tears a family apart.

DONALD TRUMP
So, Donald Trump is going to sit down with the dictator of North Korea, provided that Kim Jung Un comes to The Donald for The Donald with not go to the Dear Leader.  Trump says that it would not hurt to talk to the man.  Well, maybe not.  It certainly could not be a debacle like the one grown by our dear leader Barrack Hussein Obama between us and Iran.  That deal reminds me of Chamberlain coming back from Munich in 1938 saying that he had secured "Peace in our Time."  I have to say as inept and ineffective is, the Donald (if elected...please God no) will make Obama look lie a genius. The only thing that works on Donald is the mouth.  Obama was right when he said that Trump's yapping did more harm then good.

HILLARY CLINTON
So, if I can't vote for Donald, is Hillary a better choice?  I don't think so. She DOES have experience in higher government and that certainly is in her favor. But, the Benghazi affair and her stupidity of using a private mail server for official and often secret communications shows that her brain is not firing on all cylinders.  Besides, did you see what she looked like while being under the pressure of being the Secretary of State?  She let herself go, she forgot how to look good in front of a camera.
Now if she was affected that badly by the Sec State job, how in the world do you think she will fare under the pressures of the presidency?  Even Obama's hair is turning white because of the intense pressure that he is under day after day.

CHICAGO
My heart weeps for my ancestral home town. My family landed in the city in the early 1900's and enjoyed being part of a vibrant, living, city.  Today not a day goes by when we do not hear of another child caught in crossfire, or a gang of thugs marching down the Magnificent Mile robbing citizens. Just recently a bunch of rowdy men and women tried to rob a couple of tourists. The tourists ran out in the street to get away from the thugs and the lady was fatally hit by a car.  My old neighborhood which used to be a wonderful place to live called Brighton Park now requires you to wear a flack jacket to keep yourself safe.  I would not visit, nor would I recommend anyone that I loved to visit Chicago.  Like I said my heart weeps.

That;s it for now.  Leave a comment if you want to - even if you want to curse me out.
God bless, my usual blog entries will resume tomorrow. Thank you for reading my rants.

Stop That Hearse

"Young man arise!"

The Gospel being proclaimed at mass this weekend is from Luke 7: 11-17, the story of the widow at Nain.  If you recall this widow had already lost her husband and now her son had been taken from her. In her world, having no man in the household to support her, she would be reduced to begging to sustain her life. Jesus entered the town and saw the widow in loud mourning, he saw the funeral procession proceeding to the tomb. The gospel says "He was moved with pity for her."  He stopped the procession and commanded, "Young man, arise." The man sat up in the coffin and began to speak,  Jesus gave him back to his mother and the crowd praised God,  They said, "A great profit has arisen in our midst." And further the shouted "God has visited His people."  They were filled with awe. 

Our deacon at mass made a couple of points that I want to share with you. First, this reading is heard on the 10th Sunday in Ordinary time every third year. But this Sunday very often is either Corpus Christi Sunday or Trinity Sunday whose readings would take precedence. The next time this gospel will be proclaimed on a Sunday will be in the year 2043!  Chances are very good that I will be speaking to the widow in heaven when this comes around again. The other thing he mentioned I found fascinating.  In our translation of the Bible we read that Jesus was moved with pity for this widow who would have been reduced to begging to earn her daily bread.  In actuality the phrase used her in the Greek is, "He was filled with gut wrenching love for her."  That is quite a difference.  Feeling pity is one thing and being filled with gut wrenching love is quite another. Luke uses this same phrase in two other passages. Of course I can only remember one of them!  It was used when the Prodigal Father saw his son afar of and ran to greet him. 

Gut wrenching love is what God has for us. There is no reason to be afraid of Him. He will take us back as long as we want to be restored to His friendship.  This coming week remember the love the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have for you and spread that love wherever you go.  Small tender acts of mercy are well within our reach. Maybe instead of cursing the guy that cuts you off in traffic you can utter a prayer that he receives the mercy of God that day.  Maybe stop at the church and put a couple of dollars into the poor box.  Go home and be extra gentle and loving with your spouse. Put on Jesus and share the gut wrenching love He has for us with others. 

 

Memorial Day - Honoring those that have kept us free

1ST LT THOMAS GORDON EDGREN

198TH LIGHT INFANTRY 

UNIT COMMANDER

1945 - 1970

25 YEARS OLD

KILLED BY SMALL ARMS FIRE 

REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM 

AUGUST 8 1970

First Lieutenant Thomas Gordon Edgren

Heavenly Father, I lift up the name of 

Thomas Gordon Edgren

of Libertyville Illinois

Whom you called home in 1970

Father, he died far away from home

In a foreign land torn by civil war and death.

I pray Father, that Thomas is with you now and

that his happiness knows no end. 

There are thousands of men and women just like Thomas

O gracious Father, each has given their all so that we might enjoy freedom in this great land.

My Father, today we are engaged in yet another war.

Men and women in our armed forces are in foreign lands.

Protect them we pray, 

Bring them home to their friends and relatives 

Safe and Secure

For the wounded Lord, melt the hearts of stone we 

in our leaders in Washington, 

Let them move heaven and earth to see to it 

that the wounded in body and mind get nothing but the best of care.

Father, move your hand I pray. 

Your children are weary of war and long for peace.

We need your help, Father to end the violence.

Grant us peace dear Lord, Grant us peace 

Really Really Bad Popes

The Coat of Arms of Vatican City 

It's time to fess up. The Catholic Church, the Church that Christ began has had some of the worst leaders imaginable in the twenty centuries since Jesus appointed Peter as it's first leader.  So how does this affect the claims of the Catholic Church, her teachings and her authority?  Lets first examine a few of the rotters that occupied the Chair of Peter. 

Pope Julius III

This pope was in office for five years and during that time he looted the church treasury to fix up his home. He was known to be a child abuser and flaunted it.  Not exactly what one would expect of a pope. 

Pope Paul III

This pope ruled during a time of turmoil. He adopted a public anti corruption stance but offered offices in the church for sale. He had lovers on the side, the most famous was the Constanza Farnese, his daughter! 

Pope John XII

Pope John XII was haunted his whole life with lust. This can be explained perhaps as he assumed the throne of Peter at age 18 when hormones are raging.  He did not take NO for an answer and his list of crimes includes having sex with his niece.  It is reported that he died as the result of the punitive action of a jealous husband who found him in bed with his wife. 

Pope Benedict IX 

His contemporaries had a lot to say about this man. St. Peter Damian said "he is guilty of feasting on immorality." He also described him as a "demon from hell in the guise of a priest."  He also was deposed, got an army together, became pope again. He then sold the papacy and had sellers remorse, came back with an army and took it back.  He was forced out, refused to stand trial for his crimes and was excommunicated. 

Pope Stephen VII

He dug up Pope Formosus and tried him. Yes, he tried a corpse, found Formosus guilty and had the papal vestments removed from the the corpse, dressed it rags and eventually had the corrupted corpse thrown into the Tiber. For some reason, the people of Rome thought Stephen was insane. They rioted and eventually killed Stephen. 

Pope Alexander VI

This man worshiped one god, money. He is often thought of as the worst of the worst. He cared little about religion and was famous for throwing wild orgies. When money became a problem he arranged for the rich to have their treasures confiscated and if they refused well, there was the death penalty to consider. As you can readily imagine he made many enemies and some of them succeeded in getting him to step down from the throne of Peter by feeding him a wonderful poisoned pasta plate which he consumed with gusto, washing it down with most likely tainted vino.  

Okay, there you have it. My picks for the absolute worst popes of all time.  Have I shot myself in the foot?  Have I given ammunition to the anti-Catholic trolls out there?  No, not at all!! The Catholic Church has had 266 popes including Peter. The Pope is a fallible human being. A pope can commit sin and it is said that Saint Pope John Paul II went to confession at least once a week.  Out of all these men there was bound to be some who did not measure up to the standards we would expect a man in charge of the Church that Christ built.  But if you delve into church history a bit you will find one amazing fact.  Never in the history of the Catholic Church has a pope taught heresy or error. The Holy Spirit sees to that.  

There was a pope in the sixteenth century named Sixtus V.  He was a good pope, he brought order to the northern Italy, refilled the treasury but he was deficient in one thing, as far as his Latin went, well, he sucked. He assigned the task of translating the Bible to a group of scholars and they took what Sixtus thought was a long time. He fired them and undertook the translation himself, providing a Bible that was full of error and mis-translations.  He prepared the paperwork to tell the Church this was now the official translation that will be used. The night before he was going to issue the papal bull, he died, of natural causes.  This is an example of how the Holy Spirit protects the Church and the Pope from teaching error. 

So, when your non-Catholic friends point out a bad pope, you can point out the fact that Jesus has kept His promise and continues to keep it.  The gates of Hell will never prevail against His Church. 

 "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it"

It's Time For A Crusade For The Muslims!

Let's face it. It is time that we marshal our forces, gird our loins (whatever that entails) don our armor and take on the issue of Islam!  Now wait a minute, did you read the title of this post - go on, look at it again...yes this is a Crusade FOR the Muslim people/ Our armor is the armor of Christ!  What on earth do you mean by this?  Well lets look at the situation from a Christian point of view. 

Those that follow the Islamic faith for the most part are people like you and I. They want peace, they want to live their life and raise their families. Unfortunately Islam is not ruled by a central organization. Therefore we have people like ISL that do their best to kill in the name of God.  We have to pray for both groups, the innocent every day Muslim and the mad dog, I will cut your head of infidel pick-up truck with a machine gun jockey.  Why do we have to pray for both groups?

Regardless of their innocence or guilt, followers of Islam do no believe in Jesus as the Son of God.  They do not have Jesus, they to not recognize Him and like it or not as non-believers they are condemned to an eternity without God.  How can I say such a thing? Well, it's not me, read Mark 16:16, "Anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved but whoever does not believe will be condemned."  

We as Christians have to do something.  There are millions of people who are technically lost because they do not have Jesus.  We cannot go to the killing fields of Syria and Iraq.  We cannot just invade the local mosque and shout "Jesus is Lord" at the top of our lungs.  We cannot hit them with the Bible, they do not believe in what the "people of the book" as they call Christians and Jews say.   What can we do?  

The answer is simple and elegant and very Christian. We can pray. We can pray to our Lord Jesus Christ to rescue these poor lost souls lost in the moon madness of Islam. We can pray and pray without ceasing for their conversion. 

This is the crusade we need.  We do not need drones, soldiers or smart bombs to eradicate Muslims.  We must love them into the Christian family and the only way to do this is to pray for their conversion. 

The command of Jesus is "to love one another as I have loved you." He loved us to his death.   God is waiting to move His hand.  He wants his children, you and I, to show trust in Him and  through prayer and fasting, He will make all things new. 

What say ye?  Are ye brave enough to become a Crusader for the Conversion of Muslims?  

Is It Cool To Be Poor?

There are two groups of people that are opposed to one another in this world.  The two groups are the poor and the rich.  Defining these two groups can be slightly problematic.  What is poor for one person is considered rich for another. But for the purposes of this post we are going to consider the poor and the rich in the United States of America. 

In the U.S. there is a sharp divide between those that have and those that have not.  A janitor in a company will work for minimum wage while the CEO of the company will work for a couple of million dollars a year. If the janitor does a bad job or the company wants to "downsize" he or she is fired and sent away with little thought. In effect he is told, "good bye and good luck, keep warm and well fed." On the other hand if a CEO does a bad job, the board of directors suggests that maybe he should retire. So, he "retires" taking his golden parachute with him so that his life is not disrupted by the inconvenience of his forced retirement.  Here we have on the one side a man who will have to depend on social services, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and maybe relief money to keep his family fed, clothed, and sheltered.  On the other hand the CEO will take his family to Disneyland for a couple of weeks of fun in the sun before taking on the task of maybe getting another job, no hurry though. 

You could say that the work that the janitor does is not as important as the work the CEO does for the corporation.  This is obviously true. The more keys you carry around in the corporate world, the less important is your work. But the fact remains that in spite of the circumstances that the two men find themselves in, their basic needs are exactly the same.  Each of these men (or women) have to provide the basic things that a family needs. The difference is simply that the CEO is empowered to do these things without surrendering personal dignity while the janitor has to surrender his and prove to government mandarins that his worthy to be given some assistance while he is out of work. 

Pope Francis in a comment he delivered this week said that those that mistreat their employees by paying them so little while making themselves rich are leaches and their behavior is a mortal sin. Those are very strong words of warning indeed.  But we can look to the Bible to see that Jesus Himself gives us the very same warning in Luke 16:20 where Lazarus hoped for the scraps from the rich man's table and got nothing.  We read where Lazarus died and was carried to his reward in heaven with Abraham. We also read that the rich man died and was buried.  The rich man ended up in a place of torment and begged Abraham to send Lazarus with a drop of water for his tongue. Abraham told the rich man that he had received his reward in life and besides it was not possible to travel from heaven to hell as there was a vast chasm between them and you could not cross from one side to another. 

Also in Matthew we have the story of the goats and the sheep where the goats are taken away for eternal misery and punishment because they did not recognize Christ in those in need while the sheep did and helped those around them.  In Matthew 19:24 Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to gain heaven.  This is a curious thing to say.  When we think of a needle we thing of sewing and the little hole at the top where the thread goes.

 But that is not the eye of the needle that Jesus is speaking of. The eye of the needle is a gate in a wall that was put there to slow people down.  They would get there and then they would have to remove all of the freight they were carrying, lead the camel through, then bring the freight through. This gate made it very hard for an enemy to attack the city.  I have always thought that this is the way Jesus is telling us to not be so attached to material things because we cannot take them with us.  

So, is it better to be rich or to be poor?  I think that God loves the poor. But what makes a man poor is not what he has in the bank, it it what he has in his heart. A person that has access to fabulous wealth has access to all of the wonderful things of this earth. There are cars, electronics, jewelry, everything that you could want to make your life one of comfort and ease. Unfortunately the shininess and glitter can blind the owner to the plight of the world around him and he looses sight of the people in need.  On the other hand a poor person who depends on God not only will feel sympathy for his fellow paupers but with the right attitude will share what he has with those around him. 

Do you see here an irony?  A person rich in the goods of this world can make himself a pauper by sharing what he has with those less fortunate. For a rich person the attachment of the goods of this world is a danger.  If he does all he can to keep what he has in the end he looses everything.  Further a poor person that holds everything closely commits the same sin as the richest man on earth. The secret is to share what we have no matter what our state is in life. So being poor is not only cool, it is required. The things we have are not ours. We will leave them behind for others and they in turn will leave their riches behind for others.  In the end everything we have belongs to God, we are only entrusted with it and expected to use it for good. 

No one ever said following Jesus would be easy. Let's say for example you own a gas station.  You pay your employees minimum wage and they take their money and use it the best way that they can to make a life for their family.  Out of the money they get they have to provide shelter, food, medical care, schooling etc to their family. On minimum wage this is a very hard life. But say you are the owner of a gas station and you pay over the minimum wage and you provide medical insurance. Your gas station does not make as much profit as the one on the next corner but because you share what you have, you get more loyal employees and you store up for yourself treasure in heaven. 

So is it cool to be poor?  What are your thoughts?