(richardatf) 1st Thessalonians 5:22 Abstain from all appearance of evil.
I would think that considering this clear warning you might abstain from posting pictures of yourself next to little girls, especially considering the history of catholic "priests" with young children. I am not accusing you of anything but utilizing poor judgment in this case (and ignoring the above scripture).
Perhaps she is a relation of yours, she couldn't be a child of yours as you are forbidden from having relations with women. Which is against the following:
1st Titus 3:2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
(Cristoiglesia) I guess that if you had a granddaughter like mine and you had a picture taken with her such a picture would have the appearance of evil. MY granddaughter is not evil and neither am I. But you are so filled with evil thoughts about Christ’s Church and its faithful that you can see no goodness such is your prideful bigotry and self righteousness. The history of Catholic priests with children is honorable. The fact is despite your denial is that you are accusing me of evil and for no reason except hatred which does not come from God but another source.
I have four children and eight grandchildren. I do have a wife as do many Catholic priests and have never vowed celibacy as is the state of 22 of the 23 Rites of the Catholic Church for our priests. Celibacy is a choice and is not forbidden by the Church nor has it ever been. It is just a discipline for some. Both St. Paul and Jesus taught in favor of celibacy for the clergy. Titus 3:2. is speaking of the selection of married as priests and should not be inferred to mean that all priests MUST be married.
(richardatf) Kissing a statue is worshiping it, kissing a statue of Peter (it was removed from a Roman temple and was formerly considered a statue of Jupiter, moron) is just as much worship. And I do not bow down before my bed.
(Cristoiglesia) Maybe every time you kiss someone or something it is worship but for most people this is nonsense. Certainly Catholic Christians would not see this as worship as to do so would make them cease to be Catholic. No, the statue was not removed from a Pagan temple and the name changed to St. Peter. You should try kneeling beside your bed to pray, I do it every morning after rising for the day. It is very comfortable resting against the bed to pray. Do not worry, kneeling down is not synonymous with worship.
(richardatf) You have failed to answer much, and citing catechism will not suffice.
(Cristoiglesia) The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the official teaching of the Magisterium of the Church and is reliable as the true teaching of the Church. I know it disagrees with your lies against the Church but it is truly what the Church teaches and not your opinions.
(richardatf) p.s. if the sunburst is manmade,it is an idol and sunworship
(Cristoiglesia) No it is not an idol but the monstrance is the holder for the truly real and substantial Body, Soul and Divinity of our Lord and Savior. We worship Him and not the object.
God bless!
In Christ
Fr. Joseph
27 July, 2009
Discussion with richardatf about the Sacrament of Reconciliation
(richardatf) Simple question for you, under what authority have you chaVery intriguing, wonder if you can site a source? Perhaps this is a lie too?
Scripture tells us to " Confess [your] faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. " (James 5:16)
Says nothing about your so called "priests" does it? "one to another" means you confess your faults to the person you harmed.
Cite your source where Jesus says to confess to a "priest", or be proven a liar once again
(Cristoiglesia)
(Cristoiglesia) Christ instituted the sacraments purposefully. The sacrament called reconciliation or penance is what we call our actions when we go to confession. Going to confession and confessing to a priest is the normative way of reconciling oneself back into God's family when we have committed a mortal sin. It is the biblical way corresponding to Jesus' teaching as recorded by the apostle John in John 20: 22-23. What we learn from John is the powers given to the priests are not only to forgive sins but also to retain sins. Jesus commanded the power to be used. It is the duty given by Jesus for the priest to measure the contrition of the penitent and act accordingly.
However, one must repent and pray sincerely to God as an act of contrition before one enters the confessional. The priest represents Jesus by acting in persona Christi and for the entire family of God represented by the Church militant who is harmed by the sin of another. No sin is private but all sin affects others. Jesus described this relationship as a vine with Him as the vine and we as the branches (John 15:5). If one member of the branch is sick then all
the branches are affected and suffer as a result. Because of our familial relationship with each other Jesus created a means of confession so that all those affected in His family are represented by the priest as is God. The acts of sin and forgiveness are not a private matters. God bless!
In Christ
Fr. Joseph
Scripture tells us to " Confess [your] faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. " (James 5:16)
Says nothing about your so called "priests" does it? "one to another" means you confess your faults to the person you harmed.
Cite your source where Jesus says to confess to a "priest", or be proven a liar once again
(Cristoiglesia)
(Cristoiglesia) Christ instituted the sacraments purposefully. The sacrament called reconciliation or penance is what we call our actions when we go to confession. Going to confession and confessing to a priest is the normative way of reconciling oneself back into God's family when we have committed a mortal sin. It is the biblical way corresponding to Jesus' teaching as recorded by the apostle John in John 20: 22-23. What we learn from John is the powers given to the priests are not only to forgive sins but also to retain sins. Jesus commanded the power to be used. It is the duty given by Jesus for the priest to measure the contrition of the penitent and act accordingly.
However, one must repent and pray sincerely to God as an act of contrition before one enters the confessional. The priest represents Jesus by acting in persona Christi and for the entire family of God represented by the Church militant who is harmed by the sin of another. No sin is private but all sin affects others. Jesus described this relationship as a vine with Him as the vine and we as the branches (John 15:5). If one member of the branch is sick then all
the branches are affected and suffer as a result. Because of our familial relationship with each other Jesus created a means of confession so that all those affected in His family are represented by the priest as is God. The acts of sin and forgiveness are not a private matters. God bless!
In Christ
Fr. Joseph
Discussion with richardatf about Sunday worship
(richardatf) Simple question for you, under what authority have you changed the Law of God and the day (time) of worship from Saturday (the true Sabbath) to Sunday (the venerable day of the sun)?
Daniel 7:25 And he shall speak [great] words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.
(Cristoiglesia)
One of the things that the Seventh Day Adventists fail to acknowledge is that the practice of worship on the first day of the week is as old as Christianity and was instituted by the Apostles. It is important to recognize that this is eisegesis on their part supporting instead of the Ten Commandments the teaching of their prophetess and founder Ellen Gould White. They would say that this practice, which is as old as Christianity, is a violation of God’s eternal decree. Let us go to Scriptures and see if the evidence is there to support their conclusions.
Let us look at the basis, other than Ms. White’s visions, that SDA’s have this belief and criticism of the orthodox belief in observing the first day of the week instead of the Sabbath. According to Scriptures this is the “perpetual covenant” that was given to man through all ages. Therefore according to history the Jew’s have observed the Sabbath in commemoration of our Lord’s rest after creation. These are the verses in regards to the pre-Christian practice:
(Exo 20:8 DRB) Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day.
(Exo 20:9 DRB) Six days shalt thou labour, and shalt do all thy works.
(Exo 20:10 DRB) But on the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: thou shalt do no work on it, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy beast, nor the stranger that is within thy gates.
(Exo 31:16 DRB) Let the children of Israel keep the sabbath, and celebrate it in their generations. It is an everlasting covenant
(Exo 31:17 DRB) Between me and the children of Israel, and a perpetual sign. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and in the seventh he ceased from work.
(Exo 31:18 DRB) And the Lord, when he had ended these words in Mount Sinai, gave to Moses two stone tables of testimony, written with the finger of God.
(Deu 5:12 DRB) Observe the day of the sabbath, to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.
(Gen 2:1 DRB) So the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the furniture of them.
(Gen 2:2 DRB) And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made: and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.
(Gen 2:3 DRB) And he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
(Gen 2:4 DRB) These are the generations of the heaven and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth:
(Gen 2:5 DRB) And every plant of the field before it sprung up in the earth, and every herb of the ground before it grew: for the Lord God had not rained upon the earth; and there was not a man to till the earth.
(Gen 2:6 DRB) But a spring rose out of the earth, watering all the surface of the earth.
(Gen 2:7 DRB) And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
(Gen 2:8 DRB) And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed man whom he had formed.
(Gen 2:9 DRB) And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
(Gen 2:10 DRB) And a river went out of the place of pleasure to water paradise, which from thence is divided into four heads.
(Gen 2:11 DRB) The name of the one is Phison: that is it which compasseth all the land of Hevilath, where gold groweth.
(Gen 2:12 DRB) And the gold of that land is very good: there is found bdellium, and the onyx stone.
(Gen 2:13 DRB) And the name of the second river is Gehon: the same is it that compasseth all the land of Ethiopia.
(Gen 2:14 DRB) And the name of the third river is Tigris: the same passeth along by the Assyrians. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
(Gen 2:15 DRB) And the Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it.
(Gen 2:16 DRB) And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat:
(Gen 2:17 DRB) But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.
(Gen 2:18 DRB) And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself.
(Gen 2:19 DRB) And the Lord God having formed out of the ground all the beasts of the earth, and all the fowls of the air, brought them to Adam to see what he would call them: for whatsoever Adam called any living creature the same is its name.
(Gen 2:20 DRB) And Adam called all the beasts by their names, and all the fowls of the air, and all the cattle of the field: but for Adam there was not found a helper like himself.
(Gen 2:21 DRB) Then the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it.
(Gen 2:22 DRB) And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman: and brought her to Adam.
(Gen 2:23 DRB) And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.
(Gen 2:24 DRB) Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.
(Gen 2:25 DRB) And they were both naked: to wit, Adam and his wife: and were not ashamed.
(Gen 3:1 DRB) Now the serpent was more subtle tha any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?
There have been those who will say that the Catholic Church abandoned this commandment and practice but such a claim is incorrect. Instead the Church transferred the third commandment to observe the Sabbath to the first day of the week and called it the “Lord’s day” to commemorate the fact that it is through his resurrection that we become a “new creation” as is stated in the following verses:
(Act 20:7 DRB) And on the first day of the week, when we were assembled to break bread, Paul discoursed with them, being to depart on the morrow. And he continued his speech until midnight.
(1Co 16:2 DRB) On the first day of the week, let every one of you put apart with himself, laying up what it shall well please him: that when I come, the collections be not then to be made.
(2Co 5:17 DRB) If then any be in Christ a new creature, the old things are passed away. Behold all things are made new.
(Gal 6:15 DRB) For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision: but a new creature.
In about the year 60AD the Didache records and instructs the Christians to gather together on the “Lord’s Day”. Evidence from the Church fathers are in the writings of Justin Martyr around 155 AD to the Roman Emperor that stated that the liturgy of the Eucharist is celebrated on the first day of the week instead of the Sabbath.
There are principally two reasons that the Church transferred the observance of the third commandment to the first day of the week. First of all this is the day that Christ rose from the dead:
(Mat 28:1 DRB) And in the end of the sabbath, when it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalen and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre.
(Joh 20:1 DRB) And on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalen cometh early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre: and she saw the stone taken away from the sepulchre.
The second reason is that the Church wanted to make clear their separation from Pharisaical Judaism which included ritualistic animal sacrifices because the ultimate and final sacrifice had occurred to take away the sins of the world. Christ’s sacrifice had replaced the Passover lamb which was slain and eaten as a symbol of sacrifice for sin. In addition we see that Christians also rejected other rituals of the Jews such as the Kosher food laws and dietary restrictions imposed by the law of Moses. Nor does the Christian Church observe Passover or the feast days as the following verses show:
(Joh 1:29 DRB) The next day, John saw Jesus coming to him; and he saith: Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who taketh away the sin of the world.
(Joh 1:36 DRB) And beholding Jesus walking, he saith: Behold the Lamb of God.
(Deu 12:15 DRB) But if thou desirest to eat, and the eating of flesh delight thee, kill, and eat according to the blessing of the Lord thy God, which he hath given thee, in thy cities: whether it be unclean, that is to say, having blemish or defect: or clean, that is to say, sound and without blemish, such as may be offered, as the roe, and the hart, shalt thou eat it:
(Deu 12:16 DRB) Only the blood thou shalt not eat, but thou shalt pour it out upon the earth as water.
(Deu 12:17 DRB) Thou mayst not eat in thy towns the tithes of thy corn, and thy wine, and thy oil, the firstborn of thy herds and thy cattle, nor any thing that thou vowest, and that thou wilt offer voluntarily, and the firstfruits of thy hands:
(Deu 12:18 DRB) But thou shalt eat them before the Lord thy God in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, thou and thy son and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and maidservant, and the Levite that dwelleth in thy cities: and thou shalt rejoice and be refreshed before the Lord thy God in all things, whereunto thou shalt put thy hand.
(Deu 12:19 DRB) Take heed thou forsake not the Levite all the time that thou livest in the land.
(Deu 12:20 DRB) When the Lord thy God shall have enlarged thy borders, as he hath spoken to thee, and thou wilt eat the flesh that thy soul desireth:
(Deu 12:21 DRB) And if the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, that his name should be there, be far off, thou shalt kill of thy herds and of thy flocks, as I have commanded thee, and shalt eat in thy towns, as it pleaseth thee.
(Deu 12:22 DRB) Even as the roe and the hart is eaten, so shalt thou eat them: both the clean and unclean shall eat of them alike.
(Deu 12:23 DRB) Only beware of this, that thou eat not the blood, for the blood is for the soul: and therefore thou must not eat the soul with the flesh:
(Deu 12:24 DRB) But thou shalt pour it upon the earth as water,
(Deu 12:25 DRB) That it may be well with thee and thy children after thee, when thou shalt do that which is pleasing in the sight of the Lord.
(Deu 12:26 DRB) But the things which thou hast sanctified and vowed to the Lord, thou shalt take, and shalt come to the place which the Lord shall choose:
(Deu 12:27 DRB) And shalt offer thy oblations, the flesh and the blood upon the altar of the Lord thy God: the blood of thy victims thou shalt pour on the altar: and the flesh thou thyself shalt eat.
(Deu 12:28 DRB) Observe and hear all the things that I command thee, that it may be well with thee and thy children after thee for ever, when thou shalt do what is good and pleasing in the sight of the Lord thy God.
(Deu 14:3 DRB) Eat not the things that are unclean.
(Deu 14:4 DRB) These are the beasts that you shall eat, the ox, and the sheep, and the goat,
(Deu 14:5 DRB) The hart and the roe, the buffle, the chamois, the pygarg, the wild goat, the camelopardalus.
(Deu 14:6 DRB) Every beast that divideth the hoof in two parts, and cheweth the cud, you shall eat.
(Deu 14:7 DRB) But of them that chew the cud, but divide not the hoof, you shall not eat, such as the camel, the hare, and the cherogril: because they chew the cud, but divide not the hoof, they shall be unclean to you.
(Deu 14:8 DRB) The swine also, because it divideth the hoof, but cheweth not the cud, shall be unclean, their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch.
(Deu 14:9 DRB) These shall you eat of all that abide in the waters: All that have fins and scales, you shall eat.
(Deu 14:10 DRB) Such as are without fins and scales, you shall not eat, because they are unclean.
(Deu 14:11 DRB) All birds that are clean you shall eat.
(Deu 14:12 DRB) The unclean eat not: to wit, the eagle, and the grype, and the osprey,
(Deu 14:13 DRB) The ringtail, and the vulture, and the kite according to their kind:
(Deu 14:14 DRB) And all of the raven's kind:
(Deu 14:15 DRB) And the ostrich, and the owl, and the larus, and the hawk according to its kind:
(Deu 14:16 DRB) The heron, and the swan, and the stork,
(Deu 14:17 DRB) And the cormorant, the porphirion, and the night crow,
(Deu 14:18 DRB) The bittern, and the charadrion, every one in their kind: the houp also and the bat.
(Deu 14:19 DRB) Every thing that creepeth, and hath little wings, shall be unclean, and shall not be eaten.
(Deu 14:20 DRB) All that is clean, you shall eat.
(Deu 14:21 DRB) But whatsoever is dead of itself, eat not thereof. Give it to the stranger, that is within thy gates, to eat, or sell it to him: because thou art the holy people of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not boil a kid in the milk of his dam.
(Col 2:16 DRB) Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a festival day or of the new moon or of the sabbaths,
(Col 2:17 DRB) Which are a shadow of things to come: but the body is of Christ.
(Col 2:18 DRB) Let no man seduce you, willing in humility and religion of angels, walking in the things which he hath not seen, in vain puffed up by the sense of his flesh:
(Col 2:19 DRB) And not holding the head, from which the whole body, by joints and bands, being supplied with nourishment and compacted, groweth into the increase of God.
(Col 2:20 DRB) If then you be dead with Christ from the elements of this world, why do you yet decree as though living in the world?
(Col 2:21 DRB) Touch not: taste not: handle not.
(Col 2:22 DRB) Which all are unto destruction by the very use, according to the precepts and doctrines of men.
(Col 2:23 DRB) Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in superstition and humility, and not sparing the body; not in any honour to the filling of the flesh.
This was all done by the earliest Christians to witness to others the true meaning of the Sabbath which came to complete fruition in the New Covenant of Christ, in whom we find true rest.
(Mat 11:28 DRB) Come to me all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.
The Old Covenant Sabbath with its temple ceremonies and animal sacrifices was an imperfect prefiguration of Christ’s perfect fulfillment through His New Covenant. The Old Covenant practices were only a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary. As the Scriptures say once the perfect has come, the imperfect passed away. Just as Baptism replaced circumcision the Church saw the third commandment differently.
(Heb 8:5 DRB) Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things. As it was answered to Moses, when he was to finish the tabernacle: See (saith he) that thou make all things according to the pattern which was shewn thee on the mount.
(Heb 10:1 DRB) For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things, by the selfsame sacrifices which they offer continually every year, can never make the comers thereunto perfect.
The rituals of the Old Covenant are not binding on Christians according to St. Paul and he even rebuked Christians who continued with the Old covenant restrictions and ceremonies. In Christ, the demands and the observance of the Old Covenant demands and obligations of which the Sabbath are a part are no longer binding and have passed away, being replaced by the spiritual observance of the Sabbath of the New Covenant. One other thing, when the rich man asked what he must do to be saved Christ told him several commandments to follow and none were to keep holy the Sabbath.
(Gal 4:9 DRB) But now, after that you have known God, or rather are known by God: how turn you again to the weak and needy elements which you desire to serve again?
(Gal 4:10 DRB) You observe days and months and times, and years.
(Gal 4:11 DRB) I am afraid of you, lest perhaps I have laboured in vain among you.
(Col 2:16 DRB) Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a festival day or of the new moon or of the sabbaths,
(Col 2:17 DRB) Which are a shadow of things to come: but the body is of Christ.
(Mat 19:16 DRB) And behold one came and said to him: Good master, what good shall I do that I may have life everlasting?
(Mat 19:17 DRB) Who said to him: Why askest thou me concerning good? One is good, God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
(Mat 19:18 DRB) He said to him: Which? And Jesus said: Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness.
(Mat 19:19 DRB) Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
(Mat 19:20 DRB) The young man saith to him: All these have I kept from my youth, what is yet wanting to me?
(Mat 19:21 DRB) Jesus saith to him: If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.
(Mat 19:22 DRB) And when the young man had heard this word, he went away sad: for he had great possessions.
Now, I have been told by our critics that the Catholic Church has no authority to change the third commandment but as I have pointed out Christ gave that authority as well as the teaching authority:
(Mat 18:18 DRB) Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven.
(Luk 10:16 DRB) He that heareth you heareth me: and he that despiseth you despiseth me: and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me.
(Mat 28:18 DRB) And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.
(Mat 28:19 DRB) Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
(Mat 28:20 DRB) Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.
Jesus made it very clear that He is the Lord of the Sabbath Day and stated that the day was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, that being true it would logically follow that the Church shares that authority as was said to Peter when He passed the keys:
(Mar 2:28 DRB) Therefore the Son of man is Lord of the sabbath also.
(Luk 6:5 DRB) And he said to them: The Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.
(Mar 2:27 DRB) And he said to them: The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.
(Mat 10:40 DRB) He that receiveth you, receiveth me: and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me.
(Mat 16:19 DRB) And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.
(Mat 18:18 DRB) Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven.
(Mat 18:19 DRB) Again I say to you, that if two of you shall consent upon earth, concerning anything whatsoever they shall ask, it shall be done to them by my Father who is in heaven.
(Mat 18:20 DRB) For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
Thee are other parallels in Church authority other than the observance of the Sabbath from the last until the first day of the week and in all cases it does not represent an abandonment of the law as Church critics would suggest but is rather a fulfillment of the law in a more perfect manner. We must remember what Christ said:
(Mat 5:17 DRB) Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
(Mat 5:18 DRB) For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled.
(richardatf) so lets see, the pope speaks great words against the most High my calling himself "Vicarus Filii Dei", he changes the laws and times by changing the day of observance to Sunday and (in your vaunted catechisms) removing the Sabbath day Commandment and splitting the Commandment against coveting into two.
(Cristoiglesia) Sorry, but “Vicarius Filii Dei” is not and never has been a title of the Pope and it is not inscribed in the Papal Tiara as Alexander Hislop claims..
God bless!
In Christ
Fr. Joseph
Daniel 7:25 And he shall speak [great] words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.
(Cristoiglesia)
One of the things that the Seventh Day Adventists fail to acknowledge is that the practice of worship on the first day of the week is as old as Christianity and was instituted by the Apostles. It is important to recognize that this is eisegesis on their part supporting instead of the Ten Commandments the teaching of their prophetess and founder Ellen Gould White. They would say that this practice, which is as old as Christianity, is a violation of God’s eternal decree. Let us go to Scriptures and see if the evidence is there to support their conclusions.
Let us look at the basis, other than Ms. White’s visions, that SDA’s have this belief and criticism of the orthodox belief in observing the first day of the week instead of the Sabbath. According to Scriptures this is the “perpetual covenant” that was given to man through all ages. Therefore according to history the Jew’s have observed the Sabbath in commemoration of our Lord’s rest after creation. These are the verses in regards to the pre-Christian practice:
(Exo 20:8 DRB) Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day.
(Exo 20:9 DRB) Six days shalt thou labour, and shalt do all thy works.
(Exo 20:10 DRB) But on the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: thou shalt do no work on it, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy beast, nor the stranger that is within thy gates.
(Exo 31:16 DRB) Let the children of Israel keep the sabbath, and celebrate it in their generations. It is an everlasting covenant
(Exo 31:17 DRB) Between me and the children of Israel, and a perpetual sign. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and in the seventh he ceased from work.
(Exo 31:18 DRB) And the Lord, when he had ended these words in Mount Sinai, gave to Moses two stone tables of testimony, written with the finger of God.
(Deu 5:12 DRB) Observe the day of the sabbath, to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.
(Gen 2:1 DRB) So the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the furniture of them.
(Gen 2:2 DRB) And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made: and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.
(Gen 2:3 DRB) And he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
(Gen 2:4 DRB) These are the generations of the heaven and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth:
(Gen 2:5 DRB) And every plant of the field before it sprung up in the earth, and every herb of the ground before it grew: for the Lord God had not rained upon the earth; and there was not a man to till the earth.
(Gen 2:6 DRB) But a spring rose out of the earth, watering all the surface of the earth.
(Gen 2:7 DRB) And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
(Gen 2:8 DRB) And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed man whom he had formed.
(Gen 2:9 DRB) And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
(Gen 2:10 DRB) And a river went out of the place of pleasure to water paradise, which from thence is divided into four heads.
(Gen 2:11 DRB) The name of the one is Phison: that is it which compasseth all the land of Hevilath, where gold groweth.
(Gen 2:12 DRB) And the gold of that land is very good: there is found bdellium, and the onyx stone.
(Gen 2:13 DRB) And the name of the second river is Gehon: the same is it that compasseth all the land of Ethiopia.
(Gen 2:14 DRB) And the name of the third river is Tigris: the same passeth along by the Assyrians. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
(Gen 2:15 DRB) And the Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it.
(Gen 2:16 DRB) And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat:
(Gen 2:17 DRB) But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.
(Gen 2:18 DRB) And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself.
(Gen 2:19 DRB) And the Lord God having formed out of the ground all the beasts of the earth, and all the fowls of the air, brought them to Adam to see what he would call them: for whatsoever Adam called any living creature the same is its name.
(Gen 2:20 DRB) And Adam called all the beasts by their names, and all the fowls of the air, and all the cattle of the field: but for Adam there was not found a helper like himself.
(Gen 2:21 DRB) Then the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it.
(Gen 2:22 DRB) And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman: and brought her to Adam.
(Gen 2:23 DRB) And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.
(Gen 2:24 DRB) Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.
(Gen 2:25 DRB) And they were both naked: to wit, Adam and his wife: and were not ashamed.
(Gen 3:1 DRB) Now the serpent was more subtle tha any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?
There have been those who will say that the Catholic Church abandoned this commandment and practice but such a claim is incorrect. Instead the Church transferred the third commandment to observe the Sabbath to the first day of the week and called it the “Lord’s day” to commemorate the fact that it is through his resurrection that we become a “new creation” as is stated in the following verses:
(Act 20:7 DRB) And on the first day of the week, when we were assembled to break bread, Paul discoursed with them, being to depart on the morrow. And he continued his speech until midnight.
(1Co 16:2 DRB) On the first day of the week, let every one of you put apart with himself, laying up what it shall well please him: that when I come, the collections be not then to be made.
(2Co 5:17 DRB) If then any be in Christ a new creature, the old things are passed away. Behold all things are made new.
(Gal 6:15 DRB) For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision: but a new creature.
In about the year 60AD the Didache records and instructs the Christians to gather together on the “Lord’s Day”. Evidence from the Church fathers are in the writings of Justin Martyr around 155 AD to the Roman Emperor that stated that the liturgy of the Eucharist is celebrated on the first day of the week instead of the Sabbath.
There are principally two reasons that the Church transferred the observance of the third commandment to the first day of the week. First of all this is the day that Christ rose from the dead:
(Mat 28:1 DRB) And in the end of the sabbath, when it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalen and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre.
(Joh 20:1 DRB) And on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalen cometh early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre: and she saw the stone taken away from the sepulchre.
The second reason is that the Church wanted to make clear their separation from Pharisaical Judaism which included ritualistic animal sacrifices because the ultimate and final sacrifice had occurred to take away the sins of the world. Christ’s sacrifice had replaced the Passover lamb which was slain and eaten as a symbol of sacrifice for sin. In addition we see that Christians also rejected other rituals of the Jews such as the Kosher food laws and dietary restrictions imposed by the law of Moses. Nor does the Christian Church observe Passover or the feast days as the following verses show:
(Joh 1:29 DRB) The next day, John saw Jesus coming to him; and he saith: Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who taketh away the sin of the world.
(Joh 1:36 DRB) And beholding Jesus walking, he saith: Behold the Lamb of God.
(Deu 12:15 DRB) But if thou desirest to eat, and the eating of flesh delight thee, kill, and eat according to the blessing of the Lord thy God, which he hath given thee, in thy cities: whether it be unclean, that is to say, having blemish or defect: or clean, that is to say, sound and without blemish, such as may be offered, as the roe, and the hart, shalt thou eat it:
(Deu 12:16 DRB) Only the blood thou shalt not eat, but thou shalt pour it out upon the earth as water.
(Deu 12:17 DRB) Thou mayst not eat in thy towns the tithes of thy corn, and thy wine, and thy oil, the firstborn of thy herds and thy cattle, nor any thing that thou vowest, and that thou wilt offer voluntarily, and the firstfruits of thy hands:
(Deu 12:18 DRB) But thou shalt eat them before the Lord thy God in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, thou and thy son and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and maidservant, and the Levite that dwelleth in thy cities: and thou shalt rejoice and be refreshed before the Lord thy God in all things, whereunto thou shalt put thy hand.
(Deu 12:19 DRB) Take heed thou forsake not the Levite all the time that thou livest in the land.
(Deu 12:20 DRB) When the Lord thy God shall have enlarged thy borders, as he hath spoken to thee, and thou wilt eat the flesh that thy soul desireth:
(Deu 12:21 DRB) And if the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, that his name should be there, be far off, thou shalt kill of thy herds and of thy flocks, as I have commanded thee, and shalt eat in thy towns, as it pleaseth thee.
(Deu 12:22 DRB) Even as the roe and the hart is eaten, so shalt thou eat them: both the clean and unclean shall eat of them alike.
(Deu 12:23 DRB) Only beware of this, that thou eat not the blood, for the blood is for the soul: and therefore thou must not eat the soul with the flesh:
(Deu 12:24 DRB) But thou shalt pour it upon the earth as water,
(Deu 12:25 DRB) That it may be well with thee and thy children after thee, when thou shalt do that which is pleasing in the sight of the Lord.
(Deu 12:26 DRB) But the things which thou hast sanctified and vowed to the Lord, thou shalt take, and shalt come to the place which the Lord shall choose:
(Deu 12:27 DRB) And shalt offer thy oblations, the flesh and the blood upon the altar of the Lord thy God: the blood of thy victims thou shalt pour on the altar: and the flesh thou thyself shalt eat.
(Deu 12:28 DRB) Observe and hear all the things that I command thee, that it may be well with thee and thy children after thee for ever, when thou shalt do what is good and pleasing in the sight of the Lord thy God.
(Deu 14:3 DRB) Eat not the things that are unclean.
(Deu 14:4 DRB) These are the beasts that you shall eat, the ox, and the sheep, and the goat,
(Deu 14:5 DRB) The hart and the roe, the buffle, the chamois, the pygarg, the wild goat, the camelopardalus.
(Deu 14:6 DRB) Every beast that divideth the hoof in two parts, and cheweth the cud, you shall eat.
(Deu 14:7 DRB) But of them that chew the cud, but divide not the hoof, you shall not eat, such as the camel, the hare, and the cherogril: because they chew the cud, but divide not the hoof, they shall be unclean to you.
(Deu 14:8 DRB) The swine also, because it divideth the hoof, but cheweth not the cud, shall be unclean, their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch.
(Deu 14:9 DRB) These shall you eat of all that abide in the waters: All that have fins and scales, you shall eat.
(Deu 14:10 DRB) Such as are without fins and scales, you shall not eat, because they are unclean.
(Deu 14:11 DRB) All birds that are clean you shall eat.
(Deu 14:12 DRB) The unclean eat not: to wit, the eagle, and the grype, and the osprey,
(Deu 14:13 DRB) The ringtail, and the vulture, and the kite according to their kind:
(Deu 14:14 DRB) And all of the raven's kind:
(Deu 14:15 DRB) And the ostrich, and the owl, and the larus, and the hawk according to its kind:
(Deu 14:16 DRB) The heron, and the swan, and the stork,
(Deu 14:17 DRB) And the cormorant, the porphirion, and the night crow,
(Deu 14:18 DRB) The bittern, and the charadrion, every one in their kind: the houp also and the bat.
(Deu 14:19 DRB) Every thing that creepeth, and hath little wings, shall be unclean, and shall not be eaten.
(Deu 14:20 DRB) All that is clean, you shall eat.
(Deu 14:21 DRB) But whatsoever is dead of itself, eat not thereof. Give it to the stranger, that is within thy gates, to eat, or sell it to him: because thou art the holy people of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not boil a kid in the milk of his dam.
(Col 2:16 DRB) Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a festival day or of the new moon or of the sabbaths,
(Col 2:17 DRB) Which are a shadow of things to come: but the body is of Christ.
(Col 2:18 DRB) Let no man seduce you, willing in humility and religion of angels, walking in the things which he hath not seen, in vain puffed up by the sense of his flesh:
(Col 2:19 DRB) And not holding the head, from which the whole body, by joints and bands, being supplied with nourishment and compacted, groweth into the increase of God.
(Col 2:20 DRB) If then you be dead with Christ from the elements of this world, why do you yet decree as though living in the world?
(Col 2:21 DRB) Touch not: taste not: handle not.
(Col 2:22 DRB) Which all are unto destruction by the very use, according to the precepts and doctrines of men.
(Col 2:23 DRB) Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in superstition and humility, and not sparing the body; not in any honour to the filling of the flesh.
This was all done by the earliest Christians to witness to others the true meaning of the Sabbath which came to complete fruition in the New Covenant of Christ, in whom we find true rest.
(Mat 11:28 DRB) Come to me all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.
The Old Covenant Sabbath with its temple ceremonies and animal sacrifices was an imperfect prefiguration of Christ’s perfect fulfillment through His New Covenant. The Old Covenant practices were only a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary. As the Scriptures say once the perfect has come, the imperfect passed away. Just as Baptism replaced circumcision the Church saw the third commandment differently.
(Heb 8:5 DRB) Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things. As it was answered to Moses, when he was to finish the tabernacle: See (saith he) that thou make all things according to the pattern which was shewn thee on the mount.
(Heb 10:1 DRB) For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things, by the selfsame sacrifices which they offer continually every year, can never make the comers thereunto perfect.
The rituals of the Old Covenant are not binding on Christians according to St. Paul and he even rebuked Christians who continued with the Old covenant restrictions and ceremonies. In Christ, the demands and the observance of the Old Covenant demands and obligations of which the Sabbath are a part are no longer binding and have passed away, being replaced by the spiritual observance of the Sabbath of the New Covenant. One other thing, when the rich man asked what he must do to be saved Christ told him several commandments to follow and none were to keep holy the Sabbath.
(Gal 4:9 DRB) But now, after that you have known God, or rather are known by God: how turn you again to the weak and needy elements which you desire to serve again?
(Gal 4:10 DRB) You observe days and months and times, and years.
(Gal 4:11 DRB) I am afraid of you, lest perhaps I have laboured in vain among you.
(Col 2:16 DRB) Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a festival day or of the new moon or of the sabbaths,
(Col 2:17 DRB) Which are a shadow of things to come: but the body is of Christ.
(Mat 19:16 DRB) And behold one came and said to him: Good master, what good shall I do that I may have life everlasting?
(Mat 19:17 DRB) Who said to him: Why askest thou me concerning good? One is good, God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
(Mat 19:18 DRB) He said to him: Which? And Jesus said: Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness.
(Mat 19:19 DRB) Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
(Mat 19:20 DRB) The young man saith to him: All these have I kept from my youth, what is yet wanting to me?
(Mat 19:21 DRB) Jesus saith to him: If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.
(Mat 19:22 DRB) And when the young man had heard this word, he went away sad: for he had great possessions.
Now, I have been told by our critics that the Catholic Church has no authority to change the third commandment but as I have pointed out Christ gave that authority as well as the teaching authority:
(Mat 18:18 DRB) Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven.
(Luk 10:16 DRB) He that heareth you heareth me: and he that despiseth you despiseth me: and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me.
(Mat 28:18 DRB) And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.
(Mat 28:19 DRB) Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
(Mat 28:20 DRB) Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.
Jesus made it very clear that He is the Lord of the Sabbath Day and stated that the day was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, that being true it would logically follow that the Church shares that authority as was said to Peter when He passed the keys:
(Mar 2:28 DRB) Therefore the Son of man is Lord of the sabbath also.
(Luk 6:5 DRB) And he said to them: The Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.
(Mar 2:27 DRB) And he said to them: The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.
(Mat 10:40 DRB) He that receiveth you, receiveth me: and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me.
(Mat 16:19 DRB) And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.
(Mat 18:18 DRB) Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven.
(Mat 18:19 DRB) Again I say to you, that if two of you shall consent upon earth, concerning anything whatsoever they shall ask, it shall be done to them by my Father who is in heaven.
(Mat 18:20 DRB) For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
Thee are other parallels in Church authority other than the observance of the Sabbath from the last until the first day of the week and in all cases it does not represent an abandonment of the law as Church critics would suggest but is rather a fulfillment of the law in a more perfect manner. We must remember what Christ said:
(Mat 5:17 DRB) Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
(Mat 5:18 DRB) For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled.
(richardatf) so lets see, the pope speaks great words against the most High my calling himself "Vicarus Filii Dei", he changes the laws and times by changing the day of observance to Sunday and (in your vaunted catechisms) removing the Sabbath day Commandment and splitting the Commandment against coveting into two.
(Cristoiglesia) Sorry, but “Vicarius Filii Dei” is not and never has been a title of the Pope and it is not inscribed in the Papal Tiara as Alexander Hislop claims..
God bless!
In Christ
Fr. Joseph
Discussion with Freedom about grace, justification, merit and Holiness
(Freedom) Thanks for correcting me, but I still don't understand the meaning of "grace" the way that the RCC interprets itIf one recieves grace through sacraments, then that comes down to "doing or achieving" something other than "faith alone." which means Catholics are saved by faith + works. The definition of grace is "unmerited or unearned favour.
Jesus did tell us to be baptized and to participate in communion. But he did not say that this is how to be saved or receive grace. He said to "believe" in him.
The works of baptism and communion are done out of obedience but not to "achieve" grace. That given freely by trusting and believing in Christ's sacrifice that he did "once and for all." I have been humbly trying to understand the RCC interpretation of grace for a long time. I am sure that I am not being blinded by my pride. I want to be 100% sure that I am believing in what is right.
(Cristoiglesia) The belief in faith alone is a heresy condemned the only place it appears in Scripture by St. James. Even the demons believe. The Catholic Church does not teach that works merit salvation but instead we teach grace through faith. You are accusing us of the same heresy we have already condemned which is Pelagianism. Can you agree that works may come as the result of the believer cooperating with the Holy Spirit and being obedient to God and working within His will? Can you also agree that it is the Holy Spirit that makes us desire Him and become in a familial relationship with Him? Jesus did say that unless we eat His Body and drink His blood we have no life (eternal) in us. We desire His great feast and it is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that gives us that desire and hunger to do His commandment. Surely we do desire eternal life but we do not desire His Body and Blood because of this but it is the Holy Spirit that gives us the desire and compulsion to do His will.
ARTICLE 2
GRACE AND JUSTIFICATION
I. JUSTIFICATION
1987 The grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ" and through Baptism:34
But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.35
1988 Through the power of the Holy Spirit we take part in Christ's Passion by dying to sin, and in his Resurrection by being born to a new life; we are members of his Body which is the Church, branches grafted onto the vine which is himself:36
[God] gave himself to us through his Spirit. By the participation of the Spirit, we become communicants in the divine nature. . . . For this reason, those in whom the Spirit dwells are divinized.37
1989 The first work of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion, effecting justification in accordance with Jesus' proclamation at the beginning of the Gospel: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."38 Moved by grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, thus accepting forgiveness and righteousness from on high. "Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.39
1990 Justification detaches man from sin which contradicts the love of God, and purifies his heart of sin. Justification follows upon God's merciful initiative of offering forgiveness. It reconciles man with God. It frees from the enslavement to sin, and it heals.
1991 Justification is at the same time the acceptance of God's righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ. Righteousness (or "justice") here means the rectitude of divine love. With justification, faith, hope, and charity are poured into our hearts, and obedience to the divine will is granted us.
1992 Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ who offered himself on the cross as a living victim, holy and pleasing to God, and whose blood has become the instrument of atonement for the sins of all men. Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy. Its purpose is the glory of God and of Christ, and the gift of eternal life:40
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus.41
1993 Justification establishes cooperation between God's grace and man's freedom. On man's part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent:
When God touches man's heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, man himself is not inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he could reject it; and yet, without God's grace, he cannot by his own free will move himself toward justice in God's sight.42
1994 Justification is the most excellent work of God's love made manifest in Christ Jesus and granted by the Holy Spirit. It is the opinion of St. Augustine that "the justification of the wicked is a greater work than the creation of heaven and earth," because "heaven and earth will pass away but the salvation and justification of the elect . . . will not pass away."43 He holds also that the justification of sinners surpasses the creation of the angels in justice, in that it bears witness to a greater mercy.
1995 The Holy Spirit is the master of the interior life. By giving birth to the "inner man,"44 justification entails the sanctification of his whole being:
Just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification. . . . But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life.45
II. GRACE
1996 Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.46
1997 Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life: by Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the Head of his Body. As an "adopted son" he can henceforth call God "Father," in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.
1998 This vocation to eternal life is supernatural. It depends entirely on God's gratuitous initiative, for he alone can reveal and give himself. It surpasses the power of human intellect and will, as that of every other creature.47
1999 The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification:48
Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.49
2000 Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God's call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God's interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification.
2001 The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us what he has begun, "since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it:"50
Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without him we can do nothing.51
2002 God's free initiative demands man's free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy. The promises of "eternal life" respond, beyond all hope, to this desire:
If at the end of your very good works . . ., you rested on the seventh day, it was to foretell by the voice of your book that at the end of our works, which are indeed "very good" since you have given them to us, we shall also rest in you on the sabbath of eternal life.52
2003 Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us. But grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church. There are sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different sacraments. There are furthermore special graces, also called charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning "favor," "gratuitous gift," "benefit."53 Whatever their character - sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the gift of miracles or of tongues - charisms are oriented toward sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. They are at the service of charity which builds up the Church.54
2004 Among the special graces ought to be mentioned the graces of state that accompany the exercise of the responsibilities of the Christian life and of the ministries within the Church:
Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.55
2005 Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved.56 However, according to the Lord's words "Thus you will know them by their fruits"57 - reflection on God's blessings in our life and in the lives of the saints offers us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs us on to an ever greater faith and an attitude of trustful poverty.
A pleasing illustration of this attitude is found in the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges: "Asked if she knew that she was in God's grace, she replied: 'If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there.'"58
III. MERIT
You are glorified in the assembly of your Holy Ones, for in crowning their merits you are crowning your own gifts.59
2006 The term "merit" refers in general to the recompense owed by a community or a society for the action of one of its members, experienced either as beneficial or harmful, deserving reward or punishment. Merit is relative to the virtue of justice, in conformity with the principle of equality which governs it.
2007 With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from him, our Creator.
2008 The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man's free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man's merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.
2009 Filial adoption, in making us partakers by grace in the divine nature, can bestow true merit on us as a result of God's gratuitous justice. This is our right by grace, the full right of love, making us "co-heirs" with Christ and worthy of obtaining "the promised inheritance of eternal life."60 The merits of our good works are gifts of the divine goodness.61 "Grace has gone before us; now we are given what is due. . . . Our merits are God's gifts."62
2010 Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God's wisdom. These graces and goods are the object of Christian prayer. Prayer attends to the grace we need for meritorious actions.
2011 The charity of Christ is the source in us of all our merits before God. Grace, by uniting us to Christ in active love, ensures the supernatural quality of our acts and consequently their merit before God and before men. The saints have always had a lively awareness that their merits were pure grace.
After earth's exile, I hope to go and enjoy you in the fatherland, but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven. I want to work for your love alone. . . . In the evening of this life, I shall appear before you with empty hands, for I do not ask you, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is blemished in your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in your own justice and to receive from your love the eternal possession of yourself.63
IV. CHRISTIAN HOLINESS
2012 "We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him . . . For those whom he fore knew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified."64
2013 "All Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity."65 All are called to holiness: "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."66
In order to reach this perfection the faithful should use the strength dealt out to them by Christ's gift, so that . . . doing the will of the Father in everything, they may wholeheartedly devote themselves to the glory of God and to the service of their neighbor. Thus the holiness of the People of God will grow in fruitful abundance, as is clearly shown in the history of the Church through the lives of so many saints.67
2014 Spiritual progress tends toward ever more intimate union with Christ. This union is called "mystical" because it participates in the mystery of Christ through the sacraments - "the holy mysteries" - and, in him, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. God calls us all to this intimate union with him, even if the special graces or extraordinary signs of this mystical life are granted only to some for the sake of manifesting the gratuitous gift given to all.
2015 The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle.68 Spiritual progress entails the ascesis and mortification that gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes:
He who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning, through beginnings that have no end. He never stops desiring what he already knows.69
2016 The children of our holy mother the Church rightly hope for the grace of final perseverance and the recompense of God their Father for the good works accomplished with his grace in communion with Jesus.70 Keeping the same rule of life, believers share the "blessed hope" of those whom the divine mercy gathers into the "holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."71
IN BRIEF
2017 The grace of the Holy Spirit confers upon us the righteousness of God. Uniting us by faith and Baptism to the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, the Spirit makes us sharers in his life.
2018 Like conversion, justification has two aspects. Moved by grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, and so accepts forgiveness and righteousness from on high.
2019 Justification includes the remission of sins, sanctification, and the renewal of the inner man.
2020 Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ. It is granted us through Baptism. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who justifies us. It has for its goal the glory of God and of Christ, and the gift of eternal life. It is the most excellent work of God's mercy.
2021 Grace is the help God gives us to respond to our vocation of becoming his adopted sons. It introduces us into the intimacy of the Trinitarian life.
2022 The divine initiative in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man. Grace responds to the deepest yearnings of human freedom, calls freedom to cooperate with it, and perfects freedom.
2023 Sanctifying grace is the gratuitous gift of his life that God makes to us; it is infused by the Holy Spirit into the soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it.
2024 Sanctifying grace makes us "pleasing to God." Charisms, special graces of the Holy Spirit, are oriented to sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. God also acts through many actual graces, to be distinguished from habitual grace which is permanent in us.
2025 We can have merit in God's sight only because of God's free plan to associate man with the work of his grace. Merit is to be ascribed in the first place to the grace of God, and secondly to man's collaboration. Man's merit is due to God.
2026 The grace of the Holy Spirit can confer true merit on us, by virtue of our adoptive filiation, and in accordance with God's gratuitous justice. Charity is the principal source of merit in us before God.
2027 No one can merit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life, as well as necessary temporal goods.
2028 "All Christians . . . are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity" (LG 40 § 2). "Christian perfection has but one limit, that of having none" (St. Gregory of Nyssa, De vita Mos.:PG 44, 300D).
2029 "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mt 16:24).
________________________________________
34 Rom 3:22; cf. 6:3-4.
35 Rom 6:8-11.
36 Cf. 1 Cor 12; Jn 15:1-4.
37 St. Athanasius, Ep. Serap. 1,24:PG 26,585 and 588.
38 Mt 4:17.
39 Council of Trent (1547): DS 1528.
40 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1529.
41 Rom 3:21-26.
42 Council of Trent (1547): DS 1525.
43 St. Augustine, In Jo. ev. 72,3:PL 35,1823.
44 Cf. Rom 7:22; Eph 3:16.
45 Rom 6:19,22.
46 Cf. Jn 1:12-18; 17:3; Rom 8:14-17; 2 Pet 1:3-4.
47 Cf. 1 Cor 2:7-9.
48 Cf. Jn 4:14; 7:38-39.
49 2 Cor 5:17-18.
50 St. Augustine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, 17:PL 44,901.
51 St. Augustine, De natura et gratia, 31:PL 44,264.
52 St. Augustine, Conf. 13,36 51:PL 32,868; cf. Gen 1:31.
53 Cf. LG 12.
54 Cf. 1 Cor 12.
55 Rom 12:6-8.
56 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1533-1534.
57 Mt 7:20.
58 Acts of the trial of St. Joan of Arc.
59 Roman Missal, Prefatio I de sanctis; Qui in Sanctorum concilio celebraris, et eorum coronando merita tua dona coronas, citing the "Doctor of grace," St. Augustine, En. in Ps. 102,7:PL 37,1321-1322.
60 Council of Trent (1547): DS 1546.
61 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1548.
62 St. Augustine, Sermo 298,4-5:PL 38,1367.
63 St. Thérèse of Lisieux, "Act of Offering" in Story of a Soul, tr. John Clarke (Washington DC: ICS, 1981), 277.
64 Rom 8:28-30.
65 LG 40 § 2.
66 Mt 5:48.
67 LG 40 § 2.
68 Cf. 2 Tim 4.
69 St. Gregory of Nyssa, Hom. in Cant. 8:PG 44,941C.
70 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1576.
71 Rev 21:2.
God bless!
In Christ
fr. Joseph
Jesus did tell us to be baptized and to participate in communion. But he did not say that this is how to be saved or receive grace. He said to "believe" in him.
The works of baptism and communion are done out of obedience but not to "achieve" grace. That given freely by trusting and believing in Christ's sacrifice that he did "once and for all." I have been humbly trying to understand the RCC interpretation of grace for a long time. I am sure that I am not being blinded by my pride. I want to be 100% sure that I am believing in what is right.
(Cristoiglesia) The belief in faith alone is a heresy condemned the only place it appears in Scripture by St. James. Even the demons believe. The Catholic Church does not teach that works merit salvation but instead we teach grace through faith. You are accusing us of the same heresy we have already condemned which is Pelagianism. Can you agree that works may come as the result of the believer cooperating with the Holy Spirit and being obedient to God and working within His will? Can you also agree that it is the Holy Spirit that makes us desire Him and become in a familial relationship with Him? Jesus did say that unless we eat His Body and drink His blood we have no life (eternal) in us. We desire His great feast and it is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that gives us that desire and hunger to do His commandment. Surely we do desire eternal life but we do not desire His Body and Blood because of this but it is the Holy Spirit that gives us the desire and compulsion to do His will.
ARTICLE 2
GRACE AND JUSTIFICATION
I. JUSTIFICATION
1987 The grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ" and through Baptism:34
But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.35
1988 Through the power of the Holy Spirit we take part in Christ's Passion by dying to sin, and in his Resurrection by being born to a new life; we are members of his Body which is the Church, branches grafted onto the vine which is himself:36
[God] gave himself to us through his Spirit. By the participation of the Spirit, we become communicants in the divine nature. . . . For this reason, those in whom the Spirit dwells are divinized.37
1989 The first work of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion, effecting justification in accordance with Jesus' proclamation at the beginning of the Gospel: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."38 Moved by grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, thus accepting forgiveness and righteousness from on high. "Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.39
1990 Justification detaches man from sin which contradicts the love of God, and purifies his heart of sin. Justification follows upon God's merciful initiative of offering forgiveness. It reconciles man with God. It frees from the enslavement to sin, and it heals.
1991 Justification is at the same time the acceptance of God's righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ. Righteousness (or "justice") here means the rectitude of divine love. With justification, faith, hope, and charity are poured into our hearts, and obedience to the divine will is granted us.
1992 Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ who offered himself on the cross as a living victim, holy and pleasing to God, and whose blood has become the instrument of atonement for the sins of all men. Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy. Its purpose is the glory of God and of Christ, and the gift of eternal life:40
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus.41
1993 Justification establishes cooperation between God's grace and man's freedom. On man's part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent:
When God touches man's heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, man himself is not inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he could reject it; and yet, without God's grace, he cannot by his own free will move himself toward justice in God's sight.42
1994 Justification is the most excellent work of God's love made manifest in Christ Jesus and granted by the Holy Spirit. It is the opinion of St. Augustine that "the justification of the wicked is a greater work than the creation of heaven and earth," because "heaven and earth will pass away but the salvation and justification of the elect . . . will not pass away."43 He holds also that the justification of sinners surpasses the creation of the angels in justice, in that it bears witness to a greater mercy.
1995 The Holy Spirit is the master of the interior life. By giving birth to the "inner man,"44 justification entails the sanctification of his whole being:
Just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification. . . . But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life.45
II. GRACE
1996 Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.46
1997 Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life: by Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the Head of his Body. As an "adopted son" he can henceforth call God "Father," in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.
1998 This vocation to eternal life is supernatural. It depends entirely on God's gratuitous initiative, for he alone can reveal and give himself. It surpasses the power of human intellect and will, as that of every other creature.47
1999 The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification:48
Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.49
2000 Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God's call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God's interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification.
2001 The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us what he has begun, "since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it:"50
Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without him we can do nothing.51
2002 God's free initiative demands man's free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy. The promises of "eternal life" respond, beyond all hope, to this desire:
If at the end of your very good works . . ., you rested on the seventh day, it was to foretell by the voice of your book that at the end of our works, which are indeed "very good" since you have given them to us, we shall also rest in you on the sabbath of eternal life.52
2003 Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us. But grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church. There are sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different sacraments. There are furthermore special graces, also called charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning "favor," "gratuitous gift," "benefit."53 Whatever their character - sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the gift of miracles or of tongues - charisms are oriented toward sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. They are at the service of charity which builds up the Church.54
2004 Among the special graces ought to be mentioned the graces of state that accompany the exercise of the responsibilities of the Christian life and of the ministries within the Church:
Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.55
2005 Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved.56 However, according to the Lord's words "Thus you will know them by their fruits"57 - reflection on God's blessings in our life and in the lives of the saints offers us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs us on to an ever greater faith and an attitude of trustful poverty.
A pleasing illustration of this attitude is found in the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges: "Asked if she knew that she was in God's grace, she replied: 'If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there.'"58
III. MERIT
You are glorified in the assembly of your Holy Ones, for in crowning their merits you are crowning your own gifts.59
2006 The term "merit" refers in general to the recompense owed by a community or a society for the action of one of its members, experienced either as beneficial or harmful, deserving reward or punishment. Merit is relative to the virtue of justice, in conformity with the principle of equality which governs it.
2007 With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from him, our Creator.
2008 The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man's free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man's merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.
2009 Filial adoption, in making us partakers by grace in the divine nature, can bestow true merit on us as a result of God's gratuitous justice. This is our right by grace, the full right of love, making us "co-heirs" with Christ and worthy of obtaining "the promised inheritance of eternal life."60 The merits of our good works are gifts of the divine goodness.61 "Grace has gone before us; now we are given what is due. . . . Our merits are God's gifts."62
2010 Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God's wisdom. These graces and goods are the object of Christian prayer. Prayer attends to the grace we need for meritorious actions.
2011 The charity of Christ is the source in us of all our merits before God. Grace, by uniting us to Christ in active love, ensures the supernatural quality of our acts and consequently their merit before God and before men. The saints have always had a lively awareness that their merits were pure grace.
After earth's exile, I hope to go and enjoy you in the fatherland, but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven. I want to work for your love alone. . . . In the evening of this life, I shall appear before you with empty hands, for I do not ask you, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is blemished in your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in your own justice and to receive from your love the eternal possession of yourself.63
IV. CHRISTIAN HOLINESS
2012 "We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him . . . For those whom he fore knew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified."64
2013 "All Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity."65 All are called to holiness: "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."66
In order to reach this perfection the faithful should use the strength dealt out to them by Christ's gift, so that . . . doing the will of the Father in everything, they may wholeheartedly devote themselves to the glory of God and to the service of their neighbor. Thus the holiness of the People of God will grow in fruitful abundance, as is clearly shown in the history of the Church through the lives of so many saints.67
2014 Spiritual progress tends toward ever more intimate union with Christ. This union is called "mystical" because it participates in the mystery of Christ through the sacraments - "the holy mysteries" - and, in him, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. God calls us all to this intimate union with him, even if the special graces or extraordinary signs of this mystical life are granted only to some for the sake of manifesting the gratuitous gift given to all.
2015 The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle.68 Spiritual progress entails the ascesis and mortification that gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes:
He who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning, through beginnings that have no end. He never stops desiring what he already knows.69
2016 The children of our holy mother the Church rightly hope for the grace of final perseverance and the recompense of God their Father for the good works accomplished with his grace in communion with Jesus.70 Keeping the same rule of life, believers share the "blessed hope" of those whom the divine mercy gathers into the "holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."71
IN BRIEF
2017 The grace of the Holy Spirit confers upon us the righteousness of God. Uniting us by faith and Baptism to the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, the Spirit makes us sharers in his life.
2018 Like conversion, justification has two aspects. Moved by grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, and so accepts forgiveness and righteousness from on high.
2019 Justification includes the remission of sins, sanctification, and the renewal of the inner man.
2020 Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ. It is granted us through Baptism. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who justifies us. It has for its goal the glory of God and of Christ, and the gift of eternal life. It is the most excellent work of God's mercy.
2021 Grace is the help God gives us to respond to our vocation of becoming his adopted sons. It introduces us into the intimacy of the Trinitarian life.
2022 The divine initiative in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man. Grace responds to the deepest yearnings of human freedom, calls freedom to cooperate with it, and perfects freedom.
2023 Sanctifying grace is the gratuitous gift of his life that God makes to us; it is infused by the Holy Spirit into the soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it.
2024 Sanctifying grace makes us "pleasing to God." Charisms, special graces of the Holy Spirit, are oriented to sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. God also acts through many actual graces, to be distinguished from habitual grace which is permanent in us.
2025 We can have merit in God's sight only because of God's free plan to associate man with the work of his grace. Merit is to be ascribed in the first place to the grace of God, and secondly to man's collaboration. Man's merit is due to God.
2026 The grace of the Holy Spirit can confer true merit on us, by virtue of our adoptive filiation, and in accordance with God's gratuitous justice. Charity is the principal source of merit in us before God.
2027 No one can merit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life, as well as necessary temporal goods.
2028 "All Christians . . . are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity" (LG 40 § 2). "Christian perfection has but one limit, that of having none" (St. Gregory of Nyssa, De vita Mos.:PG 44, 300D).
2029 "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mt 16:24).
________________________________________
34 Rom 3:22; cf. 6:3-4.
35 Rom 6:8-11.
36 Cf. 1 Cor 12; Jn 15:1-4.
37 St. Athanasius, Ep. Serap. 1,24:PG 26,585 and 588.
38 Mt 4:17.
39 Council of Trent (1547): DS 1528.
40 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1529.
41 Rom 3:21-26.
42 Council of Trent (1547): DS 1525.
43 St. Augustine, In Jo. ev. 72,3:PL 35,1823.
44 Cf. Rom 7:22; Eph 3:16.
45 Rom 6:19,22.
46 Cf. Jn 1:12-18; 17:3; Rom 8:14-17; 2 Pet 1:3-4.
47 Cf. 1 Cor 2:7-9.
48 Cf. Jn 4:14; 7:38-39.
49 2 Cor 5:17-18.
50 St. Augustine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, 17:PL 44,901.
51 St. Augustine, De natura et gratia, 31:PL 44,264.
52 St. Augustine, Conf. 13,36 51:PL 32,868; cf. Gen 1:31.
53 Cf. LG 12.
54 Cf. 1 Cor 12.
55 Rom 12:6-8.
56 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1533-1534.
57 Mt 7:20.
58 Acts of the trial of St. Joan of Arc.
59 Roman Missal, Prefatio I de sanctis; Qui in Sanctorum concilio celebraris, et eorum coronando merita tua dona coronas, citing the "Doctor of grace," St. Augustine, En. in Ps. 102,7:PL 37,1321-1322.
60 Council of Trent (1547): DS 1546.
61 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1548.
62 St. Augustine, Sermo 298,4-5:PL 38,1367.
63 St. Thérèse of Lisieux, "Act of Offering" in Story of a Soul, tr. John Clarke (Washington DC: ICS, 1981), 277.
64 Rom 8:28-30.
65 LG 40 § 2.
66 Mt 5:48.
67 LG 40 § 2.
68 Cf. 2 Tim 4.
69 St. Gregory of Nyssa, Hom. in Cant. 8:PG 44,941C.
70 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1576.
71 Rev 21:2.
God bless!
In Christ
fr. Joseph
Discussion with Richardatf about the Communion of Saints and Soul Sleep
(richardatf) Acts 4:12 Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
(Cristoiglesis) OK, would you mind telling me what this verse has to do with what we are discussing? In any case, this is what the Church teaches from the New Testament that we wrote.
(richardatf) talking about Jesus here, but you pray to dead "saints" for intercession, and what is intercession asked for if not for salvation/forgiveness of sins?
(Cristoiglesia) Calling a saint dead is an oxymoron. One cannot be a saint and be dead in Christ. Yes we are instructed in Scriptures to pray for each other out of love for one another.
This is from my blog:
First of all it is disingenuous to state that the practice of praying for each other has no biblical foundation, we are instructed in Scripture to have a prayer life for others as it is part of God’s commandment to love one another.
(2Co 5:8 DRB) But we are confident and have a good will to be absent rather from the body and to be present with the Lord.
The Catholic Church does not teach that it is absolutely necessary for one to ask for the intercession of saints for salvation. The Church does teach that prayer to God is necessary for salvation for all believers. For a Catholic it would be wrong to ignore the liturgical worship offered to God at feast days for the saints and the prayers asking for their intercession.
The Communion of Saints is a dogma of the ancient Church and is recorded in the apostles Creed. It simply states that the faithful because of their relationship with Christ are alive even after the death of their flesh and worship with us. To us the Church is made up of the Church militant who represents all those believers living out their hope in the flesh.
(Phi 2:12 DRB) Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only but much more now in my absence) with fear and trembling work out your salvation.
(Phi 2:13 DRB) For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will.
It consists of the Church Suffering who are those who are temporarily in need of further purgation from sin so that they may enjoy the presence of God.
(2Ma 12:46 DRB) It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.
Lastly, the Communion of the Saints consists of those who have won the race:
(Phi 3:14 DRB) I press towards the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation of God in Christ Jesus.
Their immortal souls are in heaven in God’s presence:
(Rev 5:8 DRB) And when he had opened the book, the four living creatures and the four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.
The universal stream connecting all of God’s creation is His love, which we take on in our baptism into our journey towards sanctification. This is not an emotional but a desire placed in us by the Spirit of God that endures as a desire for those other than ourselves and this love extends even to our enemies. This is truly a love that comes only from God and is a foreign concept and nonsense to those who have not received God’s salvific grace. This desire within our souls does not end with the death of our flesh but continues into eternity where the saints through their intercession in prayer encourage us in our race and assist us to endure unto our union with God.
I think that some people of faith, who do not understand the Communion of Saints, somehow believe that asking saints to pray for us is detracting from our love or our trust in God. In truth it is impossible, if we truly love as God commands and has given us the grace to understand, not to pray to those whom we love and in turn we expect them to return that same love to us by praying for us and presenting our prayers to God.
(richardatf) Speaking of dead folk. Your damnable church teaches that people go to heaven at the time of theiir death.
1st Thessalonians 4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
I guess, according to your church, the souls in heaven are stuck back into their bodies for the resurrection? stupidity! Why was Lazarus happy to be brought back from the dead if he was ripped out of heaven?
(Cristoiglesia) The Scriptures are very clear that our souls are immortal. Some will say that the soul is not immortal such as Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah Witnesses. Their doctrine is used to deny the existence of saints in heaven and thus the “Communion of Saints.”
(Isa 14:9 DRB) Hell below was in an uproar to meet thee at thy coming, it stirred up the giants for thee. All the princes of the earth are risen up from their thrones, all the princes of nations.
(Isa 14:10 DRB) All shall answer, and say to thee: Thou also art wounded as well as we, thou art become like unto us.
(Isa 14:11 DRB) Thy pride is brought down to hell, thy carcass is fallen down: under thee shall the moth be strewed, and worms shall be thy covering.
(Isa 14:12 DRB) How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning? how art thou fallen to the earth, that didst wound the nations?
(Isa 14:13 DRB) And thou saidst in thy heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north.
(Isa 14:14 DRB) I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the most High.
(Isa 14:15 DRB) But yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, into the depth of the pit.
(Isa 14:16 DRB) They that shall see thee, shall turn toward thee, and behold thee. Is this the man that troubled the earth, that shook kingdoms,
(Isa 14:17 DRB) That made the world a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof, that opened not the prison to his prisoners?
(1Pe 3:19 DRB) In which also coming he preached to those spirits that were in prison:
In both the verses from Isaiah and the verses from 1 Peter they indicate that the dead are conscious. Could Christ have preached to the spirits in heaven if they were asleep? Of course, He could not.
The following verses further contradict Ellen White’s and Charles Russell’s theory that the soul sleeps until the Parousia. Death simply allows the saint to be present with the Lord. The body is just a tent that does not last and man cannot kill the soul which lives after the death of our bodies and the saints in heaven offer our prayers to God while living in happiness.
(2Co 5:8 DRB) But we are confident and have a good will to be absent rather from the body and to be present with the Lord.
(2Co 5:1 DRB) For we know, if our earthly house of this habitation be dissolved, that we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in heaven.
(2Co 5:2 DRB) For in this also we groan, desiring to be clothed upon with our habitation that is from heaven.
(2Co 5:3 DRB) Yet so that we be found clothed, not naked.
(2Co 5:4 DRB) For we also, who are in this tabernacle, do groan, being burthened; because we would not be unclothed, but clothed upon, that that which is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
(2Pe 1:13 DRB) But I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance.
(Mat 10:28 DRB) And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.
(Rev 6:9 DRB) And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held.
(Rev 6:10 DRB) And they cried with a loud voice, saying: How long, O Lord (Holy and True), dost thou not judge and revenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
(Rev 6:11 DRB) And white robes were given to every one of them one; And it was said to them that they should rest for a little time till their fellow servants and their brethren, who are to be slain even as they, should be filled up.
(Rev 5:8 DRB) And when he had opened the book, the four living creatures and the four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.
(Rev 14:13 DRB) And I heard a voice from heaven, saying to me: Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. From henceforth now, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours. For their works follow them.
We also learn from Scriptures that the soul lives eternal in hell as well as heaven:
(Rev 14:11 DRB) And the smoke of their torments, shall ascend up for ever and ever: neither have they rest day nor night, who have adored the beast and his image and whoever receiveth the character of his name.
(Mat 25:41 DRB) Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels.
(Mat 25:42 DRB) For I was hungry and you gave me not to eat: I was thirsty and you gave me not to drink.
(Mat 25:43 DRB) I was a stranger and you took me not in: naked and you covered me not: sick and in prison and you did not visit me.
(Mat 25:44 DRB) Then they also shall answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to thee?
(Mat 25:45 DRB) Then he shall answer them, saying: Amen: I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me.
(Mat 25:46 DRB) And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.
(Luk 16:19 DRB) There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and feasted sumptuously every day.
(Luk 16:20 DRB) And there was a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who lay at his gate, full of sores,
(Luk 16:21 DRB) Desiring to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table. And no one did give him: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
(Luk 16:22 DRB) And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell.
(Luk 16:23 DRB) And lifting up his eyes when he was in torments, he saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom:
(Luk 16:24 DRB) And he cried and said: Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water to cool my tongue: for I am tormented in this flame.
(Luk 16:25 DRB) And Abraham said to him: Son, remember that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted and thou art tormented.
(Luk 16:26 DRB) And besides all this, between us and you, there is fixed a great chaos: so that they who would pass from hence to you cannot, nor from thence come hither.
(Luk 16:27 DRB) And he said: Then, father, I beseech thee that thou wouldst send him to my father's house, for I have five brethren,
(Luk 16:28 DRB) That he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torments.
(Luk 16:29 DRB) And Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them.
(Luk 16:30 DRB) But he said: No, father Abraham: but if one went to them from the dead, they will do penance.
(Luk 16:31 DRB) And he said to him: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe, if one rise again from the dead.
(Mar 9:42 DRB) (9:41) And whosoever shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me: it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea.
(Mar 9:43 DRB) (9:42) And if thy hand scandalize thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life, maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into unquenchable fire:
(Mar 9:44 DRB) (9:43) Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.
(Mar 9:45 DRB) (9:44) And if thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter lame into life everlasting than having two feet to be cast into the hell of unquenchable fire:
(Mar 9:46 DRB) (9:45) Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.
(Mar 9:47 DRB) (9:46) And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee with one eye to enter into the kingdom of God than having two eyes to be cast into the hell of fire:
(Mar 9:48 DRB) (9:47) Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.
(Mat 18:8 DRB) And if thy hand, or thy foot, scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to go into life maimed or lame, than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire.
(Mat 8:12 DRB) But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Certainly one can see from all the evidence in Scriptures that soul sleep is not a supportable doctrine.
God bless!
In Christ
Fr. Joseph
(Cristoiglesis) OK, would you mind telling me what this verse has to do with what we are discussing? In any case, this is what the Church teaches from the New Testament that we wrote.
(richardatf) talking about Jesus here, but you pray to dead "saints" for intercession, and what is intercession asked for if not for salvation/forgiveness of sins?
(Cristoiglesia) Calling a saint dead is an oxymoron. One cannot be a saint and be dead in Christ. Yes we are instructed in Scriptures to pray for each other out of love for one another.
This is from my blog:
First of all it is disingenuous to state that the practice of praying for each other has no biblical foundation, we are instructed in Scripture to have a prayer life for others as it is part of God’s commandment to love one another.
(2Co 5:8 DRB) But we are confident and have a good will to be absent rather from the body and to be present with the Lord.
The Catholic Church does not teach that it is absolutely necessary for one to ask for the intercession of saints for salvation. The Church does teach that prayer to God is necessary for salvation for all believers. For a Catholic it would be wrong to ignore the liturgical worship offered to God at feast days for the saints and the prayers asking for their intercession.
The Communion of Saints is a dogma of the ancient Church and is recorded in the apostles Creed. It simply states that the faithful because of their relationship with Christ are alive even after the death of their flesh and worship with us. To us the Church is made up of the Church militant who represents all those believers living out their hope in the flesh.
(Phi 2:12 DRB) Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only but much more now in my absence) with fear and trembling work out your salvation.
(Phi 2:13 DRB) For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will.
It consists of the Church Suffering who are those who are temporarily in need of further purgation from sin so that they may enjoy the presence of God.
(2Ma 12:46 DRB) It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.
Lastly, the Communion of the Saints consists of those who have won the race:
(Phi 3:14 DRB) I press towards the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation of God in Christ Jesus.
Their immortal souls are in heaven in God’s presence:
(Rev 5:8 DRB) And when he had opened the book, the four living creatures and the four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.
The universal stream connecting all of God’s creation is His love, which we take on in our baptism into our journey towards sanctification. This is not an emotional but a desire placed in us by the Spirit of God that endures as a desire for those other than ourselves and this love extends even to our enemies. This is truly a love that comes only from God and is a foreign concept and nonsense to those who have not received God’s salvific grace. This desire within our souls does not end with the death of our flesh but continues into eternity where the saints through their intercession in prayer encourage us in our race and assist us to endure unto our union with God.
I think that some people of faith, who do not understand the Communion of Saints, somehow believe that asking saints to pray for us is detracting from our love or our trust in God. In truth it is impossible, if we truly love as God commands and has given us the grace to understand, not to pray to those whom we love and in turn we expect them to return that same love to us by praying for us and presenting our prayers to God.
(richardatf) Speaking of dead folk. Your damnable church teaches that people go to heaven at the time of theiir death.
1st Thessalonians 4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
I guess, according to your church, the souls in heaven are stuck back into their bodies for the resurrection? stupidity! Why was Lazarus happy to be brought back from the dead if he was ripped out of heaven?
(Cristoiglesia) The Scriptures are very clear that our souls are immortal. Some will say that the soul is not immortal such as Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah Witnesses. Their doctrine is used to deny the existence of saints in heaven and thus the “Communion of Saints.”
(Isa 14:9 DRB) Hell below was in an uproar to meet thee at thy coming, it stirred up the giants for thee. All the princes of the earth are risen up from their thrones, all the princes of nations.
(Isa 14:10 DRB) All shall answer, and say to thee: Thou also art wounded as well as we, thou art become like unto us.
(Isa 14:11 DRB) Thy pride is brought down to hell, thy carcass is fallen down: under thee shall the moth be strewed, and worms shall be thy covering.
(Isa 14:12 DRB) How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning? how art thou fallen to the earth, that didst wound the nations?
(Isa 14:13 DRB) And thou saidst in thy heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north.
(Isa 14:14 DRB) I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the most High.
(Isa 14:15 DRB) But yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, into the depth of the pit.
(Isa 14:16 DRB) They that shall see thee, shall turn toward thee, and behold thee. Is this the man that troubled the earth, that shook kingdoms,
(Isa 14:17 DRB) That made the world a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof, that opened not the prison to his prisoners?
(1Pe 3:19 DRB) In which also coming he preached to those spirits that were in prison:
In both the verses from Isaiah and the verses from 1 Peter they indicate that the dead are conscious. Could Christ have preached to the spirits in heaven if they were asleep? Of course, He could not.
The following verses further contradict Ellen White’s and Charles Russell’s theory that the soul sleeps until the Parousia. Death simply allows the saint to be present with the Lord. The body is just a tent that does not last and man cannot kill the soul which lives after the death of our bodies and the saints in heaven offer our prayers to God while living in happiness.
(2Co 5:8 DRB) But we are confident and have a good will to be absent rather from the body and to be present with the Lord.
(2Co 5:1 DRB) For we know, if our earthly house of this habitation be dissolved, that we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in heaven.
(2Co 5:2 DRB) For in this also we groan, desiring to be clothed upon with our habitation that is from heaven.
(2Co 5:3 DRB) Yet so that we be found clothed, not naked.
(2Co 5:4 DRB) For we also, who are in this tabernacle, do groan, being burthened; because we would not be unclothed, but clothed upon, that that which is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
(2Pe 1:13 DRB) But I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance.
(Mat 10:28 DRB) And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.
(Rev 6:9 DRB) And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held.
(Rev 6:10 DRB) And they cried with a loud voice, saying: How long, O Lord (Holy and True), dost thou not judge and revenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
(Rev 6:11 DRB) And white robes were given to every one of them one; And it was said to them that they should rest for a little time till their fellow servants and their brethren, who are to be slain even as they, should be filled up.
(Rev 5:8 DRB) And when he had opened the book, the four living creatures and the four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.
(Rev 14:13 DRB) And I heard a voice from heaven, saying to me: Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. From henceforth now, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours. For their works follow them.
We also learn from Scriptures that the soul lives eternal in hell as well as heaven:
(Rev 14:11 DRB) And the smoke of their torments, shall ascend up for ever and ever: neither have they rest day nor night, who have adored the beast and his image and whoever receiveth the character of his name.
(Mat 25:41 DRB) Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels.
(Mat 25:42 DRB) For I was hungry and you gave me not to eat: I was thirsty and you gave me not to drink.
(Mat 25:43 DRB) I was a stranger and you took me not in: naked and you covered me not: sick and in prison and you did not visit me.
(Mat 25:44 DRB) Then they also shall answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to thee?
(Mat 25:45 DRB) Then he shall answer them, saying: Amen: I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me.
(Mat 25:46 DRB) And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.
(Luk 16:19 DRB) There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and feasted sumptuously every day.
(Luk 16:20 DRB) And there was a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who lay at his gate, full of sores,
(Luk 16:21 DRB) Desiring to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table. And no one did give him: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
(Luk 16:22 DRB) And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell.
(Luk 16:23 DRB) And lifting up his eyes when he was in torments, he saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom:
(Luk 16:24 DRB) And he cried and said: Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water to cool my tongue: for I am tormented in this flame.
(Luk 16:25 DRB) And Abraham said to him: Son, remember that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted and thou art tormented.
(Luk 16:26 DRB) And besides all this, between us and you, there is fixed a great chaos: so that they who would pass from hence to you cannot, nor from thence come hither.
(Luk 16:27 DRB) And he said: Then, father, I beseech thee that thou wouldst send him to my father's house, for I have five brethren,
(Luk 16:28 DRB) That he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torments.
(Luk 16:29 DRB) And Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them.
(Luk 16:30 DRB) But he said: No, father Abraham: but if one went to them from the dead, they will do penance.
(Luk 16:31 DRB) And he said to him: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe, if one rise again from the dead.
(Mar 9:42 DRB) (9:41) And whosoever shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me: it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea.
(Mar 9:43 DRB) (9:42) And if thy hand scandalize thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life, maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into unquenchable fire:
(Mar 9:44 DRB) (9:43) Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.
(Mar 9:45 DRB) (9:44) And if thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter lame into life everlasting than having two feet to be cast into the hell of unquenchable fire:
(Mar 9:46 DRB) (9:45) Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.
(Mar 9:47 DRB) (9:46) And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee with one eye to enter into the kingdom of God than having two eyes to be cast into the hell of fire:
(Mar 9:48 DRB) (9:47) Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.
(Mat 18:8 DRB) And if thy hand, or thy foot, scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to go into life maimed or lame, than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire.
(Mat 8:12 DRB) But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Certainly one can see from all the evidence in Scriptures that soul sleep is not a supportable doctrine.
God bless!
In Christ
Fr. Joseph
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