"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Today I’d like to address an objection to Christianity which you hear every now and again:
“Jesus prophesied that the Jerusalem Temple would be completely destroyed. However, the “Wailing Wall” is still standing, proving him wrong. Jesus is therefore a failed prophet and therefore can’t be God”
Jews praying in front of The Wailing Wall, Jerusalem
In this week’s Gospel we pick up where we left off last Sunday. Last week Peter gave his confession of Faith, but in today’s reading he doesn’t fare so well….
However, I think the real jewel this week is the Second Reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. Every word of this passage is rich with meaning and worthy of meditation.
For the last couple of months, I have been helping beta test a website which is being launched by a friend of mine. Normally, I’m the one writing the code, so it was a lot of fun having an opportunity to find the bugs in someone else’s work!
Although I’ve known people to find their spouse on CatholicMatch.com, I also know of a lot of people who have found the whole online dating experience frustrating. If this is you, you might like to try CatholicChemistry…
Click on the link above and sign up with the promo code “JMJ”, you’ll get a 6-month subscription for free. If you’re not sure how to start the conversation and get a date, you might like to try some of my favourite Catholic pick-up lines. You can thank me in your wedding toast… 😉
In previous “Quick Apologies”, I’ve dealt with different aspects of the intercession of the saints. Today I’d like to address one of the final pieces of the puzzle…
After explaining the Catholic understanding of Saintly intercession, as well as having shown its merit, one is often presented with a common retort against many Catholic doctrines:
“But [Doctrine X] is not in the Bible!”
I’ve written before in another post about the problem with this objection and about the logical problems and presuppositions associated with it. However, is the claim actually true in this case? Is it correct to say that we don’t see saintly intercession within the pages of Scripture?
We actually do see Saintly intercession within the pages of Scripture. We see departed Saints offering prayers and pleading for God to take action upon the earth. In fact, we don’t just see departed Christians doing this…
In John’s Book of Revelation, we read the following:
And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints…
– Revelation 5:8
These “twenty-four elders” are deceased humans, yet we are told that they offer bowls of incense before the throne of God which are representative of the prayers of other Christians. If they are offering these prayers to God, it would make sense that they have some knowledge of their content too.
In response to this, I’ve heard a variety of attempts to deny that this passage teaches Saintly intercession. However, the fact cannot be denied that the Book of Revelation presents us with a picture of the deceased interacting in some way with the prayers of those on earth. This stands in rather stark contrast to assertions which Catholics often hear (“Christians in Heaven can have nothing to do with Christians on earth”).
A little later in the Book of Revelation, we read about how the martyrs in Heaven petition God:
…I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne; they cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before thou wilt judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth?” – Revelation 6:9-10
Here we have a concrete example of deceased Christian martyrs pleading for God to take action upon earth!
A few chapters later, we see not only Saints, but angels as having something to do with prayers from earth:
And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. – Revelation 8:3-4
One might ask how this is possible. How could an angel have anything to do with the prayers of men on earth? How could they know of the contents of a man’s prayer? If we recall that angels rejoice whenever a sinner repents (Luke 15:10) then surely anything is possible through the grace of God.
UPDATE 11/20/15 07:10 – I just got back from Mass where the First Reading included the first passage I quoted in this post. I had no idea prior to posting 🙂
It’s now less than a week until Judgement Day. Well, it is if you believe a chap called Harold Camping. Camping is the president and founder Christian Family Radio and asserts that Judgement Day is going to be this Saturday, May 21st. You may have seen the billboards or commercials around:
I hadn’t come across this group until Ι first visited San Diego when one of their leaflets was given to me Downtown by a street evangelist. Later that day, over an ice tea, I read the leaflet from cover-to-cover (I always try to read the stuff that guys like that give me). It didn’t contain anything about the end of the world, but did give me an introduction to the group’s rather “unique” way of interpreting Scriptural prophecy.
I remember that, through interpretation of some of the writings of the prophets, the leaflet asserted that the “Church Age” had now ended and that true believers should now leave their local congregations, study the Bible on their own and, as you might expect, listen to their radio station.
Today I’m continuing my series of posts in response to the Facebook discussion a couple of weeks ago concerning the March For Life.
In my previous entry I briefly looked at what I think can be done to raise the standard of dialog between pro-life and pro-choice advocates. I would now like to start looking at some of the particular issues which were raised during the exchange. Today I would like to focus upon the opening comment from a former schoolmate:
“I kinda just wish people would stop telling other people how to live their lives….I’m pro-CHOICE, not pro-telling-people-what-to-do….”
As a pro-lifer, you hear sentiments similar to the one expressed above with considerable regularity and, on the surface, such a position seems extremely commendable. In fact, it is one of the sacrosanct secular doctrines in contemporary culture.
I think that respecting other people’s opinion is a good thing, I do. I mean, nobody likes to be told what to do, right? However, there are some immediate problems here. For a start, the statement self-refuting. As soon as you tell someone that they should mind their own business, you’re attempting, at least in some measure, to impose your own will on another person. That means you’re breaking your own rule and not minding your own business!
In the remainder of this post I would like to look at whether the live-and-let-live ideal is consistently applied…
I’ve recently been involved in a number of conversations about Christianity and swearing.
This week, a Catholic friend whom I very much respect suggested the possibility that it might be okay to “swear intentionally in the proper context”. I took some time to write a substantial reply on social media, so I thought I’d share it here as well, as I think it sums up my main thoughts on the subject…
The first objection I see to swearing is the clear motif from Scripture concerning Christian speech. To begin with, we are told that the words of our mouth are important:
Read moreLet the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
Psalm 19:14