Tag: Sacrifice

Frank Turek – Charitable but still uninformed about Catholicism

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The very fact that the video’s title talks about “last rights” rather than “last rites” doesn’t instill great confidence…

I love Frank’s ministry, but he really should never speak about Catholicism. Every video and podcast I’ve seen and heard of him talking about Catholicism is littered with inaccuracies.

Saying “I was brought up in the Catholic Church” is no guarantee you understand what the Catholic Church teaches. The biggest example of it in this video is where he and the lady in the audience assert that Catholics believe they’re sacrificing Jesus again.

I hope Franks mum will see this video and read to him the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit”.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (Paragraph #1366)

This paragraph goes on to quote the Council of Trent:

[Christ], our Lord and God, was once and for all to offer himself to God the Father by his death on the altar of the cross, to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death, at the Last Supper “on the night when he was betrayed,” [he wanted] to leave to his beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands) by which the bloody sacrifice which he was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be re-presented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power be applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit.=

Council of Trent (1562): DS 1740; cf. 1 Cor 11:23; Heb 7:24, 27.

PWJ: S1E38 – MC B4C8 – “Is Christianity hard or easy?”

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In today’s episode, Lewis attempts to answer the question: “Is Christianity hard or easy?”. When discussing this question you may hear conflicting answers, since Scripture sometimes speaks as though it is former, and then at other times, the latter.

Please send any objections, comments or questions, either via email through my website or tweet us @pintswithjack or message us via Instagram!

Episode 38: Is Christianity hard or easy? (Download)

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Sunday School: The Meaningful Life

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What path will you choose? How will you live out a meaningful life? Who wants to be a failure?

Aren’t the accomplishments that are most satisfying those requiring sacrifice and effort, the meeting of a challenge and overcoming it? Isn’t this the theme of inspiring movies we love and just about every sports movie ever made? Rarely do we tire of moving stories where the little guy conquers against all odds or where truth and justice persevere. How interesting would movies be if the main characters regularly failed to succeed in their quest to overcome and succeed?

Flip it around now; how inspiring would a movie be if the supposed “hero” had everything handed to them without effort and gained everything they desired. Would you take them seriously? Would you respect a person that achieved much from nothing? Wouldn’t you come to dislike this person if they insisted they deserved it?

Christ is our role model and He calls us to practice His witness of self-sacrificial love in both small and large ways. Denying ourselves what we desire at times to sacrifice for the other helps us to grow stronger in faith and as a human person… really they are inseparable, just as we are body and soul, a mystery of unity.

There is something deeply interwoven into each of us that understands to truly value something, whether it be an accomplishment, honor, title or even physical item, it must have come at some cost or with some struggle. One of the great lies straight from the pit of hell is happiness is a state derived from pleasure and leisure. The really profound moments of life only occur after sacrifice, this is why we fast before great feasts. In fasting we prepare ourselves for the great feast we are to participate in. We struggle to empty ourselves from all of the “junk” we hang onto that is of the world in order to have the space be filled with the life and gifts of God. Recall also when celebrating a great feast, or struggling to fast before one, you are doing so in communion with those who came before you and even those who have yet to come. Truth be told, we are only capable of small glimpses of true sheer joy. These fleeting moments can have life altering consequence urging you forward to become closer to God the source of all life. Were it not this way, we would develop a spiritual sweet tooth or that of an entitled child expecting a treat at every turn and focus on the gift and forget the Giver. It’s normal to feel periods of spiritual dryness and distance. The voice of the saints and mystics is to just keep going. Struggle and sacrifice always wins out in the end and you can write a new story of valor in your own family and community.

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Sweet Sacrifice

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I wanted to just blog briefly about a passage of scripture which I’ve been thinking a lot about recently, 2 Samuel 24:18-24:

That day Gad came to David and said to him, “Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.”

So David went up to do what the Lord had commanded him. When Araunah saw the king and his men coming toward him, he came and bowed before the king with his face to the ground. “Why have you come, my lord the king?” Araunah asked.

David replied, “I have come to buy your threshing floor and to build an altar to the Lord there, so that he will stop the plague.”

“Take it, my lord the king, and use it as you wish,” Araunah said to David. “Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and you can use the threshing boards and ox yokes for wood to build a fire on the altar. I will give it all to you, Your Majesty, and may the Lord your God accept your sacrifice.”

But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on buying it, for I will not present burnt offerings to the Lord my God that have cost me nothing.” So David paid him fifty pieces of silver for the threshing floor and the oxen.

I few years ago I came across this passage only minutes before I was about to do something I really did not want to do.  The part that stuck out to me was that David refused to offer to God the free gifts from Araunah:

“I will not [make a sacrifice that] cost me nothing“

This Scripture passage showed me what makes a sacrifice…a sacrifice. The very nature of a sacrifice is that it costs us something. It reminded me that living a life which gives glory to God sometimes requires us to do what we would rather avoid.

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart.” – Psalm 51:7

altar

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