I M A G E of the CHURCH. Tuesday of the 8th Weekday. St. Pope Gregory VII, St. Bede, St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi.

 1.  The Church. 

      During the Ascension, Jesus had completed the image of the Catholic Church that He had just established. That was the job He was sent by the Father to do.  The Liturgy described how that Church looks like, its teachings, its teachers, its classrooms, its pupils. 

      Tuesday and Wednesday shows with the commemoration of St. Gregory VII, St. Bede and St Mary Magdalene de Pazzi how the Church look like years after its establishment.

      St. Gregory VII, the Pope, shows how a Pope should look like. St. Bede shows how a priest should look like. St. Mary Magdalene shows how a layman should look like. All of them have one thing in common which united them into one Church. They all knew the commands of Christ as enumerated in the New Testament; they knew how those commands should be put into practice; and they put into practice all those commands. In short, they recipients of the Apostolic Commission Christ gave the first Apostles and they put them into practice. They conformed to the image of the Church,  Christ established before He ascended to heaven. 

      How does our Catholic parish or diocese look like? How does the Vatican look like?  Nowhere near the Church before the Ascension and nowhere near the Church of Gregory VII, Venerable Bede and Mary Magdalene de Pazzi. In fact, just the opposite. 

2. The Catholic Faith. 

     The Catholic Faith is established by obeying the Apostolic Commission given by Christ to the apostles. The last two phrases are the significant points whose goal is for listeners to make an Act of Catholic Faith; 'teach them all that I have commanded, and how to observe them.'

      The Catholic Faith is to know all the commandments of Christ as found in the New Testament, and how to observe them as taught by Christ to the first Christian communities  but written down later by the Fathers of the Church. 

        For the above Faith to be alive, it must be enlivened by Charity which consist in obeying the commandments of Christ. Theologians describe this as Faith and Charity, or Faith and Good works. There are approximately 82 commandments of Christ as found in the Gospel of Matthew. True Faith with Charity consist in obeying all of them.

         The image of the true Catholic Church described before the Ascension of Christ to heaven is that the Pope must have mastered all the 82 commandments of Christ and have obeyed them. He must, in turn,  teach these to the cardinals, bishops and priests, who in turn must master them and obey them. And lastly they must teach these commandments to the laity in the dioceses and parishes, who, in turn must obey all of them. 

          When Pope, cardinals, bishops, priests and lay people have obeyed them all, then God will send them the Holy Spirit to unite them into One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. This is how the true Catholic Church looked liked before the Ascension; this is how it should look like today. But it does not look like this today; not before the pandemic,  more so during this pandemic. 

           During the ongoing pandemic, neither the Pope, nor the cardinals and bishops, nor the priest or nuns, nor the laity have heard the commandments of Christ as laid down in the Liturgy of the Mass since the last two Holy Weeks up to today, Tuesday of the 8th week of Easter. No one is showing he has the Catholic Faith, except a very few who have it through a very special intervention of Almighty God. 

3. Proof of what Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in the 1980s on the 'crisis of Faith,' in his best selling 'Ratzinger Report.'

    In the above treatise, Ratzinger noted that the crisis in the Church is due to lack of Faith.  Unbelief or the sin against Faith is the greatest sin. Through unbelief, man remains in sin and becomes totally incapable of progressing forward. Chastisement is a punishment for unbelief.

 4. The sin of unbelief during the Corona pandemic.

      The present pandemic is a chastisement from God for man to see what is his sin. His sin is unbelief and the punishment is condemnation according to Christ. What does the world not believe in? It does not believe in the Divine Providence of God, i.e. in that God controls all of creation. That God decides when a man lives and when he dies. And nobody can change God's Providence. 

      Man may wear anything; he may wear a mask, a face shield, a gas mask, a hood. He can wear anything and that is alright. He can observe social distancing and live in the opposite side of the earth if he wants.

5. The Church.

      But Faith consist in that man must believe that God dictates who the virus will infect and who will not be infected; who will die and who will live. And most importantly, who will go to heaven when he dies and who will go to hell.

       Faith, also, consist in believing that there is a direct Will of God wherein He willed to create the Chinese and the Americans. And that there is a permissive Will of God that made Him allow the Chinese to make the Corona virus and for the Americans to have a new President.  

      Faith consist in believing that God allowed the Corona pandemic to test the Faith of all men with the end of rewarding the faithful while punishing the unfaithful. True Catholics are those who believe in this Divine Providence of God and have passed this on going test of Faith. 

6. He who does not believe in God's truth will believe in every lie.

    He who does not believe in Divine Providence but believes in every lie does not belong to the true church completely established by Christ before His Ascension. 

7. The reaction of the whole world shows it has no Faith.

     This reaction of unbelief is more pronounced in the institutional Catholic Church; The behaviour of the Vatican and almost all Diocese and parishes is total unbelief in the doctrine of Divine Providence. 

      There is nothing wrong with the face masks, face shields and social distancing. It is the reason for wearing and doing these that shows no Faith. One can use five masks and shields and still believe in the doctrine of Divine Providence. Unbelief is an act of the mind and will; it is not a physical act. 

       There is nothing wrong with not attending Mass if one is ill. But it is a sign of unbelief if one misses Mass due to fear of the virus; 'fear not what can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Fear God who can kill both body and soul.' God kills those guilty of unbelief. Unbelief was the Chosen People's greatest sin when Christ preached to them. 

        Christ, Himself, prophesied that an age will come when people will experience 'decay of Faith' and the 'waxing cold of Charity.' Perfect Faith goes hand in hand with Charity; both are theological virtues that go together. Both are needed for salvation, because God  gives the virtue of Charity, only, to those with perfect Faith. That is why God did not send the Holy Spirit, the author of Charity,  on Pentecost until the apostles had perfect Faith which they had before Christ ascended to heaven.

        Most of mankind, today, do not have Charity, i.e. love of God and neighbour. St. Augustine wrote; if you do not love God, you will hate everybody. So what we have is hate crimes. And the only love man know is 'love of concupiscence,' the love one has for another for what pleasure he can get from the other. 

      There is no Charity because there is no perfect Faith upon which Charity is based. And there is no perfect Faith because man has not repented of their sins; it is for this reason that God sent the on going Corona virus pandemic, because man has not repented for his sins. And why has man not repented? Because he does not know his sins. How come he does not know his sins? Because he does not know the commandments of Christ, the violation of which is called sin. If Pope Francis and most of the US bishops do not know that abortionist cannot receive Holy Communion, demonstrators will not know that looting is wrong. 

8. How does the true Catholic Church look like. 

    It should look like the day before Ascension Day as described above. We must have a Pope like Gregory VII,  priests like Venerable Bede and a laymen like Mary Magdalene of Pazzi. Is the present institutional Church like that? Reading how the Church look like before Ascension, and reading the lives of the above saints commemorated  in today's Mass...........it is not. 

     

P E A C E . Signs of the true Church. ASCENSION WEEKDAYS.

  1. Ascension. Christ's work is done.

      Before He ascended to His Father, Jesus saw to it that his work on earth is done. His work was to establish His Church on earth for the salvation of mankind. Thus the Liturgy is now showing how that Church looks like. 

       The true Church of Christ can be recognised in many ways; through the 4 visible signs found in the Nicene Creed. Through the 15 Marks of the true Church by St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, which is an expanded version of the four visible marks from the Creed. 

        Souls with grace can recognise the true Church through the Moral and theological virtues. But for most Catholic, the true Church can be recognised through the parables on the kingdom of God as narrated in the Liturgy; especially as summarised in the Gospel of the feast of the Ascension of Christ and during the following Gospels of the following weekdays. 

2. Signs of the true Church established on Ascension.

    Its head, either the Pope, Bishop or priest is teaching them all the commands of Christ as found in the New Testament, is teaching them how to put those commands into practice as taught by Christ to the first Christian communities and written down by the Fathers of the Church and further explained by the Doctors of the Church. 

    And the followers are obeying those commands as instructed. This was the Apostolic Commission of Christ to the apostles and all their successors must obey them. If these are not taught they are not Catholic. 

     The next signs the Liturgy gave is the power God had given His true Church. The power to drive devils from their souls, the power to expose heresies and to remain in the truth in the midst of heretical teachings.  

      After being given wisdom and powers, Christ saw to it that they are not of the world  as He was not of the world. The Church is like the City of God and not the City of man, as St. Augustine differentiated them. 

3. They have the gift of PEACE. 

     This 'peace' is a gift of the Holy Spirit. No man can give this nor any institution demand or agree on it. Peace is given, only, to those who have undergone the four steps the Liturgy have shown from Ash Wednesday up to Ascension; i.e. know your sin, repent for your past sins, have perfect Faith enlivened by Charity. Then and only then can a soul have peace. It is a sign that a soul has become truly a Catholic. 

      St. Thomas wrote that 'peace' is, exclusively, a gift from God. Nobody can just have it. That is why no organisation can promise it nor can produce peace anywhere. Neither the UN nor the institutional Church who is uselessly trying to make peace among different religions.  Who do they think they are.  Gods?

       Peace is possible only in souls that are in the state of grace, i.e. souls who have no sins. That is why there is no peace in the world, among nations, among husband and wives, not even among brothers and sisters, because all have sinned. It is impossible for Israel and Hamas to have peace. All human efforts are futile in making peace because a sinner does not even have peace within himself. St. James wrote that all battles begin within each person before it goes public. Man, due to sin, is at war with himself, and this war will go external. 

4. The word 'peace' is usually plastered all over monastery walls. Because that is the goal of monastic spirituality, the attainment of the gift of 'peace.' After which they are supposed to go out into the world and become peace makers. To be a peace maker is a Beatitude and a soul must be very holy before he can become a peace maker; he must, first, have peace. 

     Today's peace makers, like the UN. is full of sins. They don't have the gift of peace. Even in the Vatican whose offices are filled with gay and heretics, they cannot have peace due to their sins.  Thus it is impossible for them to create their beloved one-world religion wherein all are in the state of sin and, therefore, do not have peace. What they have is guilty conscience that gives them no peace, and which is driving them crazy unless they repent. 

     The lack of peace is the cause for all the hate crimes in the world. It is not so much that the other person is hateful. It is each person, due to their own sins who hates all the others. 

5. Considering the Church, the finished job done by Christ before His Ascension, today, no institutional church is identical to it based on the signs already enumerated in the Liturgy. 

6. So where is the Church?

     It is, still, there on earth. But it seems no one knows the description of the true Church just before Ascension Day. The church in the Vatican is not even a shadow of the Church before the Ascension. And neither any diocese or parish. 

     Today, as Christ said to the Samaritan woman, true worshippers worship in spirit and in truth. But they, still, possess their human bodies so they can be seen. The man of peace, still, has his human body so he can be seen, he can be found and he can, still, aid in teaching the way of peace to the Israelites and Palestinians. And to the whole world. The man or woman who have followed Christ from Ash Wednesday up to Ascension Day is the man of peace. Only he or she can lead others to a life of peace because God the Holy Spirit, who alone is the giver of the gift of peace, is in them.

          

Being a BRANCH ATTACHED TO THE VINE in China, Africa, Middle East, USA....and in the whole world.

  1. The third level interpretation.

       The third level of interpretation of the parable of the Vine and the branches, according to St. Thomas of Aquinas, refers to the free will, the faculty of Charity or love, and is impossible without the grace of God. 

      It is the way souls become truly Christian through the direct intervention of God. Pagans and even Catholics enter the true Church this way. The incident is common among saints that do not show human interventions, like the example of St. Therese of Lisieux.

       As in the previous post, it is the way a soul is saved though he is alone in an island in the middle of the Pacific with absolutely nothing. No telephone, no books, no radio, no computer, no nothing. 

          Firstly, if this soul looks up to heaven and sees the sky, the sun, the moon and stars ..... and say, I think a Divine Being created all these and how I greatly wish to know who he is. Secondly, if he further say, this Divine Being had commanded the sun to move from East to West, the moon and the stars. How I wish I know His commands for me. And thirdly, if this soul says, If I knew his commands I will obey them. This soul had just become a branch attached to the Vine.

2. Act of the Free Will.

    Note that the three above acts are acts of the free will and, therefore, acts of love. Since these acts are directed towards a Supreme Being, grace had been given to him to enable him to make an act of Faith, Hope and Charity. This soul is truly a member of the Catholic Church, and will surely be saved. The above three acts were done by both the intellect and free will. But since the intellect is completely ignorant of Catholic teaching, the above act was reduced to mainly an act of the free will, i.e. an act of Love, Charity.

      Christ mentioned to the Samaritan Woman that one day she did not have to go to Samaria or Jerusalem in order to worship God because the day will come when true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth. 

      This is that day. Souls do not have to go to the Vatican, to cathedrals or parishes because people do not worship God properly in those places. We have come to those days when true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth. With the spiritual faculties of intellect and free will and based on natural truths, like there is a God of nature. 

3. Chinese, Africans, Middle East Catholic Christians persecuted in these places should worship God in this way to minimise their exposure to the wrath of pagans. They must worship God by going to their rooms and locking the door, as Christ exhorted. They should not show external signs of Catholicity unless forcefully demanded by circumstances to confess their Faith. 

     These persecuted Catholics know the basic Catholic truths upon which they can base their acts of free will, i.e. their act of desire. Though their knowledge is incomplete due to their persecuted situation, this very situation will not prevent them from making the act of free will, i.e. by wishing. 

4. This is the deepest interpretation on how a branch is attached to the Vine, i.e. through the free will. It is an act of love, an act of Charity that is moved by the grace of God. God intervenes directly in such special situations when He sees the proper disposition of a soul that is predestined. True Catholics in such situations similar to a soul alone in an island in the midst of the Pacific should not depend on instructions from the Vatican, from the diocesan office or anywhere else. The age has come, Christ prophesied to the Samaritan Woman, that going to the Vatican, the diocese and parish for instruction, is over. True worshippers will worship in spirit, i.e. with their spiritual faculties of intellect and free Will, and in Truth, i.e. there is One God. 

5. Period of Pandemic.

    This is the same situation in areas where there is pandemic. They are like in an island in that there are no Sacraments, no Masses and no one preaching the Catholic truths because Christ had prophesied that we are in an age where there is a decay of Faith and the waxing cold of Charity. That is as bad as being in an island in the middle of nowhere. 

     Droplets of truth can still be found in Scriptures, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church but these truths cannot be understood without the grace of God. And this grace is given only to the humble, not to the  proud of which most people are. So today, we must worship, also, in spirit and in truth. Nobody seems to know how to do that, except God and He is not talking too much. 

6. The Ark of the Covenant is gone. 

     The ark of the covenant was the place where God, in the form of cloud and fire, use to speak to the priests who will eventually transmits God's Will to the people. Because of the infidelity of both priest and people God took away the Ark of the Covenant. It was still missing at the time of Christ. God stopped speaking to the priests. And the priest could not convey God's Will to the people. The priest and the people ended up just doing their own will, just like Adam and Eve. Mankind had returned with vengeance to original sin.

       Today, God no longer speak to priests and bishops. So they only tell people their own opinion that is why their homilies are all written down. Their homilies are written by men and copied from men. They know nothing about the Will of God. And so, rightly, have God cancelled everything because mankind is just talking nonsense to one another. God is not talking to mankind and man is not talking to God. No branch is attached to the Vine. The branches are all dead and dried. It is ready for the fire. Except for a few that have gone to be alone in a spiritual island......or in the middle of the spiritual desert in the middle of China, Africa or the Middle East. Or lock down in spiritual cell in Manhattan, St. Louise, or South Carolina,......like St. Catherine of Sienna who was always within her monastic cell everywhere she went. With her mind and free will in constant communion with God.