“Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” 1 Peter 3:15.
Ever notice that the emphasis on man’s first sin wasn’t really focused on sin, but regarded as the fall from grace? If sin withheld us from going to heaven, than no man could make it, for even the holy and righteous have some taint of sin. The emphasis is not having grace, which can be hindered by sin.
Why be a Catholic? Many people have asked me this question, and still many more will follow. I am also sure many people have asked you that question if you are a Catholic. Or if you are not maybe you have asked this question yourself. This is a heavy question. Why should I be part of this particular religion instead of, for instance, Hindu, Islam, or Unitarian? And if I do chose Christianity, why should I be Catholic as opposed to any of the other denominations out there? The answers to these questions are innumerable. However, I have assembled, what I believe to be five of the most important reasons to be a Catholic.
In #1131 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church it is read that the Sacraments are “efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions.” In the Catholic Church there are seven sacraments. They are the broken into three categories. There are the Sacraments of Christian Initiation, which are Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist. Then there are the Sacraments of Healing, which are Penance and Anointing of the Sick. Lastly there are the Sacraments at the Service of Communion, which are Matrimony and Holy Orders. A Sacrament is an outward sign for something that is happening spiritually. They are action or practices that are performed to indicate something that is happening that cannot be seen. To exemplify this we will briefly describe what is going on during a few of these Sacraments.
Have you ever done something for someone else and felt good about it? Maybe you feel proud that you gave something up for someone else. One thing that we often forget when we do this is that the good things we do in life are not of ourselves, but of God. I know I myself fall into this trap quite frequently. However difficult as this might be, it is necessary to strive for a state of mind where we give God credit for everything we do right. We must have the prudence to remember that it is from God’s grace that we are able to act out his will. What a gift though! To think that God lets us be His instrument to enact His will on earth. I can think of no greater honor.
Someone asked me the other day why the Creeds of our faith were so important. My first response was that they helped us to profess what we believe in, but as I thought about it I realized that they were much more than that.
The Creeds of the Catholic faith serves many purposes when stated publicly or privately. One of its purposes is, as previously stated,to be a profession of faith. This means that the Creed is a declaration of what the person who recants the Creed believes in. This is seen by the construct of the sentences in the Creed. Most statements in the Creed begin with I/We believe. This functions in a way that allows the faithful to publicly or privately declare what it is that they have faith in, or allows them to profess their faith and outline the major components of that faith.
My Journey Home began in the first fruits of my adult life. Between Sunday services and Thursday night Bibles studies, my religious endeavors was consumed by long-winded, late night conversations with a long time childhood friend. In brief, I grew up Protestant in a Four-Square church and transitioned to a non-denominational congregation in the earliest of my teenage years. I went to church weekly, and wove in and out of several Bible studies, searching along the Narrow Path, seeking to find my Journey Home.
“Through baptism, we have joined in death with Christ. And through our immersion we will resurrect as He has.”
Simply said, baptism is our true death. Death, as we understand it in a bodily sense, is just a temporal passing into a state of aeviternity. We know the saints of heaven are more alive than we are in our temporal bodies. We have yet to be unconditionally united to the complete body of the all life giving source, the Godhead. With beatific vision, the saints live with the most fullness of life attainable that can never be ascertained in our mortal lives.
“But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion. From here, a sign of care for the weakest of the weak – the unborn child – must go out to the world. If you become a burning light of justice and peace in the world, then really you will be true to what the founders of this country stood for.” Mother Teresa.
“Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne.” Revelation 5:6.
A Lamb as though it had been slain. Hearkening back to the Old Testament, in the time of Pharaoh’s rule over God’s children, the Jews of Egypt, we see the establishment of the long held Passover feast. As most Christians can tell you, this foreshadowed the sacrifice of Calvary. As we go through the Holy Writ of Exodus, we find in chapter 12 the tradition of Passover. To ensure the safety of all the children, specifically the firstborns, we understood that a price of blood had to be paid. Lambs blood was used, having been smeared on the door-posts of each home. As we read further, we see that this was not all that was to be done to save the children. Had anyone smeared the lamb’s blood and foregone the consumption of the unblemished sacrificial lamb, many would have awoken to a morning filled with grief over deceased firstborn sons.
