Two Roads -Life of Man/ Life of Christ

 
Hello Everyone:
As you all know –a lot is being unleashed upon us in the world and in the Church but we can’t forget that we have problems in the Catholic Church without these scandals heaved upon us at the present moment. We have Christians who look at Jesus as just a man and not a living God! (Including the Pope????)  Link below.

The decay of Christianity is due to the tendency to regard Jesus only as a memory of a man who taught and lived. God is too good to give us the gift of Jesus and permit His human existence to last ONLY from the crib to the Cross. “Behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world”. It is the fullness of Christ-Life, beating and throbbing at this very hour in millions of souls right now, which gives flesh and blood to His teaching and His example. He lives today! His example is not something that HAS happened, but something that IS happening.

Bishop Fulton Sheen has stated: "The great tragedy of history is not that men should fall, but that they should fail to rise to the full realization of their vocation as children of God." In other words, that they should miss so much by not having a loving relationship through prayer.

Today we see vast multitudes of men and women of refinement and culture, endowed with intelligence and possessed of every natural virtue and every now and then swept by emotions and ideals that are noble, but who are living second-rate, superficial, unimportant and morally insignificant lives, because they have never had their “nature enkindled into flame by the Spirit of Christ” which comes from a true prayer life. They may do much for the world in the material order, they may build bridges, create computers or robots, accomplish great pieces of research, but they never fill the depths of their souls which can be filled ONLY by God. The world of the supernatural has no more appeal to them than heroism has appeal for a coward. They have become so used to the dense atmosphere of the material, that they are stifled in the atmosphere of the supernatural.

In this lies the danger of our whole civilization which is gradually turning away from God. Nothing great, nothing really good was ever done in this world by any human life that had not a baptism of God’s Holy Ghost. “Without Me, you can do nothing”. Jesus’ Life is not something which WAS lived; it is something which IS BEING LIVED in us now. “I will not leave you orphans: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more. But you see Me: because I live and you shall live. In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” John 14 18:20

So what does it mean to be a true Christian and why should I want others to be evangelized? Christianity is not a system of ethics, it is a life. It is not good advice, it is Divine adoption. Being a Christian does not consist in being kind to the poor, going to church, reading the Bible, singing hymns, being generous to relief agencies, just to employees, gentle to cripples, serving on Church committees, though it includes ALL of these. IT IS FIRST AND FOREMOST A LOVE RELATIONSHIP THROUGH PRAYER, AND AS YOU CAN NEVER BECOME A MEMBER OF A FAMILY BY DOING GENEROUS DEEDS BUT ONLY BY BEING BORN INTO IT OUT OF LOVE. SO YOU CAN NEVER BECOME A CHRISTIAN BY DOING GOOD THINGS ----- BUT ONLY BY BEING BORN TO IT THROUGH DIVINE LOVE. Doing good things to a man does not make you His son (such as what is proposed to us through social justice jargon), but being a son (through Baptism and prayer) does make you do good things.

Christianity begins with being, not with doing, with life and not with action. If you have the life of a man, you will do the things a man does, but if you have the Life of Christ in you, you will act like a self-sacrificing, loving Christian in imitation of Jesus. There is a world of difference between the two.  To be a Christian means to discard self as the supreme determinant of actions; it means to put on the mind of Christ so as to be governed by Christ’s Truths; to surrender the will to His Will, and to do all things that are pleasing to Him and not to self.

May we turn to Mary – Our Mother who is so prayerful, so self sacrificing and so loving to all those she meets. She is our model of great virtue and prayer. Let us pray to her in order to live in imitation of her so that we will always be pleasing to God – Her Son.

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Breaking News About Pope Francis 10/9/19