Abortion- A Meditation on Scripture

As I write these words, more than 47,669 babies have been directly killed today. Since I loaded the web page which has the abortion counter some minutes ago, more than 5,251 unborn children have been killed, and this year, more than 16,425,995 unborn children have been killed. Many countries and states continue to legalize abortions and Physician assisted suicide has continued to be on the increase as well.

The situation is worrisome and is even more so as people who are being charged with the nobility of preventing disease and in effect engendering life, have turned around to be harbingers of death. As Christians, what are we to do? What camp are we to join? I am indeed aware of the many arguments for both sides from many corners, but what I want to do is to listen to Our Lord himself, the Eternal Word, our own master, and teacher, to find out what exactly, we, the people of His way, should believe and do about these issues.

The Theology of Giving

In my last post I mentioned that there were two themes on my mind, one I wrote about, but the other is something I feel for me is important. Before we finally leave Tobit, there is something else in its 12^th chapter that we need to consider. Amongst the many things Raphael told them, one important thing he said to them was that it was better to give alms than to treasure up gold, that almsgiving preserves from death, and it purifies from sin, and that those people who give alms will have a long life (Tobit 12:8-9). You see, I do not mean to underestimate us all, we all know that it is indeed good to give alms, we really don’t need a new person to tell us that. But something we may not have considered is ‘How good exactly is giving alms?’

Let It Love

After having a discussion with my friend, who for the record I do love very much,last night, I woke up to attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass this morning only to hear some sermon about the nature and the beauty of love. One of those times I feel God is actually playing a prank. 

 

I had complained to my friend about how I had struggled not to love him the way I do because I felt I gained nothing from it, I could barely find a reciprocated affection and care, and I felt I was literally playing the fool. Earlier in the year I had kept my distance from him, particularly because I wanted to stop, it was so difficult, we kinda ceased to be friends in the way we used to be. I knew what I was doing, I knew it was a step in the opposite direction, but nevertheless, I continued, yeah I did till I was tired.

Found Him Yet?

I am a Christian, In fact, I am a Catholic. Day by day I come into a deeper encounter with what the essence of Christianity is, you know, something not everybody easily gets these days, something many people got in the past and was the attractive force for bringing so many people into the Christian Faith. You know what I am talking about?

Not to worry, you will soon. One of my favorite quotations from the Bible is a sentence of three words, each time I think about it, it opens up a deep ocean of discovery that many times, I am not even ready to delve into. A statement so profound, many thinkers and theologians have meditated on its depth for ages. It may actually be the answer to many atheists and indeed religious people who are in search of who or what God really is. You know what that sentence is? God is Love! A description of that other being that is so deep I doubt if John, though he was called the beloved one, actually understood the entirety of its depth, of its mystery.

I Speak Of Love

Love! Something so powerful, something so beautiful, something so special. At the heart of human desires, at the very foundations of human existence, lies this word made of just four letters, this word that is yet bigger than four, that expresses something bigger than itself, that expresses something bigger than the person who pronounces that word.

Love! Something many if not all do want, but something that has been subconsciously pushed far away from our reach, something people no longer believe exists, something man has bastardized and reduced to what it is not. And people wonder why the world is so sad, why life seems unfair, well isn’t it because the very essence that gives life its fairness has been divulged from life itself and separated from life? Life without love is now imaginable, it is a life that has lost all its beauty and fairness. A life that is sad and adorned with darkness and gloom.

THE BIBLICAL PURGATORY (PART 2)

Hello Dearest Friends, after much delay on my part I have undertaken to continue my meditations with you on the Biblical Purgatory… It has been a nice experience really, and ever since the last part, some of you have waited for where I was going with the explanations from Scripture. I am sorry for having waited this long to share this with you. A lot of things have happened since then. But without wasting much time, let us begin.

In our last meditation we saw straight from scripture the nature of the God that has called us to be together with him. We established from Heb. 12:29 and from 1 John 4:8 that the Lord our God is A CONSUMING FIRE OF LOVE. We also established from scripture too that our Christian calling involves our being drawn into that consuming fire of love, and that in the process that fire tends to burn away all the exigencies that prevent us from full and perfect communion with him. That is the process of Sanctification wrought in us by the Holy Spirit whereby the merits of Jesus Christ on the Cross are applied to our Souls. Finally, we established, again from scripture, that this process of sanctification involves self-denial and mortification, ‘selling all we own’, and then carrying our crosses and following our Lord. In that part we frequently made use of the word ‘to purge’ which means to purify to describe the process of our sanctification which we have outlined above. May I humbly inform you that it is from this same word that the word “Purgatory” is derived.

How it began…with love!

The holy scriptures tell us that God is love. (1John4:8), and that is essentially what He is, Love. in my previous write-ups I have written about some of the essential characters of this love that we speak of, namely, that it is never contained in itself, it is never individual or personal, that it generates community, and that God who is love, and for that very fact exists in himself as a community of three persons, the trinity.
When I say love is not contained in itself, I mean to say that love always seeks expression. In love, there is always the lover and loved. The very reason for creation to have come about, is that boundless love, could not be contained in himself, and so, like Fulton J. Sheen said, love overflowed. We must remember that before the creation of the world and all that exists, God existed in boundless happiness, boundless love, and a wonderful community of the trinity. He was not in need of love, or friendship, or service. The simple thing that happened in creation was that love sought expression, as it naturally would, just like the sun cannot hide the fact that it is the sun because it shines, giving life the plants of the earth and shedding its rays of light on all that we are able to see, so too, was God who is love, at creation. And we, with all that exists are the expressions of eternal love. Such that we are product of the boundless love of eternity, we are made by love, and our ultimate purpose is love. since God made us for himself, we are made for love.