Worth reposting: Why you shouldn't give up chocolate for Lent.
Full version here. :-)
Most of us want too many things. These things are not bad in themselves, but they are too much and they weigh us down. The secret to life, to happiness and order is to want one thing, and that then to allow that one thing to order everything else.
Msgr. Charles Pope
Source: blog.adw.org
Today an illusion is dangled before us: that a man can find himself without first conquering himself, without the patience of self-denial and the labor of self-control. [...] A man who has been relieved of all tribulation and led off into a never-never land has lost what makes him what he is, he has lost himself.
Fr Joseph Ratzinger (in 1973)
Source: amazon.com
You are not tempted because you are evil. You are tempted because you are human.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen
WikiHow will even teach you...
"How to Avoid Temptation to Sin". Amazing!
So Jefferson Bethke has a new video out... it's okay and I hope it helps people (a lot), but the "in-your-face" accusatory tone to it is a double-edged sword.
Best line: "If you can't give it up, you don't own it. It owns you."
If Devils Tempt Us, Then What Do Guardian Angels Do?
Oh, and why does God need angels in the first place? Answers to those and more questions here.
Anonymous asked:
Hi Father, I'm in college and me and my boyfriend have been going out for years. I care about him, love him and don't know where i would be without him. we go to church together and stuff but at the same time we get a little carried away when we're together. idk what to do or how i feel about this. because shouldn't he be helping me towards God? what if he's depending on ME to get closer to God? idk!
Well, you're definitely called to bring each other closer to God. We all are, as Christians, and the closer we are to each other, the more it becomes "our business" to do so.
Of course, that will happen best when what attracts you when you're together -- and what's getting truly bonded -- is the soul (the person) and not just the body. Both soul and body are created by God and tell us important things about God, but the bodily dimension of your relationship needs to wait to come to full flower until marriage. Here's part of the reason why.
So it's very healthy for you to be attracted to each other even on the sexual level, but stay focused on the other parts of your relationship for now... the more the relationship is what God wants for it now, the better it will be what God wants for it later, and the better you'll be able to bring each other to holiness!
Honesty, communication, and even occasionally Confession are essential parts of trying to work that out. But a little Jason/Crystalina Evert fix might be just what the doctor ordered.
God bless you!
- Father Shane
Anonymous asked:
Father, I am petrified of death. Petrified. I have a hard time comprehending heaven and its existence. There is nothing else within the faith that I have trouble believing apart from this, and I just have this horrible feeling that when I die that is it - I cease to exist. I don't know what to do or how change these feelings.
It’s certainly understandable! It may come as a relief to you to know that even some of the first Christians struggled with this. Here’s what St. Paul had to say to them:
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:12-14)
Because that’s what you’re looking for, right? Certainty about your own resurrection. But the Church is so certain about it that it’s the conclusion of the Creed: “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.”
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead. (1 Corinthians 15:19-20)
If you’re being tempted against belief, there’s not much you can do about that fact. But don’t fight the temptation directly… instead, seek to strengthen your faith and to talk to Jesus about how his love for you is eternal. Make that the thing you spend the whole Mass talking to him about. Read Pope Benedict’s Spe Salvi, especially the part around paragraphs 10-12. Rustle up a copy of Peter Kreeft’s book on heaven. Or check out some of the previous things I’ve written here.
The real key to understanding this is that Christ’s love for you is eternal. The relationship you’ve begun here on earth is eternal, and the peace that he wants to instill in your heart is eternal too. For God, things don’t end. Ever. Not when it’s a matter of his beloved children. So yes, his love is far more than you can even begin to imagine. This is the only case in which something sounds too good to be true… and isn’t!
God bless you and we hope to see each other in heaven, where every tear will be wiped away, and we'll no longer be anons!
- Father Shane
We have all got to be realistic. People are people; men are men; women are women. This doesn’t change when a woman begins to seek holiness. This doesn’t change when a man becomes a priest. Neither chastity nor celibacy is maintained and matured by pretending that certain circumstances will remove all temptation. And temptation can be especially subtle precisely in the midst of a relationship that begins on a deep spiritual level – the level where a priest and a female directee are interacting.
Temptation: What is it and when does it become sin?
Did you know that Bob Dylan played for JP2 on September 27, 1997, at a youth rally in Bologna?
How many roads must a man walk down, before they call him a man How many seas must a white dove sail, before she sleeps in the sand How many times must the cannonballs fly, before they are forever banned The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind The answer is blowing in the wind
Here's what JP2 said afterwards:
A representative of yours has just said on your behalf that the answer to the questions of your life "is blowing in the wind". It is true! But not in the wind which blows everything away in empty whirls, but the wind which is the breath and voice of the Spirit, a voice that calls and says: "come!" (cf. Jn 3:8; Rv 22:17).
You asked me: How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? I answer you: one! There is only one road for man and it is Christ, who said: "I am the way" (Jn 14:6). He is the road of truth, the way of life.
I therefore say to you: at the crossroads where the many paths of your days intersect, question yourselves about the truth value of every choice you make. It can sometimes happen that the decision is difficult or hard, and that there is an insistent temptation to give in. This had happened to Jesus’ disciples, for the world is full of easy and inviting ways, downhill roads that plunge into the shadow of the valley where the horizon becomes more and more limited and stifling. Jesus offers you an uphill road, which is heavy going but lets the eye of the heart sweep over ever broader horizons. The choice is yours: to let yourselves slide downhill into the valley of a dull conformism, or to face the effort of climbing to the peak, where you can breathe the pure air of truth, goodness and love.
As the pilot of a vessel is tried in a storm; as the wrestler is tried in the ring; the soldier in the battle, and the hero in adversity: so is the Christian tried in temptation.
Anonymous asked:
Hello Father,So the other day I was having a conversation with a fellow Catholic about some of the implications of Christ being both fully human and fully divine. Even though he possesses both natures, he is one divine person. Which means, as divine, it's impossible for him to sin. (I think I worded that correctly.) So our question was: How can we say Christ was a sinless -human- being when it was his -divine- personhood controlling and directing his human life?Which led to other interesting questions, such as: What, exactly, would have constituted temptation for Christ? For most human beings, temptation is more than simply having an option to sin, but feeling an actual inclination to do so. When we have inclinations to temptations flare up, emotions or desires legitimately beyond our control, it's not a sin if we don't choose to act on it. But would Christ even have had those kinds inclinations? A more mundane example would be his anger at the moneychangers in the temple (which probably avoids the discussion at all by being proportionate, righteous anger); the obvious example would probably be when the devil tempted him in the desert. So when we say Christ was tempted, do we mean he -felt- temptation, as we do, or just that the -opportunity- to sin was there?I hope that made sense!
Not only is that an extraordinarily deep question, you've also stumbled into one of the deepest questions of Christian theology of all time... what exactly does it mean that Christ was both fully human and fully divine? For starters, it's a mystery, and it doesn't help that I'm not enough of an expert on patristic christology to really give you a full answer, but let's do what we can.
The Church in the first millennium grappled with questions like this most especially when heresies arose that challenged traditional thinking; it was usually only then that great precision was needed in the definitions of faith. In this case, the relevant heresy was the rather arcane one of "monothelitism"... that Christ had only a single will. The great champion of orthodoxy against monothelitism was St. Maximus the Confessor (or "of Constantinople," if you prefer), and the final definitive statement of the Church on the question came at the sixth of the ecumenical councils, Constantinople III (681).
Monothelitism is an outgrowth of the slightly more famous heresy of monophysitism, that Jesus' human nature was completely absorbed into the divine nature.
Orthodox Christian belief holds that there is one Person (the 2nd of the Trinity), two natures (human and divine) and two wills (human and divine) in Jesus. More than his divine nature controlling his human life, as you say, it would be more instructive in this case to point to his human will submitting to his divine will. But that struggle of human submission was a struggle for Jesus too. (There is an excellent discussion of that point here.)
"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin." (Hebrews 4:15)
Just to discuss your definition of temptation for a moment... No, Jesus wouldn't have had disordered inclinations in himself. But if his human will was truly free, he had the possibility of choosing rightly or wrongly. That's enough to make temptation, when it presents itself either from without (like the devil's words to Jesus in the desert) or from within (presumably like the temptations in Gethsemane), real enough. Jesus' human will cooperates freely with his divine will. So long as we say it's free, we're opening ourselves to the horrifying possibility of a divine self-contradiction, but the wonderful truth we confess is that Jesus' human will never did freely choose to counteract the Father's will.
So the opportunity to sin was definitely present, and in that sense I think we can say that the temptation was very real.
But, like I said, I'm not nearly expert enough to be talking much about this in public, so I'd be quite interested to know if anyone who's studied this more can add anything. For your reference, the Catechism discusses the human/divine "interface" in Christ quite at length here, with his wills mentioned in #475. His temptations in the desert are dealt with here, and Gethsemane is here.
God bless you!
- Father Shane
When the devil reminds you of your past, remind him of his future!