It is Jesus Christ who draws people to Himself, and our attachment is to Him.
To have members of the congregation, including the priest, in the Church,
"welcoming" "new" people to the Church is totally misplaced; by so doing
they put the focus on themselves and takes away the focus on God, which
ought to be the reason for going to Mass.
It is a gesture of pride and a display of self importance.
These are the same people that will slander you and gossip about you,
then they will deny it, and they will never apologize to you. So it's clear that we
must not depend or count on people, we are warned against it in the Bible.
Psalms 118:8 - It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.
Micah 7:5 - Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide: keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom.
Jeremiah 17:5 - Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.
Psalms 118:9 - It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in princes.
Psalms 118:8-9 - It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.
Galatians 6:3 - For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.
The teaching of the Church must be implemented in all our actions and words,
through and with our body and mind. It is in no way separate from the entire
experience of our daily life.
Jesus; Son of God and Son of Man, was fully God and fully human; He felt
pain and hunger and temptation just in the same way as we do.
Yet He trusted fully in God the Father;
God the Father who was not separate from Himself, because He was One with
the Father.
The Catholic Faith is based on reason and logic; it depends on us using our intelligence.
But it must be applied and lived in the body, it must never just remain in the academic
sphere. If so, it is no more than a sort of entertainment, an activity; something that
"takes us out of ourselves".
If our main motivation for going to Mass is to be able to meet people and if we fail
to go to Mass in a parish where we don't know the people,
then we are not practicing Catholics. We are then following people, we have an
attachment to people, and we are not following Jesus, we are following the world.
But our dependency is on Jesus, we must lean on Him alone.
We are not to be attached to anything on earth, only to Our Lord Jesus Christ.
"Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it
abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me."
John 15:4
We live in the world, but not according to the world.
Mass is a Sacrifice first of all, and we should unite ourselves
to the Sacrifice that Jesus made for US in his Passion and Death on the Cross.
He did it completely willingly, He never resisted and never tried to avoid it, it was
supposed to happen, it was not a terrible tragic accident, it was planned,
in order to redeem us.
Are we willing to suffer even just a little bit in return?
Whatever our burdens are, maybe unresolved emotional or psychological pain;
Jesus asks us to to give it to Him; hand it over to Him.
The yoke He gives us in return is easy to carry; to serve Him and to be obedient
to His teachings.
We also have a loving and powerful mother in His Mother Mary; our Queen
and our Mother too.
Yes, we must love, be kind and take especially care of the ones close to us,
our children, family, and we are attached to them in a deeply personal way,
but otherwise, we must never use, cling to or depend on people for our well
being.
It is folly to do so because sooner or later they will let you down.
We must never cling and hang on to people.
To do so is dependency; seeking security in parent figures, something
has not grown up to become fully autonomous and independent.
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