“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal"

 

"No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, 

or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. 

You cannot serve both God and money."

(Matthew 6:24)

 

Whatever dominates our spirit, our heart,  we manifest it in our lives, 

it becomes our lives.

 

If the spirit and mind is focused on either accumulating wealth, or always 

looking for monetary gain, because it gets satisfaction from it, 

the heart will not be able to fully, truly love another person, because that

space is already occupied. Love of money is an evil spirit, a mortal sin.

   

The Church has very many devoted practicing Catholics who would not dream 

of giving up their comfortable life styles, living securely in accumulated 

wealth that they have always kept foremost in their minds throughout their lives.

They might be very active in the Church, doing a lot of things, even taking on a 

lot of responsibilities, but their spirit is worldly and not Christian.

 

 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or 

about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more 

than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away 

in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable 

than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

(Matthew 6:25-27)

 

We need money to live, but as long as we have enough, why would we occupy 

the mind with thinking about having more?

 

We are called to love each other to the point of actually giving our lives.

Jesus did it for all humanity, for the remission of our sins, He took our sins 

upon Himself, He suffered an atrocious death in order to redeem those who 

believe in Him, Jesus who is true God and true Man. A real Man,

but totally without sin; God.

 

But what is Man? 

"What is mankind that you are mindful of them,

 human beings that you care for them?

You have made them, a little lower than the angels
 and crowned them with glory and honor. 

You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
 you put everything under their feet: 

all flocks and herds, 

and the animals of the wild, 

 the birds in the sky,
 and the fish in the sea,
 all that swim the paths of the seas.

Lord, our Lord, 

how majestic is your name in all the earth!"

Psalm 8, 4-9

"Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, 

so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, 

over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures 

that move along the ground.

So God created mankind in his own image, 

in the image of God he created them; 

male and female he created them".

 Genesis 26-27

 

For us humans serving and loving God means serving and loving each 

other. 

All my life I searched for God, I was in search of love, which I sought in the 

institution that God established on earth; the Sacrament of Marriage.

My heart could not have been more devoted.

When we had children, the idea of handing them over to a stranger to look 

after them so I could go out and earn money, when we had enough to live,

never occurred to me.  Nothing was more important to me than looking after 

them. 

But when the money became more plentiful things changed, and with the 

added curse and killer of souls; alcohol addiction, it became difficult.

I wanted his love, I begged for it, but between his need for alcohol and his 

focus on money, he knew he was unable to give it, so his solution was to tell

me "to go and live my own life, do whatever I wanted, but we stay together

in the same house".

No man who has any love for his wife would say such a thing. 

 

He eventually acquired the whole house, in addition to properties

in 2 other countries. I did not get my fair share, but I got

what is important to me; the love between myself and my adult children. 

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who 

loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not 

know God, because God is love.  

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son 

into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, 

but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  

No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is 

made complete in us." 

(1 John 7-12)

 

"Catholic guilt" is an expression that many people think is something

unnatural and exaggerated in a Catholic who lives according to the 

commandments and dogma of the Church.

In reality it is that the person has a truly informed conscience, and can 

actually see and feel the true horror of his or her sins, the real consequences 

and damages they cause. The guilt we feel is well founded and justified. 

And that is why we cannot live without the graces received in the 

Sacrament of Confession, 

because there our sins are forgiven and the stains of them removed.

 

So if we were able to remove all sin in us, who would we be like?

 

Christmas Day – God became man so that men might become gods

By Robert Verrill O.P.

25 December 2011

1.22k

Isaiah 52:7-10, Psalm 97:1-6, Hebrews 1:1-6, John 1:1-18

God became man so that men might become gods. These words of St Athanasius sum up the mystery of the Incarnation. This is what we celebrate at Christmas and it is the source of our great joy.

The Incarnation changes everything. It brings together what the world tries to keep separate – God who is pure spirit, and the material world. Because of this, the true meaning of Christmas is a great challenge to our world. Because of sin, there is a great tendency for us to live fractured dualistic lives where the material reality is separated off from the spiritual reality. From the material perspective, human beings are seen as nothing special, just mere collections of fundamental particles of nature. This is the world of cold facts. This perspective is contrasted with the spiritual perspective where human beings are essentially centers of consciousness, and it is from this spiritual perspective that people try to search for meaning and love. This disunity between materiality and spirituality results in all kinds of evils. When people do not base the spiritual perspective on anything objective, there is no firm foundation to morality – things are only valuable or have meaning because an individual say so. If we believe that from the material perspective we are nothing special, there is no need to treat our bodies with any respect – we just treat our bodies in a way that is consistent with our own artificial set of values.

The sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden, was that he wanted to live beyond his material-spiritual existence, so as to exist in the same way God exists. But in trying to overreach himself, his material and spiritual unity was undermined – he became an enemy of God. God reminds Adam he is dust and to dust he shall return. Ever since the Fall, there has been a war between the material and spiritual realities. Man is uncomfortable in his own skin. He tries to strive for a spiritual existence and to escape from his mundane materiality, but his materiality drags him down and makes him do things he hates doing.

In the Incarnation, all this changes. God, who is pure spirit entered into our material world. The source of all our values, all our meaning and all our loving became a historical fact, Jesus Christ, a child born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. Through Jesus Christ, not only is our integrity restored, but by taking on human flesh and dying on the cross, God freely gives to man, what man tried to take by force at Eden. God becomes man so that men might become gods. The powers of darkness still try to undermine our material and spiritual unity, but we now know that this darkness is impotent in the light of Christ. In the words of St Leo the Great, we hear the true meaning of Christmas:

O Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.

Robert Verrill OP

Categories:

Christmas

https://www.english.op.org/godzdogz/christmas-day-god-became-man-so-that-men-might-become-gods/

From the Dominican Friars   England, Wales and Scotland website

 

  

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

External reality : objective facts

 

Not admitting the truth to oneself, but modifying or changing it to fit 

our ideas and our view of ourselves and the world can be at the root of 

mental illness. 

It might be convenient at the given time, that is why we do it, but in the 

long term it is damaging.  

On the other hand, being manipulated or bullied into admitting something that is 

not true, but somebody else's opinion and which serves them and not you,

is equally sick. 

This is why we as Catholics are called to avoid interpretations (judgements), 

to always only stick to facts and never to add our own subjective impressions.

But of course it might be that the objective facts that we present might in themselves 

be interpreted as judgements by others, but that is their problem, not ours, 

we must only adhere to facts.

 

It is also important to take control of our thoughts, our imagination, our memories.

 

For example, if we have confessed a sin to a Catholic priest and  have

received absolution, we should never again dwell on it. God has forgiven it, 

He has also forgotten it, and we must do the same.

If we do not, we might be engaging in destructive self indulgence.

 

In a therapeutic setting; talking about our feelings as they are really felt, describes 

facts inside a person, it is real, it is true, but only to the person, it is subjective.  

As for our imagination; it is an amazing tool, but it ought to be used effectively and 

correctly, with discipline.