seeking something more

One of my greatest frustrations in life is this concept about loving your neighbor. I mean, I’m kind to most people. I’m tolerant of people. I’m generally an agreeable person.  But being kind or tolerant or agreeable is not what love is. It’s a bit of it, perhaps, but only a very small bit.

My frustration is increased even more by the fact that I’m an introvert and avoid most people. I really don’t know a lot of people. By effect, I don’t really have many people to share this confusing thing called love. I mean, I guess, I can love people I don’t know in person, but that makes my problem even more complicated. How do I love people I have not seen or talked to? Do I end up just loving my conceptions of them, or can I really love them from afar? I know that we as the Church are one body, and distance is only some physical thing that is weak against our spiritual union. That is not my problem. My problem is that it’s hard to for me to separate abstract things from concrete things.

Last semester, just for fun, I read C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, and one of the things that I noticed is Professor Weston’s loyalty to humanity. This does not result in any goodness. As other characters from the book pointed out, Weston would happily sacrifice humans for the sake of this abstract concept of “humanity.” However, as Dr. Peter Kreeft said in one of his lectures. God doesn’t command us to love humanity. He commands us to love our neighbors. He doesn’t command us to love abstractions or concepts. He asks us to love real people with real faults and real value. He asks us to love each man and woman and child, not some vague idea in our mind of society. I was also reminded of this fact, of the need to love humans instead of humanity, when reading Centisimus Annus, or at least reading the first few paragraphs of it. John Paul II here over and over states that a big problem in modern society is that we tend to think of men as simply cogs in a machine, as simply parts of the State. That’s not what humans are according to God. According to God, each human being is someone made in His image, made with profound dignity, made so that one day he may share in the happiness and love of his Creator.

I don’t want to fall in that trap. Nice doesn’t cut it when you’re a Christian, and humanity has little value when you forget to value each human. Only love suffices and even overflows, and that I can only learn from God.

Anonymous asked: Do you think that the Bible should be followed exactly? If not, how can you call yourself a true christian? Woudn't that make you a theist?

If you mean to say that we should follow the commandments of the Bible and the words of Christ, then how can I say no? Of course we should follow the Bible and its commandments. After all, when the rich young man asked Jesus, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?” he answered, “…If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matt. 19:16-17).

However, if you mean that I must interpret the Bible literalistically, then I would have to say no. I think that the Bible is too rich to just take its words by the literalist meaning. For example, Jesus told us, “[I]f your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire,” but I really don’t think he meant to literally cut off our hands when we use them to do something wrong or to literally gouge out our eyes when we look at someone lustfully (Matt. 18:8-9). I think he meant to convey that our material bodies are nothing compared to spiritual life, and that we musn’t value them over our spiritual life.

I call myself Christian because I am baptized and reborn by water and spirit into eternal life. I call myself Christian because I have faith in Christ. I call myself Christian because I believe in the words of Scripture and the words of His Spouse. I call myself Christian because I try with His grace to pick up my Cross and follow Him.

There are a few things which my classmates usually associate with me: one is that I’m Catholic and another is that I love G.K. Chesterton. The odd thing is I don’t really remember how exactly I came to know him. My hypothesis is that I was searching things about C.S. Lewis because I fell in love with Mere Christianity and found Chesterton as one of Lewis’ influence. I am currently trying to read more of his works, and I’ve read The Great Divorce and Till We Have Faces (which is absolutely amazing) and I’m trying to read The Problem of Pain and a recently bought book The Screwtape Letters. Because of these recent readings, I remembered an old quote by C.S. Lewis, “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”

A long time ago, when I first heard it, I thought it was really witty, but as I learned more theology, I came to realize that this quote is inaccurate. Now, C.S. Lewis is an amazing theologian and apologist, and I do not know the context of this quote, but as it is, the statement is false.

Humans are not angels. We are not spirits, and our bodies are much more than machines to be controlled. Some Christians, I think, consider the body as only an obstacle and would agree with C.S. Lewis. Christ, in the garden of Gethsemane, told his disciples, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). However, while it could be said that the body (especially our human bodies in this age) are weak, we cannot say that it is evil. Even with Jesus’s comment, we can notice that our material bodies are very connected to our souls. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, humans are “body and soul but truly one.” 

This emphasis of the unity of both material and spiritual in humans is one of the things which separate most Protestants and Catholics. Protestants seem to focus mainly on the soul and spirit of humans, and all faithful Catholics would agree that the soul is very important, “that which is of greatest value in him, that by which is most especially in God’s image” (CCC  363). The Catholic Church, however, also declares that the material body is also part of human nature, that “spirit and matter, in man are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature” (CCC 365).

Two things especially found in the Catholic Church and rare to see in Protestant churches are self-punishment and the sacraments. Self-punishment, especially with the release of The Da Vinci Code seems to be getting negative reactions, and that is understandable. Yet, this practice go to the earliest days of Christianity with the intention of not necessarily punishing the body, though it could be a sign of penance, but to discipline the body, a sort of spiritual work-out. Some might wonder how punishing the body might affect the spirit, but once again it goes back to the belief of the union of body and soul. The sacraments are one of the most positive signs of the belief that God knows the material and spiritual nature of humanity and so offers ways to lead man in its spiritual journey through material things. Man, being both material and spiritual, needs both material and spiritual things in his quest for God, and through the sacraments, both parts of the human nature is satisfied.

While I do not know Mr. Lewis’s intentions in this quote, it is very problematic to think of humans as souls and their bodies as machines. This was not what He intended. “[T]he Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). We are not spirits with bodies, but rather both body and soul.

Note: CCC is the Catechism of the Catholic Church

Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Online Reading

Audio Reading

- From the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

You know how sometimes, you try to understand something, but you never really get it? Then, suddenly, it clicks. I had just one of those moments.

Though, I have always believed in purgatory, one argument against it always had me stuck: if purgatory exists, then doesn’t that mean that Christ’s sacrifice was not perfect?

The huge block was that although I knew purgatory was for purging, in my head it just kind of translated as punishment. However, while I was listening to Catholic Answer’s radio archive, specifically to the wonderful Jimmy Akin, the answer just clicked. Yes, Christ was a perfect sacrifice, enough to pay for the sins of the world, yet, even after we are saved, don’t we still have the tendency to sin? Don’t we still lack in love for God? Even when we are forgiven, it does not mean that we become perfect. On the other hand, Revelation states that, “nothing unclean will enter it,” that ‘it’ being heaven (Rev. 21:27). That does not mean that everybody who is not perfect would not be able to enter heaven. It means that those impurities in our soul must be removed. The removing or “purging” of our tendencies to sin and the temporal effects of our sin is what purgatory is.

Christ’s sacrifice was most perfect, and we do not earn our salvation but receive it from Him. Yet, God’s love requires perfection from us. He wills us to become perfect. When we cannot achieve it by ourselves, but we trust in His mercy and love, He shall make us perfect to participate in the joys of heaven.

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Online Reading

Audio Reading

- From the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Online Reading

Audio Reading

- From the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops