The Self-Effacement of Love, the Impotency of Despair, and Man's Destiny in Eternity

Rose-window of Notre Dame in Paris

This is an ambitious post in that I want to lay the groundwork for some very theoretical and abstract ideas of mine on the meaning of love, the role of despair, and how this reflects the mystery of God. I aim to investigate the image of God from how I have come to understand human love, and hopefully reach upwards to reflect on God’s love for mankind. You must forgive me first for the shallowness of my own soul and the inability with which I am able to comprehend these topics. This post is not so much a form of philosophical proof as an exposition and exploration of opinion, and perhaps in a certain sense persuasion.

God grant me faith. God grant me grace. God grant me hope. God, lay the foundation of my heart in love.

Thoughts on the maxim: Know Thyself

Christ the Light of the World
by William Holman Hunt

I've been on hiatus for quite some time and so I apologize for my long withdrawal from blogging. However, I've come up with a few categories that I’d like to talk about; namely, I have been struggling with a post that hopes to address something I call the poverty of love and more fully the Divine Poverty of Christ (or the Trinity, which is a far higher ideal). This sort of grandiose essay has escaped me for far too long and my love falls far too short to make any honest progress other than what amounts to straw and hot air. In this topic I’d like to just ease back into blogging with the question of whether a man (or woman) ought to strive to know himself very thoroughly or whether it is better to profess a certain form of ignorance surrounding one’s self. Or is there perhaps a dualism by which we ought to know ourselves well in one way but not in another.

First Grade Catechism for Adults 1.01.03: God loved me from the foundation of the world

Jesus washing the feet of the Apostles
at the Last Supper.

In St. Paul’s letter to St. Timothy, St. Paul writes that it is pleasing to God that we pray for everybody and that “³[this] is good and pleasing to God our savior, ⁴ who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:3-4)¹. It is important to know that God loves every single creature that He has created, and He loves men and women, boys and girls, so much that He sent us His only begotten Son into the world to save us from our sins and that whoever lived faithfully by Him would have eternal life². All of God’s plan for us is sometimes called the history or the plan of salvation. The Lord made us to share in his divine life, that is to be with Him in Heaven and share in the mystery of love between His own self and us. St. Peter in his second letter writes, “Through these, He has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire.” (2^nd Peter 1:4) He writes that God has given us many promises and blessings so as to approach Him and come to even share in God’s mysterious divine nature.

First Grade Catechism for Adults 1.01.02: God made mankind in His image

"The image of the invisible God"
Colossians 1:15

God tells us in Genesis 1:26, “Let Us make human beings in our image, after Our likeness.”¹ But we need to ask ourselves what does it mean to be made in the likeness and image of God? Usually when we talk about somebody being the image of somebody else we mean to say that they look like them. For example, a father might tell his wife that their newborn baby boy is the near perfect image of his wife or of himself. However, when we talk about people’s likeness to God we don’t mean to say that in the beginning when God made Adam and Eve that He made them so that they look like what He looks like. This is part of the reason why the Israelites were forbidden from making an image of God, and this is because nobody knew what God looked like, and so God wanted to protect them from confusing Him with images of Him which could never really reflect who He is. Isaiah asks in Isaiah 40: 18-19 who can make an image that looks like God and if anybody could it would not be God, or even look like him. And so we must identify what it means that God made us in His image.

Contraception and the Divine Poverty

Sic Deus dilexit mundum.
For God so loved the world.

My apologies on not having written anything in due time, I have had a lot of time to spend at work this summer, and though that is not a full excuse I have spent some time reading up. I hope to blog a bit about what I read in Orthodox readings of  Augustine, that is a volume based on a 2007 conference regarding the Eastern Orthodox reception of St. Augustine the blessed Father of the West. However, this post regards a controversial topic for Christians in modern industrialized societies regarding the usage and acceptance of contraception as a means to postponing pregnancy. The focus of this essay will aim to discuss why the Catholic Church in her wisdom has provided that contraception is against the Divine mandate to be fruitful and multiply, as well as the notion of the man and woman becoming one flesh as Christ chose Himself to become one with His holy Church. Human sexuality is inevitably tied to Christ and His mission through His Incarnation and Holy Life. Marriage is the image and icon of Christ’s loving union and communion with the Church, which is without reserve and is of a totally self-giving, self-sacrificial love. The use of contraceptives shatters the total self-giving of love present in the marital life and so ruins and distorts that which marital life is aimed to imitate, the beauty of the unity between Christ and His Bride the Church. May Christian spouses love each other in Christ, be united to Him, and love each other in the image and likeness of Christ's sacrificial Incarnation, Life, and Passion, for the sake of His Beloved Bride, the Church.

The Absurdity of the Pro-Abortion Movement and the Dignity of the Human Person

St. Augustine much in his life spoke out against the vices and evils of his time, whether it be the terrible schism of the Donatists from the holy Church, the errors of the Manicheans, the corruption of the Roman state, or simply those that lie in his and many other peoples live, and if we aim to follow in his footsteps we must do much the same. The Catholic Church speaks out sharply against the sin of abortion, and threatens automatic excommunication for anyone who willingly participates or assists in an abortion. The Church knows deep in her heart by the reflection of what she has received from her Bridegroom, Christ, that abortion necessarily entails the murder of a person with an eternal soul, fastened and created by the Lord at conception. The reasons are simple then why abortion is wrong; the reasons against it are quite convoluted so as to distract us from the real evil of murdering our innocent children. Here I will begin to try and shed some light on some of the reasons why abortion is an unjust deed, the arguments will come from Christianity and right reason.

Petition Against the HHS contraception mandate (Again)

Introduction

In past months the United States government has tried to pass mandates that require Catholic institutions though not Catholic churches and parishes to materially provide for contraceptives, even those that may cause the abortion of a newly conceived child before pregnancy occurs, to its entire staff under its health insurance policies. The argument from the United States government states that institutions that are not solely dedicated to spreading a religious message and are not dedicated to solely employing employees of that same religion cannot be exempt from this ruling. This effectively requires Catholic hospitals, charities, schools, and many other Catholic institutions to provide contraception against the will of those who run these institutions. These groups will either eventually be required to cease being Catholic institutions, since the bishop of the diocese grants the title of Catholic to the institution, and become secular institutions, have to be shut down, at the bishop’s will, or in some manner co-operate materially with what is against the Divine law as promulgated through the Church. Catholics are prohibited from using artificial contraception as outlined in Humanae Vitae a papal encyclical that is binding on all Catholics. Here is the official document at the Vatican website: Humanae Vitae