Happy Easter, some thoughts..
Interesting article relevant to our times,
by Christopher Kaczor, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
Yes, to be Catholic Christian, is to be cool
the Hall of fame of scientific research, invention, discoveries is filled with Catholic/Christians saints, priests and laity but of which you will never hear much but instead, we have these usurpers, a tsunami of godless chatter of the damned which has extinguished the flame of faith in many, in our times. Is it sign of end times like Christ said?," many will lose their faith". But even Christ was humble enough to admit He knew not of the hour, only His Father.
It was the Catholic church and after the schism, the Protestantism which nurtured science in its infancy. Rene Descartes, a devout catholic, the father of scientific philosophy and knowledge with his fundamental assumption that Christian God being benevolent would not try to deceive us through our senses, there were skeptics who felt reality perceived through our senses is transient and even more so with our mortality and not to base our tree of knowledge and wisdom on this edifice. And this goes even further into antiquity, to the Greeks- Socrates, Pluto and the dialogues which reflect on the permanence of our soul which our church imbibed through St Augustine, the great theologian.
It is true, however and here I concur with Voltaire, the religion or false worship or pagan cults across every continent arose from fear of the unknown or need to propitiate, God a cruel dictator who had to be humored with rituals, idols or else.., and more often than not these religious cults contradicted each other. then there are other cults who will rather have men vegetate through excision of our human nature and desires, our humanity and our free will, of which not even angels can tamper with..
in this milieu, Christ revealed Himself to the human race, 2000 years ago. And no reputed historians, or scholars will deny His existence.
IN the Gospels or precisely ,GNB( Good News Bible) excluding the Old testament, the Hebrew bible which some Christians erroneously base their moorings on, which Jews now claim to be just an allegory.
. In fact, early Christians had a heated debate on this matter and a Bishop Marcion concluded that God of Old testament alien to Christ persona and his teachings, for which he was excommunicated.
Here is God far from being cruel and dictatorial bears punches for us and submits to men's cruelty instead, in the most vicious form of torture and death, the cross.
what's this kingdom of heaven like?, is it like the earthly hierarchical top down model we are accustomed to?
in the sermon of the Mount, you have to be like little child to enter it. the meek, the poor and the persecuted will inherit it. and he gave us his parables.
He could command the natural physical laws and transform matter, calm the storm, walk on water, multiply few loaves of bread, fish to feed the multitude. turn water into wine.
and why not? He was there, the Alpha and the Omega when the big bang occurred 13.7 billions years ago, and spatial matter, debris coagulated to form our planet earth about 4.6 billion years ago, "this pale blue dot" which revolved around itself and around the sun a billion times which we call "Time". it is yet another day for our Creator for an analogy, the electron which revolves around its nucleus in an atom on your iPhone or laptop, close to speed of light, so reading of few sentences ahead, is equivalent to billions of rotation. Puts our "time" in perspective.
when climatic conditions finally stabilized ideally after billions of years on our planet to support life, the vast and varied life forms or species with set mortality rates made its entry. About 200,000 years ago, a distinct human race with consciousness like no other life form materialized
although, we can engage in speculation on our origins, Christ had all the answers.
but was it important then to his disciples? not at all, mortality or our short life spans, was like "sword of domiciles" hanging on to our species, the speculation on origins does not hold much water.
the greater question that afflicted human kind then and due to the glitter and distraction of science we have somehow sidelined, is this fundamental question of mortality. Egyptians built their pyramids, Chinese emperor drank mercury for eternal life.
So on this auspicious day, Christ proved to us with his death and resurrection, the same is achievable for those who believe in him and live a good Christian lives.. ..His concern or priority was to get us safely into new and better realm, with our body and soul intact.
Pax Christi
Comments