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Gaby,

You wrote: "If you want to be understood by people, speak in plain language, not in fables."

Plain language is made of words or gramatically connected groups of words. Words (or groups) point to concepts but don't contain them in their full meaning. Concepts point to a reality, but don't fully contain it.

Consider the word 'love' and all the different notions people have about it, and all the different lived realities these notions point to. Indeed, Jesus summarized the essence of the voluminous laws of Judaism into 2 commandments. These however only point to a mystery that cannot be contained in limited words and concepts. jesus was pointing to God, to that which is absolutely most fundamental -- cannot be contained in words, and concepts, thus parables.

You also pondered: "To my limited knowledge, Jesus was not the "only begotten son" of God. What about Satan and all the other angels? He "begot" them as well didn't he?"

According to my faith, there are created creatures with a beginning and there is God who is eternal. Jesus Christ is eternal, has always been, and is of the same type of reality (eternal) as the father. The scriptures support this (e.g. "Before Abraham was, I am" or John 1).

Jehova´s Witnesses, however, argue that Christ was an 'angel', not God. Their translation of John 1, contradicts the Catholic translation. JW claim that Jesus was one god of many, and indeed only an angel. Perhaps you have heard this somewhere and thus your question.

I have never communicated with an angel, except the Blessed Virgin Mary, proclaimed by the Church the queen of angels, who, of all humans is in the most intimate presence of God; was party to the incarnation itself. Anyone can communicate with her. I recall once having suggested this to a jewish friend. He tried and acknowledged having received a response, but he did not convert; but does not practice or believe in the Jewish faith either.

I can only speculate about angels or refer you to Scripture or to Thomas Aquinas. The latter explains that as one approaches God, or Unity of Being, there are less beings, and these are less densely corporeal; conversely as one descends into multiplicity, created beings proliferate, and they are denser. Angels are nearer God, yet as created beings they can be relatively good or evil (e.g. Lucifer, angel of light).

Jesus Christ, not an angel, is all good; thus is my experience. Yet in human form he was tempted like any of us and did not succumb, but could have succumbed. In human form, he was subject to all of our limitations.

Personally, I have a hard time with foreknowldge and predestination, for that would suggest that we are not in any way free, yet I experience a relative freedom, often perhaps even mostly illusory, but not absolutely so. I experience God as having a profound respect for my freedom; he steps aside and I don't control his response to my approaches, and don't experience him controlling mine at all --quite the contrary.

Yet the interrelationship of the multiplicity of being requires mutual inter-influencing, inter-conditioning and thus limited freedom. Yet this is because of creature-creature relationships, not because of creature-God.

If I may suggest, take a look at Teilhard de Chardin's 'Christianity and Evolution' (quite interesting given your questions), and at Aquinas ´Summa Theologica' (free on internet).

Teilhard was censured by the Church during his lifetime. He could have left the Catholic Church and done quite well socially and economically, but chose not to. He was a genius; predicted today's internet 40-50 years before its time, not as a bible-type prophet, but as a reasoned logical development of the ´noosphere', the envelope of thought which he proposed surrounds the biosphere.

Enrique:

Thanks for your explanations. While I respect your faith, I can not follow it.

To my limited knowledge, Jesus was not the "only begotten son" of God. What about Satan and all the other angels? He "begot" them as well didn't he? Doesn't it then stand to reason that they would have the same knowledge Jesus had?

As far as Jesus speaking in parables. I have a problem with that also. If you want to be understood by people, speak in plain language, not in fables.

Rev. Reese writes: "Apocalyptic literature has been a favorite genre of oppressed peoples who feel powerless in the face of unjust structures and authority. God’s justice will be victorious."

Sadly, this is not even an issue in any of these faith forums. It only underscores how this increasingly frivolous culture has disabled people's ability to peek, let alone care, about what is real and outside their totality; except to the extent that it may impact their 'lifestyles'. Has this totality, like Turnball's "Mountain People" reached the point of no return?

For just inches south of the border this is precisely the burning issue dividing Catholics questioning the full meaning of their faith.

"Dear Little Servants of Our Lord Jesus Christ,…be further converted and prepared for the great day of the Lord. It is a cause for much excitement for all of us in Heaven, as we watch you strive to be ready to receive Him and live now in His will. In my time on earth, I was so ignorant and unprepared for the gifts of God…Please do not be alarmed at what our great God and Father is working in your lives. He acts out of the greatest love for you and wishes only to bring you back to His knee…It is necessary that a serious amount of intervention on the part of our Father be experienced by all the people of the earth…We wait for you and pray in union with all our loved ones here. I am Catherine who bids you, be of good cheer and joy and hope for a future bright with the Light and love of the Triune God. All of Heaven is praying. Be strong and persevere."

Jesus spoke in parables with the intent that those who truly belonged to the Kingdom would understand.

Origen, an early church father, castrated himself when he read Matthew 18:8. So evidently some people have taken the parable quite literally.

San Ignacio de Loyola read it differently. His spiritual exercises begin with the first principle, which I will quote:

"Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this
means to save his soul.

"And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that
they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created.

"From this it follows that man is to use them as much as they help him on to
his end, and ought to rid himself of them so far as they hinder him as to it.

"For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things in
all that is allowed to the choice of our free will and is not prohibited to it; so that, on
our part, we want not health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty,
honor rather than dishonor, long rather than short life, and so in all the rest;
desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we
are created."

While even this may (and has been) misinterpreted, it makes the parable clearer.

That the bible is a hoax is something that is arguable for all human history. Consumed unreflectively, one jesuit argued, it is nothing more than a bunch of wasted paper.

Like anything else.

Understood as the pedagogical dialogue between 'I am who am' and the human species, it is an evolutionary path to the Kingdom.

We seem to be in agreement on the notion of "son of God" but have failed to ask the simplest of questions. Why did people claim to be the "son of God?"

All but Jesus have something else in common, they all made war. The tricky part of understanding hell comes from war. What happens to those killed in battle? Do they go on to the NEXT WORLD and lay in wait for their killers? Hell was invented by "sons of God" so they could reassure their soldiers that the dead they killed would not be waiting for them in the next world.

To verify that concept one need only go to a Sious reservation. They hack up the dead bodies of their enemies in an effort to make the fight in the next world lopsided in their favor. Was Jesus a Sioux Indian?

Matthew 18:8 "If your hand or foot causes you to sin cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire."

Jesus says the new body after the death of this body will be an identical duplicate. Missing a hand now, missing a hand in heaven.

Jesus clearly agrees with Crazy Horse. Being hacked to pieces is hell all by itself. Jesus improves on that notion by adding the threat of a place called hell. Anyone who dose not do what the "son of God" dictates will go to hell.

The good news is: The Bible is a proved hoax and the new body will be just that, new and whole. Killers, war makers should take heed but they won't of course.

´Son of God´ is a metaphorical pointer, yet in the case of Jesus Christ, also literal.

Of the 4 earliest gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke,John), 2 (Matthew and Luke) affirm a divine origin and a virgin birth through the action of the Holy Spirit, but diverge on accounts of the infancy. At best, only one of them could thus be based on Mary's testimony as a primary source. John, who reported to have provided Mary a home after the Cruxifiction, clearly affirms Jesus' divine origin, but does not address the actual physical birth. Nothing hence precludes a Virgin birth of a human-divine being. Yet its affirmation is not sufficiently strong to be accepted without faith.

Faith is what happens when one experiences the love of Christ. It transcends all human categories.

´Son of God´ is a metaphorical pointer, yet in the case of Jesus Christ, also literal.

Of the 4 earliest gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke,John), 2 (Matthew and Luke) affirm a divine origin and a virgin birth through the action of the Holy Spirit, but diverge on accounts of the infancy. At best, only one of them could thus be based on Mary's testimony as a primary source. John, who reported to have provided Mary a home after the Cruxifiction, clearly affirms Jesus' divine origin, but does not address the actual physical birth. Nothing hence precludes a Virgin birth of a human-divine being. Yet its affirmation is not sufficiently strong to be accepted without faith.

Faith is what happens when one experiences the love of Christ. It transcends all human categories.

A follow on to JOZEVZ ET AL: The ancient world was ruled by "sons of God." All, no matter the title claimed divine fathering. The last one of them, if there is a last one, is Hirohito of Japan, 20th century, a day or two ago.

The story of Jesus, another "son of God" has it's roots in something very subtle, Sons of God are fathered but not mothered by God. The Virgin Mary is/was not God. That's the ancient standard. Alexander was the son of God but his monter was not God.

Jesus is a fictional person based upon a real person who wanted to be a son of God. She had a couple of problems none the least of which was being a female. Jesus isn't credited with much action. He did "throw the money changers out of the temple of God" and so did she. We can't seem to locate another account of one claiming divine fathering that did that, throw the money changers out of the temple besides the would-be Pharaoh, Amenophis IV.

Those who frequent this blog know that story is at http://www.hoax-buster.org page 2.

Sounds like saracasm has become the only hard currency in this culture. Why?

That said and asked, I want to address Gaby's questioning of Jesus´ foreknowledge.

Jesus claimed subordination and inferiority to the Father while claiming having originated from and being the same entity as the father. At face value this appears to be a contradiction.

Yet there is another way to understand it. Through his incarnation, Jesus Christ reveals a dimension of the triune God not otherwise visible in God. God reveals himself in time, to limited evolving humans, in stages. Otherwise He would be totally incomprehensible and inaccesible.

As incarnate God, Jesus is consubstantial; as human, his foreknowledge is limited. My arm is consubstantial with me, but does not know what "I" am going to write next. When I speak, my words are part of me and they ripple out through space and time.

The Son is the Father speaking.

FR Reese:

Have you reviewed, http://www.hoax-buster.org/sellyoursoul I wonder if you could rebut the claim that the being in the burning bush was actually Devil and not God at all?

Thank you.

Fr. Mike,

As I recall, the Maginot line was breached in 1940 by the Germans.

I'm afraid that in 2007, it's the truth that is breaching your Maginot line.

Regards.

It appears that we are going through another one of those periods when folks are so desperate they will manufacture the excitement of a pending Armageddon...

Watch out for the Christian Zionists, like evangelist John Hagee, whose agenda is to influence the Bush Administration to invade Iran to force God to move...If they pull this off, we will have our Armageddon, but it is my guess that God will not be in attendance...

There can be nothing as hopeless as an American President who fails to understand that the ethic of the Middle East is about sectarian schisms...Democracy in Iraq ensures that the Sunnis (who represent 20%) will never again be in power without force...Democracy cannot work there because there can never be a coalition government without compromising religious beliefs...

"Oh, McChurch, you've done it again!"

Stan Moody, Christian Policy Institute, author of "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry."

DO asks:

Ann O what did the Vatican have to do with the removal at Ava Maria U? Or do you just blame the Vatican for anything you can pin on them.

Hi, Do,

Sorry if I didn't make myself clear. What I said was,

" Did you see that the provost of Ave Maria University was removed summarily today -- without being given a reason? Maybe now he'll understand why we progressives despise the way the Vatican sometimes acts."

I was trying to draw an parallel between the high-handed, outrageous way Fr.Fessio was dismissed and the high-handed outrageous way that some theologians have been removed from teaching by the Vatican. The way he was fired was despicable. When he asked for the reason why he was fired, he wasn't one. This a man who in large measure has made that school what it is. You call that a Christian way to behave? My point is that now he must understand how the theologians who have been badly treated by the Vatican have felt.

Fr. Fessio is an extremely conservative Catholic, and I am not. But my heart goes out to him for the sort of treatment he has received.

There is no dogma that says we must believe that Vatican officials will always be fair, and criticism of some of them is sometime very, very justified. Furthermore, if American Catholics had been more critical of the actions of the hierachy when they deserved extreme criticism, the sex scandal probably would not have reached the dimensions it did.

No, we are not called on to overlook the sins of the hierarchy. Quite the contrary.

Ann O.

Gaby,

I believe you're right in your latest post.

Regards.

Ann O what did the Vatican have to do with the removal at Ava Maria U? Or do you just blame the Vatican for anything you can pin on them.

Give the Vatican it's do for 'What you bind on earth, will also be bound in heaven'.

Important you remain on the right side, which may not always be the 'progressive' side. 'Despise' is a heavy word, and not one I've found anywhere in the Bible as one you should want to identify yourself with.

Since Mankind was given the gift of free will by an omnipotent God, there is essentially two ways that God's Kingdom can be fulfilled on earth, plan A and plan B: the bang or the whimper. Mankind freely choosing to live according to the will of God by concensus would be the whimper. The Book of Revelation spells out plan A modeled on Jesus' death and Resurrection, where mankind comes to be divided into two great camps: pro-God in whom Man cooperates with his creator; pro-Man that creates a consensus god, who viciously opposes the other camp and would succeed in wiping it out without a divine intervention. I prefer the Catholic "three days of darkness" over the Protestant myth of rapture, where the believers gather in safe refuges of prayer while the rest of the world gets caught up in a globalized insanity that would make the worst day in in the worst place in Iraq look civilized. Once the corpses are buried beginning that fourth day, a new era in human civilization would be born that could last up to 1000 years.

Love your neighbor is not the end all be all or even foundation stone of our faith. Jesus put even more emphasis on believing that He is the Messiah - the risen Lord. So in addition, we are to believe in Him and if you believe then you will strive to love your neighbor, do many other good things, and in the context of this gloomy subject, the end of the world, you will not have to worry. Forget about trying to escape the judgement at the end of the world by loving your neighbor because just today, if you will be honest, you have had hateful thoughts about your neighbor. That's why you need a Savior and that's why first and foremost you need to believe.

Father Reese: I tend to agree with "Yet it probably does not matter which position we take..."

It will be whatever God has planned it to be. That's totally out of our control and knowledge.

The key is what we can control, which is that we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves while this World exists.

Thanks, Norrie!

However, it appears we now have another contradiction in the Bible.

If Jesus knows, then Revelations is wrong and therefore can not be divinly inspired. If he doesn't know, then their is no trinity and he truly is only the son.

Fr. Reese-

I feel there is a provocative response to the end times discussion in the messages given by Our Lady of America in Rome City, IN back in 1956. These messages from these apparitions have been well-documented and were issued an Imprimatur by Archbishop Paul Leibold previous to his untimely death in 1972.

Archbishop Raymond Burke of St Louis is now heading this confirmation effort so I feel these messages have great merit. In these messages, Our Lady gives a remedy for the children of America to lead the world by the purity of their lives. I find this quite compelling in light of current world events.

There have also been numerous reported miracles of healing and conversion at the Rome City, IN apparition site which I find to be "the good fruits" associated with the presence of The Holy Spirit. Have you looked into these at all?

Gaby,

Jesus is "Of one substance with the Father, begotten not made".

My vision is of a sphere of bubblegum. Then a portion is pulled and stretched out to make the appearance of a separate entity, but it is not actually separated from the original sphere of bubblegum.

So you're right, Jesus the Son has to know the exact day and hour.

So does the Holy Spirit, which I conceive of as the aroma emanating from the sphere of bubblegum.

How Jesuitical is that?!

"“As for the exact day or hour, no one knows it, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matthew 24:36). If the Son does not know it, who are we to try to predict it?

Very interesting! Where does that leave the trinity? On numerous other topics in these blogs, people state that Jesus is Lord, that he is God in the flesh, that they are one and the same. Obviously, the little sentence above refutes that theory completely. Something smells fishy!

Explanation are welcome!

Hi, Father Reese,

You are indeed missed at America :-(

Thanks for joining this blog. I'm sure you'll find it a lively one. Very.

Ann O.

P.S. Did you see that the provost of Ave Maria University was removed summarily today -- without being given a reason? Maybe now he'll understand why we progressives despise the way the Vatican sometimes acts.

I got my doctorate at a Jesuit university and always found my colleagues there interesting even when I didn't agree with them. Fr. Reese seems to be in that tradition, and I come to the same bottom line, even if I reached without a call from Christ or any other supernatural being.

Father Reese,
This blog is a blessing to all of those who admire your work and miss you at AMERICA.

I am sure that all your readers - Catholic and non-Catholic alike - will find your writing refreshing and insightful as always.

Best wishes,
Father Albert
www.fralbert.com

Fr. Reese,

I agree with your conclusion.

From a Buddhist perspective, we should strive to be fully present in the present moment, show compassion to all beings, and strive to do good.

Dont't be concerned about what might happen at some future time. When that time arrives, be fully present in that moment.