#this is why i love being catholic
Some people attempt to share the gospel message by making a “sales pitch” for Jesus. The temptation in evangelism is to make the message seem as attractive as possible, and to minimize the difficulties involved in making a genuine decision to walk with the Messiah. Often the appeal is made along the lines of the ego’s self-interest. Jesus is put forth as a solution to life’s problems, a panacea for the worries of life, a blessing for your love life, etc. “Believe in Jesus – because it works for you! You’ll be amazed by the results! God will bless you and you’ll find happiness and contentment at last!"
Unless we are careful, using an approach like this can make a subtle appeal to the flesh, to the all-too-human desire for personal satisfaction, happiness, and even pride. But Jesus never made a "cheap sale” of His message and mission. He never appealed to the flesh as a reason for following Him. On the contrary, he repeatedly stated the cost of discipleship and warned of being hated for his sake. “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard (i.e., τεθλιμμένη, "oppressive”) that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matt. 7:14). Indeed, Jesusoften intentionally offended people when they encountered him. Far from making it easy to believe, Jesus regularly put up stumbling blocks when people approached Him. He never was a “people pleaser” and He never apologized for speaking the truth, just as He never sought the crowd’s approval nor sought a “market” for His mission. Even less did Jesus seek the approval of the status quo, that is, the religious establishment of the Jews or the political establishment of Rome.
In short, Jesus’s life was scandalous to human beings and their various conceits. Encounters with him were always “tests” that evoked one of two responses: offense or faith. For example, Jesus scandalized his family (Matt. 12:48), his community (Matt. 13:54-57, John 6:42), the gawking crowd (John 6:26-30), various religious seekers (Mark 10:17-22), the religious establishment (Matt. 15:12), the political establishment (Luke 13:32), and even His own followers (John 6:61). His question is always, “Who do you say that I am?” People either were offended at Him or accepted Him, but Jesus made it impossible for them to be indifferentabout Who He was.
John J. Parsons
The Holy Spirit renews us in baptism through His godhead, which He shares with the Father and the Son. Finding us in a state of deformity, the Spirit restores our original beauty and fills us with His grace, leaving no room for anything unworthy of our love. The Spirit frees us from sin and death, and changes us from the earthly men we were, men of dust and ashes, into spiritual men, sharers in the Divine Glory, sons and heirs of God the Father– who bear a likeness to the Son and are His co-heirs and brothers, destined to reign with Him and to share His glory. In place of earth, the Spirit reopens heaven to us and gladly admits us into paradise, giving us even now greater honour than the angels, and by the holy waters of baptism extinguishing the unquenchable fires of hell.
We men are conceived twice: to the human body we owe our first conception, to the divine Spirit, our second. John says: “To all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God. These were born not by human generation, not by the desire of the flesh, not by the will of man, but of God.” All who believed in Christ, he says, received power to become children of God– that is, of the Holy Spirit, and to gain kinship with God. To show that their parent was God the Holy Spirit, he adds these words of Christ: “I give you this solemn warning, that without being born of water and the Spirit, no one can enter the kingdom of God.” [But through that same Spirit, He has given us both the power and means to accomplish this.]
Visibly, through the ministry of priests, the [water of the baptismal] font gives symbolic birth to our visible bodies. Invisibly, through the ministry of angels, the Spirit of God, whom even the mind’s eye cannot see, baptizes into Himself both our souls and bodies, giving them a new birth. Speaking quite literally, and also in harmony with the words of water and the Spirit, John the Baptist says of Christ: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Since we are only vessels of clay, we must first be cleansed in water and then hardened by spiritual fire – for God is a consuming fire. We need the Holy Spirit to perfect and renew us, for spiritual fire can cleanse us, and spiritual water can recast us as in a furnace, and make us into new men.
Saint Didymus of Alexandria
The word ‘commandment’ often implies coercion and regimentation, and ‘obedience’ implies an unwilling or even a sulky child. In the case of God’s commands, however, a commandment is a gift, indicating the way in which love can be expressed; and obedience is a way of seeking to draw closer to God by imitation. The lover seeks to act like the beloved, to be modelled on the qualities which are loved and admired. The commands of God are not random or domineering, but are indications of the ways in which we can draw just a little nearer to the infinite qualities which are seen in the creating and redeeming God. The generosity seen in the beauties of nature and humanity, in the beauty of tolerance and forgiveness, are reflections of the divine qualities. This [humble, constant, compassionate “reflecting”] is how Jesus kept His Father’s commandments and remained in His love, and how we too may do the same.
It might even be said that Jesus needed to suffer so that we might see that God too can endure suffering. Suffering and the supreme suffering of death are human experiences which cannot [derive from] God, [nor can they be said to reflect any quality of divine perfection, for sin and death only entered the human experience through sin]. And so Jesus Himself took them on to share and ennoble these also, [transmuting death itself into a door to life– a paradox only God Himself could accomplish]. Jesus showed His love of the Father and His love of humanity by adopting and enduring the experiences which cannot touch an impassive God– [by being so touched, He proved His tender heart forever.] Such is the full meaning of the love expressed by ‘as the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you.’
Dom Henry Wansbrough; Commentary on John 15:9-17
To love Jesus means to keep His commandments. [Such keeping] is not a matter of mere obedience but of loving imitation. [Try as one might, it is impossible to honestly obey anyone unless one also loves them; neither pride nor indifference can even feign the virtues of humility and dedication required to observe another’s commands. On the other hand,] if I love a person, I want to keep that person’s commandments, both out of loyalty and out of respect for that person’s qualities: [for as one who loves will easily discern,] the commandments [given] will reveal and mirror that person’s qualities. So, the Law given by Moses reveals God’s nature by what He commands. Just so, the actions of Jesus reveal His and the Father’s nature: He heals, He loves, He judges, He forgives, He commands. To obey the commands [given by our loving God] is a response in love, [not legalism. To keep them, like a gift, is the natural and necessary consequence of our personal relationship to Him]: we need to do just that.
Dom Henry Wansbrough; Commentary on John 14:15
So, I tell you this: Do not be thinking all the time about how to stay alive. Do not have trouble in your mind about the food and drink that you need. Do not always be thinking about the clothes that you need to wear. Your life is more important than the food that you eat. Your body is more important than your clothes… Even if you are always thinking about your life, you cannot make it go on any longer, not even by one hour! [The length of your life will always be in God’s hands.] It is God that gives [you each new day, and the things you need to get through it.] God will certainly take care of you, much more than He takes care of the [birds and the] grass. [If He cares for even a single flower so tenderly, do you think He would overlook you, His child?] You should trust Him more than you do! So, do not have trouble in your mind about these things.Do not always say, “What will we eat?”, or “What will we drink?”, or “What will we wear?” People who do not know God are always thinking about these things. But as for you, your Father in heaven knows that you need them. Instead [of worrying, then], always think about the things that are important in the kingdom of heaven. Always do what God shows you is right. Then He will also give you the things that you need each day.
Matthew 6:25, 27, 30-33 EASY
The context of the annual Festival of Dedication of the Temple gives a special meaning to Jesus’ claim [of His divinity in John 10:30]. On this festival of the return of the LORD to his Temple (after its desecration by the Syrian King Antiochus Epiphanes) Jesus is claiming that He Himself is the abode of God. [Indeed,] throughout the Gospel, Jesus has been making His own the institutions of Judaism. At Cana, He takes over the jars of water for Jewish rites of purification, making them the wine of His wedding-feast. Then He goes to Jerusalem and [functionally] replaces the perishable Temple with the Temple which is His Body. He makes the Sabbath His own by working on it as only God may do. He, rather than the manna provided by Moses, is the life-giving Bread from heaven. At Tabernacles, the festival of light and water, He declares that He is the Light of the world and the Source of Living Water. Finally, He will make the Passover His own at the Last Supper, and as the paschal lamb. It is this [record of so acting and speaking with Divinely transmutative religious authority] which gives the context and significance to the claim that ‘I and the Father are one.’ [Tragically, even though] the hostile question of the Jews [sparked] off Jesus’ sayings, [they are still unwilling to accept His unchanging response] and immediately after this passage they take up stones to throw at Him, [only misunderstanding] His claim to be one with the Father as blasphemy [rather than Truth].
Dom Henry Wansbrough; Commentary on John 10:22-30
What has Adam’s guilt got to do with us? Why are we held responsible for his sin, when we were not even born when he committed it? Did not God say: “The parents will not die for the children, nor the children for the parents, but the soul which has sinned, it shall die.” How, then, shall we defend this doctrine [of original sin? Let us begin by affirming that] the soul [which] has sinned [shall] die. We [all] have become sinners because of Adam’s disobedience in the following manner: After he fell into sin and surrendered to corruption, impure lusts invaded the nature of his flesh, and at the same time [his nature was infected,] the ‘evil law’ of [all future mankind’s] members was born. For our nature contracted the disease of sin because of the disobedience of one man, that is, Adam, and thus many became sinners [by nature]. This was not because they sinned along with Adam, because they did not then exist, but because they had the same nature as Adam, which, [by failing to honor the law of God,] fell under the law of sin. Thus, just as human nature acquired the weakness of corruption 'in’ Adam because of [his] disobedience, [whereupon] evil desires invaded it, so the same nature was later set free by Christ, who was obedient to God the Father and did not commit sin– [restoring & preserving forever, through His sharing in human nature, the righteous purity that Adam lost].
Saint Cyril of Alexandria
