Two Inspiring Spiritual Messages*

Two Inspiring Spiritual Messages*

In pursuit of the truth - cinops be gone - Friday, July 20, 2012

“To faith belong the readiness to suffer but also the courage to do battle. Granted, we have no lack of people who tell us: Faith should be both protest and resistance against the power of this world. But if we look more closely, what such groups really want is, for the most part, an activator, a loudspeaker, for their slogans, for slogans of their party.

“But it is a totally different matter when the Church opposes the real powers of this age; when the Church condemns the disintegration of marriage, the destruction of the family, the killing of unborn children, the distortion of the Faith. [Today’s America!]

“Then, suddenly, a Jesus is held up to her who was apparently all mercy, who condoned everything and never harmed anyone. The saying was coined: “One cannot be a Christian at the cost of one’s humanity”, and people understood it primarily in reference to themselves. Being Christian may perhaps be a pleasant luxury, but it must not cost anything.

“The real Jesus was very different. Certainly he uttered words of great and healing mildness and compassion. But he also uttered these quite different words: “I have not to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt 10:34). He opposed the convenient lie, the easy-going injustice. He exalted the superiority of truth over that merely comfortable getting-along-together that leads ultimately to the power of injustice, to the dominion of the lie.

“For such words, which are written large and shining in history, which established the opposition of truth to the indolence and degradation of humanity, for such words Jesus went to the Cross: a Jesus who merely condoned would not have been crucified.”

*The above is from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth, Meditations for Every Day of the Year, Ignatius, 1992, July 18th meditation.
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“Sir,” they said, “give us that bread every day or our lives.” Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry again. Those who believe in me will never thirst. But you haven’t believed in me even thought you have seen me.

“However, those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them. For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do what I want. And this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those he has given me, but I should raise them to eternal life at the last day.

“For it is my Father’s will that all who see his Son and believe in him should have eternal life - that I should raise them at the last day.”

*The above is from “The Best of the Bible,” 365 Must-Read Bible Passages, Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois - 1996, July 18th meditation.