Transcription
This, this expression, I bless you. People have asked me, how can we bless God? You know, Pope Francis came out with a document that said, pastors at their own discretion can bless all people. But there are two types of blessing. One is ascending, one is descending. What is the ascending blessing? Imploring God's help, we need God's assistance. Sinners can ask for that, even the most heinous criminals.
A descending blessing is God's favor is resting upon you because you were in his grace. See the difference? Ascending blessing, you don't have to be in the state of grace to receive it because it puts you there. It disposes you to put you there. It disposes you for an act of repentance so that you may confess your sins. That is an ascending blessing. Descending means you're already in the state of grace.
And many Catholics, well, I won't say many, I'd say it was definitely about less than 20% were complaining about Pope Francis writing this document stating, how can you impart an ascending blessing upon a sinner such as a person that's cohabitating with another outside of marriage but approaches a priest for a blessing? And here's the answer. Because that blessing imparts us positive strength to lead them to repentance. It doesn't condone their state. It disposes them to get out of it or regulate it. You see what I'm saying?
So, most people didn't understand this because I don't. Well, there were two reasons. Number one, Pope Francis was not a theologian. He never obtained his degree doctoral degree in theology, uh, teach with a razor edge precision as a Ratzinger, right? Therefore, that document was not crystal clear in its theological articulation. It could have been expressed better, but it didn't contain any heresies. It contained ambiguities. So, what did people do? Instead of saying, well, explain this, they jumped at the juggler and started attacking him. Right?
I'll give you an example. Take for example the fifth joyful mystery, the finding of the child Jesus in the temple. Mary is worried, okay? But not to the point of losing her peace. And this is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will book, where she says she implored the angels earnestly, "Where is my child, my life, the source of my bliss?" She was living an interior dark night for 3 days, the Blessed Virgin Mary, living by faith alone, not knowing where her son was. Dark night, by the way, doesn't mean you're not journeying with faith, of course you are. In fact, faith is at its best when all the external consolations and niceties are removed from the soul and has to voyage in spiritual blindness. So, Mary was going through this for 3 days in an intense way. And she was receiving no response from the angels, cuz God ordained it thus. And then she and Joseph, after both of them searching all about for 3 days and 3 nights, finally come across him in the temple. And what does he say? Oh, I had. Didn't you know I had to be in my father's house? As if they should have known, right?
And what was Joseph and Mary's reaction? Was it like that of those people who responded to Pope Francis' document, "Why did you say such a thing? You can't write such things." No. They said, "Why did you do this to us? Didn't you know that we were searching for you?" And he said, "Didn't you know that I must be in my father's house?" Basically, they did not hold his decision in contempt. So, what does the scripture, the Gospel of Luke say? After Jesus said these words to them, Mary pondered these things in her heart. She pondered them. What does that mean? She allowed the Holy Spirit who would remind her of what Jesus taught her and reveal to her all the truth, John chapter 16 verse 12, of what the inner meaning of these words meant and the action of Jesus disappearing for 3 days meant. It didn't come to her in that moment. It progressively came to her.
What does this tell us? Often times when the church teaches some things and they're not crystal clear to us, to our finite human minds, on account of our ignorance or on account of the church's lack of razor edge precision articulation in theological terms, we should not jump to the juggler and attack the church of which Christ is the head. Christ often times spoke in parables deliberately. Why? Why didn't he just plainly tell people how things were, black and white? Because God does not cast his pearls to swine. We have to be properly disposed to understand them. And how do we get properly disposed? How are we properly disposed? By being docile to the Holy Spirit. That was Mary's attitude. If Mary jumped to conclusions, said, "This doesn't make any sense, son. You should have told us. Look what you did to us." She would never understood what happened. But she eventually did. Jesus' 3 days in the temple were preparing her and Joseph, even though Joseph would not experience this later on, but he would when he would be on his deathbed. Jesus' absence in the tomb. Now, I say Joseph experienced on his deathbed these moments because Jesus was not always beside Joseph's bed. If you read some of the writings of Church approved revelations on Joseph, you find this as well. He also had to experience these moments of the absence of Christ.
As always, I truly appreciate every one of you watching the videos, and thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us. I'm sorry if I can't reply to every comment you've written, but I will keep on trying to reply to as many as I can. And I hope all of you have learned a lot from this video. If there's any suggestion or feedback, please don't hesitate to let me know in the comments below. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for your continuous support, contribution, and prayer.