Transcription
Thanks for tuning in to Everything Catholic again. And for this video, it's going to be another one super long clip, not the usual compilation of clips I usually share with you, but there's a lot that all of us can learn from this one. So, I hope you'll find this one helpful.
God is attracted to the loneliness of those who acknowledge their own ineptitude. You see, there's nothing more than a rude awakening than acknowledging ourselves for what we really are, dust. I mean, let's call it as it is. Our bodies came from nothing. The church in the early ecumenical councils and in other in the postecumenical councils refer to God's creation of mankind as ex nihilo in Latin, meaning out of nothing we came, and that's pertaining to our bodies. Our soul did not exist. We were nothing. But God, at one point in human time in the material order, decided to infuse within this clay that came from the earth, called the human body, a rational, volitional soul, and in so doing, infused within us a spark of his own divine essence.
St. Augustine says that God, when he created us, put a little piece of his love within each and every one of our hearts. But our hearts are never totally complete unless they are rejoined to the full heart of God, of which we are only at peace. And therefore, God sent us into the world where we would try to gather up all the love we could, but where we never could be totally happy, totally in love, unless we went back to him who had given us a piece of his heart and received the full portion of that in eternity. So, really, our mission here on earth is to be tested in order to passing the test, merit heaven. Heaven is not given free to anyone. Our life is given free to us. We didn't ask to be born or conceived. That's freely given. But what is not freely given is eternal life. Therefore, our purpose, our primary purpose of being here on earth, is to pass a test. Everyone has to pass a test.
We know from the writings of St. Irenaeus and St. Polycarp. We know that St. John the Evangelist taught Polycarp, second-century church father, who in turn taught Irenaeus, fourth-century church father, doctor, that the reason why Lucifer and a third of the angels fell from heaven is because God the Father revealed to Lucifer, while yet a good angel, that the Son of God, not yet incarnate, would become incarnate not in an angelic but a human nature. Lucifer's response was, "This is illogical. We angels far surpass human beings in intellectual prowess. Why would you decide to incarnate yourself in the lowest form of rational life in the universe? Why not incarnate yourself in us?" So Lucifer said, "I will not serve this plan of serving humans because if you decide to incarnate in human nature, then we have to serve human nature." In fact, the letter to the Hebrews says that angels serve us. We thank them. We're grateful to them, but they serve us. So Lucifer said, "No way am I serving this plan." And therefore, he took a third of the angels to try to pull rank and declared mutiny. And God, who can with the blink of his eye defeat all angels, said, "No, that's too easy. I'll choose a lower angel to defeat you." See, Lucifer was a Seraph, the highest of the nine choirs. Michael was an archangel. He was like the fifth one down in the choirs of angels. So God said, "I'll choose him. I'll choose Michael to defeat you." And that's how the story of the fall of the angels began, which was a preamble of the fall of man, because that angel who fell became the cause of the fall of Adam and Eve, our parents, who infected the human DNA with original sin.
And therefore, the Beatitudes that Matthew relates are really promises of a future blessing, not of a blessing in this earth. In part, it's a blessing, but Jesus, when he says, "Blessed are the pure of heart, they will see God. Blessed are the merciful, they will receive mercy," it's always in the future tense. And, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for my name's sake. Rejoice and be happy, for your reward will be great in heaven." Not on earth, in heaven. So the Beatitudes are a promise, a pledge of the future.
Now, why does Jesus not promise us now a prize? Now, let me answer it this way, in the terms of the two different ideologies that we've experienced in the last 100 years. Communism and Christianity. Even though Christianity preceded communism by 2,000 years, communism, which began really with Vladimir Ulyanov in the Bolshevik Revolution, who brought Engels and Marx's German manifesto into the Russian curriculum and state system, crashed the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Christian Church, killed all the Romanov family in Russia, seized all land, forced people into oppression, and this spread fast into Mexico and into Vietnam and other countries, China. But it all started with the Bolshevik Revolution. And communism's ideology is predicated really upon two principles: the denial of God and the denial of a free human conscience that can worship the one true God. So the rights that we take for granted in the Western world, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and so forth. These come from God. As the Bill of Rights states, these are inalienable rights. They come from the Creator. Communism says, "Nope, they do not come from the Creator, who does not exist. They come from the state, the party majority." So therefore, the party majority can take them away if you do not comply to their rules.
Now, this attitude and ideology is already prevalent in all Western countries. Communism migrated from Russia to America, the Americas, in the Western world. If you look at what has been happening in the last several years, it's not the same form of external oppression communism as in the early 1900s, which is the reason why the Blessed Mother appeared in 1917 to stop this flow of communism. And her condition was that we consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart and did not just consecrate Russia, but observed the first consecutive five Saturdays of the month, which almost nobody had done. So it wasn't until Pope John Paul II effectively consecrated Russia in 1984 that the Blessed Mother finally said it was accepted as she expected the Church to do in 1917. But because the Church did not do this until '84, communism spread its errors all throughout the world, and there was a Second World War which could have been avoided. So now it's in the form of, well, working through the shadows, not in the open as in the early 1900s. Now it's working in the shadows, and our rights are being taken away little by little. And Christianity is the one religion you can mock openly and get away with. You can't do that with many other religions, but you can do with Christianity. So, Christianity has been under attack for the last, oh, 60 years. They've been slaughtered in Lagos, Nigeria, in South Africa, in Beirut, in Lebanon, which is Beirut in Lebanon, in Syria, Afghanistan, even parts of the Americas, and the list goes on. Libya.
I mention this because Christ's Beatitudes are blessings for the future. And communism, its ideology is predicated upon the cross without Christ. So there's oppression, there's sacrifice, but there's no glory. There's no reward. Today's technocrats, if you want to call them that, or autocrats that are seizing our rights and liberties, want Christ without the cross. They want no sacrifice, and they want the reward here and now. So we have two extremes: Communism, the cross without Christ, and today's globalist oppressors who want Christ without the cross. Christians embrace both Christ on the cross, and that means that our reward cannot be in this world. That's the cross, and in the next, that's Christ. So therefore, Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, talks about the folly of the cross that the wise of this world do not understand and that reject. And in order for us to prove our loyalty to God, in order to merit heaven by passing the test of loyalty, we have to remain faithful to the Gospel to the end. Faithful to the Ten Commandments. In Exodus chapter 20, we receive Ten Commandments. And in the Gospel, Jesus gave us only one. So we have 11 commandments. Jesus said, "I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you." So the Gospel ethic is based upon the feast after the fast. And that's why we have Lent before Easter. That's why we have Advent before Christmas.
So our purpose on this earth is to pass the royal test by embracing the cross as God allows us in life, in order to rise with him on Easter Sunday. Our crosses come in many forms and fashions, and we don't have to go looking for them because they come to us. Sometimes we may take upon ourselves certain penances, which is a cross for the glory of God. Whether it's a fast or an act of charity or an act of self-abnegation, all these serve to increase the merit that awaits for us in the next life. But our type of love, the world knows nothing of, because Jesus said, "Satan now is the prince of this world." And what happens with a prince? When the king returns, he concedes his power to the king. Christ, in Revelation, is known as the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, coming down on a white horse to reclaim on earth his place. But until he comes, Satan is the one now governing this world. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, he's the prince of the powers of the air. And Jesus said, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from the sky." To here? Yeah, probably landed in Geneva. I don't know. I mean, a lot of crazy stuff going on there. The World Economic Forum and all these crazy organizations about globalism and the CERN, you know, experiment of trying to recreate the Big Bang and all that.
In any event, we have our vocation in life, which is primarily that of following in the bloody footsteps of our Lord that lead to Easter glory. The kind of love that enables us to carry our cross faithfully is only one. In Greek, it's known as agape, which is a self-giving, unconditional, divine love, which is agape, and that's exemplified by Christ on the cross. So the agape love is the kind of love that enables us to bear our cross despite being sent out into the world among wolves, which is what Christ did with the apostles. He didn't say, "I'm taking them out of the world." He said, "I'm praying that they do not become of the world, but while being in the world among wolves." Why on earth would Christ do this? We're set up to fail. He's putting us in a position to fail. They were all crucified and died, practically. Some were flayed, some were beheaded, some were crucified like Peter, upside down. Christ set them up to be martyred. Why did he do it? Because the most glorious crown you can receive in heaven is martyrdom. The teaching of the early Church and of Christ is martyrs go straight to heaven. No purgatory. Who wouldn't want that reward? Right? If I were to choose any way in which to go out of this world, it would be martyrdom. But we have to merit that. It's a great grace. We can't just be given it because we want it. We have to merit it.
St. Maximilian Kolbe, he prayed to the Blessed Mother for two gifts: the gift of martyrdom and the gift of purity, virginity, which he was. He was a virgin. And he received both. In fact, he had a vision of being given both. Now, here's the dilemma. He was not a martyr. He was never killed, shed his blood for his faith. He was killed for his faith, but he didn't shed his blood. And martyrs have to shed their blood. So his compatriot, his compadre, Pope John Paul II, made him a martyr of charity, not of blood. Okay? So we still got that martyr's crown.
I want to explain to you very briefly how we acquire the gift of unconditional, self-sacrificing, divine love, which is agape love. It's through a process known as divinization. We go through purification, illumination, unification, and then finally divinization. Pope John Paul II made a statement when he put out his apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineuente, which is on the threshold of the third millennium, in which he stated, "A new stage opening in the light of Christ has come upon the third millennium of Christianity, which began in the year 2000. Intimately linked to this new stage is the Spirit's gift of universal holiness, which he describes as divinization." He states, "In this very special time, our gaze is more than ever firmly set on the face of the Lord. Its goal of divinization brings with it a rediscovery of the Church's holiness." And Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he was coronated Benedict XVI, stated in his bull of indiction of the Great Jubilee 2000, "The Church opens to all the prospect of being divinized." But how do all people become divinized? How can humans, or even this great cosmos of ours, be divinized? Remember St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, states that all creation, not just humans, all creation groans with eager longing for the revelation of the sons of God. Creation will be set free from its slavery to corruption and obtain the glorious freedom of the sons of God.
Now, what subject did creation to slavery? Original sin. From the moment Adam and Eve sinned, thistles grew, beasts became wild, man had to earn his keep by the sweat of his brow, woman had to experience labor pains. And we were subjected, and are subjected, to aging, pains, suffering, death, and taxes, and then some. So let us look at the cosmos and then man, because I want to show you that all creation, not just humans, are undergoing this divinization already. God put a law within nature that reflects the divinization he possesses.
Now, the communists have imbued the curriculum in several school systems, east and west, starting in the east, moving to the west, with this idea of evolution, Darwinian evolution, and Marxist class conflict, that out of chaos, via the survival of the fittest, emerge. The strong survive. But let us first examine this idea of the Darwinian survival of the fittest evolution. The Church admits microevolution but not macroevolution. What is microevolution? It is a process of variation and development of living organisms, predominantly irrational creatures, and these adapt to circumstances and changes at a microscopic level. Take, for example, I think his name was Mendel, a philosopher, who took two pigeons, black and white, sent them off on an island, took a boat back to the mainland. He went back after 10 years, I think it was, maybe eight years, and he found that they were gray. Now, before they were just black and white. So by the mingling of the black DNA and the white DNA, a gray DNA pigeon emerged. That's microevolutionary processes. So the bird did not become a human. It remained a bird, but its micro-atomic molecular changes occurred within the subsisting organism of the dove or the bird, the pigeon. Now, macroevolution, the Church does not endorse. That means a bird can become a human, or an ape can become a fish, things like that. There's no evidence to suggest that one organism changes over time into another organism. They remain the same organism.
Pope Benedict XVI made a statement at the Sorbonne University in Paris in 1999, and this is contained in his published book. It was published in 2004, entitled Truth and Tolerance. He stated, "The evolutionary ethic that inevitably takes as its key concept the model of selectivity, that is, the struggle for survival, the victory of the fittest, successful adaptation, remains a bloodthirsty ethic. This is of very little use for universal peace." So unlike this Darwinian survival of the fittest, this Marxist class conflict where the strong survive, only is really an evolution of love that God placed within the universe. And we see this in the irrational creatures, like the sun, the plants around us, even the fruits. Take, for example, the sun. It is supposedly 93 million miles from the earth, burning itself out at a rate of 365,000 tons a day just to give us light and heat. Little electrons and protons are burning themselves out for our very sustenance. So we can say that the sun, however unconsciously, is given this impulse of God's divine love to sustain us in this development of the universe.
Now, it is said by some scientists, and presumably after the fall of the angels, some early theologians maintained this as well, that the earth came off of some great fiery nebula, and it was filled with caverns, and the gases that poured out of these caverns became rills and rivers and finally oceans. And also out of these caverns, there were chemicals like phosphorus, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and various salts, all of which were the conditions of making blood. And these minerals and salts came from the volcanoes into the waters, and where there was the first form of life. And it's maybe not a coincidence that at baptism, we come from water and the Spirit, the beginning of new life. So we can say that in its primordial forms, creation was begotten by God through the elements. We came from the earth. Our bodies came from the earth. Okay.
Now, we can say that creation struggles in as much as, like a plant has its own properties. It has its own stem, shoot, leaves. But not without being mindful of the next generation of plant life. In the cradle of a leaf is a seed, and as the plant approaches its death, it becomes thoughtful of life, casts out that seed before it dies so that it be sown in the ground, cultivated through the light of the sun, through the water of the rain, through the soil's nutrients, to become the new generation. Take, for example, an apple. It will fall from a tree. The outer pulp decays, but inside are the seeds of life, the condition of life. There was a scientist, he took, because there are certain trees that if you wound them, they will hasten their reproductive cycle so that the next generation may survive. Now, a scientist once took a tree that weighed 5 pounds. He placed it in soil that weighed 170 pounds. He waited 5 years, and after the 5 years, the 5-pound tree that was placed in the 170-pound soil increased in weight to 165 pounds. Where did the increase of this tree come from? The tree was in communion with the invisible forces of light and heat to suggest that in our lives, our souls are in contact with the invisible forces of grace that allow us to grow.
Another example is the amoeba. Now, we have the hydra. The amoeba is only made up of one cell, the tiniest form of reproductive life. And if its life is threatened, it will split itself for the survival of the next generation. So, what my point is, is that even in irrational creatures, God has put this law of love for it to preserve its own species.
Now, when it comes to humans, we have a rational, volitional love, a conscious love, deliberate love. Remember the passage of the Diary of Divine Mercy where the Lord spoke to St. Faustina Kowalska because she was struggling with the idea of her not having the ability to love as she should love her neighbor as she should. So one day she said to Jesus, and this comes from entry 1628 in the Diary of Divine Mercy, "My Divine Master, you see very well that I feel no love for those who trouble me, and this causes me concern." And Jesus said, "It is not always within your power to control your feelings. You will recognize that you have love if, after having experienced contradiction and annoyance from others, you do not lose your peace." This is important. Jesus always told this to Luisa: never lose your peace. And if you do, it's a sign that you're in the wrong spiritual place. You will recognize that you have love if you do not lose your peace. But pray for those who have made you suffer and wish them well.
Okay. Now, Christ loved us while yet we were sinners. If somebody offends us, annoys us, contradicts us, the first thing we say is, "You, you've lost my love. Change, then I will love you." Jesus turned it upside down, like in the Beatitudes. That which is of value to the world is not of value to God. He said, "Love someone, and then they will change." Don't make their betterment a condition of your love, but make your love the creation of their betterment. Love someone, and then they will change. So we do that by seeing in them the love we put there. We're not going to see the love that they don't have until we put it in them. This is a test. We are to prove our love and in so doing, merit eternal life.
So I spoke of the test of the angels. What was the test of Adam and Eve? We know that was a literal fruit. Of the many trees, of the many fruits in the garden, he told them not to partake of only one. And they couldn't even do that. You know, of course, it was Eve who sinned first. And then once Adam bit the tree, our teeth have been aching ever since. Because it was the sin of Adam that infected the human race with original sin. Now, the sin of Eve, even though Eve was the first one to take the devil's sales pitch and make Adam fall in a way by telling him to do what she did, but because Adam was the head and Eve was not, it was not until he sinned that God expelled them both. Because once he did, the whole human race was doomed. Literally, there was no hope until God, in Genesis 3:15, made the promise, the first proclamation of salvation, that a woman would crush the infernal serpent's head, and that he would strike at her heel. And then we find in the last book of Revelation, chapter 12, the woman, the victress, clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars.
So, we, following the example of Jesus Christ, are drawn into the agape love that no human being could acquire without God's grace. So we need God's grace in order for us to live in the divine will, to grow in the divine will, to be one with this outpouring of the Holy Spirit that Pope John Paul II accentuated in the third millennium of Christianity, and that apostolic letter of his where he says that there will be a new springtime of Christianity, a new unification of Christians, and a new growth of vocations.
That will be all for the video this time. And as always, thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us. And hopefully, all of you have learned so much from this video. And remember, if ever you have any feedback or suggestions, please let us know in the comments below. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for your continuous support, contributions, and prayers. And until the next one, thanks again for watching. And may God bless.