6 False Premises in the Book, "Pagan Christianity"

Frank Viola best describes Pagan Christianity? (George Bama, co-author) in his preface: "This is not a work for scholars." I agreed, so somewhere in chapter six, I set the book down. I may not be a scholar, but I am not interested in reading unscholarly work. Here's the point of their book according to Viola:

...if the church is following the life of God who indwells it, it will never produce those [Catholic] non-scriptural practices this book addresses. Such practices are foreign elements that God’s people picked up from their pagan neighbors as far back as the fourth century.

The authors give us page after page of misapplication of facts about how, when and from where Catholicism gets its doctrines and traditions. To the authors' credit, they did some extensive research, but their interpretation of facts is not well-informed. The authors simply do not grasp the pre-Reformation worldview of Christendom and that is vital when attempting to discern history. For it really does matter if one reports that the sign of the cross comes from paganism rather than from the letter "tau" Jews made on their forehead to symbolize the Torah. One is a breaking of the commandment not to bear false witness against thy neighbor.

[Note: The irony for the Protestant authors is that they assert Christianity should rid itself of Catholic man-make traditions that cannot be proven in scripture just to write an entire book based upon Protestant man-made traditions which cannot be proven in scripture!]

To be brief, I have chosen six false premises that underpin Christian Paganism's assertions: 

False Premise #1: The Church Abandoned God, Therefore, She is the False Church 

When Martin Luther couldn't immediately and decisively persuade the Church, that his interpretation of scripture was correct and the Church's interpretation of scripture had been incorrect for 1500 years, he ordered a revolt. He went from an understandable concern about indulgence abuses to storming out of the Church calling her the "whore of Babylon." This is why a reformation from within turned into a protest from without. He convinced a lot of people that you can't reform or reconcile with the Devil's agent--the whore of Babylon. This is Luther's tradition.

But, you might ask, "Didn't the Reformers call the Church the false church and the Whore of Babylon because she rejected God by infusing the gospel with pagan rituals, sacraments and hierarchies?" The authors attempt to prove this by tying most past and current church traditions to pagan roots and warn that we must seriously consider extracting these foreign element from Christianity. (I didn't read a direct statement that the Catholic Church is the false church but it is implied on every page.)

This premise could be argued on two levels: 
a) that the rituals are, in fact, pagan and 
b) that if they were pagan, it would automatically mean the Church had deserted God. 

Look at the people of God in the Old Testament. God sent numerous prophets to Israel to warn them against their wicked, pagan ways, but He never took away their position as the people of God. There is a difference between being an imperfect, even corrupted church and a false, pagan one.

There is no New Testament prophet who warns that the New Covenant Church at any point in history will become pagan or "false." (Christ threatens to remove one of the seven lamp stands and spew the church at Laodicea out of His mouth, but these are individual churches, not the whole of the Body.) 

If something so momentous as God's Bride going rogue was going to happen, don't you think God would have warned us through scripture? 

There is no Biblical evidence that the Catholic Church is a false church nor the whore of Babylon. That is a man-made tradition and interpretation. 


False Premise #2: The Church Abandoned God, Therefore, God Abandoned the Church 

Even if the Church had discarded their covenant with God, it doesn't follow that Christ would disown His Church. He is faithful even when we are not! He didn't forsake Israel when she was practicing idolatry (at least not forever), He punished Israel. Punishment is God's way of dealing with His children, not abandonment. In fact, Jesus promised His Church that He would be with her forever. 

So they are no longer two, but one flesh (man/wife and Christ/Church). What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. Matt. 19: 6

I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever. John 14: 16.

Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age. Matt. 28: 20.

False Premise #3: The Church Abandon God, So We Should Abandon the Church. 

There is no precedent nor prophecy anywhere in scripture that encourages a sheep to leave the fold. 

No Hebrew was told to start a New Israel. The Bible never predicts that Christ's Church, His Body, His Bride would become so corrupted that He would desire Christians to start a new Church. 

St. John's first letter warns that some of those who leave the church are antichrists. 

[Y]ou have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come...They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out, that it might be plain that they all are not of us. I John 2: 18-19

Jesus said to cut off the part of the Body that is causing it to sin. He didn't say throw the entire body out, nor separate from the body or start a new body.

False Premise #4: The Early Church's Doctrines Were Based in the Bible 

Viola writes: 

The normative practices of the first-century church were the natural and spontaneous expression of the divine life that indwelt the early Christians. And those practices were solidly grounded in timeless principles and teachings of the New Testament. 

The early church did not have the Bible. The scriptures, known as the Bible, were not compiled until the fourth century. At best they may have had a copy of of an Apostle's letter or the four gospels, but what Christ taught was transmitted orally--through preaching. We could easily reverse this statement to get to the truth: The Bible is based on the doctrines of the early church.

False Premise #5: We Must Return To the Early Pristine Church

 Viola states in his preface: 

I beleive the first-century church was the church in its purest form, before it was tainted or corrupted.”

He's wrong on two levels. Jesus tells us the opposite when He speaks to the seven churches in Revelation. Paul describes many problems in his letters to the churches. The early church was split into many heretical factions. 

The authors also are wrong assuming that doctrines should not develop over time and that somehow the early church was pure, complete and uncorrupted is nowhere in scripture. Nothing in scripture tells us that things are to remain primitive. The early church was the seed that was to develop into a large tree. The history of God's people starts in a garden (Eden) and ends in a city (New Jerusalem). The early church did not have a definition of the Trinity or the full Divinity of Christ. The mysteries of salvation were slowly revealed and deepened in understanding through Biblical history. This idea that we should return to the first century to find the fullness of truth is not a Biblical idea. 

False Premise #6: Church Traditions Should Come From Bible

Again, we must emphasis that the very reverse of this is true.

Scripture came from Church Tradition. 

Another mistake the authors make, as well as many Protestants, is to believe that all Jesus said was written down. It wasn't. 

I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. John 16:12 

But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. John 21: 25

I will give directions concerning the other matters when I come. I Cor. 11: 34

The first chapter of Acts reports that Jesus taught the disciples for forty days after His resurrection. This vital message is not in scripture. We cannot presume that the oral teaching of Christ the forty days following the Resurrection should be discarded as unimportant because they weren't written down.

The premise that the oral words of God cannot be trusted but the written words of God are the final authority for the Christian is a Protestant tradition. That claim is not found within scripture itself. In fact, the Bible points to the Body of Christ, the Church, as the final authority on doctrines.

If your brother sins...go and tell him his fault...But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you...If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Matthew 18: 15-17

 We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. I John 4: 6

The authors trust only scripture and refuse to go outside of it for church practices, saying about certain traditions:

Such practices are foreign elements that God’s people picked up from their pagan neighbors as far back as the fourth century.

If the fourth-century church was already corrupted so badly with paganism that we cannot trust her to correctly pass down the oral teachings of Christ, then we can’t trust the Bible because at that time the canon of scripture was decided upon by Catholics councils. The fourth-century Catholic Church decided which books would be in the Bible!)

I think this is worth repeating because it is such a widespread Protestant premise that the Bible is the Church's final authority. This is a Protestant tradition and has no scriptural evidence. Actually:

The Bible is the greatest evidence the Church has that God gave the Church His authority.


Conclusion:
Viola and Barna are noticing the same thing the Luther and Zwingli and Wesley brothers did. And frankly, all of us realize, that Christianity is filled with corrupt people and doesn't seem to be "working." The church is in need of reformation and renewal. (And this isn't some shocking news to the Catholic Church. She has always taught that each generation must be reforming the church.) 

Where the authors go wrong is that they blame the corruption in the church on extra-biblical traditions. But as we have seen, each new reformer or group of reformers begins with the idea of starting over and wiping away all traditions. Yet they inevitably end up creating a new set of traditions that divide the body of Christ. 

Christ never said to tear down and start His church over, He said to repent, renew and refresh. This isn’t an institutional problem we can blame on rituals and rites. This is a heart problem, a sin

problem, that has to be dealt with on an individual basis. The rituals are there to facillitate individual regeneration and renewal. Don’t blame the rituals if the people in the church are dead (or sleeping). Blame the people.

Whitewashed Tombs and Snow Covered Dung

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisees! 

First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." Matthew 23: 25- 28

Whitewashed Tombs

In the context of these famous seven "woes" of Matthew 23, Christ also calls the scribes and Pharisees snakes, children of hell, blind guides, fools, murderers,  vipers! He compared them to whitewashed tomb which means they are nicely decorated dead people who are putrefying and fetid. 

Our Lord is not pleased with these men. I doubt Christ is dealing in hyperbole in the passages above. When the Son of God calls you filthy, lawless and a hypocrite, you can assume it is not an exaggeration; you are truly corrupt. 

Yet, the Pharisees were not outsiders like gentiles or unbelievers. They were the leaders of His covenant! These men didn't sneak into authority without God's knowledge. They had been deliberately anointed Hebrew leaders as part of God's requirements. They were men of the circumcision, set apart and consecrated as Israel's authorities. 

St. John Chrysostom wrote of the moral fall of these great men in whom the Holy Spirit had worked, "What mournings and lamentations does this call for when the members of Christ have become a tomb of uncleanness?" (Homily 73 on Matthew, section 3.) 

And do not forget that Jesus considered these same scribes and Pharisees, even with such corruption, legitimate leaders. For in the first verses of chapter 23 He tells the crowds, "You must obey them [Pharisees] and do whatever they tell you." 

These were God's chosen men. They were His. And yet, their hearts were dark and filthy. 


Much like today...


Dunghills 
Fast forward for a moment to the Reformation. 

Dr. Martin Luther, like Jesus and His disciples, often used earthy comparisons. 

Luther's followers credit their leader with the theological teaching that believers are snow-covered dunghills.  God imputes His righteousness to us and our sins are covered by Christ's merits. Because of the Cross, our facade appears clean to God even when sins reign in our body.

Imputed righteousness is the interpretation that the reformers came to when they read Paul's own personal "woes" in Romans 7. The apostle laments:

"I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate....  It is the sin that dwells in me.... nothing good dwells in my flesh! (I can hear Paul yell, "I am a dunghill!") I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want but the evil I do not want is what I do...

For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Oh wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" 

Paul, the best of the Pharisees, saw himself just as Christ saw the Pharisees (and many Christians today see themselves): whitewashed tombs, hypocrites, snow-covered dunghills. 


Yet as similar as the metaphors of whitewashed tombs and snow-covered dunghills are, Christ and Luther dealt with them quite differently. 

Martin Luther assumed sin was an irreversible condition of fallen man. And the very best that could be achieved is a nice, clean spiritual facade so that God can't see your wickedness for He sees Jesus in your place. All Christians can ever expect on this earth is a snow-covered dunghill or a whitewashed tomb.

But did Christ agree with that?

Christ admitted that the Pharisees looked good from the outside. Their dunghills were absolutely covered by snow. But that cleaned up outer shell wasn't a gift of grace. Christ called that hypocrisy, not imputed righteousness.

Yet before the Cross, before the full outpouring of Grace and the Holy Spirit, Jesus chastised the Old Covenant leaders for their inability to become internally holy. Jesus did not show understanding for the Pharisees' weakness nor sympathy for being enslaved in sin. He publicly exposed their prideful motives. There is nothing about unmerited grace being applied to their account because of faith apart from their works. He did not remind them that His righteousness was credited to them, so they would feel no condemnation. And they certainly did feel condemned by His words. 

Jesus said to clean the inside first! Christ doesn't cover your wickedness with snow to make the dunghill acceptable. We are to tackle the inside, the underneath, first.

I realize some will say, yes, but their whitewash was their own works and the snow is God's works. One is the righteousness of man and one is God's. But Christ's words were clear. When you cover up your wickedness and you have nothing but a symbolic facade of holiness, you are a hypocrite. There needs to be something real to your sanctification. 

But, some Christians will ask, after Paul's rant in Romans 7, how can he glory in Romans 8: 1 that states, "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus?" Is Paul thrilled that the struggle he has with sin is no longer necessary? Is he now going to rest as a hypocrite and a whitewashed tomb? 

No! For the apostle tells us that we have been set free from the law of sin and death! Not simply a symbolic or legal freedom, but the life of the Spirit brought to us through Christ's fulfillment of the law and our flesh is dead to sin when Christ is in us.  His life gives life to our mortal bodies. 

Clean yourselves through and through. Do not allow yourselves to be only clean on the outside. Do not have a false facade of righteousness. Be truly righteous both inside and out--not a superficial cleaning on the outside. 

Christ never called us to dung-hillness, but as is written, "as He who called you holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct... You shall be holy, for I am holy."

Be more than just whitewashed tombs or snow-covered dunghills. God is calling us to sainthood. 

Duck Dynasty Christians

Stuck in a hotel, I flipped through the cable channels, disgusted with everything I saw.  Accidentally, I assure you, I ran into Duck Dynasty and thought, "Well, I might as well watch for a moment to see what all the fundamentalist buzz is about this show and what is making Wal-Mart rich by marketing stuff with the show's characters on it."

It was the episode about the main guy shooting squirrel for his wife. I did not enjoy it. Granted, I prefer Mozart's Requiem to the sound of a duck call and eating at the Cheesecake Factory to a picnic with fresh rodent, but my objections to Duck Dynasty goes much deeper. I hate to judge anything by one partial viewing but..... just watch this.

Duck Dynasty Promo on Youtube

Yes, these fundamental ZZ top look-alikes (I am sure that is a way overdone comparison by now)  are bizarrely amusing, with their red-necked love affair with everything that makes me cringe. Being raised almost a vegetarian, I want to dry heave thinking about the entree du jour being fried squirrel brains.

Are we so desperate to associate with anyone who calls himself a Christian that we will utterly cave and go to the opposite of the culture into backwoodsman crude? Why is it that we will put up with sarcastic women and men bragging that they don't take showers because they pray before dinner? 

Christians this is how the non-Christians want to paint you out as--backwoodsman less respected than the Bigfoot hunters. This is not a compliment. A&E are mocking Christians, folks and making a lot of money off Christians supporting this program.

Sometimes Christians can be incredibly gullible. Somebody is fooling us. I don't buy these Duck Dynasty guys. This is about making money. They may be Christians, but I don't believe this is anything but pure entertainment. If you watch it, watch Duck Dynasty for fun, but not to jump onto the bandwagon that these guys are being a great witness for the gospel to the world.

Why I Need the Crucifix

If we are being afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation; if we are being consoled, it is for your consolation, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering. Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation.

2 Corinthians 1:6, 7

I need the crucifix. 

The cross is a wonderful symbol of the resurrection, but my life right now needs a crucifix. 

Let me begin with this: Most of my life I have felt close to Christ. My relationship with Him has been one of great joy. 

But, there is a problem with this. I was brought up in a world that implied that if I loved Jesus that I would be happy. That after Christ came into my heart, I would have that romantic spirituality of feeling Jesus near-- I would feel safe, cozy and warm and cheerful.  

That leaves one with the perspective that if you don't feel Christ near, something is wrong. If your life faces serious challenges, that you somehow failed Christ or that His favor has been withdrawn from you. There is Christian judgement for imperfect lives. Subconsciously I will assume, they treat you  as if you slipped up and sinned somewhere.

I can hear many of you denying this.

But despite the denial, Christians may not explicitly teach that we should always have a smile and be happy, that is how Christians behave. Believers do feel abandon by God when their lives fall apart. 

It seems a natural question, "Where are you God?" in painful crisis and that question would not be there if we assumed suffering was a part of Christianity. If we truly believed that we are to take up our crosses and follow Him, we wouldn't be asking Christ why we have a cross? Suffering is a part of the program.

In Sunday mass, I looked up at the Crucifix hanging in front-- upon Jesus suffering and a revelation swept me. Not a new revelation, but something so clear it illuminated my basic understanding of God.

Jesus paid it all. But what does that mean?

Jesus did not suffer so that we may not suffer. 

Because the Beloved chose to sin, Jesus stretched out his hands to absorb the blows of the evil of the cosmos  not so that we can avoid pain. For His beloved, He opened  Himself up to the deepest sufferings of mankind so that we can see how love behaves.  

Love suffers for the Beloved.  

Jesus was not obedient in all things, even unto death so that we may do what we want to do. 

He was obedient to His Father even to the agony in the garden that led to the agony of the cross so that we may live in obedience to the Father.

I need to keep the crucifix near me at all times, to find comfort and strength not just from seeing His sacrifice for me, but to remind me to humbly bow before Him and endure the crosses I have been given when I am being obedient to Him. 

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. Rom. 8: 18 

For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ. 2 Cor. 1: 5 

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death. Phil. 3: 10

I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. Col. 1: 24

But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. I Pet. 4: 13

Now, I do not ask, "Why am I having to go through this? Where are you Lord?" But I look up to Christ and unite with His sufferings.

Love suffers. Love suffers for the Beloved. The crucifix speaks to me that I am part of that love. 

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Apprentices For the Lord

Be Apprentices For God!

Leonardo da Vinci showed so much artistic talent as a child that he was enrolled in Italy's finest art school. Once there, instead of being given a brush and told to express himself, he was given a grinder. For several years he was grinding pigments and mixing paint for the more advanced students. It was a slow and tedious method of study as an apprentice. But it was give the most talented students patience, wisdom, technique before giving the student the freedom to wield the brush. 

Da Vinci learned how to properly clean up, how to store paint and stretch and prepare the canvas with glues and gessoes, sand them and let them cure for years. Then when he was ready, he could then copy. For years, Da Vinci copied the masters unable to express himself. Then when he was a master apprentice and knew the painting techniques of his teachers, he was allowed to fill in portions of the teacher's painting carefully following the teacher's style. 

Sometimes painting students would wait ten or fifteen years before they would be allowed to paint what they wanted to, with their own style. 

Young men and women who aspire to be great singers are cautioned to take care of their voice and not sing while young. If they are serious vocal students, they will learn to speak properly so that they won't damage their voices. They will study Italian, French and German. Then when they are between sixteen and eighteen they can begin voice lessons--usually solfeggio (sight reading) and lots and lots of gentle vocal warm ups. 

Even the greatest singers of all time spend a great deal of their practice in silly sounding warm ups. Then they can go onstage and wow the audience with sustained beauty for hours.

Same thing with sports. You practice and learn the game for many years before you perform publicly or with success. 

So then, if in every aspect of our lives we realize that to be good at something we need to patiently and with dedicated discipline hone our God-given talents, why is it in the realm of religion and spirituality this lesson is ignored? Why is it we encourage anyone, even those who are the newest to faith, to get up and give their theological discourse to others? 

I think we as Christians make a very big mistake in doing this. As St. Paul writes in the 12th chapter  of his first letter to the Corinthians,  not all are called to be apostles or teachers. Some Christians are to remain silent until someone asks them why they are Christians (as St. Peter exhorts in I Peter 3:15): "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have."

When a Christian is feeding solely on milk perhaps the church should not allow them to give their public discourse on the meat. They have not yet learned to digest the meat! 

I don't think we are doing our young people or our new Christian converts any favor by putting them out there in public as authorities on the gospel or on theological matters. We need to be discerning.  Our youth should be, absolutely, involved in spreading the gospel but they also need to be first... for many years... grinding the pigments... learning the languages... disciplining themselves, learning to fear the Lord in humble submission before they believe they can speak for God and have any spiritual authority. 

I am aware of the fact that Jesus was twelve when he took on the pharisees in the temple and how Timothy was a very young man when he was appointed bishop. But remember that Jesus didn't start His ministry until He was thirty and that Timothy had known the gospel since he was a boy. Timothy wasn't a new Christian. 

The most talented and gifted new Christians need time to develop their spiritual walk. We need more apprentices for Christ who are willing to walk humbly, obediently before they try and teach others the deeper mysteries of salvation.

TAKE UP YOUR CROSS AND FOLLOW ME

Jeremiah didn’t sign up to be a prophet of God like the prophet Isaiah did. This was not a “here am I, send me” situation since God called Jeremiah to be His witness from the womb. Jeremiah didn’t have a choice, he had to obey God. Now he was commanded to prophesy very bad news. The besieged holy city of Jerusalem must surrender to the Chaldeans and serve Nebuchadnezzar for seventy years. Israel was to voluntarily give themselves up to slavery. 

(Imagine American Christians being told that by a prophet of God today!) 

The weeping Jeremiah gave the message and what was the outcome of such courageous obedience? Jeremiah was thrown in prison. 

God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac on Mt. Moriah. Can you imagine? For three days, three agonizing days Abraham prepared for this journey of personal horror. 

Imagine the sweat streaming down the old man’s brow and his arm muscles trembling as he split the wood for the sacrifice his son would be slaughtered and burnt upon? The terrifying heartbreak at each step  to the top of the mount of Moriah he ascended with his two servants and his son. The sun was blistering down upon them. This excruciating work of struggling up a mountain, so that at the end of the journey of being obedient to God, you would be destroying your entire life. You would be killing your only son. 

As Christ wiped the blood for His forehead and stood bravely and resolutely in the garden that night, He didn’t simply walk to the Cross and die. 

Crucifixion was the end of the journey of obedience to His Father. But until the Cross, He endured an eternity of humiliation and cruelty in those few hours.

He was tortured with all the fury that hell was allowed. Every evil force was unleashed upon the kind Savior as he made his way up the to top of Scull hill. He walked a thousand miles on the Via Dolorosa with unimaginable grief and the weight of all the sins of mankind upon His spirit. 

Like with Jeremiah, and Abraham and many other great men of God, it was not merely the end of the story that was seeming failure and heartbreak. Knowing the end, one was called to persevere under the most trying and difficult circumstanced to get to the painful end. 

Has Christ called you to a personal crucifixion of your deepest desires? When you really look at what you want in your life and realize that your goals are not in line with who God is calling you to be, you may make that ultimate sacrifice and die to self and hand the end over to God. But often, if we decide to follow Christ and give up our all to follow Him in obedience, we see the end of our earthly lives and know that it is not what we chose. We then are tempted to expect God to make the journey to His purpose easy. 

“I sure didn’t want to become a priest and live a life of celibacy, but if that’s what God’s asking me to do, then He better give me a lot of perks along the way... for my sacrifice.” 

Or: “Since I gave up my career in law to follow Christ (if God truly asked the person to give it up) then I better be rich doing something else. I better get a great life for my sacrifice.”

We all are tempted to think such things. But even Job, after God took everything from him and restored it later, would never stop grieving for his children. He carried pain with him. He would not have chosen the end of his life even with the reward.

Jesus didn’t call us to sacrifice and promise the road of obedience to that sacrifice would be easy. He has called us to take up our cross daily. Each day will have its fill of troubles even when we are obedient.... especially because we are obedient. 

Walking in obedience to God when you understand the pain of the self-sacrificing finish is impossible for the human. It demands the miraculous grace to walk the day to day journey to that end.

Do not add to the burdens of life by believing if God loved you He would make your life comfortable and easy. Take courage by the saints of the old and new Testaments. Persist in sacrificial obedience to Christ even when the Christian road is full of thorns and stumbling blocks. 

Each tear, each bruise, each stumble we are uniting in the sufferings of Christ and coming closer to Him. He is there with kindness and mercy carrying our cross with us. The richness of suffering will bear thirty fold in its fruits. 

Hearing the Heart of Pope Francis

Hurt and Humiliated

Sometimes when I hear Peter Kreeft and read Catholic blogs I am hurt and embarrassed. Being Catholic keeps you humble... at least me. I am not smart enough to be Catholic.