Tag Archives: God

The River Whose Streams Gladden the City of God

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Holy Spirit dove window

Image by hickory hardscrabble via Flickr

From a sermon On Pastors by Saint Augustine, bishop:

The river of God is brimming with water. You have provided their food, for this is your way of preparing them. There can be no doubt about the river referred to, for the prophet says: There is a river whose streams gladden the city of God; and in the gospel the Lord himself says: Streams of living water welling up to eternal life will flow from the heart of anyone who drinks the water I shall give him. He was speaking of the Holy Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive. The river of God is brimming with water; that is to say, we are inundated by the gifts of the Holy Spirit and from that fountain of life the river of God pours into us in full flood.

We also have food prepared for us. And who is this food? It is he in whom we are prepared for life with God, for by receiving his holy body we receive a place in the communion of his holy body. This is what is meant by the words of the psalm: You have provided their food, for this is your way of preparing them. For as well as refreshing us now, that food also prepares us for the life to come.

We who have been reborn through the sacrament of baptism experience intense joy when we feel within us the first stirrings of the Holy Spirit. We begin to have an insight into the mysteries of faith, we are able to prophesy and to speak with wisdom. We become steadfast in hope and receive the gift of healing. Demons are made subject to our authority. These gifts enter us like a gentle rain, and once having done so, little by little, they bring forth fruit in abundance.

The Pope – On the Great Convert

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In an excellent meditation delivered at the vigil of the beatification of John Henry Newman,Pope Benedict XVI said, “”Passion for the truth is costly: it often involves being dismissed out of hand, ridiculed or parodied.”

The Pope said:

Newman’s life also teaches us that passion for the truth, intellectual honesty and genuine conversion are costly. The truth that sets us free cannot be kept to ourselves; it calls for testimony, it begs to be heard, and in the end its convincing power comes from itself and not from the human eloquence or arguments in which it may be couched. Not far from here, at Tyburn, great numbers of our brothers and sisters died for the faith; the witness of their fidelity to the end was ever more powerful than the inspired words that so many of them spoke before surrendering everything to the Lord. In our own time, the price to be paid for fidelity to the Gospel is no longer being hanged, drawn and quartered but it often involves being dismissed out of hand, ridiculed or parodied. And yet, the Church cannot withdraw from the task of proclaiming Christ and his Gospel as saving truth, the source of our ultimate happiness as individuals and as the foundation of a just and humane society.

Finally, Newman teaches us that if we have accepted the truth of Christ and committed our lives to him, there can be no separation between what we believe and the way we live our lives. Our every thought, word and action must be directed to the glory of God and the spread of his Kingdom. Newman understood this, and was the great champion of the prophetic office of the Christian laity. He saw clearly that we do not so much accept the truth in a purely intellectual act as embrace it in a spiritual dynamic that penetrates to the core of our being. Truth is passed on not merely by formal teaching, important as that is, but also by the witness of lives lived in integrity, fidelity and holiness; those who live in and by the truth instinctively recognize what is false and, precisely as false, inimical to the beauty and goodness which accompany the splendour of truth, “veritatis splendor.”

The Eucharist, Pledge of Our Resurrection

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From the treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus,

The eucharist, pledge of our resurrection

If our flesh is not saved, then the Lord has not redeemed us with his blood, the eucharistic chalice does not make us sharers in his blood, and the bread we break does not make us sharers in his body. There can be no blood without veins, flesh and the rest of the human substance, and this the Word of God actually became: it was with his own blood that he redeemed us. As the Apostle says: In him, through his blood, we have been redeemed, our sins have been forgiven.

We are his members and we are nourished by creatures, which is his gift to us, for it is he who causes the sun to rise and the rain to fall. He declared that the chalice, which comes from his creation, was his blood, and he makes it the nourishment of our blood. He affirmed that the bread, which comes from his creation, was his body, and he makes it the nourishment of our body. When the chalice we mix and the bread we bake receive the word of God, the eucharistic elements become the body and blood of Christ, by which our bodies live and grow. How then can it be said that flesh belonging to the Lord’s own body and nourished by his body and blood is incapable of receiving God’s gift of eternal life? Saint Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians that we are members of his body, of his flesh and bones. He is not speaking of some spiritual and incorporeal kind of man, for spirits do not have flesh and bones. He is speaking of a real human body composed of flesh, sinews and bones, nourished by the chalice of Christ’s blood and receiving growth from the bread which is his body.

The slip of a vine planted in the ground bears fruit at the proper time. The grain of wheat falls into the ground and decays only to be raised up again and multiplied by the Spirit of God who sustains all things. The Wisdom of God places these things at the service of man and when they receive God’s word they become the eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ. In the same way our bodies, which have been nourished by the eucharist, will be buried in the earth and will decay, but they will rise again at the appointed time, for the Word of God will raise them up to the glory of God the Father. Then the Father will clothe our mortal nature in immortality and freely endow our corruptible nature with incorruptibility, for God’s power is shown most perfectly in weakness.

God, the Fine-tuned Universe/Multi-verse

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Middle-age should be a thoughtful time.  You be the judge:

(Speaking of Santa Claus) as unbelievable as those tales are from the north pole, the tales from Jerusalem leave it in the dust. Snakes that can talk, the Universe built from nothing in 7 days flat, procreation without copulation, walking on water, building a single ship to accommodate 3 million animals (1,589,361 species times two), turning water into wine, feeding 5000 people with a couple small fish a few loaves of bread, rising from the dead, etc… It certainly flies in the face of reason based on everything I’ve seen in this world, but it is firmly believed by at least a billion big humans on the planet tonight.

Just because it is the person’s will and desire to make it true, sadly does not make it truth.

I don’t doubt there is much more to this world than what we can see, hear, smell, feel, etc…. Quantum physics has gone much further and deeper than regular old atoms/matter… There are most likely many more dimensions than the four that we experience. I don’t even doubt the power of prayer or other group-think exercises.. I wholeheartedly support many of the values espoused by many of the religions of the world. I just am not buying the unbelievable stories sans proof and with so much proof against.

As to the four last things…

death — empirically it’s looming for all of us, no way around it.. is it final? not too sure — if consciousness survives to go another round, it probably has a more scientific multi-dimensional explanation.

judgment / heaven / hell — empirically haven’t seen any evidence of these, but it sure sounds like a good concept for a king to control a kingdom in the here and now. If I were the man behind the curtain, I’d be telling my subjects all about the this stuff to make sure they didn’t cause too many problems for me.”

This enlightened summation of the Bible, doesn’t actually deal with the Bible.  Nowhere here is there evidence of serious inquiry. The understanding and reflection of holy men and scholars are rather ceremonially dismissed with ridicule and from a distance of disdain.  The Holy Scripture, an anthology and compilation of priestly, prophetic, scholarly and apostolic construction guided by the Holy Spirit, suffers a verbal sortie of “trash talk.” I look for a sense of respect for the sacred and fail to find it.

What I see in the derision is a sophomoric  cliff notes overview filled with disdain and a lack of true familiarity with the revealed Word of God. The foray is little more than a stylish dance of words and ego perhaps for the amusement of others. What is gained? What is lost? Knowledge? Grace? Having brushed aside the pesky gnat of Holy Revelation, the author reaches for the stars or to be more exact, to other dimensions. Though playful, the piece uncovers a well of cynicism usually reserved for the old and broken.

Does the grandeur of the Universe or a multi-verse diminish or dismiss a Creator?  Doesn’t the smallest living cell give us a sense of a plan? Doesn’t  a plan of necessity infer a planner, somewhat like finding a copy of Hamlet would point to a Shakespeare. Darwin conveniently starts with a creature with cells, so he doesn’t theorize about how they came to be- just how and/or why they might have changed.

Do untold dimensions rule out a Heaven or Hell, or increase the likelihood in the realm of the possibilities raised by new dimensions governed by rules unlike those of our own universe and time?

If the Universe, Time and the Laws that mapped out the direction of our destiny came into being with the Big Bang, what of these other dimensions, other Times and possibilities? “Eternity”, according to Dinesh D’Souza, “has become a coherent concept.” New universes, new dimensions, ergo new equations? While new stuffs and equations don’t equal life or worlds, we can dream dreams and wonder.

Stephen Hawking reveals that even he doesn’t know who or what put the fire into the stuff and equations. (“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” Stephen Hawking)

By reaching for fantastic and even far-fetched ideas, the question of a Creator/God doesn’t go away. D’Souza does note that while there is evidence for the Big Bang there is not an iota of evidence for the multi-verse. However, in the multi-dimensional scenario, our existence is no longer improbable. In our Universe fine tuning is necessary for us to exist. Fine tuning is of course indicative of a plan. However in a multi-verse,we are no longer privileged and unique but possible and expected to have popped up along the way. By the same token, however, with the new multi-dimensionalism, the multi-verse, emerges new laws, new realms and new possibilities. The existence of Heaven and Hell now becomes as probable as any other combination of world characteristics. The pièce de résistance… there is nothing in the multi-dimensional theory that precludes a Creator. One can still see in the grandeur of the scheme of things, the One who schemes, just as a thought reveals a thinker.

Matter which is the stuff of atheistic materialism now serves to raise questions to which we thought we had the answers. Quantum theory pokes all kinds of holes in our understanding of matter. Atheists are big on matter but are they prepared to deal with Dark Energy and for that matter, Dark Matter. Ordinary matter and energy make up only 5% of the matter and energy in the universe. If 95% of all energy and matter is made up of dark energy and dark matter doesn’t that make all arguments about matter, as atheist insists on it operation, irrelevant. How can you make any claims for it, if you can only account for 5% of it, or so asks D’Souza.

We haven’t even touched on mind, consciousness which acts as an observer of the creation about us. What are the rules governing mind which is not matter/material. Mind and consciousness do exist but they are immaterial. If you doubt that, tell me how much a mind weighs? What are its dimensions, its length and width?

In the end, Quantum Theory is not an escape from God. It, rather, gives us pause to marvel at how God has chaos under control. Which brings us back to the Bible, the very beginning, Genesis: “the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.” Genesis 1:2 “The waters” in biblical-speak refers to primordial chaos and “a mighty wind,” a poor translation of the Hebrew phrase “ruach Elohim” (literally the “wind/breath of God. ) While Science investigates Nature, God is not probed like a microbe or star dust. He is seen with the eye of Faith, keeping in mind that “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor the heart of man imagined, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”1 Corinthians 2:9

Easter “Praises of God”

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Praises of God

  • You are encircling Love.
  • You are abiding strength
  • You are the constant “Hound of Heaven”
  • You are my Spouse, my Love.
  • You are my All-in-All.
  • You are my surrounding Presence.
  • You are the joy of my life.
  • You are my dearest Friend.
  • You are my “nudger” when I am weak.
  • You are my encouraging companion.
  • You fill my life with purpose and meaning.
  • You are gentle, caring and compassionate.
  • Your are beauty, sweet unction for my soul.
  • You are impregnating Presence filling all life.
  • You are my precious guide and protector.
  • You are my Counselor, my Lover, My Friend.
  • You are Wisdom, Truth and Peace.
  • You are so human and so divine.
  • You are mystery, urging us on.
  • You draw us to Your Father and give us Your Life-giving Spirit.
  • You keep showing us Your Mother to also honor and love.
  • You are filled with amazing surprises.
  • You mend our broken hearts, mind and body.
  • You are water for the thirsty.
  • You are bread for the hungry.
  • Your are Creator, Redeemer, Risen Lord.
  • You enflesh us with Your image and likeness, Your very life-giving breath.
  • You are healing when we humbly acknowledge our brokenness.
  • You are forgiving when we fail.
  • You sense our needs before we know them.
  • You are the hand that holds us close to Your Heart.
  • You are the Indwelling Presence that makes us special.
  • You are the Light that illumines our darkness.
  • You are peace  for longing, agonizing hearts.
  • You are the flower that perfumes our life.
  • Your are the smile that brings acceptance.
  • You are the most precious friend that we cannot so without.

Amen!  Amen!

by   Sister La Donna Pinkelman, OSF Sylvania, Ohio