Asking Questions to Receive Answers

I read this recent speech given by Pope Benedict XVI:

To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible - and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a Pope from Germany. In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can only be a dread silence - a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this? In silence, then, we bow our heads before the endless line of those who suffered and were put to death here; yet our silence becomes in turn a plea for forgiveness and reconciliation, a plea to the living God never to let this happen again....

...On 7 June 1979 I came as the Archbishop of Munich-Freising, along with many other Bishops who accompanied the Pope, listened to his words and joined in his prayer. In 1980 I came back to this dreadful place with a delegation of German Bishops, appalled by its evil, yet grateful for the fact that above its dark clouds the star of reconciliation had emerged. This is the same reason why I have come here today: to implore the grace of reconciliation - first of all from God, who alone can open and purify our hearts, from the men and women who suffered here, and finally the grace of reconciliation for all those who, at this hour of our history, are suffering in new ways from the power of hatred and the violence which hatred spawns.

How many questions arise in this place! Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil? The words of Psalm 44 come to mind, Israel’s lament for its woes: “You have broken us in the haunt of jackals, and covered us with deep darkness ... because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off forever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For we sink down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up, come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!” (Ps 44:19, 22-26). This cry of anguish, which Israel raised to God in its suffering, at moments of deep distress, is also the cry for help raised by all those who in every age - yesterday, today and tomorrow - suffer for the love of God, for the love of truth and goodness. How many they are, even in our own day!

We cannot peer into God’s mysterious plan - we see only piecemeal, and we would be wrong to set ourselves up as judges of God and history. Then we would not be defending man, but only contributing to his downfall. No - when all is said and done, we must continue to cry out humbly yet insistently to God: Rouse yourself! Do not forget mankind, your creature! And our cry to God must also be a cry that pierces our very heart, a cry that awakens within us God’s hidden presence - so that his power, the power he has planted in our hearts, will not be buried or choked within us by the mire of selfishness, pusillanimity, indifference or opportunism. Let us cry out to God, with all our hearts, at the present hour, when new misfortunes befall us, when all the forces of darkness seem to issue anew from human hearts: whether it is the abuse of God’s name as a means of justifying senseless violence against innocent persons, or the cynicism which refuses to acknowledge God and ridicules faith in him. Let us cry out to God, that he may draw men and women to conversion and help them to see that violence does not bring peace, but only generates more violence - a morass of devastation in which everyone is ultimately the loser. The God in whom we believe is a God of reason - a reason, to be sure, which is not a kind of cold mathematics of the universe, but is one with love and with goodness. We make our prayer to God and we appeal to humanity, that this reason, the logic of love and the recognition of the power of reconciliation and peace, may prevail over the threats arising from irrationalism or from a spurious and godless reason.

The place where we are standing is a place of memory, it is the place of the Shoah. The past is never simply the past. It always has something to say to us; it tells us the paths to take and the paths not to take. Like John Paul II, I have walked alongside the inscriptions in various languages erected in memory of those who died here: inscriptions in Belarusian, Czech, German, French, Greek, Hebrew, Croatian, Italian, Yiddish, Hungarian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Romani, Romanian, Slovak, Serbian, Ukrainian, Judaeo-Spanish and English. All these inscriptions speak of human grief, they give us a glimpse of the cynicism of that regime which treated men and women as material objects, and failed to see them as persons embodying the image of God. Some inscriptions are pointed reminders. There is one in Hebrew. The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth. Thus the words of the Psalm: “We are being killed, accounted as sheep for the slaughter” were fulfilled in a terrifying way. Deep down, those vicious criminals, by wiping out this people, wanted to kill the God who called Abraham, who spoke on Sinai and laid down principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that are eternally valid. If this people, by its very existence, was a witness to the God who spoke to humanity and took us to himself, then that God finally had to die and power had to belong to man alone - to those men, who thought that by force they had made themselves masters of the world. By destroying Israel, by the Shoah, they ultimately wanted to tear up the taproot of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of man, the rule of the powerful...

By God’s grace, together with the purification of memory demanded by this place of horror, a number of initiatives have sprung up with the aim of imposing a limit upon evil and confirming goodness. Just now I was able to bless the Centre for Dialogue and Prayer. In the immediate neighbourhood the Carmelite nuns carry on their life of hiddenness, knowing that they are united in a special way to the mystery of Christ’s Cross and reminding us of the faith of Christians, which declares that God himself descended into the hell of suffering and suffers with us. In Oświęcim is the Centre of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, and the International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust. There is also the International House for Meetings of Young people. Near one of the old Prayer Houses is the Jewish Centre. Finally the Academy for Human Rights is presently being established. So there is hope that this place of horror will gradually become a place for constructive thinking, and that remembrance will foster resistance to evil and the triumph of love.

At Auschwitz-Birkenau humanity walked through a “valley of darkness”. And so, here in this place, I would like to end with a prayer of trust - with one of the Psalms of Israel which is also a prayer of Christians: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff - they comfort me ... I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long” (Ps 23:1-4, 6).

I found this because a group of people were using this speech as a reason to bash the Pope because he asked "First year seminarian type questions" within this speech...specifically

"Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?"

not noticing that they were rhetorical questions. This ended up evolving into an argument with sedevacantists about all the things they think are wrong with the last few popes. The things they most reviled were the ideas that the Jews (or anyone outside their Church) could attain salvation.

My response is the following:

If the Catholic Church, or ANY church, teaches something that is directly contradicted by scripture. Specifically contradicted I mean, then is the church wrong or is the Bible wrong?

The reason I am asking is because I have been under the impression that Man has a tendency, all too often, of being prideful and forgetting that God is the one in charge and that the only understanding that truly matters is God's understanding. That is why HE is the judge of our hearts, and we aren't the judges of one another as to who is 'saved' and who is not 'saved'.

Are you saying that, whether or not the Bible agrees with you, the only salvation comes through the Catholic Church? Because I thought salvation came through Christ. Are you saying that your church teaching and human understanding is more important than discovering God's Truth? Churches are made up of human beings...imperfect human beings who make errors. Human beings who still require forgiveness because they make mistakes. Human beings who follow errors because it appeals to their pride or vanity or laziness. Human beings that misunderstand God's word and don't recognize their own willfullness and put their own understanding ahead of God's understanding.

I trust God implicitly, I simply don't always trust humans to have it perfect. I am willing to have an open mind regarding any church's teachings because I believe God is in control, not Man and God will ultimately guide us to do the right thing that is His will. Although in our human weaknesses we stumble and fall repeatedly, God always helps us back up and puts us in the correct direction...we just need to be open to receiving His help instead of going our 'sheeplike' own way.

Finally, I think (regarding the statements made regarding the Jews) that Romans chapter 11 explains most eloquently the situation regarding salvation of the Jews and it explains as well that those who are without grace and mercy are equally (if not MORE) in danger of being broken off and tossed into the fire. God is eternal and his promises are everlasting. He made a promise to Abraham, God does not lie, so why would God have lied to Abraham? Which is more likely to be true: God lied to Abraham about the eternal covenant or a later human being allowed pride to overcome Truth and taught it...with God stepping in to make changes so that his church would continue to grow in Truth and not falsehood? I think humanity will continue to allow Satan to blind us to truth and God will continue to step in and open eyes to the Truth of his eternal love.

God's Church is not a manmade institution, it isn't a social club, with an official membership decided by human beings. It is God's Church. Whatever it is CALLED, it is God who knows who belongs to it, who is written in His Book of Life, and no 'church roll call' determines who is a member of His church, because we are members by faith, hope, and love, not by dogma. God wants us to love one another and learn his Truth. I love God more than I love any church and I think that is the way God wants it to be. I love the church only because it is part of God, the bride of Christ.

What I see the Pope doing is simply being humble, being Christlike. What a great man to recognize that he doesn't have all the answers! The last shall be first and the first shall be last.

A woman came up to my husband while he was wearing his collar when we were out of town a few weeks ago working a booth for a mission. She pointed to his collar and told him it was a sign of authority. He and I both said simultaneously, "No, it is NOT!" That collar is a sign of humility, it is a sign of a SERVANT, it is a symbol of the yoke...the burden that he carries. He is responsible for the care and spiritual (if not physical) well being of every person whom he ministers to. When the bishop was talking to us before my husband's ordination, he told my kids, "Do you know why we enter the sanctuary in the order we do? With Christ coming first, then the Deacons, then the Priests, then the Bishop?" The kids and I had no idea. He replied, "Because Christ is the most important, so he goes first, the Bishop is least important, and he goes last. It is to remind the bishop that his position is last because he is least. It is a reminder of his burden to SERVE the church."

When I read of things like what the Pope is saying, I can admire him for recognizing a need for this world we are living in to overcome our selfishness and overweening pride and start serving one another again. I admire him for teaching us to turn to God with our questions and joys and sorrows that our relationship with him will grow. Who better to teach that than the Pope, who better to teach that through word AND deed? As Christ was reviled for teaching Truth through love, so will any teacher who, when teaching Truth through love be reviled.

May God bless you.

Can God be Limited to a Body?

Recently I was asked this question...

While considering the question I raised in the title, a statement Jesus made occurred to me, Matthew 24:36 "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

Now, this is not to say that Jesus was not fully God and fully Man, lest someone think that is where I am going...

I simply wonder if the fullness of God's knowledge...eternity...can it be contained by flesh?

God can do anything, but for various reasons, does not always do so. As with an eternally flowing pitcher of wine that never grows empty, or the simple knowledge that the more love you share with others, the more love you have...a miracle that is a mystery...and yet, scripture seems to support that Jesus, though fully God, was not the fullness of God when in flesh.

I think that is where the understanding of the Trinity always becomes confused. People want to say that Jesus is the Father and is the Holy Spirit rather than respecting the sovereignty of the position Jesus held, the sovereignty of the position that the Father holds and the sovereignty of the position the Holy Spirit holds.

If three people think exactly alike on a matter, does it really matter who is 'in charge'? One like mind, three seperate individuals, all God.

It does not diminish Christ in any way if he is not the Father, anymore than it diminishes me in any way to be a daughter. In maturity, I have friendship with my parents. I love and respect them for who they are/were, but I am neither above them nor below them, I simply love them. I can respect them, admire them, but it doesn't make me less than them. I left my parents home to be joined with my husband. Based upon how I was raised, I might think like my mother thought, but that doesn't make me my mother...it makes me the image of my mother perhaps. That doesn't mean I know all my mother knew, but it doesn't mean I never will either. As my husband becomes the head of our family upon our marriage, we are our own household, I can respect my parents still, but I hold a different position now.

I see Jesus in a similar way, here on earth, he is like we are...he is the child of God, but upon the bride of Christ coming into existence, upon the marriage of Jesus to the church, he becomes the bridegroom and as such, what is required of him changes. That different place doesn't bring the Father down, nor does it change who Jesus is. Seated at the right hand of the Father, He has the knowledge of the Father and His authority as well.

So, can God be limited to a Body? Yes, with God all things are possible, even eternity contained by flesh. Was God limited to a body? I believe so. Was the entire fullness of the knowledge and power of God contained within that body? I don't think so...and I think there was a purpose to it though. The purpose of that lack was to show us the way. If Jesus had the fullness of God contained in his flesh, he couldn't have identified with temptation. Jesus is NOW equal to the Father, always existed with the Father and was equal to the Father and eternal with the Father, however, during his time in flesh, He voluntarily gave up that aspect to take on our weaknesses. In life he was more than man, but by appealing to the Father, He could show us how we can appeal to the Father for ALL things, so long as we desire God's will and not our own. Upon becoming the bridegroom of the Church, His father becomes Our Father, we are married into His family and can receive the parental blessings of the Father, yet still have Jesus as the head of our 'household' being guided by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. As when we are married, we become the heads of our own households, upon Jesus' marriage to the Church, his bride takes charge of the household (the world) but he is the head of our household, the head of our family...the family of Christ.

God bless

Maimonides

Moses Maimonides was a Jewish scholar of the 12th century. The article in the link above was an interesting one that I wanted to share.

I googled Maimonides because I wanted to find out more about this person. I had read of him several times and I was interested in discovering if what I was told this morning at church was true (that he did NOT consider Christians idolators towards the end of his life).

Here is the statement in the linked article that refers to that possible inference:

Concerning Christianity, with which he probably had no real contact, Maimonides’ views underwent a decided change over time. In his aversion to what he considered to be Christian dilutions of pure monotheism, especially in its doctrine of the Trinity, much of Maimonides’ philosophical critique of Christian theology is similar to Islamic arguments against it. In his earlier work, Maimonides translated his theoretical disdain of Christianity into practice. He deemed Christians to be idolators and bemoaned the fact that political necessity forced many European Jews to live in Christian societies.

Nevertheless, this is not the whole picture. At the end of his great code, Mishneh Torah, in his discussion of the political–legal role of the Messiah–to–come, Maimonides makes a predictable concession to Islam, but a surprising concession to Christianity. He argues that despite the errors of Jesus and Muhammad, the religions that emerged from their respective teachings are instruments of divine providence for bringing all of humankind to the worship of the one true God. Now it is obvious from this concession to Christianity that he no longer regarded it to be a form of idolatry, the worship of a "strange" god. Surely no form of radical idolatry could possibly be the means for the universal spread of monotheism. (Ironically enough, the Christian censors of the printed editions of Mishneh Torah forced the publishers to remove that passage.)

Moreover, in a responsum written after the publication of Mishneh Torah, Maimonides rules that Jews may teach the Torah to Christians but not to Muslims because Christians believe Hebrew Scripture in toto to be the revealed word of God, whereas Muslims believe that primary text to be the Quran; for them, Hebrew Scripture is a flawed revelation. Thus Jews and Christians share a common revelation in a way that Jews share with no other religious community. Furthermore, Maimonides believes that Jews can best proselytize Christians because of this common text. All Jews need do is show Christians how they have misinterpreted that common text (the New Testament being the erroneous Christian interpretation or midrash he has in mind) and how Judaism’s interpretation of it is ultimately more convincingly accurate. (Using the same logic, Christians have frequently regarded Jews as the most logical objects of their own proselytizing efforts.) The Jewish problem with Christianity, for Maimonides, is largely a matter of exegesis, and the differences there are more theoretical than practical. True idolators, on the other hand, could hardly have accepted Hebrew Scripture as the word of God.

I thought this interpretation was excessively interesting. I started searching further, but found that the majority of modern rabbinical scholars either overlook this or still maintain that Christians are idolators.

For example, on one Jewish site, I was informed that we Christians literally worship the cross that we have in our churches. This is absolutely NOT true. If they wish to consider me an idolator for considering a man (Jesus) to have been God, that I can accept their consideration of idol worship, but to believe that the simple reminder of his sacrifice ...a pictoral reminder of a sort is equivalent to idolatry, that I will deny.

This all comes back to the Christian belief in the Trinity.

I cannot fully explain the mystery of the Trinity. I have opinions of what I believe God has revealed to me, but I would not presume to force those opinions upon anyone outside my family. I believe in the Trinity, I believe that I understand it so far as I am able to in this life, in this body of flesh. I hope that in the next life, in my eternal body, that I will be able to better understand, but if I am not able, I can accept that it is not for me to understand, it is merely for me to accept God's will and His word regarding this.

These same people who have called me an idolator in the past have made efforts to help me understand the 'errors' that I have been taught. Errors in translation or otherwise. I believe that it is 'possible' they are correct (after all, we are sinful human beings still of flesh and fully capable of error), but I also believe that it is equally possible that ancient rabbinical scholars made efforts to hide the truth. I cannot consider the possible guilt of one without the possible guilt of the other. I know God. I know His love, it is boundless and eternal. In the Jesus I know, I see God's love at work and I see absolutely nothing that proves otherwise. I have asked God to reveal the truth to me, thus far, I have not received any revelation that Jesus was not God. Through the Holy Spirit, I hear God's voice from heaven, in my heart, in what I read, and in my dreams.

Jesus was born a Jew. Romans 11:11-32 says:

Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring!

I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches.

If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, "Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in." Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.

Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!

I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:

"The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
And this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins."

As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

Revelation of the knowledge of Christ will come to the Jews and Christians, it will come from God when the time is right. It is not our (Christian) place to tell any Jew that he or she is 'going to hell'. We are not the judges. They worship God, they love God and they were born into God's family, we are merely ingrafted branches and we should keep that prideless, unworthy thought in front of our minds. To diminish the law is to diminish a part of God, the law is a blessing, but forgiveness, redemption, grace...these are infinite blessings as well.

So let us, Christian and Jew, come together if only in acknowledging our love of the infinite Lord. Let us love the same God together, the God of love, a just God whose justice is tempered only by His mercy. We know the same infinite God, we love the same just and merciful God, we merely don't see Him the same way. Someday, we will all worship Him together and before Him, all truth will be revealed.

God bless