Where
do you get the things you say on your website? The Catechsim [sic]
tells us that it’s not a sin to fight wars and
defend ourselves, and Pope John Paul II even
blessed athletes. How do you justify
yourself?
 don’t justify myself. Holy
orthodox and catholic and apostolic love justifies me. Sadly, most men hold
politics and sports
more sacred and more dear in their hearts than their love for God.
And why should this be? Well,
because these men have suffered emotional
conflicts in their childhood
families,[1]
they desire more than anything to be “in
control” of the
world.[2]
They are men who so fear human weakness that,
in spite of calling themselves Christian, in the secret unconscious depths
of their hearts they look upon the Cross itself with repugnance.
Yet, Christ told us that
salvation can be attained only in the
Cross.
The Necessary
Minimum
Now, the Catechism of the
Catholic Church (CCC), like all the teachings of the Church, instructs
us in the necessary minimum (see CCC 2041) of what we must do to attain
the salvation promised by Christ. That is, if you do all that the
Catechism requires—depending on the sincerity of heart with which you
do it—it will be likely that you will get to
Purgatory rather than
hell.
In contrast, if you want to be
more than one of the crowd that followed Jesus at a distance—that is,
if you want to climb Mount Carmel to attain personal
growth, heightened wisdom, enhanced interpersonal effectiveness, and divine
love—then it will be necessary to do more than what is minimally required.
Follow the counsels on this website, for example,
to remove from yourself the psychological
baggage that prevents you from making that
glorious climb into pure love.
It’s your choice. Do what
you want.
Either way, however, you will
have to pay a huge price.
The Price of
Least Obligation
If you take the way of least
obligation, using your own wits and your own strength, hoping to squeak past
hell into Purgatory, you
just might fall into hell anyway because of all the
temptations from which you now refuse to distance
yourself.
Also, consider that, even if
you do manage to get there, Purgatory is not a Sunday picnic; you would drop
dead in horror right now if you had to see what the most abject of the poor
souls have to suffer.
At the moment of your judgment
after death, you will have to face Christ Himself who will ask you, as you
have scornfully demanded of me, “How do you justify yourself?”
And then you will see yourself in the light of divine truth and—assuming
that you recognized and repented your sins before
you died—you will sink down into the torment of purgation.
You will have to pay in Purgatory
for all the sins you have committed, including all the
prayers you failed to say and all the
sacrifices you failed to make for others during
the course of your life because you were too preoccupied with arguing about
politics, boasting about
sports, and otherwise
entertaining yourself. Everything, even the
least blade of grass, will be accounted for. God’s
justice is perfect.
But if you don’t believe
me, do what you want.
The Price of
the Front Lines
On the other hand, if you decide
to step into the front lines of the spiritual battle
against evil, armed only with love, be prepared
to be despised, calumniated, forgotten, ridiculed,
wronged, suspected, and set aside, unnoticed—particularly by other
Catholics—as the price for witnessing the
truth in a world growing
spiritually cold because of its seduction by
sin.
In this case, once you recognize
how a repugnance for the Cross inhibits you from living a spiritually fruitful
life, the best penance to pay for that mistake now, before you die, is to
spread the seeds of spiritual fruit. It’s similar to alms giving, which
is a traditional penance. Just as giving alms requires a giving of money
from your resources, spreading the seeds of your spiritual fruit is also
a giving of yourself. Without arrogance and pride holding you back, you can
start to produce spiritual fruit, and the seeds that you spread—that
is, the holy influence you have on others—is a fitting penance for having
previously stifled your spiritual development—and for cheating others
in the process.
You can pay now or you can pay
later. It’s your choice.
Notes
1. For example, an early death of a parent or
sibling, an alcoholic parent, an emotionally
or physically missing father, a rejecting or controlling
mother, and so on.
2. Sports and politics are prime examples of
“control,” right along with sexuality, intellectual mastery, and
technical mastery.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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