Originally posted by J Thur:
And who or what appoints the proper authority? How do we know that a proper authority has been appointed? How do we know that an appointed authority is proper? What is the criteria?
Joe
Dear J;
I spent hours yesterday drafting you a reply, and erased it each time. Then upon awaking this morning I saw the way to answer, let me hope I can put what I saw into something understandable.
I was trying to answer with what you were looking for. How to sort through all the conflicting opinions and claims and reads of history which it seems are interpreted in so many ways by people who should know. How hard this is for us. After all, how can we really be sure that Jesus even appointed only 12? Have not we read somewhere that the gospels were written well after with the purpose to re-write the events in order to convince readers??
Bottom line is - that we can be sure of nothing. But our hearts tell us that �something� is there. Our hearts tell us �this is how I want to live� our hearts say we do not want to do what Jesus did but we want to live the way Jesus is telling us.
To that end - we do what we do with any other thing - we give intellectual investigation in order to identify the way, the methods, etc.. that if we apply to ourselves, should change us into what we want. For the purpose, we need to know which church? Which branch? Who do I read? Who do I follow? What self rules do I adopt? At some point we think we have adopted and changed ourselves enough and then - comes disappointment. Some secret sin that we had tried to escape resurges. Some stressful situation comes and to save our self - we cross the line - we blame someone else - we lie just a little bit to keep the pressure off . Or perhaps there is that little item that would give us so much joy or excitement and there it is - free for the taking. Perhaps it is that we find that yet again we have come down hard on someone who did not deserve it just because we are under stress at work.. There are hundreds of little ways we cross the line - and know - it has not worked. It has not worked.
So, we adjust. We amend and re-program. Hopefully we can find that little portion we were missing in our mind set - that will complete the formula - and bring about the behavior changes that we want. And - this is our life. A continual adjusting of mind sets that - almost - work. Our eye is always open to the possibility that the grass may be greener - over there. Our prayer �God - help me - fix this and fix that and do this and do that� seldom seems to get a response - but is not �faith� a thing that means that if you seem to get no response you should keep on believing anyway??
Let me begin with this little tale.
�Sell all you have, take the money and give it to the poor, and come follow me.�
Common theology (what we generally and commonly believe) tells us that the important factor here is to be compassionate to the poor. The good here is self sacrifice (sell your belongings) and aid some poor person who is crushed by life� and by doing that we would be doing what Jesus would like us to do and that would constitute - following him. Psychologically we can see the benefits here. We �break� our self-severing habits - we change our behavior - and we become as loving to the poor as Jesus was. If we did this, did it well, and did it over and over - it would become easier - it would become habit - it would bring about the change we wanted.
The trouble with the above - is - it is poppy cock.
The Good Lord would have no trouble feeding the poor - all the poor - if he wanted to. He could - change every stone into bread - if he wanted to. The real point of this advise - is - Providence.
To sell all you have - is to rid yourself of all you devises by which you secure your future and security. It is to �empty your store house� which you have accumulated against the possibility of famine. Giving the money to the poor may have some social value - but it is not like God needs you to be the go between and he could not get money to the poor without you. The REAL good here is that by doing what is said here - you are throwing yourself, your well being, your future - upon the mystery of - Providence. And by doing THAT - you ARE following Christ because Christ IS the author and the governor of all events which come to you at any time.
This - is a hard thing to believe.
After all - the day I got fired from the job - was it not Joe who instigated that? When those kids broke into my car and stole my lap top - isn�t it the evil of drugs and bad upbringing that did that??
If there existed a - way - and a - guide book - or people who could guide us to the right formula by which we could change our bad habits and actually experience in our life - something of the reality of God being our Father and we being his son - then most assuredly - before Jesus left - he would have written a book and said �Make sure everyone reads this.� But he didn�t. If the �secret way� that creates saints was given to the apostles and to be passed down to all members of the church through doctrine and church laws - then surely Jesus should have done a bit more to assure we could easily find it without all the research and reading and figuring and logic by which we all tend to sort through this stuff looking for what is real and what is false.
Again, the missing ingredient - is a living - today - now - Providence.
Imagine if Jesus said �He would can figure out the puzzle of church archeology - is my brother, my sister, my mother etc�� or the Lord�s prayer be �They truths be figured out� instead of They Will be done.
But the point of the matter (as it had always been with Jesus) is - Thy Will be done. He who does the will of my father is my brother, my sister, etc.. and as Mary said �Let it be done to me according to as you say.�
Our intellect leading the way through the maze of the church - will always - just seem to be - almost working. Because it is not by our intellect that we go the way to God. Why? Because no such path exists.
�Peace to men of good will - for today a savior is born to you� (paraphrased) it is not �Peace to men of good reason and knowledge� or not �Peace to men who have faith despite seemingly little results.�
I had a friend one time, in the evangelical church, whose son developed leukemia. This father refused to take his son to the hospital because he and the church we praying for his healing - and by using doctors he would be doubting God. The �method� was that he should build up his faith, not doubt, and �claim� his miracle� if he could build up his human faith enough �mountains would move�. Well - his soon died soon after. His response would be that it was his own fault because he could not �believe� enough. My response would be - poppy cock.
There is nothing - no way - no path - no �law� within nature of given by God - by which we shall find a way to sainthood (we are just looking to feel secure, and happy, and whole) - there exists no acetic practice that will take us there. There IS a path back to Eden - but we can not find it. And that is the point - WE can not find it because it is impossible for human nature to find it.
You ask �How do we know who is rally appointed and has authority in the hierarchy??� (paraphrased) and I say - does it really matter?? The Pope, nor even the local bishop - neither has ever called me to either ask my advise nor give me personal guidance. They simply do not have any daily impact on my life. I have no need - to answer this question. If there was a need - Providence would somehow give me the answer for my need - but the truth is - it makes no difference to me in my day to day life (except for my efforts to identify the path - which I shall never find).
�Let us form-make man in our image.�
�In the beginning was the Word, and through Him all things were made and without him not one thing has come into being�
�If a man believes in me and loves me I will come make my home with him�
�I shall be with you - forever�
(paraphrased)
We think
If only I could build up my faith to really really believe in these things - I would be safe� and we try and try - and we insist that we do believe - yet deep in the heart we know - we lie. We lie - hoping to make - it real. We lie to ourselves hoping that faith means to believe even if we really do not believe. Faith means believing the un-believable and despite our experiences otherwise. Poppy cock.
The most important theme of the gospels is that which we most often ignore. Jesus himself says in the psalms �You have prepared for me a human body - Lo - I have come to do your will.�
That Will - that living expression of God - that living and interacting movement - is Providence.
The original sin can be argued in several ways and called several things and debated in all scholastic and theological means - but it boils down to one thing - self-providence. At some point the Adam and Eve within us - freely choose to set into motion a chain of events by which we planned to provide for ourselves something of benefit to ourselves. At some point we saw the things and events of creation in a way divorced from a direct authorship and governing hand of God - and we imagined these things and events to have their own laws by which we could manipulate or set into motion some chain reaction to bring to ourselves a desired result. We - pretended and became gods. We took over providing for our selves and automatically we left the �graden� were God had provided all for us� a garden in which we were only to tend (pull up weeds) and not to plant or till etc..
Now - to back off a bit from biblical images.
The only bit of human faith needed � is to believe that somehow - God is alive and in charge of everything. And to believe that the one purpose that God has in his mind - for us - is to make me into his own image (to make me like him in some way). This is as far as human faith may take us to any miracle.
It has impressed me for quite some time, that in the gospels, the one man who continually tried to display a high sacrificial love for Jesus the human - failed miserably most often. And no gospel is more critical of Peter�s failures than Mark�s gospel (Peter�s own gospel). Time and time again, Peter took the position that Jesus assigned him as leader of the 12 (yes, I believe that) to heart - and tried so hard to be their leader and head. He tried so hard to be the go-between between Jesus (who it was expected would soon be king) and the 12 (they expected to all be cabinet like ministers in the new government). More than any other apostle, Peter tried to live up to his assigned position - and failed miserable. In the end, after Jesus was crucified, his last official act (as far as he was concerned) was to resign. The apostles came to him and asked �What shall we do now that he is dead and all our hopes are crushed� and his reply was �I - am going home.� But you cannot resign from what God has given - and so the turning point was the trick question �Peter - do you love me in a divine and sacrificial way� and with all dreams crushed Peter finally answered �No Lord, and I never really did - although I tried - my love for you has always been the small and limited love that one human has for a friend� - and THAT was all that Jesus was looking for! Because that IS the only real love a human is capable of! And Jesus re-assigned him �Feed - all my sheep.� which - like the raising of Lazareth - was not a request but carried with it all graces and ability to have the task done. Nature - be it rock, tree, flower� or human nature.. Can not ignore nor deny a direct command of God. Like Lazareth - it is said (the word spoken) and it is done. A prophet could not do that - only a God could do that.
The one thing Jesus demands of us - is honesty to ourselves. This - IS - humility. It shares the word root with - humanity. To be humble (far from being passive and weak) means to really be - human. To be as limited as humans really are.
So, to answer your question �How do we know?� - the answer is - we do not know until we need to know. When we really need to know - God will provide the guidance and answer. Until such time as we really need to know it is essentially none of our business and a great distraction from our - today - in which Providence has set about us the arrangement of circumstance and situation by which, through our human experience - he is doing his potter work within us.
Most often, Providence, to us, is what we call those few events of which we can not fully understand nor change. If someone dies, we might say �It was God�s will� in ways to comfort ourselves from the unknown. In general - for the things of which we can not figure out fully how they work - we ascribe them to God�s hand and as acts of Providence.
At one time when King David was returning from battle, a man appeared on a hill and began throwing rocks at him, yelling that David be curded! For killing his son (the son died in the battle). David�s body guards came near and asked permission to go up there and kill the man (or at least send him off) and David replied -something to the effect of �God is doing this - who am I to turn away from what God wishes to do to me.� David saw that that act was being governed and done by God and the man on the hill was only doing what God wanted done. And we think (Oh - now here is a rule! If I could practice faith like that!� but this view is wrong.
The only faith God asks of us - is the small faith to believe that he exists and that he can do what he promised. In deed, that is not much at all - except - it flies against all our well worked habits to plan and act and set up our life and the things about our life - in order to provide for ourselves the sure human knowledge that we have been working for what we consider to be our own well being. The only thing God asks of us to begin to place our future (and our past) into his hands which means that we begin to cease providing for ourselves and begin to throw ourselves on the mystery of Him providing situations and events in our daily lives - by which he - can - �let us make man into our image�.
Plenty of books written by saints and doctors of the church describe the events of our daily lives as - the living actions of God. We call them, chance, coincidence, plans worked out or failed - and saints call them - Providence. We call them humdrun, mundane, frustrating - and saint call them daily bread, the action of God, the will of God. Obviously - we want to leave our own view and adopt theirs - but how do we do that?
The answer is - we do not. Providence does it bit by bit. The faith, hope, and charity - God talks about - is something that HE puts into us - it is not anything we build up. �Unless God builds the house - it is worthless� (paraphrased.).
And this means that whatever our real need is - it will be supplied when it is needed. So how do we know a priest is giving to us - God? Because if it is that we really need the guidance - Providence has promised that it will be there - despite the personal holiness of the priest.
So - here is your answer. No path, no method, no rules, no �ways� exists - outside of the action of Providence to use it. And at the time and moment that you and Providence need it - it will be there. God has not placed here a church, as a way, a method, a set of rules, a guide book, and operations manual - that we can intellectually absorb and put into action in order to produce in ourselves either saint hood or to clear the way so sainthood might grow if God were so nice as to give it to us. No. There is a forming - a molding process, a day to day experience within arranged circumstances and situations - of which we wrongly attribute to anything else but God. We - ignore - our daily bread. We do not cooperate but instead we forge ahead insisting upon our own.
God requires our - will - our intentions - not our intellectual abilities. And when we enter into this daily interaction (and we do not need to recognize it of intellectually know why and what it is intended to do) then we have begun to enter into - reality ! For Providence (God governing and arranging all things and events of creation for the one purpose of forming us . The whole man, into something like himself� is the only reality that he brings into being. There is no other purpose or goal of reality.
When this �surrender� is done� slowly - one begins to realize - that there IS form, and purpose, to the events that come to you everyday. No set of rules, no mental training or formation - does any good when what is required is a day to day cooperation with God. The cooperation he asks - is something we begin to know - only when we are in the circumstances he has set up. Like an artist - he applies the strokes as needed� and like sons - we cooperate as needed.
It has often seemed to me that we are like mice in a maze with some scientist overlooking things. We go about looking for a way out of the maze but because of the walls we can not see which path exists the maze like the scientist over looking the project can. The mouse cannot understand human language - so it does not know the mind of the scientist. The scientist can reach down and prod the mouse into the right direction - but the mouse has no concept that this is what the scientist is doing. When the mouse eventual exists the maze through the help of the scientist - the mouse still has no concept that each time the scientist bothered it - he was actually helping. This is a poor similitude but we are the mice - our minds are human and can not grasp much of what God is doing to us - and we really do not need to know exactly what God is doing to us because it will eventual have the results that God desires - even if we have little idea what those results actually will be.
Imagine for a minute an invisible man. There is nothing about him you might see. Now imagine that that invisible man went into a pool of muddy water and came out. NOW - you would be able to see evidence that - here - is a man. There is still - nothing about him that you can see - but you would see the water and earth take the shape of him.
The guarantee is that if you decide to live in a day to day cooperation with Providence - then when a need comes - Providence will see that it is fulfilled - other than that - he allows no way, no path, no methods, no formula - by which we might walk to heaven without him (in his role as Providence).
