Please remember that you bless us with your presence, and may the Holy Spirit bring you His comfort and His peace. Join us!!!
Zoom Link:
For Study, Prayer and Fellowship - 8:00 AM PDT on 08/16/2025:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82968961343?pwd=LzcwVjJKcWVESDRURlhDcXlNV0JUdz09
Meeting ID: 829 6896 1343
Passcode: 77299ere:
08/16/2025 – Prologue – Nothing in the Gospels suggests that Jesus was interested in creating a religion*. He was offering everyone a chance for a peaceful, fulfilling and eternal life by describing a set of virtues that differed from the then dominant culture. Note: Upon Jesus’ ascension into heaven, He gave us the Holy Spirit to indwell within us; to help guide us to the virtuous life Jesus described. This was a shift from the judgement, competition, and aggression to the rule of a seeking, open heart. The Gospels represent a movement out of narcissism and paranoia to a more mature, self-possessed life of deep community. The Gospels do not focus on a plan for spiritual self-improvement or a virtuous personality. They are not a set of platitudes for living properly, but rather a supernatural, human transformation to guide us in our relationship with Him, to each other and to the world.
Since many will appropriate sex as a religion*; we must ask how does that help us win the cultural war? Thinking predates doing (hopefully) let us address our thinking: 1) Be realistic – do not expect the victims of the sexual revolution to be objective or rational. After all, we are challenging their god. We are waging spiritual warfare. We are condemning their ecstasy - Oy! 2) Always turn negatives (No, to sins) into the positive (Yes, to sinners). 3) Be clear to yourself and then to others that the reason sex is holy is because, like the Eucharist, it brings God to earth. Conception is a divine act, a miracle. 4) Recognize the presence of genuine human love even in sinful relationships. Human motives are almost always mixed and very unholy things are done with almost holy intentions or where our intentions are often confused: such as love and lust, charity and cupidity, all rather intertwined like cancer and healthy cells. 5) Use your imagination. Remember, “There except for the grace of God go I.” and What would you want your church to do for you? If you were involved in a perversion, you would want your church to deliver you rather than condemning or condoning your perversion. But how? “The expert in the law replied, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’ Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.’” [Luke 10:37]. And, 6) Make heroic sacrifices for the spiritually poor, the enslaved. Be a humble and anonymous hero of purity and chastity. Sacrifice your freedom of thought first of all. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive, every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” [2 Cor. 10:5] We are guided to not even think about it or yourself, but do it simply for the love of God and God’s lost children.
*Cambridge dictionary – religion: the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or any such system of belief and worship. Britannica dictionary – human beings, relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine or worthy of special reverence.
Think of it this way: when a body is threatened with disease it produces antibodies. The body of Christ is a real body and it produces real antibodies: saints. These antibodies are tailored to the disease. If the body is threatened with the disease of greed, the body produces heroes of poverty – St. Francis. If the body produces the disease of indifference, the body produces – Mother Teresa and her sisters of charity. If it is the disease of drunkenness, we find heroes of sobriety – Thousands of members in AA reaching out to one drunk at a time. These are only a few of the diseases that afflict mankind around the world. We must produce antibodies for them all. We are now faced with the newest - sexual sins. (Note: Please recall the historical undulations of all human behavior.)We, now in desperate need, must seek out volunteers for this battlefield. What is common for all these folks is that they are simply not sin-avoiders, but saints. Not just good people, but little Christs, hands and minds in the likenessof Christ affixed to an imperfect body. It is they who will endure human sacrifice to use the medicines that the Great Physician, in His divine wisdom, uses to save His world.
The strongest weapon in the world is sanctity. We often under-employ the power of sanctity because we associate it with holiness and holiness with ‘being nice’. [John 14:27] “Peace, I leave with you: my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” We also tend to have the opinion of saints as kind, withdrawn, gentle, holy, not abrasive. But real saints are not nice, they are warriors. They bother people. They are martyred. Jesus said. “…, If they persecute me, they will persecute you also. If they obey my teachings, they will obey yours also.” [John15:20b] Nice people are not taken to be nailed to a cross. Do we judge Jesus by our ‘nice’ idea of what a saint should be, or do we judge our idea of what a saint is by our understanding of Jesus? Why is the peace of Jesus different from the peace the world may give us? The world gives us peace with the world, the flesh and the devil. Jesus gives us peace with our neighbor, self and God. The world gives us peace based on greed (of the world), lust (of the flesh) and pride (of Satan). Jesus gives us peace based on poverty, chastity and obedience – ANDthese are the weapons that fight greed, lust and pride. Candidly, the two kinds of peace are at war with each other. The saints know this.
The world thinks rightly that saints are masters of love, and wrongly that love is nice. The love Jesus came to give is as distinctive as the peace He came to give, and He so told us. He said the whole world would be able to distinguish Christians from everyone else by the different kinds of love they had. [John 13:35] “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” If this love were not distinctive, how could the world distinguish Christians from the others? Saints love true peace. They hate false peace – peace based on lies. Saints abhor all violence and intolerance against sinners. They also dislike tolerance of sin. Saints love sinners more and sins less, than anyone else. These eccentricities often puzzle people. In Jesus’ day, the first of the two things that saints do – loving sinners - offended Jesus’ enemies. This was true because the fashion of those times was truth without peace. Today, the second of these two things that saints do – abhorring sins – offends the enemies of Christ and His church – a peace without truth.
Stated another way – in Jesus’ day those who loved sinners were accused of loving sin. Today those who hate sins are accused of hating sinners. Anyone today who speaks against sodomy is accused of “homophobia.” To speak out against fornication or adultery is accused of …, wait no one speaks out against these sins. To speak out against abortion, one is called “divisive” or “judgmental”. In fact, to state the church’s perennial teachings or the teachings of Christ on the controversial issues of sexual immorality and its illegality, is accused of “hate speech”. Saints are not nice. They are embroiled in controversy – always - and by necessity! Saints are devoted to truth just as they are to love; they will not be false prophets, giving folks what they want, rather than what they need. No matter how unpopular the job description of the saints might be, their double devotion to truth and love is the only weapon that can win the war against the culture of death that surrounds us. Only saints can save the world! AMEN
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