Good Friday 2024
There are 5 precepts in the Catholic Church. What is a precept? The Catechism says that:
“The obligatory character of these laws are the necessary minimum
in the spirit of prayer and moral effort, in the growth in love of God and
neighbor:
The
first precept ("You shall attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of
obligation unless you are sick or caring for someone who is sick
The
second precept is that you shall confess your sins at least once a year. This required confession at least once a year
ensures proper preparation for the Eucharist.
95% of Catholics surveyed reported NOT following either the first
precept or not following the 2nd or not following either one.
St. Paul in his 2nd Letter to the Thessalonians says
there will be a great falling away from the Catholic Church during or near the
time of the anti-Christ. 95% of American
Catholics have admitted themselves that they don’t take Jesus and the
Church seriously.
And Jesus asks a haunting question in Luke’s Gospel…when the Son
of Man comes, will he find Faith on Earth…
One of the most beautiful descriptions of our standard approach to
Jesus was written by Fr. Thomas Merton.
Fr. Merton writes this:
"I suppose it is usual for elder brothers, when they are still
children, to feel themselves demeaned by the company of a brother four or five
years younger, whom they regard as a baby and whom they tend to patronise and
look down upon. So when Russ and I and Bill made huts in the woods out of
boards and tar-paper which we collected around the foundations of the many
cheap houses which the speculators were now putting up, as fast as they could,
all over Douglaston, we severely prohibited John Paul and Russ’s little brother
Tommy and their friends from coming anywhere near us. And if they did try to
come and get into our hut, or even to look at it, we would chase them away with
stones.
When I think now of that part of my childhood, the picture I get
of my brother John Paul is this: standing in a field, about a hundred yards
away from the clump of sumachs where we have built our hut, is this little
perplexed five-year-old kid in short pants and a kind of a leather jacket,
standing quite still, with his arms hanging down at his sides, and gazing in
our direction, afraid to come any nearer on account of the stones, as insulted
as he is saddened, and his eyes full of indignation and sorrow. And yet he does
not go away. We shout at him to get out of there, to beat it, and go home, and
wing a couple of more rocks in that direction, and he does not go away. We tell
him to play in some other place. He does not move.
And there he stands, not sobbing, not crying, but angry and
unhappy and offended and tremendously sad. And yet he is fascinated by what we
are doing, nailing shingles all over our new hut. And his tremendous desire
to be with us and to do what we are doing will not permit him to go away. The
law written in his nature says that he must be with his elder brother, and do
what he is doing: and he cannot understand why this law of love is being so
wildly and unjustly violated in his case.
Many times it was like that. And in a sense, this terrible
situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal
will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that
we simply do not want it. We work to separate ourselves from that
love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it.”
We all need to stop throwing stones at Jesus to keep Jesus away
from us. We need to let Jesus, who is
perfect love, flood our hearts.
Jesus is not a dictator nor is he an egomaniac who demands that we
worship Him on Sundays and confess our sins once a year…Jesus made us and knows
what is best for us…let us recommit to allowing perfect love to once again
flood our being. Amen.
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