“I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.” Dorothy Day

A helping hand.

Or... 
Nah...  
It couldn't be...

Dear Fred,

Thanks for your email.

At any given moment, I imagine that a minuscule fraction of 1% of the population -- if any at all -- are counted among The Blessed. 

A literal reading of "Revelations" says only 144,000 souls eventually cross the bar.

Read any right-wing Christian blog and ask yourself: "Are these people blessed? Are these people happy?" 

Often as not, I find them desperate people, singularly lacking in faith, hope and love.

We are "all" sinners. 

We are all benighted.

As cradle Catholic George Carlin put it: "We are all fucked. It helps to remember that."

God knows I am no saint.

Of course, we are -- in light of Catholic moral theology -- not responsible for sins we "never knew" we were committing.

Personally, I have doubts. 

As I see it, deliberate "denial" -- and other diligent exercises to remain unaware -- are not innocent behaviors. 

We sin by commission and omission.

Even Human Law -- generally more lenient than Judeo-Christian Divine Law (with its continual threat of Eternal Torment in an Unquenchable Lake of Fire) -- is very clear that Ignorance of The Law is not an exculpatory circumstance.

When I contemplate "The Good Christians" and "The Good Mormons" whose lives are squeaky clean and whose faces beam like the sun itself, I simultaneously see atavistic, tribal belligerence plunging the United States into Perpetual Warfare - and for no good purpose. 

Almost always, this killing is, in some way, designed to please or appease the Old Testament's Thunder Sky God. (I am not saying that Thunder Sky God is the Old Testament's only God. But this bloodthirsty deity is the very one in whom Christians' "denied shadow" takes most ready refuge. (I have long held that American "Christians" would more honestly subscribe to Pharisaic Jewry.)

Instead of "loving one's enemies," Good Christians are hell-bent to constellate circumstances that "justify" zeal for foreign wars and to create stacked decks which imprison hugely disproportionate numbers of dark-skinned people here at home.

What do think of the following passage spoken by Yeshua himself? 

Matthew 25:31-46

American Standard Version 

³¹ But when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory:

³² and before him shall be gathered all the nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats;

³³ and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

³⁴ Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

³⁵ for I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in;

³⁶ naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

³⁷ Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, and fed thee? or athirst, and gave thee drink?

³⁸ And when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

³⁹ And when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

⁴⁰ And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me.

⁴¹ Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels:

⁴² for I was hungry, and ye did not give me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink;

⁴³ I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

⁴⁴ Then shall they also answer, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

⁴⁵ Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me.

⁴⁶ And these shall go away into eternal punishment: but the righteous into eternal life.

I am reminded of Dorothy Day's painful observation: “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.” 

Pax on both houses

Alan

On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 12:57 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:

Your point, if I may restate it, suggests a pattern of condemnation  over in right-wing country. I do not contest that. Except that it is easy to find a counter-example from this right-wing source -- no blood and thunder in this uplifting passage -- which does not disprove your point. In fact, the writers at this website are often too harsh --- except today, when they put up what you might agree is an inspiring message

Why Don’t the Blessed in Heaven Sin? Why do We?

Think of the worst pain you have ever experienced. Would you ever volunteer to subject yourself to it everlastingly and without hope of remission, for the sake of the pleasure of, say, eating a piece of chocolate cake?
That is what the prospect of sinning would be like for the blessed.
The thing is that we don’t reckon how unspeakably wonderful blessedness is. Take the most wonderful, sublime experience of your life, of any type, and it is as nothing to blessedness. “For one day in your courts is better than a thousand in my own room.” Cheerful good health and worldly happiness here on Earth is to blessedness as agony is to bliss.
Why aren’t we good? Because we have no idea what goodness is really like. As we develop spiritually, and become more spacious, and encompass more and more knowledge of the way things really are, we gain more and more knowledge of what it is like to be blessed. We begin to learn what goodness is like. At some point on the road to theosis, we pass the threshold of a phase change. In that metamorphosis, we go from being someone who is mostly crippled by sin and its sequelae in confusion, more error, more noise and confusion and ignorance, leading to further bad decisions, life catastrophes, and so forth, to someone who is not, to someone who is mostly free of the coils of this vicious cycle. The passage of that threshold consists mostly of an accession to understanding. It is as though the soul is enlarged by the infusion of  grace in the prayers and in the sacraments, so that it simply expands beyond the bounds of slavery to sin.
+++++++++++++
Thanks to Bruce Charlton, who provided the occasion of this thought.