Forget about Personal Sanctification. Align Yourself with a Diety!

I'm incensed right now.

I just heard a radio talk show host (filling in for Dennis Prager) state, "...for Christians as well as Jews, religion is not about being perfect. It's about aligning yourself with a diety who..." blah blah blah.

The words I really want to say right now rhyme with "Full Grit" becuase the fact is, for the vast majority of Christians throughout the vast majority of Christian history, religion is EXACTLY about the struggle toward perfection.The statement made by this radio talk show host is nothing more than a bunch of garbage put out by the feel-good school of modern pop-theology. Like other lies, it sounds so comforting as it rolls of the tounge but Catholics must not fall for it.

In the fifth chapter of Matthew alone, Jesus tells us:

• We are blessed if we are peacemakers and if we are meek, merciful, and hunger and thirst for righteousness.
• We will see God if we have a clean heart.
• Our conduct is to shine like a city set on a hill or a lamp on a lampstand so that our light will, "...shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."
• We must be more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees or we will not enter heaven.
• Those who are angry with their brother will face judgement and whomever calls his brother a fool will face the possibility of spending eternity in hell.
• If you even look at a woman with lust, you have committed adultery.
• If you divorce your wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and take another wife you have committed adultery and caused your wife to do the same!
• Not to seek revenge but to turn the other cheek.
• Pray for those who hate and persecute us.

And then Jesus tells us to "be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." Why? Because Jesus knows that nothing unclean will ever enter heaven. Stop and think about that for a moment. Wow!

The bottom line of christianity is our call to personal holiness; it is our primary vocation and should be our number one concern until the day we die.

This where the author is interrupted with the standard line about Jesus being the only perfect person, our bing sinnners, etc. And here is where the author politely asks you to either please stop talking and just listen or to please go back to looking at whatever pornography you were looking at before you clicked into this site. The fact is that many human beings have strived for perfection, and with God's help, have come pretty darn close. No, they weren't perfect human beings but they have achieved perfection in one or more of the virtues of prudence, justice, restraint, temperance, courage, fortitude, faith, hope, and charity. Catholics call these people Saints and we name our Churches after them and pray for them to help us be just like them.

Nobody claims that what the saints have done was easy. Nobody except Protestants claim that what they have done is impossible. Catholics claim that personal holiness - perfection in one or more of the virtues - is entirely possible if we make use of all the resources available to us through the Church, especially the sacraments of the Eucharist and Pennance and if God sees fit to give it to us.

And this is what I would like shove in the face of those who scoff at the Catholic Church's insistance that all mankind is called to personal holiness and therfor prefer to lie to their wives about where they really took that client on Friday night and the cost of the golf clubs in the back of the SUV...

You have no faith in God.

There, I said it. That's right. You have no faith in God. Do you think that God can't make you holy if you asked? Would you dare try? Yes, the thought of what I might actually have to do if I asked God to make me a saint and really meant it scares me to death too.

And what if God replied, "I have made priests to help you. I have created confession and pennance to forgive and heal you. I have given my son's body, blood, soul and divinity which you may receive daily to strengthen you. I have given the Rosary that you may ask the Mother of my son to pray for you. Pray earnestly and use these." What then? Would you claim that none of that stuff was true? Would you claim that oral confession is not in the Bible in spite of the fact that it's right there in the book of James? Would you claim that Jesus' mother cannot help you in spite of the fact that Revelation 12 says that she is queen of heaven with full access to the creator of heaven and earth and is also your mother? Would you claim that bread and wine cannot be turned into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, claiming that miracles only happen to individuals and that they can't possibly happen in the context of corporate worship?

We are told over and over to do things like persevere, endure and run the race to win. 2 Peter 1 tells us to "supplement our faith with virtue" and the living Word of God explains how the gate into heaven is narrow and how so very few will have the strength required to enter. And then Jesus sets the example when he washes feces from the feet of the person who will betray him and willingly submits himself to the cross for our sake. And yet we are told that personal sanctification is not important and even if it was, it is impossible to achieve.  

Our call to holiness, taking up our cross and denying ourselves daily, has become "Let go and let God". Now even that cliche has become "Aligning yourself with a diety."

Go ahead, align yourself with a diety if that is what you want to do. I have more faith in God than that.

-Tim-