The First American Pope
Page 17
CHAPTER 17
POPE JOHN XXIV’S ADDRESS AT GELORA BUNG KARNO, IN JAKARTA, INDONESIA ON SEPTEMBER 28, 2014
CONTROVERSIES OF GRACE VS FREE WILL
Do you believe in God? If you do, we are not alone. God is everywhere. Our souls are the repository of the Holy Spirit. The Saints and Angels are among us, helping us in our time of need. Our dearly departed whose lives merited eternal life are with God. They are there to watch and intercede for us, so we are never alone.
The souls in purgatory are being purified. They are not in hell, for that is for those who are eternally dammed. So where is purgatory? Many have believed that living in some cases has been pure hell, or too difficult with circumstances beyond their control. Have the lives of our Saints been without trials, tribulations, and some cases martyrdom?
Purgatory exists as a spirit world side by side among the living. We do not see them, but they are spending time among us to gain purification for their stained souls, doing those things by which they would have merited eternal life if they had done so while living, earning their wings so to speak. Unlike prisoners in society who earned time for good behavior, are paroled, but who nevertheless having not changed their characters or behavior are often doomed to repeat the process. Purgatory is not a cleansing fire to gain parole, but one which allows the souls to attempt to influence the living to respond with grace and dignity in the way of the Lord. It is just and proper that we continue to pray for these souls, so that they finally experience eternal union with the Creator.
The fallen angel, the demon, exists in our world, to capture or entice souls with greed, lust, murder, and to sin against all the commandments of God or church teachings guiding them against what is good and divine. So there is within the world all manner of evil worshipers and servants of the devil, including the demon. They are out there enticing future followers.
All Christian believers must be diligent in every aspect of their lives to lead wholesome lives, and to seek the strength of the sacraments and grace from the Trinity to remain strong on their life’s journey to eternal salvation. There is no shortcut to heaven. It is truly a life of struggles, heartaches, and immeasurable difficulties to achieve success toward our heavenly reward. However, if we follow the examples of the saints, and accept the burdens of life, we can also gain the graces to endure those struggles by the generosity of spirit. Consider the “Beatitudes” in your life struggles; their truths enable us to be beneficiaries of their wisdom in understanding the meaning of sacrifices. For when you see the fruits of your labors, you will rejoice in the Spirit of God and that will nourished your souls to keep on the journey.
Many cry out with vengeance at God for causing world catastrophes and heinous tragic events in people’s lives. God is not the cause of these tragedies, but the evil forces at work all over the world, and those that would sabotage our earthly, monetary, and physical entities of world structures, governments, and human beings for their own selfishness or grandiosity. If one looks at some of the horrific calamities that have occurred in the world, you need only look at the horrors of wars and the reasons countries go to war. When a life is taken by another, the repercussions felt by the peoples whose lives are touched by that person, causes immeasurable harm and difficulties for possibly a lifetime of events. It is like a stone thrown in a pond and the waves it creates; human lives are changed forever. In natural cataclysmic disasters such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, devastating fires covering hundreds of miles it is often exacerbated by human decisions of peoples or governments that have long term influences like climate change that impact thousands or millions of lives around the world. It is the iconic struggle of evil vs. good, devil vs. God.
Greed results in companies or persons choosing to compromise economic principles or structures with inferior materials in order to have a greater profit, at the risk of people’s lives if that structure fails. Ethnic genocide, territorial disputes, earthly treasures all have contributed to conflicts of war and devastation.
This is why our Lord Jesus has come back to us, to reverse the direction we as humans must change in order to save our world from its own destruction. We as Christian must unite as one, to give people and their leaders the examples by which we can live in peaceful co-existence. To succeed will be to eliminate wars, atrocities, famines and evil from this world. It is not an easy task, but it is what our Lord Jesus is asking us to do. Unlike the crusades of the early church, this is not about military might, but one of persuading others of what the Christian spirit and beliefs are all about.