Posted on 09/07/2013 5:48:38 AM PDT by markomalley
Christians must never forget that the centre of their life is Jesus Christ. That was the message of Pope Francis at Mass this morning at the Casa Santa Marta. The Pope emphasised that we must overcome the temptation to be “Christians without Jesus” or Christians that seek only devotions, without Jesus.
Pope Francis dedicated his whole homily to the centrality of Jesus in the life of the Christian. “Jesus,” he said, “is the centre. Jesus is the Lord. And yet, he maintained, this is not always understood well, “it is not easily understood.” Jesus is not a lord of this or that, but is “the Lord, the only Lord.” He is the centre that “regenerates us, grounds us”: this is the Lord, “the centre.” The Pharisees of today’s Gospel, Pope Francis noted, “make so many commandments the centre of their religiosity.” Even today, “if Jesus is not at the centre, there will be many other things,” so that “we meet many Christians without Christ, without Jesus:
“For example, those who have the sickness of the Pharisees and are Christians that put their faith, their religiosity in so many commandments, so many. ‘Ah, I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this. Christians of this attitude . . . ‘But why do you do this?’ – ‘No, it must be done!’ – ‘But why?’ – ‘Ah, I don’t know, but it must be done.’ And Jesus – where is He? A commandment is valid if it comes from Jesus: I do this because the Lord wants me to do this. But if I am a Christian without Christ, I do this and I don’t know why I have to do it.”
There are, he added, “other Christians without Christ: those who only seek devotions . . . But Jesus is not there. If your devotions bring you to Christ, that works. But if you remain there, something’s wrong.” There’s another kind of Christian without Christ, he continued, “those who seek things that are a little uncommon, a little special, that go back to private revelations,” while the Revelation concluded with the New Testament. Pope Francis warned about the desire of these Christians to go to “a spectacle of revelation, to hear new things.” But, the Pope exhorted them, “take the Gospel!”:
“‘But Father, what is the rule for being a Christian with Christ, and not becoming a Christian without Christ. What is the sign of a person that is a Christian with Christ?’ The rule is simple: only that which brings you to Jesus is valid, and only that is valid that comes from Jesus. Jesus is the centre, the Lord, as He Himself says. Does this bring you to Jesus? Go ahead. Does this commandment, this attitude, come from Jesus? Go ahead. But if it doesn’t bring you to Jesus, and if it doesn’t come from Jesus, but . . . if you don’t know, it’s a bit dangerous.”
And again the Pope asks, “What is the sign that I am a Christian with Jesus?” The sign, he said, is simple. It is the sign of the one born blind that prostrated himself before Jesus to adore Him:
“But if you aren’t able to adore Jesus, you’re missing something. A rule, a sign. The sign is: I am a good Christian, I am on the path of a good Christian if I do that which comes from Jesus and if I do that which leads me to Jesus, because he is the centre. The sign is: I am capable of adoring, the adoration. This prayer of adoration of Jesus. The Lord makes us understand that He alone is the Lord, the unique Lord. And He gives us, too, the grace of loving Him so much, of following Him, of going along the path that He has shown us.”
what an idiot. if you are “without Jesus” you are NOT Christian
That’s what Marx did. He made the tenets of Christianity acceptable to non believers. Ironically Communism acquired all the tenets of religion. Symbols such as the hammer and sickle, icons and saints ( Lenin (who in a crude way can be compared to St. Paul, Stalin, Mao, and hordes of minor luminaries) epic tales such as the Russian revolution, the Great March, distinctive orders such as the Jesuits ( KGB, Comintern), and fervent followers that have an emotional commitment and belief that rivals that of any religious fundamentalist. Of course the Pope is right. Communism was rotten and fundamentally evil at its core.
The world is full of “cultural Christians.”
Quotation marks are sometimes used to indicate irony or the opposite of the literal meaning . Hence “Christians without Jesus”.
Mark, thank you for posting this. Allen - Excellent point.
SendShaq: Obviously you miss his point that many think that one can be a Christian without Jesus. It may be obvious, but in today’s world, it is NOT. Be slower to call the Pope or any other Christian, an “idiot” for teaching the truth to those who either do not know or do not believe.
there is a person where I work who is an atheist (quiet, not ‘evangelical’) who believes that the morality of society comes from within individual people; he does not accept that it is only because of Judeo-Christian morality that allows this country and Western society to exist. He does not see a correlation between the break down of current society as resulting from the constant attacks on Judeo-Christian faith and beliefs. And for the type of work he does, his inability to see this disconnect is astonishing to me.
Who is the idiot to which you refer?
Is it the author of the sermon?
Or are you speaking as the idiot?
I go to church every Sunday, twice unless there is a football game on, i do my duty.
I make sure i have my no smoking signs where they can be seen.
If i see some one smoking i say to them :don,t you know them cigarettes will kill you: or don,t you know that you will go to hell for using tobacco?
I heard a preacher say one time that you were supposed to stop and give people a hand if they needed it, but anyone knows that if they were going to church and living right they would not be in the position to need any help.
What in the world does the Gospel have to do with it any way?
“take the Gospel!”
Thank-you Mark!
Thank-you for your coments. What it all comes down to is the need for relationship with the Lord Jesus.
Thank-you Mark and God Bless!
You are missing the point by a mile. The Pope is right and I just hear a sermon on the crisis in America of Christ-less churches
Please, do not speak ill of Pope Francis.
I sense it is a call for ALL of us to pray for our own spiritual conversion as well as for the spiritual conversion of others to Christ.
"Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you" (Jn 6:53).
It’s important to note that for the most part, socialism is a *parody* of Christianity. The easiest way to imagine this is if the Bible was rewritten to make man, not God, the center of the book, both old and new testaments.
Of course, this idea is full of holes, but socialist theorists got around the problem by rewriting any Biblical elements as needed to justify their beliefs.
This began in earnest with the “historical criticism” of the “higher critics”, from the 17th to the 20th Centuries. It was loaded with assumptions not based in facts, but opinions. For example, “Hebrews did not eat unclean animals like pork because of diseases like trichinosis.”
The idea that science displaces God also figures prominently in socialist theory, which used to be called “scientific socialism”.
This makes it especially ludicrous, as they try to justify the atheist use of Biblical doctrines in socialist faith based theories.
A favorite of these justifies radical, anti-human environmentalism. In the Bible, Adam and Eve are booted out of the Garden of Eden for eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Socialism rewrites this as a goal of socialism to return mankind to Eden (which they call the State of Nature), by renouncing the ideas of good and evil. In short, if a person becomes amoral, he is moving back to nature.
And this concept has all sorts of weird and perverse permutations, from the utterly genocidal, wiping out of most of humanity, to ideas like personal amorality or immorality “free love” as being good. To radical environmentalism, ala Al Gore.
Why do democrats abhor energy production? Simple, because it is “not natural”. Religious idiots.
In any event, the one thing that socialists cannot tolerate in their “faith” is God, in any significant way. They can be called “atheist Christians”, in that they want all the good stuff; but they are so arrogant they think themselves like God, or a substitute for God.
How about Christians without the demigoddess Mary as Queen of Heaven? Or a Church without graven images? Or a Church without infant baptisms? Jesus we need, the others need to be discarded as unBiblical.
Mary is not a demi goddess as you say. She is the mother of Jesus, true man and true God.
Where do you get your mistaken information, BTW?
**discarded as unBiblical.**
Maryh is in the Bible, or doesn’t your Bible have the Book of Luke?
LOL!
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