Posted on 02/06/2020 9:17:14 AM PST by Salvation
Monsignor Pope Ping!
No. Those who have gone before us are what they are. There is nothing we can do to help or hurt them.
The Gospel of Matthew, 18:15-17 comes to mind:
Matt 18:15 If your brother* sins [against you], go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. Matt 18:16 If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Matt 18:17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church.* If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. In the National Prayer Breakfast, refers to those who sin such as saying "I am praying for you." The Gospel of Matthew comes to mind: Matthew 18:15-17
Article on the Prayer Breakfast this morning
Trump: I Dont Like People Who Say I Pray for You When They Know That Thats Not So
Anticipatory grace.
SMH.
It's such a narrow, tiny view of His eternal grace, in which -- by His magnanimity --- we so richly participate.
No. But Roman Catholicism attributes way more to this issue tha allowed by scripture. Theres nothing you can do for your great great great grandparents. Their eternal destiny was decided when they died.
Padre Pio reminds us that it is never too late to pray, whether a person died recently or long ago: For the Lord, everything is an eternal present. Those prayers had already been taken into account so that even now I can pray for the happy death of my great-grandfather!
Time is part of creation. It didn’t exist before the first day. There is no earth-time in Heaven.
God is not trapped in time. Creation does not constrain the Creator. Eternity is not trillions of years, infinite time. Eternity is the absence of time.
very well stated!
Time is part of creation. It didnt exist before the first day. There is no earth-time in Heaven.
God is not trapped in time. Creation does not constrain the Creator. Eternity is not trillions of years, infinite time. Eternity is the absence of time.
The problem with this line of thinking is that it means God is going to do something or allows something contrary to what He had revealed to us in His word.
*****
23Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
24For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us;
25nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own.
26Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
27And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,
28so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.
Hebrews 9:23-28 NASB
However, I think you don't quite get --- maybe none of us quite get ---the idea of timelessness.
All sequencing --- whether it's before-and-after, impetus-and-act, yesterday-today-tomorrow, cause and effect --- is based in time. Step out of time and it's all there before you at once: a God's-eye view.
The prophets, too, are granted this vision, if only for a moment. St. Benedict of Nursia was permitted to see the world in a beam of light. In Hebrews, speaking of the heroes of the OT, he Epistle tells us (11:13):
"All these people died in faith, without having received the things they were promised. However, they saw them and welcomed them from afar. And they acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. Now those who say such things show that they are seeking a country of their own.."
This is also shown in that Jesus Christ died for our salvation at a locatable historic time and geographic place: on a hill called Calvary, outside of Jerusalem, on or about 3:00 pm on Friday, April 3, A.D. 33 (others have proposed other exact dates,but they're all anchored in actual historic contexts within a very narrow possible time-frame.)
And Yet... Scripture says that God the Son is "the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8), a truth which Peter repeats with these words:(1 Peter 1:19-20) ...Christ, a Lamb without blemish or spot, Who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was manifested in these last times for your sake..."
So you've got things happening in time, but simultaneously in the all-times-timelessness of the Eternal "I AM" in the Eternal Now: Eternity.
In spiritual matters, in Christ, we are quite capable of jumping in at any moment to share spiritul gifts with anybody.
That's what "in Christ" means. The same yesterday, today and forever. I think Msgr. Pope's Scriptural explanation is actually quite good. How vast, how unimaginably intricate and effective is this Body of Christ --- in Whom we live and move and have our being.
His misunderstanding of this passage leads him into all kinds of false belief.
More training in Bible would help him.
Hebrews 11:3940 commentary:
... the great heroes of faith he had spoken of had not yet realized their eschatological hopes.
This fact shows that God had planned something better for them and us. It is indeed better for us that the future hopes they strove toward be delayed, since only thus could believers enjoy the present experience of becoming companions of the Messiah who leads them to glory.
As a result, the perfecting (cf. 10:14; 12:23) of the Old Testament worthiesthat is, the realization of their hopesawaits that of all believers.
And he has a metaphysics.
I'm not saying you should agree.
But we tend to hold that God embraces all of time in, as Monsignor Pope says (and he is by no means the first to say it) God's eternal now.
We all agree,don't we, that any good we do, any holiness we enjoy is not ours but God's. So if any benefit, any goodness follows from his goodness exercised on us, why must it be limited to our creaturely sequential experience of before, now, after? To him all time is now. We are conduits for his good now in February of 2020, and such good things as follow are applied now in 1218.
...
I can see an argument against the idea that good things God does through me might be of any use to anyone. But I think the time and space problems are a slam dunk.
It's almost an argument for karma.
Our praying for a deceased loved one may make us feel good but it has zero impact on where they are.
Rome's error on this is driven by their acceptance of 2 Maccabees as Scripture and further compounded by how they understand the book.
2 Maccabees contradicts the New Testament and is rejected as part of the Christian canon.
Scripture is clear that once you die, your eternal destination is set.
No amount of praying for the person can get them out of Hell and into Heaven.
No amount of praying for a person will shorten their time in purgatory because purgatory doesn't exist.
Now, do we pray for each other while here on earth? Absolutely. That is 100% supported by Scripture.
Nonsense.
We cannot "tap" into Paul or Peter or anyone else who is deceased nor can they "tap" into us.
You've gone way, way off the road on this one, Mrs.d. Almost New Age mysticism in some ways.
Where is Pope getting his interpretation of Hebrews 11:39-40?
Even the Haydock Catholic Commentary has no traditional Catholic interpretation of these specific verses.
I’m not convinced that the author of this article is providing a Catholic interpretation of these verses.
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