“We believe that we have the precise image of what Jesus looked like on this earth,” said Professor Giulio Fanti of the University of Padua.Read the story. See the slide show.
Question: What’s the point of being a Christian? What makes Christianity the “true faith”?
Answer: The main point of being a Christian is to faithfully “align” ones self with Jesus Christ, in the hope of overcoming eternal death.
Christianity is the “true faith” because Jesus Christ is a real, historical person who actually proved he was God by his holy life, his miracles, his salvific death (precisely as prophesied, well in advance) and his glorious resurrection.
By his resurrection, Jesus Christ proved that he had overcome the power of death and only through faith in Christ are we able to maintain that blessed hope for ourselves, as well as our friends and loved ones.
Then, we have 2,000 years of continuous testimony to divine revelation and truth by the Catholic Church, which Jesus personally founded, authorized, empowered and perpetually guaranteed – a church which has miraculously withstood the scandals, abuses, shortcomings and general malfeasance of the heinous sinners who continue to lead, govern and belong to it.
No other faith tradition offers the slightest hope of overcoming eternal death, nor does any other faith tradition have the ability to provide the other very significant benefits of Christianity, because the best they can offer is some form of temporary happiness on earth, followed by an eternity separated from God.
Are there ways we can distinguish attachments from ordinary and proper desires? What are the signs that we are too attached to someone or something?
To address questions like these I turn to a great teacher of mine in matters spiritual, Fr. Thomas Dubay. Fr. Dubay died more than seven years ago but left a great legacy of teaching through his books, audio recordings, and programs at EWTN. I would like to summarize what he teaches in his spiritual classic, Fire Within, a book in which he expounds on the teachings of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.
Professor Karl Skorecki, an expert on DNA and the discoverer of the “Cohen Gene”, which identifies members of the Jewish priestly caste through genetic testing, explained to Breaking Israel News how the findings harmonize with the Biblical account.
“Analysis of mitochondrial DNA of all contemporary humans sampled today indicates that all of the different variations in the sequence of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) trace back, or converge to an original sequence in a given woman,” he explained.
“That woman, Mitochondrial Eve, transmitted her mtDNA sequence to her offspring, and over generations slight variations in sequence occurred and accumulated, leading to the diversity of existent sequences in men and women populating the earth today.”
Question: So god required a sacrifice and then he sacrificed his son who was also himself?
Answer: Not exactly.
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three divine and distinct persons who essentially constitute the one, true God.
1 X 1 X 1 = 1
The 2nd person of the Holy Trinity (the Son) took on flesh and became man, while never ceasing to be God. We know him as Jesus Christ.
Jesus did for the human race what Adam failed to do: He remained totally and completely obedient to God the Father, even unto death on the cross.
Since Jesus is the eternal God, it is impossible for him to commit any type of sin, so Jesus is immune to the wickedness and snares of the devil. Jesus’ act of total obedience to his heavenly Father, as one of us and on our behalf, served to appease God’s wrath (due to our sins) redeem mankind and “make” the peace between man and God.
When Jesus permitted the forces of evil to unjustly put him to death, he became the perfect and spotless sacrifice for the sins of the world and the forces of evil became subject to divine judgment, subsequently forfeiting the dominion over all the earth that they enjoyed after “the fall of man”.
When he rose again three days later, Jesus defeated death and proved his claim to divinity, as well as his mastery over Satan, sin and death. Jesus is now the King if Kings and Lord of Lords, wielding all power over heaven and earth, death and hell.
Fallen mankind does not have that type of power. Only Jesus does.
Through faithful allegiance to Jesus Christ, along with baptism into his church, the power to overcome death becomes available to all who truly seek it. This is primarily a function of divine grace, which is a free gift from God.
All we need do is accept God’s saving grace (which Jesus deliberately obtained for us by his life, death and resurrection) and make a free will choice to cooperate with that grace, as a full, faithful member of his church, and then, hope for the best.
God will do the rest. His grace is sufficient.
For the first 300 years of Christianity, there was no Bible as we know it today.
Christians had the Old Testament Septuagint, and literally hundreds of other books from which to choose.
The Catholic Church realized early on that she had to decide which of these books were inspired and which ones weren’t. The debates raged between theologians, Bishops, and Church Fathers, for several centuries as to which books were inspired and which ones weren’t.
In the meantime, several Church Councils or Synods, were convened to deal with the matter, notably, Rome in 382, Hippo in 393, and Carthage in 397 and 419. The debates sometimes became bitter on both sides.
One of the most famous was between St. Jerome, who felt the seven books were not canonical, and St. Augustine who said they were. Protestants who write about this will invariably mention St. Jerome and his opposition, and conveniently omit the support of St. Augustine. I must point out here that Church Father’s writings are not infallible statements, and their arguments are merely reflections of their own private opinions.
When some say St. Jerome was against the inclusion of the seven books, they are merely showing his personal opinion of them. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion. However, A PERSONS PRIVATE OPINION DOES NOT CHANGE THE TRUTH AT ALL.
There are always three sides to every story, this side, that side, and the side of truth. Whether Jerome’s position, or Augustine’s position was the correct position, it had to be settled by a third party, and that third party was the Catholic Church.
Now the story had a dramatic change, as the Pope stepped in to settle the matter. In concurrence with the opinion of St. Augustine, and being prompted by the Holy Spirit, Pope St. Damasus I, at the Council of Rome in 382, issued a decree appropriately called, “The Decree of Damasus”, in which he listed the canonical books of both the Old and New Testaments. He then asked St. Jerome to use this canon and to write a new Bible translation which included an Old Testament of 46 books, which were all in the Septuagint, and a New Testament of 27 books.
ROME HAD SPOKEN. THE ISSUE WAS SETTLED.
“THE CHURCH RECOGNIZED ITS IMAGE IN THE INSPIRED BOOKS OF THE BIBLE. THAT IS HOW IT DETERMINED THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE.” – Fr. Ken Baker
Question: Precisely what type of “peace” are we hoping for when we say “Peace Be With You” at Mass?
Answer: The “peace beyond all understanding” that the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity became man in order to declare, is the peace between sinful mankind and God, which could only be achieved by the salvific work of Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son.
When we say “Peace Be With You” at Mass, we should be thinking something like this: “May God, according to the grace obtained for us by his divine son, forgive all our sins, justify us in faith and personally invite us to spend eternity with him, in Heaven.”
For people of true faith, that should also be enough to mitigate any of the temporarily anxieties and worries brought on by the stresses and strains of our mundane existence here on earth, until the day that we might be privileged to experience God as he really is.
