Definitions of God, Love, Faith, Prayer,
Evil, Sin, Innocence, Worship, Meekness,
Mysticism, Beauty, Prayer, and Messiah
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The sources herein include Thomas Aquinas,
Francis de Sales, Catherine of Siena, Louis
of Montfort, Pius XII, & St. Bonaventure.
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Those who appreciate beauty become the
beauty they appreciate. In a similar fashion,
the mystery of love is that of transforming
into the object of your love. This includes
transforming into evil, if this happens to be
the object of your love.
The Virgin Mary once appeared to Saint Dominic after he failed to convert the Albigensians, despite his athletic effort to do so. She told him that he was trying to cultivate a harvest where no rain had fallen. She then told him that the Angelic Psalter (today's Rosary) was the way to convert souls.
The modus operandi of the Virgin Mary is to first send rain, in gentle drops. Her next mode of action is dependent upon the way the people involved respond to her gentleness. The following are elements of the Faith of Peter, written like a penny catechism.
That's to say, they're rain drops of the Faith. After all, kindness and truth are a package deal, as was first stated in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. The Holy Spirit is Kindness in essence. The Holy Spirit revealed truth. He always proceeds in gentleness. The Virgin Mary brings the gentleness.
One more point to make here: Theology = Faith seeking reason, as to why a doctrine was declared as it was.
1. Mysticism. To start, what is mysticism? ANS: Mysticism is contact with God. This is an official church definition and not a personal opinion.
My personal opinion is that mysticism is the act of delving into the infinite and supernatural, while simultaneously abandoning the finite and animalistic. This comprises detaching oneself from utterly worthless vanities such as "self esteem."
My alternate definition of mysticism is transformation. Transformation was a theme of Saint Catherine of Siena, incidentally. She's a doctor of the church.
2. God. How is God correctly defined, aside of the only being in all of existence who never had a beginning?
ANS: In status, God is the Unmoved Mover and theC atalyst that never was catalyzed. In essence, God is the infinite perfection of every virtue in existence simultaneously occurring in the same one being.
2b. It is not merely that God loves, communicates in truth, grants mercy, and stays faithful. Rather, God is charity & mercy itself, as well as kindness & truth, justice & peace, fairness & generosity, patience & temperance, fortitude & heroism, gratitude & fidelity, prudence & innocence, etc.
2b. God being the Unmoved Mover means that existence is no chance occurrence.
You realize this when you follow the trail of cause and effect. At the end of every
trail is the discovery that everything traces itself to an Unmoved Mover, as well as an Uncatalyzed Catalyst. Either someone or a plurality of someone brought into existence all that came to be.
Even if you are an unwavering adherent to the Big Bang Theory, you have to admit that no one has ever been able to explain how the unfathomably dense initial atom, with its billions of galaxies locked inside of it, came into existence.
2c. God is transcendent, being untouchable by all that is seen and unseen. Yet, the same God is immanent, in being fully involved in all that is. In fact, God is more real in any one of us than any one of us is real in ourselves. God is so intimately involved in any one person that there's a recessed area in each human soul reserved solely for God. Not even angels are capable of reaching it.
2d. The spiritually fatal error in modern physicists' search for the God Genome or the God Particle, in order for it to officially recognize the existence of God, consists in the reality that God is Spirit and Truth. Physicists are looking for an infinite spirit in the world of the finite physical.
3. Humanity's Existence. The aforementioned statements make one conclude that God is the executive producer of man's existence, no matter how the same one God arranged for that existence to come into being. In light of this, what was God's ultimate goal in creating humanity?
ANS: God created mankind, in order to honor the love between the Father and Son, as well as honoring the virtues within the Father and the Son. The goal was to give three dimensional life to these virtues and ideals.
In addition, man was created, so that God unite with his creation, by becoming man. His prior creation was already made. It was called, Angel. But, God is already like Angel, in being pure spirit and intellect. So, something remotely different from God was made.
In sequence, God's purpose for sharing in man's humanity was so that man could share in God's divinity. This is mentioned in one of the Liturgical prayers in the Canon of the Mass, concerning the consecration of the hosts.
3b. This is where the mystery of love is activated. Firstly, the Mystery of Love that of transforming into the object of your love. In this mystery, God so loved mankind that God became man. Love is transformational.
3c. The phenomenon of God uniting with God's creation translates into the concept of Messiah. Now, Messiah means Anointed One. It is synonymous with the title, Christ. The phenomenon of the Anointed One consists in humanity being anointed by the divinity of God in the same one person. The Anointed One, therefore, has to be God or else the union of divinity and humanity can't occur. This is where recognition of the existence of the Son of God comes to the fore. The Son of God is the only one in existence who can become man and then activate the anointing of divinity upon humanity. The union of the divine with the human is the Hypostatic Union.
3d. Without the existence of the Son of God, the existence of an entire God is completely impossible.
Moreover, in order for God to exist as an eternal, all-powerful, and life-giving being, such a God can only exist as a Trinity. This means that God is not a him or a her. Rather, God is a "them" who is only properly described in the third person plural of "they" when describing the actions of God.
3e. God is a spiration from one infinite person that is requited by a second infinite person. The spiration of all which is infinitely virtuous is the third infinite person.
In fact, the second infinite person is the Raison d'Etre of the first infinite person, and the spiration itself is the third infinite person of this united Divine Essence.
3f. A person who has no beginning sends forth a spiration that says, "Let there be light."
A second person who also has no beginning responds by stating, "So be it. Let there be light." A third person as infinite as the other two is the light itself. This means that God is a:
1} spiration sending forth all that is virtue, 2} a requitement of that spiration in consenting to all that is virtue, 3} a living light that is the infinite virtue, itself. God is a crossfire of love, with the third person being the fire which is being eternally exchanged between the first and second person of the endlessly united being.
3f. Some people claim that there is no God, because there has never been any quantitative measurement of God found to exist. The answer to this is that, if you could measure God, then it wouldn't be God whom you're measuring. This is because the Eternal God is transcendent and incomparable.
Secondly, quantitative measurement denotes physical structure. God doesn't have a molecular structure to put under an electron microscope. God is in all things only in that God is involved in all things. In essence, God is Spirit and Truth
4. There is a difference between being blessed and being anointed. In light of this, it is written, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God." What does it mean to be poor? ANS: To be poor means to be constantly dependent upon God.
4b. It is also written, "Blessed are the meek." What does it mean to be meek?
ANS: To be meek means to be able to take a hit without hitting back. Meekness is an element of temperance.
5. Beauty. What is beauty? ANS: Beauty is Harmony & Proportion. The source to this statement is Saint Francis de Sales.
In addition, beauty is not limited to the face, the physique, a sunset, or a starlit night. That is to say, it's not limited to the physical world.
5b. For example, you can engage in beautiful speech, where the subject matter is in
harmonious context, with all subsets of the subject matter getting proportionate attention. You can also have a beautiful relationship, consisting in harmony between each person involved, as well as proportionate interaction between the same.
In sequence, a beautiful relationship is one where the rapport between the people in the relationship is not lopsided.
5b1. Beauty exists as a reality, and not as a matter of personal preference. Now, what one person might find attractive is not always something beautiful. There's a difference between attraction and beauty. Being that God exists in proportionate harmony between three divine persons, God is Beauty itself.
6. Evil. What is evil? ANS: Evil is the lack of a good which ought to be present but is absent. Evil is deprivation.
6b. Can there be a God when so much evil has been allowed to perpetuate throughout the centuries?
ANS: The answer is Yes. God did not will the evil to transpire. The Divine Essence did not give permission for it to happen. That's why there is something known as sin. Plus, the existence of evil in the world cannot negate the existence of God. In fact, there is evil done in the name of a God whose image was distorted by those doing the evil.
Evils on earth perpetuate, only because few people on earth seek to stop them from happening. It is NOT God letting the evil happen. It's mankind letting it happen. The answer is that evil is prevailing throughout the earth because either you, in your cowardice, let it happen or others in their cowardice won't help you stop any evil you trying to stop.
In the alternate, those in power are so self-centered and inconsiderate that they let evil perpetuate. Yet, the self-centered mind set is the mindset of a coward. The gutless cowardice of men is what lets evil prevail on earth. It's known as the sin of cooperation.
Sin is the act of spiritual suicide. It's the act of turning away from God. It consists in jumping off the bridge which is God. More specifically, sin is the act of seeking to negate your existence, even though you were created to exist for ever.
In fact, sin is the act of becoming nothingness itself. Whereas God is Love, a obstinate sinner in the state of mortal sin is Nothingness. Mention of the nothingness of sin appears in the Dialogues of St. Catherine of Siena. The text includes private revelations conveyed to Catherine.
6b. Why does God stand by, letting evil occur, instead of stopping it by supernatural intervention? ANS: It is allowed, in order to bring forth a greater state of good than that which would have existed if the evil in question never occurred. God stands by, while evil completes its destruction, so that God can construct a greater good than was previously there.
6c. It's also a matter of the pruning effect. The pruning of tree branches results in the vibrant growth of the tree being pruned. God allows evil, so that the pruning of the soul can occur.
6d. This principle is illustrated in the discipline of weight lifting. Lifting weights results in muscle actually being torn down. A day of rest follows the workout, thereby enabling the body to rebuild. Thus, the weight lifting routine in itself does not build the body, but rather the days of recuperation, after each workout, do.
In like fashion, evils in themselves don't benefit anyone. Rather, its the rebuilding that occurs after the damage has been done which brings forth the greater state of good.
7. Sinners. What is a sinner? ANS: A sinner is a person who loves evil and then becomes in essence the evil loved.
Evil, too, is part of the transformational mystery of love. After all, there is such a thing as the Mystery of Evil. It's some thing that has been ongoing throughout the history of mankind ...
... throughout the tragic history of mankind. It was Saint Bernadette Soubirous said that a sinner is a person who loves evil. She was the Lourdes apparition girl of 1858. She is the patron saint of asthmatics.
8. Worship. What actually is worship? ANS: Worship is the act of attributing the beginning and end of your existence to someone or something.
9. Innocence. Does Innocence mean naivety? Does it denote docility? Does it mean to be meek? Does it mean to be uninvolved? ANS: The answer is no, in all four instances. Innocence is freedom from sin ... freedom from spiritual death.
9b. Spiritual death is the absence of the sanctifying grace which should be flowing through the soul of the person in mortal sin.
However, everyone is being given actual graces, in order for that person to be able to do good and even be spared from evil consequences. Actual graces are given, in order to enable the person to either return to the state of sanctifying grace or remain in that state. The opposite of actual grace is temptation.
9c. The Grace of God is the only thing which enables a person to do good. In fact, prayer is an essential element in preventing the absence of needed graces. In addition, the true Sister Lucia Martos of Fatima fame, stated that a person can learn more from prayer than through reading volumes of books, during her pre-1957 days.
Saint Augustine stated that prayer rules God. Thus, instead of going to fortune tellers, to see what your future holds, pray for your desired future to become a reality ...
... if what you desire isn't sinful. Prayer is the opposite of Calvinism, Determinism, and even Fatalism.
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| Ukranian Rite Church: The same faith as Roman Catholicism. |
10. Prayer. What is prayer? ANS: Prayer is the act of reaching out to God. An attraction to the celestial world results in the instinct to pray. When in doubt on how to pray, overlook your doubt and just start praying. You'll catch on, as to the way prayer becomes effective.
11. Faith. It is written that faith without good works is dead faith. Quite frankly, faith without good works is a sick joke and the ultimate hypocrisy. What is faith?
ANS: Faith is the understanding of an infinite God that we, in our finite minds, can not understand in any other way. Faith is spiritual radar. Faith is the translation machine. Faith is a supernatural gift that involves deeply recessed instinct. It isn't a matter of prejudice or opinion. It's a matter of identification.
12. Doctrine. Why is it a matter of life and death for you to adhere to the correct doctrine?
ANS: This is because a person only acts according to his beliefs. If
you believe wrongly, then you will act wrongly. The atrocities of Nazi Germany were entirely based on false beliefs.
If you don't get the doctrine right, your entire world will go wrong. You will then become a destroying angel, and later on, you will go about, getting others to be accomplices to your living lies ... should you adhere to the wrong doctrine.
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