Readings:
• Jer 20:10-13
• Psa 69:8-10, 14, 17, 33-35
• Rom 5:12-15
• Matt 10:26-33
Recently, while watching a basketball game on television, I was horrified when a commercial came on that was completely inappropriate for my young children. Actually, I thought it was inappropriate for anyone. I say “horrified” because the commercial was for a horror movie, which appeared to be unrelentingly bloody and violent. I had to wonder, after hastily changing the channel: “Why are such movies so prevalent and popular?”
There are several possible answers to that question, but I think for some people viewing horror films is an act of defiance. What is being defied? Death. Isn’t it strange how we often go out of our way to avoid thinking or talking about death in a serious way? And isn’t it equally revealing that when death is “addressed,” it is often in the form of audacious, outlandish films and television shows? It reminds me of how arguments are often carried out: by creating an absurd caricature of the opponent’s position so that it can be easily addressed and dismissed.
Christians, of all people, should and must take death seriously. Death is, after all, a certain fact of life whose dark presence cannot be dealt with by relying on power, fame, or multiple lines of credit. And Christians should know that man is helpless in the face of sin and death unless freed by the power of God and the “gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ,” as St. Paul puts in today’s reading from his epistle to the Romans.
But there is another aspect for us to ponder: the actual promise of persecution and even death, a sober promise given by Jesus to his disciples on many occasions. Today’s Gospel reading comes in the middle of a chapter—Matthew 10—in which Jesus talked at length about persecution, martyrdom, the sword, and the Cross. He was preparing the disciples for the difficult days and years ahead, in which all but one of the Apostles would be martyred (Saint John died of old age), and many others would give up their lives for their Master.
Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar, in his powerful book The Moment of Christian Witness (Ignatius Press, 1994), writes of Matthew 10: “The underlying idea of Christ’s speech is the Cross; it is both the point of departure for his argument and the goal toward which he expressly invites his followers to strive. … According to this speech made by Christ, persecution constitutes the normal condition of the Church in her relation to the world, and martyrdom is the normal condition of the professed Christian.”
Balthasar notes that many Christians, of course, won’t endure physical persecution or martyrdom. But the fact that such violence and bloodshed is taking place today—in Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia—should not escape our attention. On the contrary, it should be something that we consider and pray about on a regular basis. As our brothers and sisters in Christ suffer and are, in some cases, put to death, we should pray they will be given the grace and fortitude they need. And we can ask ourselves: “Would I be able to do that? Would I acknowledge my heavenly Father in the face of death? Or would I deny Him?”
Such difficult questions shouldn’t make us fearful. They should put into perspective the purpose of our lives and the meaning of eternal life. This point was made by Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical on hope. He noted that many people seem to reject faith in the afterlife simply because they want their present lives to go on forever. “But to live always,” he stated, “without end—this, all things considered, can only be monotonous and ultimately unbearable” (par 10).
Put another way, life without God is the true horror movie. And pretending that death is a joke or a problem to be “solved” will only end badly. We must see death, but not fear it, knowing that death is inevitable, but damnation is not.
(This “Opening the Word” column originally appeared in a slightly different form in the June 22, 2008, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)
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An vital insight. “I think for some people viewing horror films is an act of defiance. What is being defied? Death”. Often I’ve felt those who regularly take high risk are living on an adrenaline rush. I climbed the last 200 yds from the ski lodge to the top of Mt Pilatus Switzerland with some friends. I was the last to start up because of my fear of height, which having overcome I experienced the height of elation. It is I think the imaginary conquest of death. And fear. A magnificent mirage. The Gospel is an admonition by Christ to deny fear. An emotion we often objectify. The reason FDR said famously “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” But Christ in line with your article says Fear only him who can cast your soul into Gehenna. There are two deaths. It’s the second one we must avoid. For all those challenging death and literally feeling more alive as I did we simply forestall. “Life without God is the true horror”. Damnation is eternal death of all that is good. All that is left is remorse and suffering. It’s the reason now older and somewhat wiser that this dreadful reality sometimes wakes me at night to pray for my own and the salvation of those who are oblivious. Especially now that the repeated emphatic Gospel testament on eternal damnation is being discounted by many Hierarchy including the Pontiff. I can’t say everyone should, yet there is no more efficacious concern than to emulate Christ’s willingness to sacrifice.
Two of the devil’s greatest victories in today’s world are getting people that he doesn’t exist and that hell doesn’t exist. I loved Padre Pio’s reply when someone said to him ” I don’t believe in hell”. Padre Pio said ” You will when you get there”.
A prelate recently gushed “I’m confident all will be saved.” Would that were true. It’s a denial of reality. The new gospel antithetical to that revealed in Christ. The evil effect is delusion and amorality.
Hey man, get with the program!
It’s all about greeters and the peace sign during Mass, and after the wafer hor d’oeuvres with banners, then social-hall donuts with sprinkles; and eventually instead of a funeral, a “celebration of life” with more donuts.
But, then, this from an off-tune 1970ish mailing:
“Adults,
discovering their spiritual emptiness,
look to the Church
not for a breezy bon mot,
but for the hard truths of
mystical life, fasting and prayer.
Lapsed Catholics,
tiptoeing back into the Church
on Sunday Morning,
look not for a communal meal
and a handshake,
but for a holy Sacrifice
and the promise of redemption.
Our faith is like a strong drink,
or a plate of hearty food.
We can make it easier to accept,
by watering it down
and taking out the spices.
But who wants a watery drink,
or a tasteless dish? (“If the salt
has lost its savor…”)
Our society is begging for red meat.
If we offer a thin soup, instead,
we shall rightly
be rejected.”
Nothing surprising. The present culture is that of “death culture” (John Paul II)ex.abortion, euthanasia plus in most of the world Regimes(China, Iran,…) rule with exterminations of their opponents like in the Nazi or Communism Era. The way of the cross is followed only by a small % of a population that leads to …Hell.Simple! My today’s, very fresh example. In the homily, I did not hear anything as regarding “Pride” March in GT as 1st(Jeremiah) and also Gospel’s would suggest as a warning if Church (and pastors) sleeps! Regimes like such pastors. In this parade PM (of Canada) took a place. The first sentence of Canadian Const.,the Preamble says: “Canadian Nation is founded on principles that acknowledge the supremacy of God…”Hm, it seems just a question of time why such society must stop to exist- the result of the sin against the Holy Spirit (no definition in CAthesim!)To remind, the former traditional explanations are useless (the lack of hope, sinning with the goal of still getting an absolution) because they do not refer to a practical Christian and not- a Christian does not care at all about sin! This sin is a very practical as the stubbornness against the obvious data (Matt 12:22-37)and absolute logical inference, “modus ponens”!This sin looks like Satan’s “first”-eternal sin contra God. Of course, poor sheep do not know it by themselves and pastor fails to remind them.
I think the article is pretty accurate. But there may be a more insidious reason for the violence in horror movies.
I know a Hollywood writer who is a new-age pagan who is thoroughly immersed and obsessed with death. His work typically pertains to the occult and death. I heard him say once that he wants people to get over death and think that it’s no big deal.
Jesus, of course, would say something much different. We also know that existence and life is a precious gift from God. I strongly suspect that this writer is under demonic influence and that his work seeks to have Man devalue the preciousness and inherent dignity of human life – that, in the end, death is no big deal because life is of little value.
The long line of my own sinful past,and my sometimes continued desire to somehow believe & rationalize that my will,supersedes Gods will for me.Is a stumbling block or stone on the trail to a higher Spirituality and friendship with my Master Jesus Christ.10 Commandments,12 Steps,and One Golden Rule.Yet in my own life I’ve chosen the easier softer way far too many times.With the result of a tortured and damaged soul.Who’s only cure is a daily return to Jesus Christ,prayer and belief that nothing is impossible for my Savior.
Thank you. At 83 years I begin to see things very differently and wish that the younger generation could see them as I now do. My priority now is to get to heaven and take as many people as possible with me. I must love all people where they are and feel superior to none. Nothing I have is mine and the world can function just fine without me. No situation is so dark and helpless that God can’t penetrate it. No person is so evil that God can’t save them. I can not judge anyone or know what their eternal destiny will be. The person who seems most evil and despicable may well be ranked way ahead of me in heaven if I am there at all. No person,no matter how evil or powerful, can know my thoughts or harm my soul or deprive me of eternal life as I have the blessing of a free will and hold the key to my destiny. My God is my all and I praise Him. We are not left alone He has given us the His Son, our Mother Mary, and the saints to teach, comfort, guide and intercede for us on our way. He has given us our priests to absolve us of our sins when we fall. My death is not the end, but only the beginning of an existence so wonderful that it is beyond all comprehension. PRAISE GOD PRAISE HIS HOLY NAME
There was no death for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There will be no, physical or spiritual, death, in the Revelation 21, Apocalyptic, ‘New Heaven and New Earth’, unless someone living in God’s ‘Holy City’ commits sin and does not go to confession.
Revelation 21:1 The New Heaven and the New Earth.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them [as their God]. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, [for] the old order has passed away.”
Catholic Mystic Luisa lived on nothing but the Eucharist for 60 years and had the hidden stigmata. Luisa lived in the Divine Will, united with the Holy Trinity, and Jesus talked to her for 60 years. It seems God’s greatest present desire is to return all mankind to the Garden of Eden state, where State of Grace Catholics will live, united in the Presence of the Holy Trinity, in God’s ‘Divine Will’, where of course there will no longer be physical death.
Here are quotes from ‘Luisa Piccarretta and the Divine Will- Teachings of Jesus” by Susanne James, published 2020. Wow! What a book! Quotes below.
“The principle spiritual gift, which Adam and Eve had enjoyed, but lost, was the Divine Will. God had shared his own intimate life with them. God who is a Trinity (3 persons) operates with his Divine Will. The Three Persons have this Will in common, and so they exist in perfect harmony, and share perfect Love.”
“However, only four people have ever lived in the Divine Will: that is Adam, Eve, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus Christ”
Jesus to Luisa, “There will be no end to the generations, until man returns to my Bosom in the state of beauty and sovereignty, just as he emerged from my hands at the Creation! I am not satisfied only with man’s Redemption, so even at the cost of having to wait, I am patient. By virtue of my Will, man must return to Me in the same state in which I originally created him…” (November 11th 1922)
Jesus to Luisa, “…The generations will not cease until my Will reigns on earth. My Redemptive Fiat will interpose itself between the Creative Fiat and the Sanctifying Fiat. They will entwine all three together, and bring to fulfilment the sanctification of mankind.
The Third Fiat will give people such grace that they will return almost to their original state. Only when I have seen man as he emerged from Me, will my work be complete. Then will I enjoy perpetual repose in this, my last Fiat.
Only the Life of my Will shall return man anew to his original state. Therefore be attentive, and together with Me, help Me accomplish the sanctification of mankind.” (February 22nd 1921)
Fear of death is largely why you invented religions and their associated afterlife myths. Such silliness will be obsolete once science fully understands and can reverse the aging process, something well on its way to being achieved in the coming decades. It will be interesting to see how Catholics react when (not if) such technologies are widely available. I speculate that it will only further accelerate the evaporation of this mythology.
“Fear of death is largely why you invented religions and their associated afterlife myths.”
I appreciate that you think I’m powerful and old enough to invent religions, but you’re knowledge of me (yes, I’m being sarcastic here) is about as on point as (sarcasm off) your knowledge of religions and myths.
“Such silliness will be obsolete once science fully understands and can reverse the aging process, something well on its way to being achieved in the coming decades.”
And you’re the one who thinks Catholics are superstitious, anti-science, unreasonable, and out of touch with reality? Good grief.
“you” here means religious people in general, obviously. god is an ancient invention. false then, false today, and still false tomorrow.
“And you’re the one who thinks Catholics are superstitious, anti-science, unreasonable, and out of touch with reality? Good grief.”
actually you’re out of touch with the current state of progress in anti-aging research. telomere shortening, senescent cell proliferation, and several other processes – most of the factors causing aging are already well understood and there are dozens of companies working on therapies for them. life expectancy is about to be turbocharged. perhaps you didn’t notice, but evolution is entering a new paradigm whereby it is becoming self-directed. it’s crystal clear what the end game is here.
If there is no God/Creator, and there is no ultimate purpose in life, who (to quote the talented musician and nihilist Freddie Mercury) wants to live forever? Patently silly. And, for anyone who thinks about it, completely irrational compared to the belief that Someone created all things and that there is a life after in which we can know/live with that Someone.
it’s not about living “forever”, which btw can never be achieved in the same way that you can never count to infinity, but rather about making death optional. this is inevitable.
even if there is no purpose in life, or if purpose is open-ended and for one to discover on their own, this is still a far more calming situation than the belief that we’re all drones conscripted into perpetual validation of something which somehow needs it in the first place despite being infinite.
An interesting thing happened decades past in a coffee shop during my seventh year at a major secular university. Breaking his train of thought about his early years trying to reform education in Muslim Afghanistan (the pre-coup 1960s), my dissertation chairman up and announces from inside his cranium and to a small group of students: “I am not Catholic…and I don’t know if God talks to people.”
Ultimately, isn’t that the question? Not whether humans are wired to aspire for a God in some imagined form through natural religions, but whether the Ultimate Reality is a self-disclosing and supernatural “Other” who–possibly as infinite love–might have a word for our humanity, or even be “the Word” in person.
About which, and compared to the also-valued but tangential scientific-method, Pope Benedict proposed this perspective:
“Christianity’s claim to be true cannot correspond to the standard of certainty posed by modern science, because the form of verification here is of a quite different kind from the realm of testing by experiment—pledging one’s life for this—is of a quite different kind. The saints, who have undergone the experiment, can stand as guarantors of its truth, but the possibility of disregarding this strong evidence remains” (“Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions,” 2003).
As a minimum, perhaps we can refrain from publicly flashing our preconceived disdain for what’s going on in the minds of people other than ourselves.
As one with four degrees in science, I always find insistent yet adolescent ignorance on the subject fascinating. I’m now a senior but a former atheist who grew up and away from a materialist understanding of existence when I was still fairly young. You seem uncritically confident in a theory of evolution based more on anti-scientific value judgments (all value judgments are outside the realm of science) than what hard science has revealed in recent decades. Your fantasies of “turbocharging” cellular structures is hardly “inevitable” given the level of life at the cellular level has been found to be exponentially more complex than imagined over the past 50 years with the use of electron micrographs, a complexity that reveals the impossibility of chance self-organization, which is as farfetched as a tornado passing through a junk yard and creating a modern jet aircraft. And such events would have to occur in identical fashion billions of times concurrently to begin to form a significant pool of even simple organisms, let alone later exponentially more complex processes of a theoretical natural selection.
Such processes are impossible to occur by accident just as it is impossible for science and the scientific method to address or understand free agency. The chief problem with a materialism of the mind carried to its logical conclusion is that it ignores evidence contrary to its “we are just a pack of neurons” interpretation of existence. If our mental life is nothing but electrical impulses, then we cannot explain the realm of abstract concepts, including those of theoretical science. Nor can we explain the human mind’s openness to truth, the foundation of all thought, nor vain attempts to deny truth. Materialists cannot explain why anything should go right, even observation and deduction, why good logic should not be as misleading as bad logic, if they are both chance movements in the brain of a bewildered ape. Materialists exalt reason, but they cannot account for reason. Neither can materialism account for consciousness, free will, value judgments, and the existence of a unitary self. In a purely material world such things cannot exist. Matter cannot be free or have a self. Neither can matter venerate the sacred or have remorse for personal failures. Matter cannot sacrifice, especially one’s life, or have compassion for the suffering.
All existence is clearly the reflection of an intelligent creator including a creator of such perfect goodness and intent as to not grant essential perspectives to human conceit as though they are more worthy of insight and above the capacity ascertainable by the weak and humble. Self-worshipers invent and boringly reinvent the non-existence of God because they can’t accept their non-superiority. It is impossible for God to reward vanity, particularly the sort of vanity that can’t even muster sufficient human respect to use an upper-case reference to God.
You sound like myself thirty years ago.
Beautiful rendition, James! Sin is horrific! Just look at a crucifix to comprehend the bitter remedy it took to reconcile us with God and to invite us to eternal life with God; the Son of God who made Himself our eternal sacrifice for all who accept Him. I wish every Catholic would go to confession; what a great merciful gift from God. In my 30 years working nightshift in a nursing home I have seen many deaths. I can vouch for it, that people that die in peace are the ones with the rosary in their hands.