Escape to Spiritual Reality

People find ways to keep themselves distracted from the ultimate reality of God and their own death. Some like to try and assert that reality is just a construct of our own minds, whatever you want it to be.

Others deny truth can be known. "What is truth?" asked the liberal Pontius Pilate and then immediately had an innocent man scourged and then to please the majority let them crucify him. So much for truth, so much for justice.

Some, the government for example, try to draw you away from the truth. St.Paul: "Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things comes the anger of God upon the children of unbelief...They receive not the love of truth that they might be saved, therefore God sends them the workings of delusion to believe lying."

To save your soul you need first of all to make the act of will to obey God. Do this and you will receive light.

Only one religion can be the true one of God. Because God is the Spirit of Truth. He gives you up to a lifetime to find the light which is Jesus. Jesus means God Saves. "Neither is their salvation in any other, for there is only one name under Heaven given to men whereby we must be saved."

Sincerity and being a good person are not enough to save your soul. "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved but he that does not believe shall be condemned."

To reveal the life-giving faith to those who were called to be chosen as his children, God spoke to them through his prophets and then sent the King of Prophets, the Son of God himself. "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me."

Before he returned to Heaven, Jesus delegated his authority to a special band of men. "He who hears you hears me, he who despises you despises me."

These twelve were led by one, Simon son of Jonah, whose name Jesus changed to Cephas in the Aramaic that Jesus was speaking, in English Rock. He came to be called Peter from the Greek Petros and Latin Petrus. Similarly the name of the Patriarch of the Hebrew people had been changed from Abram to Abraham and the name of his grandson Jacob to Israel. "You are Rock and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven."

This Church led by its prime minister Peter and his successors was the authority for the interpretation of all divinely revealed truth especially the Gospels.

From that same day Peter was given the special divine gift of defining of doctrine. "You Jesus are the Christ, the Son of the living God," Peter pronounced. And Jesus said "Blessed are you...Not flesh and blood has given this to you but My Father who is in Heaven."

St Paul described the Church as "the pillar and ground of the truth."

At the Last Supper Christ established to means of divine life within our souls by which we can unite with the Cross of Calvary. Mass.

For this rite, he designating his Apostles priests. "Do this for the Askara of Me." The Azkara was the Old Testament memorial sacrifice of bread and wine for the propitiation of sins.

Now it was to be offered by these new priests in the body and blood of Jesus. "This is my body."

St.Paul writes of the priests as "ministers of Christ and dispensers of the mysteries." Mysteria in the Greek is "sacramenta" in Latin, in English the sacraments. These are what St.Paul calls "spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God." The Christian Azkara which came early on to be called the Mass is the sin offering of the Christian people and "the sacrament of love and unity."

St Augustine said, "one thing is seen but another understood." Bread and wine are seen, but in its essence it is changed into the Body and Blood of the Lord.

St.Paul: "The chalice of benediction which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood and Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord?"

This is the source of unity and the key to our redemption in the Cross. Mass is not only the sign of unity but also its substance, the effect.

By this means alone are we justified and sanctified, being made, in the words of St.Peter "partakers in the divine nature."

This "daily bread" and "supernatural bread" is our pledge of eternal life. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. Baptism here is another name for the liturgy and the sacraments, the sacramental system of sanctification as a whole.

The Mass is the continuation of the Incarnation whereby Christ sanctifies the world, and such of the world who obediently submit.

As Adam and Eve lost grace by eating of the forbidden tree, so by obeying the command to eat the tree of the Cross is that original sin lifted from us. This is our true Passover into the promised land of paradise.