Between the Perfect and the Imperfect Peace

OUR BLESSED LORD JESUS CHRIST said that He did not come to bring peace into this world but a sword, but this sword is not war. This sword is the exacting sharpness of truth which is the fiery blade that shall effectively separate the light from the darkness, good from the evil, peace from war and truth from lie.

For there can be no longer be any more lukewarm Christians among us at this crucial time at the void at the threshold of the third Christian millennium.

It is time to live out our universal calling to serve on behalf of our suffering humanity and in the Name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
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THERE IS NO LASTING PEACE here on this world below just the same as there is no true happiness here on our poor world. This is true for both the good and the evil, for both the willing and the willful of heart.

However, this does not preclude our free will from making the choices we have to make in order to progress in our maturity into the fullness of the age of Jesus Christ in our hearts and minds.

The imperfect peace and the imperfect experience of happiness here on our poor world is still a good that is worth pursuing because it aligns our intentions toward the one Source of all good things.

It is infinitely better to pursue what is imperfect but true and of good worth albeit imperfect because all good things align toward one purpose, it points the way to greater and greater good for this is ascendant nature of God's immovable will for us, our eventual union with Him as our one ultimate Good.

Pursuing what is flawed but good and true, while resting always in God, is infinitely better than surrendering to the enemies of God, the holy angels of God and of all of mankind. For our nations this enemy is war and war's ambition, a dominion of a principality of hell, and for our souls this enemy is sin and Satan's primordial lie whispering to us at the core of all evil things; an idolatry lethal to our immortal souls exposed and vulnerable by our current state of brokenness, by original sin.

Our LORD God has never ceded this world to Satan, He has always maintained our mutual rights to stewardship of this world and though it is true that this world is indeed ruled by a murderer and a Father of lies, this truth of our common creation does not prevent us from practicing our sovereign regential responsibility over all of lower creation by our royal kingship* over our own selves.

*908 ...That man is rightly called a king who makes his own body an obedient subject and, by governing himself with suitable rigor, refuses to let his passions breed rebellion in his soul, for he exercises a royal kind of power over himself. And because he knows how to rule his own person as king, so too does he sit as its judge. He will not let himself be imprisoned by sin, or thrown headlong into wickedness.

- Catechism of the Catholic Church

To abandon this present world in favor of some things yet to come is to forget that hope may only exist in the moment, in the now, and can never exist beyond the present moment. Eternity is an infinity that surrounds us, permeates us and transcends us and our reality is as a minute point continually rising to the surface of this immensity, like the twinkling of an eye, like the shining of the stars. There is no looking backwards and there is nothing to place anything forward. All there is is the flowing of time rising into existence from the deep of our hearts welling out into the now.

Please refer to entry: Time is a Nearness

Our Blessed Savior described His return as a thief in the night which means that the locus of our all of our hope - even our hope for heaven - must be in the now. Even the angel of death that shall bear us up into our final encounter with God in our passing away arrives at an hour we do not know. Thus, we each have to hope to be ready for heaven right now - not tomorrow, not even today but now.

True hope never looks forward beyond the moment lest it loose it's eternal anchorage and drift with the random vanity of the world. And no true hope holds fast in the void of a future that is yet to be defined by the choices we shall each make today, a future that is guaranteed by our most beneficent LORD but also a future that we must co-create with God today - here in the now.

Our Saints do not take their hopes to heaven with them nor do they need any more faith in the face of the Beatific Vision. For hope and faith ends but love is eternal. Our dear departed loved ones have always left their hopes here with us and as their faith returns again to God, our God gives them their share of His everlasting glory within His heavenly Kingdom according to the love that they gave away to unto others in exile time, especially unto His beloved poor.

Truly, we must hope for our common hopes now, one with another, with the hope of our Lord's poor most especially in our minds or we shall vainly chase after the illusion of false hopes, of the glories of men, vain and unfounded. For it is faith that looks forward as a sight to see ahead but faith sees not by the darkness of man but of God's Truelight. Faith never ascribes glory to man because it knows that all glory belongs to God. Faith knows that we may only share in God's own glory as the moon reflects the light of the sun but like the moon without the sun, we shall each likewise remain dark, having no native ability of our own to attain to the golden shine of any degree of glory in heaven without our most glorious God and His infinite mercy, undying love and filial solicitude over us.

But hope, on the other hand, looks into the needs of the moment, attends to our common lack and guards us against despair not in our yesterdays, not in our tomorrows but in our now.

One who has faith knows one can never possess the truth for in absolute reality, the Truth possesses us. How can one hold in his human hands the Hand that holds all of creation entire? Impossible! We only know the truth by a sight that is borrowed, illuminated by a Light that we do not yet possess. Therefore, it is only right to give to God all the glory, honor, praise, thanksgiving, adoration and true worship for it is only by His Light that we can truly see what we need to see and not what we want to see.

The fullness of the truth of the sacred revelation of our salvation is in Jesus Christ and this fullness subsists in our Holy Mother Church, as the ordinary means toward true human liberation, some of the million other things we must be grateful for who are her most cherished children. But let this not blind us to our Christian duties not only to each other but also to the whole of our suffering humanity. Let none of us judge others without hope for no one can be excluded from the infinite beneficence of God. More importantly, let none of us condemn with divine finality the hope of others who is not a hypocrite for their hope is not ours to fulfill or to absolutely condemn. For the hope of our last end is a promise received from God alone.

We, as the whole of blessed Christendom in general and our Roman Catholic Church in particular, must share in each other's hope, bearing crosses one with another in union with and in the Name of Jesus Christ, the one and the only Redeemer of humankind, by the grace of God, abiding in love together until the end of the age.

Beloved of God and children of Holy Mother Church, all of us hope to be happy and since we were made to be with God forever, all of us hope to be forever happy. Let us leave it at that, having faith and referring all things to the God who wants everyone to be saved. Who are we to say anything more or fall short of our Creator's own will for each and every one of these precious works of His Hands.

---<--@ to Bishop Paulos Faraj Rajjo and the martyrs of the Chaldean Christian church in Iraq and all innocent Iraqis martyrs, via con Dios, I salute you at the dawning of your peace.

Let us pray for our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, and all our bishops in communion with him, especially the bishops of our particular Churches.

Let us pray for all our serving brethren in the holy priesthood and the diaconate and for all of our lay leaders drawn from among all of us who are the common Roman Catholic laity who are sisters and brothers and keepers of each other in Christ Jesus.

Let us understand that all of us constitute the Mystical Body of Christ, the living stones of that great Temple of God rebuilt by Jesus Christ our true cornerstone in three days.

We are the one, holy, apostolic and universal (catholic) Roman Church.

Holy Father Dominic de Guzman, pray for us.

Sancta Sanctis!

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.