Being that Easter week is when I’m actually writing this, among other things, I want to send a few notes about love and God’s love in particular. When I was younger my father always said he did not mind doing things for me and my mother and I thought he might have been exaggerating at least a little, until I became a dad. The thing I did not understand is if you love somebody (as defined by Catholics 1 Corinthians 13:4-8) the thing that makes it great and why 1/3rd of the world practices the Christian philosophy and about half of that (1/6th of the world) practices the Catholic religion is because they found truth in why God came off his throne in heaven to help mankind. The thing that makes love so satisfying, as I think I have mentioned before, is that it is not based on feelings or whether or not someone else loves you but that you can do things for them that they can either not do for themselves or would be extremely difficult to do by themselves. Only Christ (the Uncreated) could make the just sacrifice to atone for mankind’s original sin and save us. Those who failed to let Him save them, by refusing to follow his commandments, would all be left in a world of their own, without being perfect (Matthew 5:48), doomed to torment each other in unspeakable ways because, minus sanctifying grace needed to repair their fallen nature, corruption would be inevitable (Romans 1:16-32).
Since God does not force change on anyone, life is about showing God that we want exactly what he wants for us, to be changed as he wills to “become as angels” (Mark 12:25), by following his commandment and not committing mortal sins and if we fall into mortal sin, going to confession and being truly sorry and amending our lives to never do it again. If your point for “loving someone” is to get love in return, you do not truly love that person, you have feelings for them and “like” them, you do not actually love them. You cannot control love as Christ knew on the cross (due to that whole thing “He is God” and built the cosmos as it exists, if He did not actually design it, which, I assume, was God the Father did – John 1:1-14). What makes it satisfying to someone that actually has the ability to love, is that you have total control over it, you love and can make life happy for the one loved. That is why most divorced people are so unhappy they almost inevitably loose the ability to make their children and grandchildren happy, due to their hatred of their spouse, consuming their time and energy and their spending most of the time avoiding the other and not spending more time loving their (grand)kids. Together they could spend twice the time with their children (since the children usually spend half their time with each parent. At my parish parents are always visiting their children who are nuns at a convent, visiting their grandchildren and being visited by their sons who are priests.
Like divorced people, many poor people blame someone else for their troubles. A classic example of someone I know who did not take this tack is Yevonne (not her real name). Yevonne, born into a family financially challenged (because of the Korean War and I understand her family was quite well to do before the war), did not say, I could only afford to attend a vocational high school so can’t go to college and can only be an accountant. She took control of her destiny and when the regulations changed, from college not requiring a regular high school to attend but to only requiring passing an entrance exam, she studied for it, together with some friends, and got accepted into a college. She studied to be a high school Spanish teacher. When she married a US service member, she had one year to go and said, if I remember correctly, if she did not return in a year she would need to start over, so her husband sent her back with her son (approximately 1 year old) to finish, which she did, still on scholarship no less. I think God blesses us all, with the opportunity to accomplish our dreams, if they are not evil, if we only look for opportunities, take them and not whine about what could have been, while doing something else easier, afraid to try to accomplish their dreams, and take those opportunities.
Some people in a relationship or just in a family setting feel just too disappointed and disillusioned in their situation to stay and fight. Yevonne supported her parents and her 2 younger siblings when there was little hope of relief until she was 28, because she actually loved them, not a feeling – action. From what she told me her older sister, was too hopeless and disappointed in the family’s situation, just left and dropped that responsibility on her. Since, then as I understand, that sister divorced several times an terminated all her pregnancies and she rarely, if ever, smiles according to the story. Not doing right leaves one dead inside.
This blame game goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. Eve blamed the snake and Adam blamed Eve for their lust for knowledge to become equal to God by eating from the tree that would provide the knowledge of good and evil. But God is God so He fore-knew but did not predestine. So why did He not do something more to prevent this? I surmised it is because to do more would have been to not have given humans true “free will” to choose. No snake to tempt, no knowledge of alternatives, in Adam and Eve’s good state upon creation (Genesis 1:26-31 which ends with: And God saw all the things He had made, and they were very good), no choice, no real free will. Mankind chose free will – more complete knowledge of the world and choices, as opposed to accepting God largesse of complete happiness with the condition of not going against God’s will and by extension being in some ways ignorant, mainly of evil. God gave mankind free will and men and women cannot blame anybody but themselves for not getting what they want or need in life to be happy especially here in the United States, the most exceptional country that has ever existed with regard to freedom!
With married couples divorce and remarriage is bad (Luke 16:18). With regard to divorce/remarriage in the worst case, if children and grandchildren exist, it’s bad because they may become victims of sexual or even physical abuse above and beyond the bad example given. Separation can be necessitated by physical or sexual abuse to either the spouse or children, but those who do CANNOT (Luke 16:18, Matt 5:32) remarry. The remarried parent should never leave a child or grandchild alone for any significant length of time with a significant other, one that is not the child’s biological parent and only if that parent is aware that they are the biological parent and is not psychologically unstable. People separate, not mindful or selfishly not caring about the possible consequences, or it being not apparent like the link of having a boarder wall/policy to stop illegals from being sexually abused or from youngsters dying from fentanyl.
Trust is, in my opinion, sometimes given way too easily in these cases of remarriage with children and why the majority of abuse cases exist in broken homes. People should not settle when it comes to a mate because marriage is not for convenience, companionship or pleasure it is for the rearing of children and raising them to be decent human beings capable of becoming citizens of heaven, but unfortunately, they must make the choice to become citizens of heaven (though they should be baptized, to have help in the decision, which really comes with the sacrament of confirmation, where upon having accepted God’s offer, really from baptism, they are strengthened by the Holy Ghost to stay firm in their conviction to be a citizen of heaven. Just as we have no choice to be born into this world, we don’t need a choice to possibly go to heaven, knowing the likely alternative, based on Christs words in John 3:5, if we are not baptized. A new born infant in the United States can be granted citizen ship in the US to the greatest country in the world without pledging allegiance, can an all good God be less generous with regard to being a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven? ). When it comes to choosing a good husband or wife, or raising good children, knowledge alone does not make the difference but the example of a decent marriage, not only during rearing but for the rest of the children’s lives, until death do they part. They must be the example of love and striving to do good toward and for the world, each other and the children themselves to succeed in raising children right.
Traditional Thomistic Catholic 