1 Chronicles, Chapter 16, Verse 25
For great is the LORD and highly to
be praised; to be FEARED above all
gods.
What
is the meaning of above all gods? Do we as moderns have gods? Have we like the
ancient Baal worshipers cheapened life (abortion, contraception, etc.) and
offered our children to the fire? Have we engaged in ritual hedonism? Have we
place creation before the creator?
Don’t
Worship Mother Nature[1]
Our old dog eats deer poop. The neighborhood cats stalk, torture, and kill our chipmunks. The spider whose web I see in front of my window stings the butterfly caught in his web, wraps it with silk, and later comes back to eat it alive. Your knee hurts. Your eyes begin to go. Cancer cells eat up the body of your closest friend. The earth shifts suddenly, and flattens part of a crowded island, and thousands and thousands die. There’s nature for you. It is sometimes only disgusting, like the dietary habits of our aging mutt. It’s sometimes just annoying, like your aching knee and fuzzy vision. But it is also cold, brutal, and merciless. Nature is entirely selfish and utterly amoral. It’s doesn’t care about anyone’s pain. It’s soaked in the blood of the innocent. And yet some people say that we ought to abandon the religions we have, like Catholicism, and worship nature instead. The Church is corrupt, they say, and obsessed with sex, and full of rules, and run by old men, and medieval, antiquated, and completely out of step with the modern world. But nature, nature is cool. It’s natural, for heaven’s sake. We hear this all the time. Writing on the website of a serious English magazine, someone calling himself (or herself) “Pagan Artist” wrote in a cheerful Mary Poppins kind of way: “What is wrong with worshipping God’s creation itself? The sun, the moon, the stars, the air, the trees, the rivers, the sea — we cannot live for a day without them.” He then explained why this made him want to worship nature and reject the god of any established religion: “For me, that makes them divine because they give us the ultimate gift of life. Organized religions on the other hand have given us nothing but death and destruction. Nature gives us life. Organized religions give us death. Which one should we hold divine and worship with reverence?” Let us set aside the claim that “organized religions” have given the world lots of bad things and no good things. It’s just silly. Walk around any major city and note the number of hospitals with names like “Mercy Hospital” and “Our Lady of . . .” and “Beth Israel.” The modern hospital come from the medical care dispensed freely by the monks of the Middle Ages. Note how many missions go around the world to feed the poor, build them homes, and give them health care when they’re sick. Remember those missionaries who got ebola because they kept helping people at the risk of their lives? They’re not unusual.
Look at the modern pagan’s
case at its best. It claims that we ought to reverence nature because it gives
us life, as Pagan Artist said. You can easily think of all sorts of wonderful
things to be found in Nature with a capital “N.” The Christian would say that
the wonderful things we find are wonderful gifts given us by a loving God, but
let that go for a second. The first thing to be said about this modern nature
worship is that it is very, very dim. Dumb, even. Sure, we find in nature
pretty sunsets, and cute little bunnies and kittens, and warm sunny breezy
spring days, and the awe-inspiring mechanics of life on earth and the equally
awe-inspiring movement of the stars and galaxies. But we also find physical
decay, cancer, earthquakes. Those cute kittens grow up to eat the cute bunnies.
The weather that produces the beautiful spring days will also produce killing
cold snaps and hurricanes that destroy everything in their path. The mechanics
of life on earth produce death as much as life, and indeed depend on death to
maintain the balance. What is to you a horrible death from cancer is for Nature
simply a way of adjusting the population. I don’t know why anyone would want to
worship this. The real pagans worshiped nature because it could kill them. They
wanted to try to make Nature like them and spare them its worst. It was a bully
they had to pretend to like. That’s not worship as we understand it. It’s
bribery, and desperate bribery at that. Some of the ancient pagan religions
would do almost anything to bribe the nature gods, including sacrificing their
own children. Think for a moment what fear men would have to feel to toss their
own infant children into a furnace. That is how frightened of nature were the
people who knew it best. Not for them the cheery “Nature gives us life” and the
chipper question, “What is wrong with worshipping God’s creation itself?” That’s
the talk of someone who lives far removed from nature, in a modern city in a
modern house with modern heat and modern plumbing, with modern medicine and
everything else that protects us from nature as she really is. If he really met
mother nature, he wouldn’t like her. As my grandmother said about a bad man she
knew, he’d crush you just as soon as look at you.
Apostolic Exhortation[2]
Veneremur
Cernui – Down in Adoration Falling
of The Most Reverend Thomas J. Olmsted, Bishop of
Phoenix,
to Priests, Deacons, Religious and the Lay Faithful of the Diocese of Phoenix
on the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist
My
beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Part
III
Loving
and Adoring the Eucharistic Lord
VI. Pastors, have one
Eucharistic procession each year in your parish.
98. Consider what is communicated
non-verbally to both those who participate and those who witness it: that
Christ is truly present in the Eucharist; that He personally leads His people
through space and time; that the faithful are linked to Him as His body-members;
that the bishop and priests are configured to Him as the head; that everyone
has a place in His body; that the Church has a place and role in public, not
just in private; that the Church is not afraid of the world but confidently
bears the light of Christ to it; that the Church is filled with joy, peace, and
confidence in Christ.
99. One need only consider any year or
even every month in our age to see that the people take their passions to the
streets to be seen and heard. Riots, protests, marches, and demonstrations in
the streets are common, but too often they are fueled by narrow ideologies and
enflamed by bitterness, resentment, anger, and a cramped secularist
perspective. Imagine the witness in our neighborhoods, towns, and cities for
people of all backgrounds to see that the Church has a message to bring to the
streets – that of Christ’s Eucharistic presence, His victory over all
evil, sin, and death – and she is enflamed with the attractive witness of
love, joy, and peace.
100. Therefore, I invite our pastors,
along with their closest collaborators, to consider planning one Eucharistic
procession each year in your parish boundary. Imagine how one beautiful
Eucharistic procession would imprint the memories of children and families with
the Eucharistic mystery.
To be continued…
Daily Devotions
·
do
a personal eucharistic stations of the cross.
·
Offering to
the sacred heart of Jesus
·
Rosary
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