ICEMANforChrist

Sirach, Chapter 25, Verse 10-12 10 How great is the one who finds wisdom, but none is greater than the one who fears the Lord. 11 Fear of the Lord surpasses all else. To whom can we compare the one who has it? 12 Fear of the Lord is the beginning of loving him, and fidelity is the beginning of clinging to him. Today try and be 100% for God. As iron, cast into the fire, loses its rust and becomes bright with the flame, so too a man who turns his whole heart to Me is purified and all sluggishness and changed into a new man. [1] Who am I, Lord, that I should be considered by You: I AM WHO AM. Saint Thomas Aquinas’ thoughts on fear: [2] 1. Fear is a shrinking back from evil. Hence, we cannot fear God in himself, for God is infinite goodness. But one is said to fear God in the sense of fearing the evil of being separated from God by sin, and in the sense of fearing to incur his punishments for sin. 2. Fear is called servile fear when it is the dread of punishm...

Matthew, Chapter 21, verse 26: 26 But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we fear the crowd, for they all regard John as a prophet.” The chief priests and the elders of the people were master politicians during Christ’s time.  Some of them were faithful in thought word and deed, but many were as Christ pointed out like marble sepulchers which are pretty on the outside but inside full of death and rottenness within.  Many of them put on the airs of piety but in reality were agnostic in nature.  Here we see the priest and elders were afraid of the people.  I think in our time a similar thing occurred with Saint John Paul II’s struggle with communism in Poland.  John Paul was a John the Baptist of his time.  Poles like the Jews of the Baptists time identified with John Paul and were hungry for a chance to cleanse themselves of the compromises they had to make to live under the rule of the communist’s. I believe John the Baptist message to have been v...