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Where
do you get the things you say on your website? The Catechism tells us that
it’s not a sin to enjoy sports, fight wars,
and defend ourselves. Pope John Paul II even
blessed athletes. How do you justify yourself?
 ou’re saying the same thing to me that
the Pharisees said to Jesus. All that I say on this website has its basis in Biblical
teaching. In fact, what Saint Paul said to dissenters of his time still applies today:
For many, as I have often told you and now tell you even in tears, conduct themselves
as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their God is their stomach;
their glory is in their “shame.” Their minds are occupied with earthly things
(see Philippians 3:18–19).
Sadly, you, and all those like you, object
to my warning about the spiritual dangers of earthly things because these are the very
things that you hold more sacred and more dear in your heart than love for God.
And why should this be? Well,
because those “whose glory is their shame” have suffered emotional
conflicts in their childhood
families,[1]
such that they desire more than anything to be “in
control” of the
world.[2]
They are persons who so fear human weakness that,
even though they take pride in calling themselves Christian, in the secret unconscious depths
of their hearts they look upon the Cross itself with repugnance. And yes, even Popes have
fallen into such heresy throughout the course of Church history.
Yet, Christ told us that
salvation can be attained only in giving up our attachment to
the world and taking up the Cross.
The Necessary
Minimum
Now, the Catechism of the
Catholic Church (CCC) instructs us in the necessary minimum
(see CCC 2041) of what we must do to attain the salvation promised by Christ.
That is, if you do all that the Catechism requires—which most Catholics fail
to do because of their lukewarm “faith”—it will be likely
that you will get to Purgatory rather than
hell.
In contrast, if you want to be
more than one of the crowd that followed Jesus at a distance—that is,
if you want to attain personal growth, heightened wisdom, enhanced interpersonal
effectiveness, and divine love—then it will be necessary to do far more than what
is minimally required.
It’s your choice.
Either way, however, you will
have to pay a huge price.
The Price of
Least Obligation
If you take the way of least
obligation, using your own wits and your own strength, hoping to squeak past
hell into Purgatory, you
won’t be fighting the darkness, you will be adding to it. Plus, you just
might fall into hell anyway because of all the
temptations from which you now refuse to
distance yourself and because of all the sins you commit while telling yourself
that you aren’t really committing sin. Even if you do manage to get there,
Purgatory is not a Sunday picnic; you would drop dead in horror right now if
you had to see what the most abject of the poor souls have to suffer.
At the moment of your judgment
after death, you will have to face Christ Himself who will ask you, as you
have scornfully demanded of me, “How do you justify yourself?”
Suddenly you will see yourself in the light of divine truth, and—assuming
that you recognized and repented your sins before
you died—you will sink down into the torment of purgation.
But note well: only if you admit
all your sins—even the ones you now say are not sins—before
you die, will you be able to pay for them in Purgatory rather than sink into
everlasting misery in hell.
You will have to pay in Purgatory
for all the sins you have committed, including all the
prayers you failed to say and all the
sacrifices you failed to make for others during
the course of your life because you were too preoccupied with arguing about
politics, boasting about
sports, and otherwise
entertaining yourself with worldly pleasures.
Plus, you will have to pay even for the sin of not believing that your behaviors
were spiritually harmful when you were told that they were spiritually
harmful. Everything, even the least blade of grass, will be accounted for.
God’s justice is perfect.
Believe Me, you shall not be set at
liberty until you have paid the last farthing (Matthew 5:26).
God’s justice is perfect, but
God is also merciful, and you can experience His mercy
if you call out for it with a penitent heart.
But if you reject the substantial penance
that a genuine Catholic life requires and instead prefer to resist hearing what I
tell you, then go ahead and do what you want.
The Price of
the Front Lines
On the other hand, you could decide
to step into the front lines of the spiritual battle
against evil, armed only with love. Be prepared, however,
to be despised, calumniated, forgotten, ridiculed,
wronged, suspected, set aside, and unnoticed—particularly by other
Catholics—as the price for witnessing the
truth to people who don’t want to hear it. The
world has grown spiritually cold because of its
seduction by sin, and,
above all else, it hates the Cross.
Every Christian has a
natural repugnance for the Cross; yet, once you
recognize this repugnance and understand how it inhibits you from living a
spiritually fruitful life, you can start
your penance now, before you have to stand in judgment before Christ. The price that
you will pay during the course of the remainder of your life is almost nothing compared
to what you would have to pay if you were to put off your penance until “later.”
If you stop resisting the truth and change your behavior now, you can start to
produce spiritual fruit that will spread seeds of holy influence on others.
Our world has now been taken over by
diabolical powers of hate; hatred is evil, there is no crime that is beneath the “dignity”
of a demon. The only force that can overcome demons is the humility of
spiritual purity, and so that must be our primary weapon on
the battleground. Sadly, those who are able to fight such a battle today are few and far
between; the Church is lukewarm and filled with
hypocrites. Even most priests today are incapable of
engaging in such a battle—that is, they are untrained or unwilling, or both. We are
on the slippery slope to doom, and only those who
seek the spark of truth in the darkness can avoid being
snatched by demons.
An Old Saying
Therefore, it all comes down to an old
saying: You can pay now or you can pay later. It’s your choice. Just
remember that what you will have to pay later may be far, far more expensive and
horrifying than what you expected. But if you value your soul so little that you are
willing to gamble with it, then go ahead, follow the
devil’s reasoning and do what you want.
One Haunting Thought
I leave you with one haunting thought:
Despite your smug self-assurance that I’m wrong, what if I’m right?
Notes.
1. For example, an early death of a parent or
sibling, an alcoholic parent, an emotionally
or physically missing father, a rejecting or controlling
mother, and so on.
2. Prime examples of “control,” are
sports and politics,
right along with sexuality, intellectual
mastery, and technical mastery.
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Though Demons Gloat: They Shall Not Prevail
by Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D.
Though we are attacked by liberal activists from without and by apostasy
from within, the true Church—that is, the body of those who remain
faithful to Church tradition—weeps, and she prays, because she knows
the fate of those who oppose God.
Our enemies might fear love, and they can push love
away, but they can’t kill it. And so the battle against them cannot be
fought with politics; it requires a profound personal struggle against
the immorality of popular culture. The battle must be fought in the
service of God with pure and chaste lifestyles lived from the depths of
our hearts in every moment.
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Read
an excerpt of a reflection about inner witness
