HOW COME? – Caryana

1. We always like to check.
We check if fruits are fresh before we buy. We check if soups are hot before we sip. We check car tires before we drive. We check the skies if there are clouds before we take a hike. How come we do not check our religion if it really is going to bring us to where we want to go.
We periodically check our blood pressure and our blood sugar; our creatinine and cholesterol. We check our visions and our innards. And we do not check the state of our souls.
We study for years to get an education but our education is totally useless for the salvation of our souls; it is not even helpful in living our lives. Agriculture is more helpful than those doctorate degrees. When those with doctorates have no job they go hungry. The agriculturist merely plant and he never goes hungry.

2. In the recent plane crash, it is certain that everyone checked their plane schedules; they check their plane seats; their plane transfers, their arrival, their hotel reservations and the plays and luncheons they will attend. On their way back home they checked the one’s who will pick them up from the airport; and they checked the gifts they are bringing for their friends and relatives. No one checked if they were ready to die and face their judge. In fact, they did not even check if they have the right religion.
The plane crashes and disappears at the bottom of the ocean. Everything suddenly became useless; the gifts, the tickets, the pictures taken, the laptops and cell phones……everything, except one thing. Where are their souls right now.
And the world continues with their futile activities; looking for the wrecks of the plane, looking for the black box. They are spending millions for ships, helicopter and underwater vehicles to look for the plane under the sea and the dead bodies. What for? What gain can they get from those efforts? Twisted metals and broken limbs. How about the souls? And they were not even good Catholics. What was their chances? Where are their souls.

3. The world is totally concerned with uselessness and forgetful of the essentials. In the early times Christians were only concerned with essentials. They set aside everything that were not essentials for salvation. Even if they were lawful and necessary for existence, as long as they were not essential to the salvation of souls they gave it up. Today, nobody will ever understand that. That is why everybody is throwing away what pertains to ancient Christianity, this is done specially the bishops and cardinals.
Among those things necessary for salvation is agriculture and animal husbandry. So the early Christians planted, raised animals and from there developed the science of agriculture and the caring of animals and their adjunct sciences like the genetic improvement of plants and animals and banking and medicine. Everything good in this world today was started by monks. Thus civilisation was improved. But like all good things it can be corrupted by the corrupt. And so it happened. Medicine is now used to kill babies.
And banking had been used to make the poor poorer and the rich richer.

4. One of the essential activities of the early Christians to aid the salvation of souls is education. Believe it or not. Schools and universities were started by monks…..to bring souls to heaven. Because to go to heaven you have to be intelligent. Ordinary intelligence is needed to go to a shopping mall. But to go to heaven, a place nobody knows, takes a supper brilliant mind; a mind enlighten by the Divine grace of God. And the first monastic schools precisely did that. Those first schools taught a little arithmetic, a little reading and a little writing. But most of all it taught the Christian children how to THINK. This is unlike modern education that simply teach everything except how to think.
And so, as Hilaire Belloc noted, we have a generation of people who knows so many useless facts but does not know how to think. This is a disaster. Because to go to heaven Faith is needed. And Faith is an act of the intelligence. Only the intelligent can make an act of Faith. A discipline intelligence. Only the intelligent go to heaven.

5. Today, there are no monastic schools. Even the Benedictines who started them do not run them as they used to. Blessed John Newman, who believed that this was the best thing that had happened to the world tried to revive it in Ireland. It was the Catholic Bishops of Ireland who blocked him. Imagine, the Catholic bishops blocking an effort to reform the Catholic Church by an Anglican who converted to Catholicism, by reinstating the monastic schools. Newman had no choice but to abandon the project and return to his order the Oratorians in England to live a more monastic life. Just like the life of the crowd who went to Christ in the desert as described in the Gospel of Corpus Christi.
Pope Benedict tried what Newman did at the beginning of his Papacy. He urged Europe to return to the monasticism of St. Benedict from where their religion came from. Like a voice in the desert, nobody listened. Someone at first listened and raised the idea of a European Union enliven by their former Catholic Faith. They even adapted the right flag – the symbol of the Blessed Virgin, the Great Sign in the Sky, twelve stars with a blue background. But like all things in ancient Christianity, the devils took over. The devil took over the monastic schools, took over the seminaries, took over the monasteries and the convents, took over the Councils and the
Synods, took over the Church and took over the Vatican. Of course, why should he not? That is his ambition and his job. And we were all caught flat footed.

6. This is the state of the world today. People do not think. They live by slogans. If they try to think, they sound like a broken washing machine. Because they do not think, it has become impossible for everybody to make an Act of Faith that is necessary for salvation. Because an act of Faith is a mature and disciplined act of the intellect which everyone has become incapable of. We have arrived at what Blessed John Newman feared most; ‘the infidelity of the future’ that will trigger the ‘great apostasy,’ or great falling away prophesied by St. Paul. We have reached what Christ prophesied; ‘the decay of Faith’ and as a result the ‘waxing cold of Charity.’ It has become impossible to evangelise, impossible for ecumenism, impossible for spiritual directions, impossible for any meetings or discussions, impossible for any intellectual activity. It has become useless to speak. So the wisest thing to do is to keep quiet and pray. Just what Pope Benedict did, and what the Catholic Church is supposed to do as described in the Gospel of Corpus Christi. Isn’ that what we call contemplation?

This is the present atmosphere. It has become impossible to save one’s soul. It has even become impossible even to know how to save one’s soul. The formula on how to save one’s soul cannot be found anywhere. It is somewhere but it is impossible to find it. Those who were assigned to teach the way to heaven do not know the way there. And instead of, not teaching us the way, they are even teaching us the way to hell. The populace is in complete confusion. And there are no signs that point to the right direction. The Pope used to be the beacon light. But that light house is in total black out with an ominous streak of light pointing somewhere else.

7. But God had always took pity on mankind. He took pity on Adam and Eve. He took pity on Noah and Abraham. He will take pity on us but under one condition. We still have to use our intellect and think. We still have to make an act of mature Faith. In His Goodness and TRUE MERCY, He has still made available the words of Divine Revelation and its correct interpretation in the writings of the Fathers of the Church. Grab it! It is our life vest in this stormy times. And hope we reach the port anchored on the Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin Mary.