1. St. Luke and Theophilus.
St. Luke addressed his Gospel to Theophilus, a royalty. But Theophilous symbolizes all men who wish to love God and attain eternal life. That means all of us.
Theophilus, like most of us, have some knowledge of the Catholic religion. But like all wise men he wanted to double check if he had learned the teachings of Christ correctly. Most of us, also, have some knowledge of the teachings of Christ which we have learned from so many sources. We should check whether we have received the right knowledge about the teachings of Christ.
So Theophilus was checking whether he had learned the true teachings of Christ or not. Except that he was just going around checking it up from every Tom, Dick and Harry. St. Luke noticed this. He goes to Theophilus and teaches him how to double check whether he had learned the right truths.
St. Luke tells him that there are two things he must know with regard with the teachings of Christ. First, he must know the complete teachings of Christ. And secondly, he must know the right order in which those teachings are to be put into practice. This pertains to the message.
With regard to the teacher, he must be one who have heard the teachings of Christ directly from Christ and have put them into practice under the tutelage of Christ, Himself. Then St. Luke wrote; and I am the only one who can do that for you. And St. Luke begun to help Theophilus to check on the knowledge he already have if it is the pure and complete teachings of Christ.
Since it is wise for us to, likewise, check on the doctrines we have learned from many sources if they are right, let us sit down with Theophilus and listen to St. Luke, who have learned all these things directly from Christ…..by listening to his Gospel.
2. Cacophony of sounds.
Aside from the cacophony of sounds from paganism the world is filled with a cacophony of sounds, also, from the Protestant sects. But the worst is the cacophony of sounds coming from the Pope down to the least Eucharistic minister. As St. Paul warneed, we do not know what the bugle is saying. Is it advance or retreat, is it stand or lie down, is it take a deep breath or exhale. It is no longer an attempt to pick the truth from the thousand falsehoods. It is already a problem of not knowing what the truth is.
Whatever knowledge we have of the Catholic religion is incomplete and in the wrong order. Neither can bring us to heaven. Let us learn with Theopilus with the help of a reliable teacher, St. Luke, himself.
3. St. Luke begins with a general outline. Then gives us the first lesson in the 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
The first reading of the Mass begins with the first step with the one command; ‘obey God’s commands.’ This refers to the ‘life of repentance,’ that contains all the ‘do nots’ of the Old Testament, like do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal.
The second reading continues with the commands of the New Testament. While the Old Testament commands us to avoid evil, the New Testament commands us to do good. The right order is to avoid evil first, then to do good. You cannot do good as long as you have evil in your soul. Evil, being the absence of good, prevents you from doing good because you just don’t have it.
The second reading enumerates the three theological virtues which God will give after repentance had been done; i.e. Faith, Hope and Charity. And the greatest is Charity; meaning to say, to go to heaven, aside from finishing repentance, we must have Faith, Hope and Charity. Of the three, Faith and Hope are necessary but Charity is the greatest without which we cannot enter heaven. So the proximate goal is Faith but the ultimate goal is Charity.
4. After the General outline, St Luke teaches us the first step for the first step. The steps outlining the plan of salvation are; first, repentance, second, Faith. Third, Hope and the final goal for all these is Charity, the love of God and neighbor. So to aim at ‘Hope in Christ’ during the just completed Congress is ‘incomplete’ and in the ‘wrong order.’ The complete aim must be ‘repentance’, Faith and Hope…….and in that order. We cannot jump to ‘Hope’ right away. That is how St. Luke would correct us.
5. Let us once more come back to ‘repentance,’ and the first lesson on repentance. The first step towards attaining eternal life is to repent. To repent, we must know what to repent for…..and these are for our sins. But the list of sins are in the Old Testament. So we must know the list of sins from the Old Testament; then see what sins we have committed and then repent, make restitution and resolve not to commit those sins again.
We must repent for every sin we have committed as enumerated in the Old Testament. The Ten commandments of God are sufficient guide; but the Psalms are even a better guide.
Now, let us stop here before proceeding further and look at the first sin we must avoid and if we have committed it we must repent. .
6. Envy, the diabolical sin.
The first sin of the devil is pride then followed by envy. The devils looked at men, saw the great good man had (the possibility of his going to heaven, a good the devil does not have). And how does the devil react? With infernal hatred and the desire to do all things to destroy man. That is the definition of envy. You see the good in others which you do not have. And you consider this as great misfortune. And your reaction is hatred and the desire to destroy the other.
Envy is the first sin of the devil coming after pride, it will, also, be the first temptation for men after pride; the temptation for men to see the good in others, consider it a great misfortune that we do not have the good that is in others. Then we hate the other to the point of wanting to destroy the other person that is making our life miserable because we are entertaining envy.
The practice of nations in removing heads of states as had been happening in the middle East is due to envy. Envy for their oil, gold, minerals, nice beaches or whatever. So these democratic nations destroy these other heads of nations by deposing them or even having them killed. This is diabolical envy. It is identical to the French revolution from whence democracy came from. Envy of the poor for the rich; envy of the bad for the good.
All forms of demonstrations are due to the fact that others have something we do not have. So we demonstrate to get what others have or at least depose them because we are contented to deprive them of an apparent good that we envy. Again, this is diabolical envy which Pius IX condemned when heads of states are deposed or removed by mass actions. Reminding us that the first Christians did not depose the tyrannical emperors even if they could have done it when they were powerful.
Communism is fundamentally based on envy; wherein the poor are envious of the possession of the rich and will destroy the rich to get the object of their envy. Democracy, too is based on envy. They enriched people and then get their fortunes through taxes. Terrorism is based on diabolical envy. Terrorist envy people who are happy or enjoying themselves and will kill them out of envy.
All sins have some element of envy.
The worse kind of envy is when we envy others for being able to commit sins that we also want to commit. Like we allow others to commit adultery because inside ourselves we want to commit adultery; like what happened in the Bishop’s Synod. This is giving in to envy. All the elements of diabolical envy is present in these examples. With envy all around we can see that the devil is really all around as can be seen by the frequency of the diabolical sin, as St. Thomas describes it.
7. The Synagogue was a type of the Catholic Church.
St. Luke reminded the Catholic Church that as she was at the beginning, her first temptation will be envy. And this happened when Christ went to his own town. The people there envied Him and as a result insulted him with the proverbial ‘Physician heal yourself.’ And the degrading comment, ‘isn’t he Joseph’s son?’ And all because of envy. They saw His powers and good speech, envied Him and desired to harm him.
St. Luke was warning the early Catholic Church in his Gospel to beware of envy because that will be the first salvo the devil will hurl at the Church. Bishop Cauchon persecuted St. Joan of Arc out of envy; seeing the great good she was doing and the popularity she had. The Franciscans of the Immaculate are being persecuted because of envy; because of their success as an order and many were attending their Latin Mass in Argentina while few were attending Bergolio’s Mass in the same place.
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