1. God’s command is very clear.
We must judge by God’s standards and not by man’s standard. And for men who judges by man’s standard, God has a compliment for them ‘ Get out of My sight, you Satan.’ It was the old story about original sin. God have given Adam and Eve His standards. ‘ You may eat of any tree in the garden of paradise. Except the one in the center. Eve disregarded God’s standard and followed her own, which came from Satan in the first place. God could had easily called her ‘Satan.’ But she was a beginner and instead gave her a second chance.
2. We live in an age where all follow the standards of men or the will of men. They call it ‘democracy.’ Pope Gregory and Pius IX call it the heresy of ‘liberalism.’ It is the heresy by which men chooses the dictates of their own consciences rather than follow the express divine revelations of God. It is the very opposite of the spirit of the true Church of Christ. And this heresy is being espoused by many church leaders, from Pope Francis down to the cardinals, bishops, priests, nuns…….and by all the poor laymen who do not know any better.
3. He who follows the standards of God belong to the City of God. He who follows the standards of men belong to the City of Satan. The Gospel says so. To see to it that these two groups are greatly separated from each other, Christ intentionally made His teachings confusing so that the true seekers can see between the lines. While those who are merely curious will not understand Him.
4. An example of this confusion is the Gospel of the 24 Sunday in Ordinary Time. The Gospel enumerates 11 commands of Christ. It is not clear where to begin and where to go next. Are these the same identical commands that merely explain each other, or are these 11 completely different commands? Which is the easier and which is the more difficult? The merely curious will be entangled in these numerous commands. The true seeker will find himself gliding through them easily.
5. Let us arrange the 11 commands and see which should be the beginning, which is the summary and which explains what.
The Gospel gives the summary on what we must do to attain eternal life. It is, in fact, the formula of ‘evangelization.’ It should be the syllabus of a seminary course. Christ laid it down in three phrases; first, he must deny his very self; secondly, he must take up his cross; and thirdly, he must follow in My steps. Those are the three main point of this Gospel. The other points are explanations of these three points.
We begin with how to study these steps; in short how are these steps learned in the seminary? Jesus asked His disciples; ‘who do people say I am?’ The apostles gave answers coming from ordinary men. ‘You are a prophet.’ And Christ hints that they were all wrong. In other words, all those who studied Catholic truths from men in the seminary had learned their theology wrongly. How do you study your theology in the right way?
Christ asked Peter; ‘and you, who do you say I am?’ Peter answered; ‘You are the Messiah.’ The other Gospels noted that Christ told Peter; ‘Men had not taught you this but My Father in Heaven.’ Theology or Catholic truths are learned directly from God, not from human teachers. It is learned while praying; not by listening to lectures. All our priests had learned their theology wrongly.
6. As Pope Benedict said; ‘we must study our theology kneeling down.’
So what must we learn? How to deny oneself, take up our cross and follow Him. The teacher will be Christ, the Son of Man who had to suffer, be rejected and put to death. The Gospel states that the classroom wherewith we can learn these three things is in the school house of suffering. The student must lose his life to save his soul. If he tries to save his life he will lose it. What does it mean to ‘lose his life?’ He must give up his dreams and ambitions on how to live his life and pattern his life according to the standards of God. He should not live his life based on the standards of men, otherwise he will lose his soul. To lose his life is not to live by the standards of men; neither his own standards, nor the adulterers’, nor the same sex lobbyists’, not the terrorists’, nor the climate changers’, nor the immigrants’, nor the atheists’, nor the Pentecostals’, nor the Waldesians’, nor…..there is no end to this. To deny oneself is to judge all things by the standards of the commands of God as proposed in Divine Revelation and follow them.
To ‘ take up your cross’ is to suffer like Christ for teaching and doing what is right. Like Bishop Livieres and Bishop Finn who were uncanonically fired by Pope Francis, together with Cardinal Burke for doing the right thing. Not to mention the numberless laymen fired by Catholic radio and television stations for preaching the truths. Though physical martyrdom will still be the order of the day, the greater martyrdom will by spiritual martyrdom; the attack on one’s personal Faith through heresies. Blessed John Newman feels that this will be the greater carrying of the Cross in these days.
And what is ‘to follow in My steps?’ Peter was trying to walk ahead of Christ. How can he follow Christ if he was walking ahead of Him? So Christ corrects him. ‘Peter, walk behind Me so you can see where I step and just follow Me. Stop walking ahead of Me where you cannot see My steps. Because if you do so you are Satan. See what you just did. You just tried to prevent me from saving the world by preventing my Passion. You Satan….and that goes for everybody who tries go ahead of Me.
‘See My steps. And do exactly what I do and how I do it. Don’t change anything. The world wide sin of men is doing things according to the standards of men. And this is led by the Pope and down the line. Isn’t the solution for the immigrant problem according to the standard of men? And isn’t that the exact solution of Pope Francis? It is different from the way the Church had been successfully solving this problem. Man’s standard is inviting catastrophe as some had already warned us
7. Man’s standard.
The belief that love is possible without dogmas, that the new wine is better than the old wine, that atheist can go to heaven, that all religions have salvific elements in them, that the Pentecostals have the Holy Spirit, that the Waldesians were right after all, that there is Global warming, that all immigrants should be welcomed like those oriented towards same sex, that those who remind us of the truths of Christ should be fired, that the USA the model of the heresy of liberalism is the model for the Church, that it is about time to change the old time religion established by Christ and the Apostles…….all of these are standards of men who do not understand supernatural truths. And its most popular propagator in the apocalyptic novel of Robert Hugh Benson was a heretical, Catholic priests who joined forces with the most devilish and ambitious head of a democratic nation who was actually ruling in an authoritarian way the whole world and was greatly admiring a man who would be the last anti-pope in history while trying a last attempt to control the last great nation of China. His name in the novel? Francis. While reading the homily of Pope Francis while he was describing the book, I thought he was describing his proposed trip to the U.S.