There are more affluent people than ever in human history; yet why are they / we so miserable? The original sin as rebellious selfish will still pulls at us.

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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Does affluence impede human happiness?

Our current generations living upon the face of the Earth are, arguably, the most affluent in human history. After the great inequalities caused by the industrial revolution that favored the holders of capital and the levers of industry, after World War II the justice and labor movements created a huge middle class rivaling the best of either ancient, medieval, or contemporary societies. As a result the people of other nations envied the West or wanted to go there.

Other nations have emulated western economies and have brought reforms to their own populations, raising their standards of living. Ironically, during this same period of time, our affluent societies have suffered incredible social disintegration and misery in countless forms. Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, the favorable conditions that brought general affluence in the mid 20th century are now quickly evaporating, causing the rich upper crust to expand exponentially along with the poor lower segments; while the middle class melts away.

If we take a step back we could say there is general agreement that human beings want to live a happy and abundant life. We quickly disagree as soon as we try to define what life in abundance means, what happiness can be, what are the best means of getting there, and what do we do with it once we have it.

Those who accept the teaching and try to follow the example of Jesus of Nazareth come to understand that what we all need to do in order to have life and have it in abundance, as God our Father and Creator intends, is to follow Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior in the way of life He has opened up for us.

Jesus preached that God offers us his Holy Spirit to help us realize and choose ways of living in accord with the Father's love and will for us. The Holy Spirit, even in the consciences of those who don't know or believe in God, works within human them to guide them in harmony with our human nature and the ways of the Creator and to shed light on the ways in which we are not living in accord with God's ways because to do so goes against our own nature. Faith in God helps us understand that opposing the Father's will opens paths that lead to dead ends, even though at first they may seem very promising or attractive.

That is why Jesus' very first words He spoke in public were "Repent, and believe the Good News. The kingdom of God has come near to you and is here." Jesus explained that there are two kingdoms existing simultaneously in our world: the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God.

Going with the flow is deadly - we need to carefully choose our path, or paths, in life.

When Jesus was tempted by the devil in the desert we see how the devil presented himself as the prince of this world. At times Jesus referred to the devil as the prince of this world, because he is. In order to tempt Him the devil showed Jesus in a kind of vision a glimpse of the glory, power, and wealth of all the kingdoms of this world and offered to give them all to Jesus if Jesus would bow down and worship him.

Jesus didn't call him a liar, which the devil is anyway, because for once he told at least part of the truth. All the things of this world are under the influence of the devil and he has power over them, and he uses the goods of this world to seduce the minds and hearts of people and turn them away from good and from God. The devil tempted Jesus to be powerful in order to succeed in his mission, but Jesus knew the Father sent Him into the world to be just like us, human, mortal, weak; so that He could encourage us and show us the way to God and to abundant life in God's love.

God's unique design of human beings

When God created human beings He designed us different, male and female, and it is together that we are made in the image and likeness of God. In other words, we most resemble God our Father when we accept to relate to one another and to love one another in a self-giving sacrificial love. Jesus made this most visible in the way He put himself completely at the service of others, especially sinners and the poor, and in the way He accepted to surrender his life so that all humanity might see how far God is willing to go in order to demonstrate his love and in order to attract us to Himself. This is because it is only by living a life in communion of mind and heart, body and soul, with God and with our neighbor that we can enter into the fullness of life here on Earth and in Heaven.

The differences between women and men are everywhere in our lives and relationships. Our differences provoke the other to make an effort to become a better self, a better person. The other's differences challenge our good will to become deeper, our love to become more sincere, our generosity to become more complete. In the end, the greatest act of love is to lay down our life for the other, for others. The true test of how much we love God, whom we cannot see, is to love our neighbor, whom we can see. Jesus commanded us not to put limits on how much we love, accepting to forgive without counting the number of times and even extending forgiveness to enemies. Rather than hate enemies Jesus commands us to love them (we don't have to like them)l To love them simply means to actively desire their good. So we ask God to bless our enemies and in his mercy to turn them around to become good and loving.

Our Creator's design for humanity has at the heart a plan for human family, and the original path to family that is most fully in accord with our design as human beings, is through marriage as the union of one man and one woman in complete self-giving, generosity, fidelity, exclusivity (with no room for any other partners), and for life - for the full duration of their life on earth - and lived out in complete openness to the transmission of life, doing nothing to block or prevent God from making them fruitful through attempts to "tame" or "stifle" their human fertility. God designed marriage and family to have no limits imposed by human beings, leaving God free to bless the married couple and their family as fully as He wants. The more human beings attempt to control life, the more we end up strangling it, squeezing the vitality out of it.

Do we follow God or do we act in accord with our own will?

Today people attempt to approach the couple experience and the life of a household outside of this original design of the family by the Creator. To the extent they are good people and make of their lives a gift of selfless love and service for the other and for children that come along; then to that extent they can experience the love that God has for every human being. This is true whether or not they know or believe in God, because it is the basic design imprinted by God on our human nature from the beginning. (Cf. The Book of Genesis in the Hebrew and Christian Bible.)

However, whenever a human union of love is not between one man and one woman, but another combination of persons; then they cannot experience the full benefit and blessing God intends for the marriage of one man and one woman for life and for the children generated by their mutual love and self giving. When married couples find themselves infertile and opt instead to adopt, they generally quickly overcome their fears and discover they can love their adopted child as well as though they had generated this child themselves. Perhaps adopting requires a special quality of selflessness in the love they pour out upon this child which, by being chosen and adopted, changed from being a stranger into their very own child.

When children come along without being generated by their own father and mother, through a variety of conception technologies or through adoption, God still loves each child as his own. However, a child not generated by the natural union of their mother and father is deprived of the loving union of their parents and of the imprint of love this union would have left upon them from the very moment of their conception.

The adults adopting, or conceiving artificially through technological intervention, and receiving that child will hopefully love that child with unconditional love and to that extent the child will thrive. Still, whenever children don't benefit from the presence, love, and care of both a mother and a father, and don't experience the love that their mother and father have for each other as well as for their children; then there are dimensions of development and blessing that the Creator cannot bestow to the extent that the model of that family remains deficient or lacking one of the elements originally and forever intended by the Creator in his original complete and complementary design of one woman and one man for life.

The design of the Creator is always oriented toward a fullness, an extravagant abundance, which we choose to limit at our own peril. Whenever we find ourselves limiting God's options through no fault of our own, of course we can always count on God's mercy to fill in the gaps in our situation and experience, providing we do all we can to live and serve others in accord with the ways of the Lord, in accord with the moral principles the Creator has embedded within our human nature and consciousness where they await our curiosity to discover and our willingness to adopt and practice them.

Previous generations still had respect for God and valued each human life.

In the past, say until just before World War II, most societies in recent centuries on Earth lived for the most part in accord with these principles, as did many of the ancient societies and civilizations. Notable exceptions were societies and cultures where human sacrifices were practiced or that were organized around adult sexual practices and preferences rather than around the rearing and good of the children. Whenever societies, cultures, clans, or families diverged from these principles they in some instances at least realized they were doing so and continued to hold these principles in high regard in the hope of being able to live in accord with them once again in the future.

People had great respect for the power of human fertility and avoided sexual activity out of fear and respect for their fertility and out of respect for life and for the other. Men who were real men respected women, and women who were real women respected men. At the very least they held human fertility in fear of the unknown and of the power made manifest in the procreation of offspring. Whether or not people were religious, they tended generally to acknowledge the existence of God, of a Creator, and they had deep respect for the Creator and his power that watches over all of our realities.

Rebellion from God is endemic to humanity since the "original sin". Its form varies over time.

In the 1700's there was introduced into Europe a way of thinking or philosophy that chose another path, diverging from that of respect for God and for our human nature and fertility. Instead they chose to ignore God and consider that everything is only up to us human beings, as if we are god ourselves. Slowly this way of thinking began to spread, and with the rapid development of industrialization in the 1800's the century of the 1900's saw all kinds of horrors that were the result of people living as though there is no God, or if there is one, as if he is powerless and not really a god or as if he doesn't care what we do.

From the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution of the 18th century until today, this new mentality that came over the whole world, one nation after another, reduced human life to a commodity, something we can buy or sell or kill or do what we want with it, thinking that there will be no consequences anyway. Millions were killed in the name of political ideologies under fascism, communism, and extremism of various forms in the 20th century, and this trend is continuing in our own day with fundamentalist terrorism. Closer to home, our consumerism has caused us all to value the life of comfort, abundance and security so much that contraception has become a normal activity and part of married and family life.

The so called "sexual revolution" initiated an attack on our personal integrity by degrading the value of our human fertility.

In 1960 "the pill" was approved for contraceptive use, and it became an instant hit. Married or unmarried, people flocked to its use to the point that it has become taken for granted that it is necessary for a woman's health for her to use it. This "chemical revolution" begs the question: "Just because we can do a thing does not necessarily mean we may do it or should do it; so, what are we doing to ourselves when we contracept? What are the immediate and long term consequences to both women and men who contracept?

Women who contracept do it because they believe it is good for them, and so do men. Even when women aren't so sure it's good for them to use the pill, often there is pressure from the man or men in their lives expecting them to take it. Even to this day it is universally believed that the pill is good for woman and anyone who speaks against it is reviled as a woman hater, or misogynist, ignorant, or worse.

Ironically, that which in the human body of both men and women for millennia was given respect and held in awe as our awesome human power of fertility and reproduction, with the advent of the pill, that same awesome faculty of our human fertility has come to be feared, despised, or held in contempt, and treated as a disease, a condition to be medicated, to be controlled or subjugated with medicine; like any other disease or medical condition.

We humans have become a species laboring towards its own annihilation.

Another practice which in various forms has existed from the dawn of human history in various places and time, but was always generally seen as evil, is the practice of abortion. In ancient Greece under certain circumstances people would leave a newborn baby out in the wilderness to be consumed by the wild beasts in order to be free from having to keep and care for the child, whether it was healthy or not. When it became a challenge for the existence of a whole tribe under extreme circumstances to care for the vulnerable, the infirm, elderly, and babies were abandoned to the wild in order that they not slow down the tribe in its quest to find safety; lest they hold the tribe back and cause everyone to die of starvation or exposure to extreme cold or heat.

In our day, despite that our western society is the most comfortable, secure, and affluent society the Earth has ever seen, not only is contraception practiced by almost everyone, but abortion has also become widespread, most of the time merely because a child would be inconvenient. Human life has lost its value in our eyes. We thought Hitler's Nazi movement four generations ago was terrible for exterminating Jews and dissidents but also the elderly, the infirm, the handicapped, and those with deformations or mental impairments. Now we do the same or worse as a society and don't even think twice about it.

God never abandons his creatures, his human children.

No matter how far we humans may stray away from our Creator, He never abandons us. God loves us and He is not silent. He speaks to us in our conscience; even though because of the original sin we are inclined not to pay attention, but instead to ignore it, and eventually, no longer to hear that inner voice. God also speaks to us through other means: through his inspired Word in the Sacred Scriptures. The Bible used to be available only to those who had education and were wealthy. Bibles were collections of scrolls made of papyrus or lamb skin, which were very expensive. The sacred texts were carefully copied and hand written, which took a monk close to a lifetime just to make one complete Bible. In addition, for much of the past two thousand years, the Bible only existed in the original languages from the time of Jesus: the Holy Land languages of Aramaic and Hebrew, and also the Empire languages of Greek and Latin.

After the Apostolic Age, ordinary people didn't know the ancient biblical languages and so couldn't read God's Word but could only hear it in Church, and even then, it was often proclaimed in those languages, which the people did not understand anyway. The first attempt to translate the Sacred Scriptures into the language of the people was by the monk St. Jerome who translated the Bible into Latin, the language of citizens of the Roman Empire. He lived from the mid 4th century to the early 5th century (347-420). So the Scriptures became intelligible to the faithful whose language was Latin; just as those who spoke Greek could understand the Scriptures when they were read in Greek in those churches that later self-identified as Orthodox.

When the Good News spread to other peoples who spoke other languages, once again the Word of God became unintelligible. One of the benefits of the Protestant Reform is that some Reformers undertook to translate the Bible into the language of their own people: such as in German by Martin Luther and in English by John Wycliffe. Still, in the Roman Catholic Church the Sacred Scriptures continued to be read in Latin in many churches, as were the prayers of the Holy Mass, which over time was no longer the language of the people.

This is why over the past several centuries, as the Holy Rosary and meditation on the Mysteries of the Rosary developed in popularity, it became a devotion of the people to enable them to pray when they attended Holy Mass in Church; while the various ministers occupied themselves with the Latin prayers and readings from the Bible. The Sacred Liturgy the Roman Catholic Church only came to be celebrated in the languages of the people in modern times in the mid 1960's. Before then, earlier liturgical reforms introduced the publication and spreading of affordable missals. These enabled people to follow the Holy Mass with the Latin on the left side and their own language on the right side. That was the kind of missal I grew up with in the 1950's and 1960's.

Now it is possible not only to own a paper Bible in hard bound or soft cover, which are quite affordable, but it is even possible to find the whole Bible on the Internet with free access. Here is a link to the New Revised Standard Version which is mostly used in our Lectionary for Mass since the latest reforms and revisions to the Roman Missal and its Lectionary. Just click on the "Book List" near the top and it opens up the Old and New Testaments - you select a book and then below there opens up a table with the numbered chapters of that book and you click on one of the chapters and it opens up for you. Amazing!

There's another way in which God is not silent. He speaks to us through Jesus, then through the Apostles Jesus sent into the whole world, and then those they sent as their successors who are the bishops, and finally the priests the Lord sends through our bishops to be our pastors and spiritual guides and confessors.

In 1968 God inspired Pope Paul VI to write a beautiful text as an eloquent reflection on human and divine love. "Humanae Vitae" (Of Human Life) is all about God's love which He has poured into our very nature as human beings. Our Creator has revealed his love, bestowed upon us as life giving gift, in the capacity He as Creator has given to us women and men to love one another generally and, in particular, to love one another in Marriage and family life in a way that is open to generate life and form children selflessly with a servant's heart in. He also warned that the use of contraception would harm us.

From childhood on we often choose to ignore warnings even at our own peril.

He warned that contraceptives would artificially "tame" the wondrous power of human fertility and we would lose our respect for our sexuality and human fertility. Women would lose respect for their own body under the illusion that they could control and tame it to serve their own will and desires, and they would also lose respect for men and their power to make their fertility bear fruit and conceive.

Men would also lose respect for their own body and would succumb to the temptation to pleasure themselves; they would also lose respect for women in general and for their wife in particular, because now her fertility being tamed, they could take her and draw pleasure from her whenever they wanted. Great now would be the danger and risk that men would perceive women as objects to be used for their own pleasure and no longer as persons.

Pope Paul VI found it difficult to issue these warnings because he loved people so much and in particular he loved young people and married couples so much. Still because of this love he knew it was necessary to issue these warnings because he could already see all around him and all over the world the devastating effects and consequences of losing respect for our lives, bodies, and sexuality, of losing respect for one another and reducing others to objects of pleasure, and finally of losing our respect for God the Creator who bestows upon us our life and fertility as great and valuable gifts to be used with great respect and reverence and gratitude. As our culture of respect would dwindle; so would our expression of gratitude to God. People would stop going to church, stop praying, stop treating God as real and as worthy of our love and worship. Trusting only in ourselves, we would no longer trust in God.

Pope Paul VI warned that the practice of contraception and the degeneration of our attitudes towards ourselves, others, and God would cause Marriage and family life to disintegrate, that divorces would multiply, and that the very thought of giving one's life to another would no longer appear as a value. We would all degenerate into a society where it is everyone for himself or herself, which is nothing less than the law of the jungle.

Sadly, Pope Paul VI's warnings fell on deaf ears. Priests and even bishops expressed angry dissent against this teaching, implying that the Pope was ignorant or naive, that he didn't understand the modern reality and the pressures people were experiencing. Until he died ten years later on August 6th, 1978, the Feast of the Transfiguration, Pope Paul VI suffered a real martyrdom in the contempt with which he was treated by clergy, laity, and even bishops. Even sadder is the reality that all his warnings came true and were realized. So many marriages break up, so much misery multiplies everywhere, so many lives end in abortion before they even have a chance to live, to breathe, to see the sun, and to discover that God loves them. We who should welcome with much reverence and gratitude these new and innocent little lives, we instead think only of ourselves and "snuff them out". Abortion is nothing less than murder and is always an extremely violent and painful act for the unborn baby, no matter its stage of development. The facts speak for themselves.

In the face of all these troubles we are, all of us, poor beggars on our knees before the Lord, imploring Him to have mercy upon us, and He loves us so much that He is eager to overlook our faults and forgive our sins. As Jesus said on Earth to those who were accused by the authorities of public sin and scandal, now He says the same to us, "Your sins are forgiven you. Now go, and sin no more, lest something worse happen to you."

Jesus was sent by the Father to restore our life in harmony with our Creator

We can see from the life, ministry, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus that the restoration of humanity to personal integrity, harmony with others and Creation, and communion with God the Holy Trinity is not a quick fix or instantaneous process. Jesus healed many people, but illness continues to be common on Earth. He raised some from the dead but they were still mortal and one day died for good. The final resurrection is God's promise for the end of time and we have no choice but to trust in the promise He revealed in Jesus' own resurrection and in the assumption of his Mother Mary. We'll just have to wait for it. Jesus forgave the sins of many, but we continue to be sinners prone to sin, inclined to go our own way and turn away from God.

We humans are quite impulsive and prefer to look for rapid outcomes. We hate to wait and prefer to take matters into our own hands and to make things happen quickly. We are loath to do things the way God has planned. We don't want to be tied down by someone else's plans or will. We don't want to depend on others and prefer to do things ourselves. Although we often use our free will to refuse, the fact that we have free will is our chief resemblance to our Father. He freely chose, out of love, to create the Universe and to create us. He created us in his own image and likeness, male and female He created us, with the freedom to choose to love as we are loved and have been loved. We wouldn't truly be free to love if we were not able to refuse to love, but exercising that capacity to refuse is what gets us into trouble.

Like little children who quickly discover the power contained in the little word "No", we more often than not say "No" to God. Still, salvation has been opened up for all of humanity by Jesus. Even people who don't know God, or having heard about Him don't believe in Him, have within their conscience the capacity to pick up on the light and guidance offered by the Holy Spirit to lead each of us towards the Father and the life He offers us.

On the one hand, it is entirely up to each of us to tune in to the Holy Trinity's call and inspiration to open up to the life they offer to share with us. On the other hand, we are not entirely on our own and can lean on the Lord, and call on Him to be our strength in our weakness, to empower us to love when we are afraid to do so, and to forgive us our sins when we falter and fall or turn away from God, only to come to our senses later in regret and sorrow.

If there is so much misery among men it is primarily because of our poor choices and our turning away from the path that leads to God and that opens us to one another. If only we turn to Him and, dying to our own self-importance and self-obsession, we accept to put our trust in Him and to serve others out of genuine love; then God will continuously pour into us his own Spirit and we will be able to face every difficulty and endure every suffering with the same patience, peace, trust, and devotion with which Jesus lay down his life out of love for all of humanity in obedience to his Father.

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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How do we discern God's calling in our daily lives? Q & A - Wanting to "be special" versus giving meaning and purpose to our lives.

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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It is perhaps a challenge for human beings to distinguish from our own awareness, thoughts, feelings, and intuitions within ourselves the real and distinct presence, action, and voice of God. Can we distinguish our regular lives from life becoming special by God's action and power?

All life is "regular" until, precisely, one opens up to God, in whatever way one can. From that moment on a person's life becomes more explicitly spiritual and enters into the supernatural realm, that is, open to God's presence and influence. All life is special because it is particularly wanted and loved by God. When it is truly God's grace at work one of the signs of authenticity is that the person is aware of being blessed, has a sense of unworthiness, but is predominantly grateful and eager to do the will of God, to please Him. A person blessed and led by God doesn't want to shine in the limelight but on the contrary prefers to remain in the background and let God get all the glory.

In the oldest Christian traditions - Roman Catholic and Orthodox - Holy Mary, the Mother of Jesus Son of God, for example, was totally surprised by the annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel and that God would choose her. She had no thoughts at all about her own importance and was on the contrary quite humbled by the message and by God's choice of her. She remained humble her whole life, content to be in the background; yet at the same time doing her part to support her Son and later the Apostles and disciples, and especially through pondering the things of the Lord and praying alone and with others.

Excessive preoccupation with wanting to be special or to shine indicates preoccupation with one's own self rather than openness and awareness of God or a desire to know and to do his will. On the other hand, it may happen that in advance of giving a special grace and calling, God may spark within a soul a desire for more, which may appear at first as dissatisfaction with the way things are. Over time, the intensification of the desire takes up more room and pushes out sentiments and attitudes of selfishness and sin, purifying and making more room for what it is that God wants to give. God's timing is always perfect and He knows best what we need in order to embrace his will.

At times, in the accomplishment of his holy will and plan for the common good of humanity and the particular good of each person God assigns to a person a particular role for others, or for the Church, or for humanity, or simply for their family or Parish community or neighborhood or place of work or school or.... How God works is often simply to infuse a little of his own wisdom into a person's normal human thoughts, feelings, and intuitions or insights.

What is primary is the glory of God, that is, that it be universally known that God is real, that He always acts for our best interests and for the common good, and the what is best is that this truth and good news about God we widely spread, understood, and embraced. The more human beings embrace and act for the glory of God the more rapidly his goodness and offer of abundant life can touch and bless the lives of human beings.

From the beginning as recorded in the Book of Genesis God our Creator has intended that human beings live our life on Earth in a true partnership and friendship with God. The original sin was to turn our back on God to prefer a stranger's novel ideas and our own preference or will in opposition to the will God has made known to us for our own welfare and the common good and the glory of God.

Whether it is a person's first and fundamental life vocation - such as marriage and family, or priesthood, or religious life, or consecrated virginity for the sake of the Kingdom, or simple celibacy in the world - or a calling constituting a profession or work or activity - such as medicine, social work, teaching, business in accord with moral and divine principles, arts or communication, and so on - in either case, the first or fundamental calling is about dedicating one's life to a particular cause and in a particular life style. God grants the grace for us to remain faithful to this calling, no matter what may change or arise.

Sometimes there can come from God a "call within a call" such as what happened to Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She was happy and faithful and very dedicated as a Sister of Loretto teaching girls that for the most part came from privileged families in India. God disturbed her with awareness of how much the poor were suffering which provoked in her a desire to do something to alleviate their suffering.

One thing led to another and she in time received permission to test out her desire by going out among the poor for a probationary period. Then as it went well her probation was extended from one year to three years. During that time her second calling became confirmed in the fruitfulness of her efforts and intensification of her desire and God gave her the intuition to seek to be released from the Loretto Sisters to found a new congregation and the Vatican approved. When there is external confirmation by the Church then a person can finally know for sure that it is God's will. Until the approval, Sister Teresa only had her personal conviction but she could not be sure that she was doing God's will and was not being deceived or misled by her own ego or worse. With the formation of the Congregation of the Missionaries of Charity Sister Teresa became Mother Teresa.

What does it mean when some impossible prayers are answered?     This is the simplest way to know that God is at work. We can do the possible, while God alone does the impossible. However the Lord did warn in the Book of Revelation that the evil one would work wonders to deceive and lead away from God even the elect. So we must always remain humble and wait on the Lord, putting Him first and not our ego or own desires. As Saint Paul wrote and taught, we must "test the spirits", that is, we must constantly discern and test our impressions to allow God to confirm what is coming from Him and what is not.

We humans can be inclined to seek for "signs" from God. What are the greatest outward signs?        The sacraments are the greatest outward signs in which God pours out his own substance, his own divine life. There is a time and place for God to give signs, but for the most part, He wants us to use our brains, to make good use of the intelligence and responsibility and free will that He has given us, always with humility, and pondering the wonders of the Lord as Mary did, and waiting on the Lord as Mary and all the saints did. Even Jesus waited on the Father when He first attempted to do the Father's will and was left in the Temple at the age of 12. When Mary and Joseph found Him He returned home with them and remained hidden until He was 30 when, called by the Father through the preaching and baptizing of his cousin John the Baptist, Jesus began his public ministry. He was very patient.

How can we understand having personal dreams with apparently deep spiritual and practical applications in our life and our family's life?        Saint Joseph's dreams were powerful because it was God who needed to confirm Joseph in the will God wanted him to carry out for the glory of God and the salvation of humanity. For normal people like us God can use dreams to nudge us in a direction, or to disturb us and open a possibility, but we must always discern and test such things over time and not be in a hurry. It is hazardous to jump when you can't see what's in front of you... it could be any kind of danger; so it is best to wait until God makes it undeniably clear.

What about when we come to have a general sense of closeness to Jesus throughout the day and always?        True closeness to Jesus is what the Father wants for everyone and this is holiness, the state of grace. However, emotionally, one need not feel that at all. On the contrary, Saint Mother Teresa almost from the beginning of her work with the poor felt, until she died, abandoned by God. That is how she felt emotionally and spiritually, but He did not abandon her. On the contrary the Holy Trinity was intimately at work constantly in and through her, and it was to keep her simple and humble and safe from attacks of the evil one on her soul that God withdrew emotional and spiritual consolations and left her feeling desolate. This is the mystery of how God works in human souls. He is supreme and He does his will, not ours, and it is always for the best for us, for others, for humanity, for the Church, for our family, for the community, and for the glory of God.

How can one know if one is being called to something very great?        If it is truly God at work, He will gives us the awareness and knowledge that we need in order to be faithful to his will, but nothing more. To use Star Wars terminology, to be overly preoccupied with greatness is probably a path that leads to the "dark side", that is, away from the true light which is God, the radiance of divine love. Only selfless sacrificial love is truly great, that is the greatest thing in the universe, which shows that Jesus' offering of Himself at the hands of his persecutors, like a humble and trusting lamb to allow the Father to accomplish his plan for our salvation, is the greatest thing in the universe.

What if a person is being called to something great but hesitates not out of insecurity in God, but because of the plain desire to live out a "normal life"?  All good actions generally involve a cost to the person doing them; so it is normal for human beings doing or called to do the great acts of selfless sacrificial love to be tempted to escape the cost, the effort, the suffering associated with serving others and God. Married people are tempted to be single again and just take care of themselves, priests and religious are tempted to escape their regimented lives and just look after their own needs and desires, and so it goes.

Can a person be called to something maybe even "biblical"?      This could mean anything. What is truly biblical is walking with the Lord humbly, hidden from the eyes and ears of others. When God is truly putting divine pressure on someone, like the prophets, it is like Saint Paul wrote: a burning in his soul requiring him to proclaim the Word of the Lord or if he didn't he would burst. When people are psychologically imbalanced and caught up within the traps and wounds of their own ego self, they may easily be inclined to misinterpret their imaginings and feelings for the real thing, but they are not. When we are not healthy in every way - physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually - it seems unfortunately easy to mistake our imaginings for God's intervention.

However, it is not without hope. Many of the saints started out neurotic or even with psychotic breaks, but because the Lord was truly working in them, and they sincerely attended to pondering the Word of God - both by listening to Him at Holy Mass and also reading Him when they had access to the Sacred Scriptures - then God worked with and through their precarious or fragile state in order to manifest his power and loving mercy. It is universally true that the saints counted first and foremost on opening themselves to God through the sacraments: frequent Confession, frequent when not daily Communion, frequent prayer and contemplation, at times of grave illness the Anointing of the Sick, and just as importantly, manifesting the fruit of God's presence in them through abundant and generous works of mercy and charity especially to the poor, the sick, the elderly, the abandoned, and all persons in need, beginning of course with their own family and other obligations.

That is why many or most of the saints cannot be imitated in the unfolding of their lives, because in the earlier years they were often not completely balanced, but only in their practice of the faith, of hope in God, and of practical works of charity. It is only how a person is at the natural end of their life and what sort of spiritual fruit and the quantity of fruit in the service of others that we can look back and see the hand of God at work, which gives all the glory to Him, and reveals the saint as a truly humble instrument of God.

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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Pope Francis regarding Donald Trump's "Mexico Wall" - what is or isn't Christian?

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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WHO IS A CHRISTIAN?
WHAT IS IT TO BE CHRISTIAN?
WHO CAN CLAIM TO BE CHRISTIAN?
WHO CAN SAY THAT A PERSON IS NOT A CHRISTIAN?

Acts 11:25-26     ²⁵ Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, ²⁶ and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for an entire year they met with the church and taught a great many people, and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called “Christians.”    NRSV

From the beginning of what we now call Christianity the disciples of Jesus did not call themselves Christians, but it was other people - ordinary citizens who were neither believers in the Jewish faith nor believers in Jesus - who called Jesus' disciples "Christians". People identified them as followers of the Nazarene Jesus Christ precisely as Jesus himself had foretold it would happen. 

John 13:34-35     ³⁴ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”     NRSV

According to Jesus' own mind and intention, any who follow Him as his disciples will be recognized as his disciples by the love they have for one another, a love which would become plain and visible to everyone as distinctive from what is to be found in the rest of society. When Jesus was arrested all twelve of his apostles failed in their love for Him. One betrayed Him, one denied Him, and the others ran away and abandoned Him. The one who betrayed Him could not cope and hanged himself. The other eleven in their regret sought to reverse their acts of weakness. They only succeeded when Jesus appeared to them and forgave them, restoring them to friendship and confidence in Him. Jesus strove to empower them to love one another after the example He gave by loving them even to the point of laying down his life for them.

The "great commission" by Jesus to his apostles

Matthew 28:16-20     ¹⁶ Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷ When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Jesus' intentions clearly revealed the will of God in his final act as the master and teacher of his 12 apostles, now temporarily only 11, and of his other disciples. He commissioned them to go out into the world and the primary thing they were to do is make disciples - without distinction of national or ethnic origin - by baptizing them, immersing them, in God the Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - and teaching them to observe all that He had commanded them.

Clearly then the "test" of a disciple is going out to make other disciples, and the substance of a disciple is the quality of love with which he or she loves others with Jesus as our model.

Any individual can desire or claim to be a Christian, but only others can truly say whether or not anyone is a Christian, a disciple of Jesus Christ. I can be a member of a Christian church, have proof of my initiation, and even regularly attend and contribute, but I could just as well be a member of a country club. Only my neighbors together with my enemies can say whether I truly live as a disciple of Jesus, who commanded his disciples to go so far as to love and forgive their enemies and do good to those who do evil to them, always returning good for evil.

Matthew 7:15-20    
¹⁵ “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. ¹⁶ You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? ¹⁷ In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. ¹⁸ A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. ¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ Thus you will know them by their fruits.     NRSV

Jesus immediately knew what kind of person came up to Him or spoke out in front of his disciples. Jesus would not allow himself of those who followed or listened to Him to be manipulated by others just because they can speak the loudest, hide behind their public office or status, or intimidate others by employing the most influence or power or flaunting their success or riches. In every age Jesus wants his disciples to enjoy the same freedom, the freedom of the children of God. So He gave us simple criteria for discerning what kind of person another is on the basis of what comes out of them. 

Matthew 15:19     ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.     NRSV

It is no coincidence that it is we, the healthy and wealthy of the Earth who take the means to isolate ourselves with walls of stone or economic protocols or other exercises of power. We in the Americas built our society upon the "ethnic cleansing" of genocide of the native peoples we found here when they would not submit to our every whim and tried to defend themselves, their peoples, and their way of life. Such a violent and murderous undertaking was certainly not the intention of most settlers and pioneers who brought high moral standards with them. However these good people were poorly represented by their leaders and the effect of the "land grabbing" attitude of Europeans was still deadly for the indigenous populations of this rich land. It is the same in every land and has been this way since the dawn of humanity, but it was not so in the original design of the Creator. To make it seem easier to exploit others all we have to do is consider them inferior, but such attitudes and policies dehumanize those who employ those very same practices.

Genesis 1:26-30     ²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”²⁷ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. ²⁸ God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” ²⁹ God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. ³⁰ And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.      NRSV

There is a clear lesson from this account of the Creation given by God to the Jewish People as his Chosen People. In the inspired Word given by God to his People, He tells that they are to be the first among his children, intending them to draw to Him all the nations of the world. From God's point of view all the abundance of the Earth is intended by Him to be enjoyed by all of humanity without any exception or preference of privilege. The Jewish Scriptures make it clear that it is out of fear and greed that human beings make distinctions among ourselves, hoard good things to ourselves, and by the same token exclude others from having access, let alone enjoy, the good things of the Earth.

Pope Francis by his whole way of being is all about reaching out to others in respect and dialogue, open to what good can come from authentic encounter between people. This attitude and approach includes a willingness to be touched or moved by the experience and conditions of the other and do what is possible to ease the other's difficulties and through sharing and caring build bridges of good will and understanding in favor of unity and peace through works of justice and caring. This is very clearly an attitude that Jesus wants even today for any who would be his disciples. 

Any approach that would build walls instead of bridges and harden the protocols that hinder others from having access to the good things of the Earth is not only unchristian but it is fundamentally an inhuman attitude. Such policies are the policies of those who would rule over others by force and do all that is deemed to be necessary to assure the rule of those with access to power, influence, riches. Many writers have explored and commented the ills of the deliberate exploitation of others, such as George Orwell in his novels Animal Farm and 1984.

What cannot be seen by those who refuse to see can often be plainly visible to mere children. This truth has been marvelously illustrated by Hans Christian Andersen in his fable "The Emperor's New Clothes". Perhaps what may prompt Mr. Donald Trump to say what he does, with all due respect to him and his bid to be the next President of the U.S.A., and all those who agree with him, is the American doctrine of "separation of church and state". 

The Roman Catholic Church agrees with citizens of the world that the civil state has its proper competence and jurisdiction in matters of civil government and that the religious institution such as the church, temple, or synagogue has competence and jurisdiction in matters of religious governance. Some especially in America would make of this an ideology that would attempt to reduce practice of a faith to the realm of private life and go so far as to abhor any public manifestation of faith. 

It is clear that the Creator of the universe as revealed to the Jewish People and in Jesus of Nazareth the Christ that God intends his children who believe in Him to practice their faith so thoroughly that it changes, enriches, and enhances every aspect of their life, including all public manifestations of their life and faith. It makes no sense therefore for a person to attempt to be a devout person of faith in church and at home but live as a pagan without regard or respect for others in school, at work, in the lab, in the marketplace, in public office, or anywhere else out in the world.

Christians are to live out their faith in God in Jesus through every aspect of their life including a rich and complete participation in the social life of their community and people. The Roman Catholic Church teaches, as in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that Catholic Christians are never to attempt to impose their faith or practice on others but rather are to live so fully their faith in every aspect of their life that they will have the effect of a leaven for the common good within society.

So, Mr. Trump, with all due respect to you, your party, and your supporters, everyone is entitled to say whether anyone is a Christian, and we all need to heed the voices of others, especially the voices of our opponents and enemies, for they are the least likely to be motivated to flatter or get into our good graces and the most likely to see clearly all those aspects of our lives which we cannot see.

God bless you and America in this final year leading to your presidential elections.

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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America is out of control - its citizenry has been betrayed and given up to the "sharks" - money has substituted human life as the highest value

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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So much is being made in the media of the wrangling by American legislators about their need to raise their debt ceiling that it is difficult to avoid making some comments and observations. It appears that America - the U.S.A., the United States of America - long deemed a great nation has become a nation careening out of control and destined for a crash, a very damaging collision with unchanging realities that seems unavoidable if they continue on their present course. 

It could be said that the motto of the USA or of their people is "America is the land of opportunity, the land of freedom for all where anything is possible." In their culture, in their beliefs, in their practices, and in their institutions this has come to be expressed in the avoidance of controls and restraints in order to avoid limiting those freedoms and opportunities. 

A corollary belief is that Americans can accomplish anything they set their mind to do; therefore, those who do not succeed fail to succeed because of their own lack of imagination, creativity, will, discipline, or effort. It follows then, according to this generalized line of thinking, that all those who have failed, who are without work, who have lost their homes, who have lost their health, who are down and out or homeless, that is, all those who do not enjoy the full realization of the American Dream, are in that state by their own fault and only by their own fault. 

That is why American culture and politics generally consider a country like Canada to be a socialist state, a short step from the Communist or Marxist states. In recent discussions about their Medicare system Americans resisted extending coverage to every citizen in the USA. There continue to be in the USA what are called working poor, those citizens and families that work one, two, even three jobs but are barely able to sustain themselves, cannot afford medical insurance, and are one hospital visit away from losing their home and being on the street. 

Representatives of their association told me personally in the Fall of 2004 that there were at that time in the USA 75 million working poor, that's 75,000,000 Americans without medical coverage. I don't fully understand their system, but it seems that those who are actually poor and reliant on government welfare payments are eligible for Medicare support if they are hospitalized, but the working poor earn too much to be eligible for those benefits. 

The only way working people can have medical coverage is by buying medical insurance. Not only that, but those on welfare and the working poor generally seem to have to resort to what we could call "B" hospitals - as in "B" movies - hospitals that may still come under the public system or hospitals founded and still managed by what are considered neither public nor private institutions such as the Catholic Church or other Christian churches, where funding may not be as abundant, where there may not be found all the latest in medical technologies and practices, where the best medical practitioners may not normally be found. 

Since the privatization of hospitals and medical institutions in the USA the costs have increased well out of reach of ordinary citizens. Medical procedures and any hospitalizations now cost more than what ordinary people earn in a year or more. The costs have been aggravated by unrestrained technological developments and further aggravated by unrestrained exploitation by the legal system. There seems to exist in the USA what we could call "perfect storm" conditions that came into being when unrestrained exploitation of the legal system by greedy lawyers and legal firms converged with unrestrained increases in investments in advanced medical technologies and unrestrained increases in medical profession salaries - which in turn may have been exacerbated by unrestrained increases in the salaries of athletes and entertainers - and unrestrained exploitation of the public by some medical insurance companies, who in their turn exploited with their money and power the legal system in order to refuse and wear down people who had rightful claims to medical coverage. 

I would hope and do believe there are medical insurance companies out there that tend to honor their policies and do compensate claimants and avoid the shameful practices of putting them through the ringer and exploiting them in their pain and vulnerability in order to dissuade them from following through on their claim or in the hope that they may die and in that way put an end to their claim. 

The perfect storm of which I speak then is the convergence of greed, lack of regard for justice, and the lack of moral restraints in the legal profession and its institutions - both public and private - in the medical profession and medical institutions - both public and private - in government institutions, and finally in citizens themselves. 

The sharks are circling out there, and in the USA if you look at someone the wrong way there may be a lawyer out there capable of convincing that person to sue you. If that other is crazy enough, or sufficiently without principle, and has enough money, they could sue you and destroy you by wearing you down in the courts; which seem no longer able to distinguish true justice from frivolous action or unjust exploitation of a system that has lost its ability to recognize or render true justice. 

That is a perfect storm, and if you're in the wrong place and the wrong time and a shark bites you, or if you lose your job and have a hard time finding another, or if you or a family member gets sick, has a baby or an accident and is hospitalized, you can find yourself with a debt you can never repay or even find yourself losing your home. 

A whole new private enterprise has cropped up in infomercials whereby they show you how to buy up the homes of citizens temporarily defaulting on mortgage payments - often because they are out of work or have a medical bill - so there are "fire sales" on peoples' homes in America, the land of opportunity for sharks. 

In this article, I contend that the USA is a nation out of control. You will find the link at the title a site that reports the actual philosophy of society and of governance of the "founding fathers" who drafted the Constitution of the United States of America. Their consensus was that only faith in God and moral restraint shown by religious people could control the human flaws and passions and that the constitution was intended for such morally virtuous citizens. 

The USA as a nation is now out of control because as a nation with its public and government institutions it has distanced itself from the mindset and moral outlook of its founding fathers. As a result America in its government and public institutions and many of its own citizenry is incapable of living out of its own constitution. 

Don't get me wrong, there are many wonderful Americans, people of character and virtue, people of faith and responsible for themselves, their families, their neighborhood, and their work. Sadly, the government and public institutions, and much of commerce and industry, and most if not all of their multinational and other large corporations are working against their own citizens. 

The founding fathers enshrined in the Constitution document their values with the intention that their descendants would allow themselves to be guided by it to go on living the life of freedom and moral restraint they were setting up for themselves and their families and all the citizens who joined them in the founding of their new nation. 

The primary good was the welfare of every citizen, to be achieved through their own efforts and with the mutual support they were committed to offer each other as they had done in resisting the British. That primary good has been replaced over time by the profit principle. It is now unrestrained greed that governs the USA. This has become obvious from the countless reports over the past few decades. 

As a nation, the USA refuses to admit that people can come into hard times, that it is possible for thrifty and hardworking citizens to get sick, to have accidents, to lose their jobs, and to need public assistance. Such people are considered a drain on public resources and on those who are healthy, wealthy, influential, and successful. They are considered unworthy of help. 

That the USA considers itself the land of opportunity in actual fact means that it is a land of opportunity for various species of shark. Those who inherit fortunes or influence, those who by their own effort and luck achieve positions of fortune and influence, who are not hindered by moral considerations and have the ability to exploit the system - all of these and others like them - are those who have opportunity because it doesn't matter how many they trample in their reckless pursuit of success and profit. 

At the time of the founding fathers, provisions were made for the state to seize and punish those who showed manifest lack of moral restraint and caused harm to others in their quest for success and profit. However, over time, a complex system of laws and legal practice have seen develop a whole culture of legalism that has little or nothing to do with justice or morality. Those who have the influence, the money, and other means and opportunity to exploit even the legal system can, and money appears for the most part able to wear out and crush the ordinary citizen. 

Money and influence have all but strangled the legislative and well as the judiciary systems. Lobbyists are known to be able to steer the outcome of legislation as well as legal outcomes, reports show that money is what actually determines election outcomes, and the government has all but lost its ability to govern, as it represents interests more often than its own citizens. Greed unhindered by moral or other restraints is also in evidence throughout American and around the globe at the hands of American multinational and other large corporations and sadly also smaller private untraded companies. 

The profit principle has trumped all other considerations for the most part: the good of the worker, the value of marriage and family, the value of building local neighborhoods and living environments - none of it matters - which is blind greed careening out of control. 

It is possible to merge new technologies with commerce in the development of living neighborhoods and in the establishment of cottage industry but the citizens must make those choices and support them. Too often large financial interests establish cut price businesses that drive small businesses to closure because the population supports them and buy there, endlessly pursuing discounts, and people just don't seem to realize there are costs. 

You can save by purchasing at a cut price outlet, but the cost is the loss of local business and in time of your neighborhood, your living environment. America is increasingly becoming a land with devastated inner city cores, sterile suburbs, and rural ghost towns as small businesses crash, victims of large profit driven cut price outlets that have little consideration for their own workforce. 

America is beginning to look like the third world, with the gap between rich and poor widening, relentless impoverishment, erosion, and diminishment of the affluent middle class, increasing numbers of wealthy (many of whom have been able to prosper unhindered be consideration for those they in effect exploit), and increasing numbers of the working poor, and in the end, of the helpless poor on welfare or worse, on the street. That's the new class of poor, those who no longer even have a home or address and hence are ineligible for welfare, and find themselves homeless. 

Americans who continue to live the kind of life intended by their founding fathers, a life of character and virtue, of faith and morality, are still able to experience the fruits and benefits of such a life, but they must be on their guard against the innumerable sharks out there. They can do their best to influence their government and public institutions for good, but realize they will often experience defeat at the hands of those bodies and individuals governed exclusively by profit. Even they can find themselves out of work, on welfare, or even on the street, if they find themselves in the kinds of conditions that put Job in total misery. 

This is for them an extreme test of faith, to continue relying on God, trying to help themselves, turning to others for help, and trusting that in the end the Lord will rescue them. The massive scale of the American economy and the trappings of their government and public institutions has allowed the USA to maintain what has increasingly become a fiction of success, a travesty, an illusion. Their public debt has become so huge that they appear unable to pay it down. There is no manifest public will to even acknowledge the debt, let alone pay it down. The dominant concern at present seems to be to continue increasing spending and the debt without any consideration for the future. 

If the government of the USA is not yet financially bankrupt, morally it is. It no longer reflects the character, morality, and virtue of its founding fathers, nor do many American citizens, businesses, corporations, and countless self-interest and lobby groups. Not until responsibilities receive equal measure with rights will this situation ever change. 

If America continues on this course, it is only a question of time until they collide with undeniable reality. A nation unconcerned about its weaker and more defenseless citizens is not worthy of its founding fathers. This remains true even if we don't mention the "selective genocide" of abortion. Only God can help them now, but they must first overcome those adhering to the profit principle who have all but succeeded in banning God from public life and discourse, and return to the character, values, morality, restraint, and faith of the founding fathers.

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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