By Who's Authority?

Palm Sunday Mass was great yesterday. Well, Mass is great all the time. But my own experience of it was a good one. I felt close to the Lord and it was a great way to start the day and to begin Holy Week.

An aquaintence's cousin's son was getting "dedicated" that day as well. So we went to church at another place in the town with the rest of her family. This church is a "plant" from a big church in a local bigger city near here. It's also in an auditorium. I'm never going back to that place, even if I'm asked to show support. Ever.

For some strange reason, I knew at some point that the pastor was going to bash Catholics. I don't know how I knew, I just did. He was more blatant than I expected. And what makes it worse is that her cousin's wife is a "former" Catholic and her mother was there too. I just don't understand it.

The pastor was speaking on the authority of Christ. I thought that it was something good to talk about. However, whenever a Protestant talks about authority I have to chuckle and pay attention. He was doing alright until I started to notice a trend in talking about "ritual" and "tradition" in a negative light. "Jesus bashes the Pharisees; let's bash the Catholics, because clearly they aren't scriptural." By the way, he was referencing Luke 4.

He specifically said, "We can't put our trust in authority other than in Christ and the Bible. Look at the Roman Catholic church now and all that has been in the news." We can't trust our leadership, huh? How can these people trust you as a pastor? How do they know you have the authority to preach and condemn the Catholic church?

Boy, I sure am glad he set me straight! Thank Jesus for the 'authority' of this guy to preach in His name. Oh, and by the way, he felt compelled to tell the audience that he was afraid what he was saying this week didn't match with what he said last week. And he thanked God for preventing him from contradicting himself. Whew.

Ugh....

To Our Seperated Brethren...

"When will Protestants realize, after five hundred years of talk of reformation: you can’t reform the Church from without, only from within. You can’t reform the Church you want reformed, while in schism from her. Come back in and die for her, with us. We may not see the fruit in our generation, but our children and grandchildren will. Otherwise, the schism will simply continue on, until Protestantism withers and fragments into the oblivion of history."

--Bryan Cross on a thread at the Called to Communion website. Comment #55.

A Homily that Hit Me

On St. Patrick's Day, I went to Mass to honor the feast day of this great Christian missionary to the Celts. (I'm a little Irish me-self.) The homily that was given really hit home and kind of goes along with the guerrilla story that I told not too long ago.

Father was talking about how Christ told Peter and Andrew to cast the net on the other side. Keep in mind that they had been fishing all night and it was now daytime. They had caught nothing and they were tired and smelly and irritable. But, they acquiesced to his request. And they put their net on the other side.

They caught the biggest catch in broad daylight that anyone could have imagined. Sometimes we are asked, not told, to have some faith and cast our nets on the other side. What we think is not the same as what God knows. We could argue with Him for a bit and we think that He might be a little crazy telling us to do one thing when we surely know the outcome. Ha.

Do we have that faith to go ahead and listen to God? Can we have faith to know that He knows whats best and what He's doing? I say, absolutely. So go ahead and trust in the Lord. Be open to his requests. Cast your nets on the other side and see what happens.

St. Joseph, Husband of Mary, Pray for us!

I Heard a Story

I heard a story today on the Drew Mariani Show on RelevantRadio. It's worth sharing:

A priest was in the middle of celebrating Mass in a small town in Africa. Guerrillas came from the woods surrounding this little community and burst into the small chapel with guns firing and people screaming. The main guerrilla grabbed the priest and threw him out of the small church. The doors being slammed shut so that the parishioners would not be able to see.

The man asked if anyone else believed that Jesus is God. After a time, an elderly man near the front stood up and declared that he did. He was grabbed by the other man and thrust out the door as well. After a few more moments other parishioners stood up and were escorted outside. When no one else stood up, the guerrilla leader walked outside. His men were still at the door.

Outside the sound of machine gun fire was heard. The guerrilla leader came back in and ordered everyone left outside. What they saw surprised them all. Instead of bloody bodies on the ground they saw all who had given witness and their priest fine, just a little dirty.

To the people who did not stand up for their faith, he said "Find what you believe in and stand up for it!" He looked at his men and ordered them back into the woods and they were gone.

How many of us would be in the group who stood up for their beliefs? How many of us would belong to the second group?