Five Essays

#1 Learning the Hard Way. 

A few days ago I was near St. Andrews Cathedral walking in a grassy area toward Beretania Street while keeping in the shade of the large trees there.  I saw the brick wall that was something I was going to have to get over so as to stay in the shade.  Now, I’m aged 75 and should have known better; feeling like I was in my teens I was going to get over that little wall.   Let’s spring over the wall I thought, but in the process I landed on the top of the wall and rolled over onto the sidewalk. Picking myself up quickly so as to look as cool about the leap as possible, I found no bones broken or serious injury but, having scraped myself holding onto the wall, I was bleeding from both hands so I had to run over to a pharmacy to buy bandages and get cleaned up.

Afterwards I thought about this; it took half an hour to get cleaned up and, my gosh, I should have had better sense.  Whereupon a nursery rime, slightly altered, came to mind − Humpty Dumpty. 

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,

all the king’s horses and all the king’s men,

were able to put Humpty together again;

Should Humpty again sit on that wall, 

and Humpty have another great fall,

all the King’s horses and all the king’s men 

refuse to put Humpty together again.

Motto: Don’t make the same dumb mistake twice.

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#2 An Essay on the Peace of Christ

A short time ago my wife and I were listening to a sermon at church.   The sermon was on the peace of Christ.  Oh boy, I thought, now we are going to hear the usual kind of sermon identifying peace as an absence of war;  but we got a surprise. 

The sermon started with a definition of peace found in the dictionary: the “tranquility of order”, seemingly a good definition; and yet, the one delivering the sermon continued:” if you look around and consider what is going on in the world today there is no tranquility of order, so no peace”. 

As the sermon continued, we were asked: What does Christ mean by saying “my peace I give you, my peace I leave with you”? Certainly Jesus means that we should do everything which brings about tranquility of order in our families and communities by observing His commandments; indeed, we are admonished even to love our enemies.

Now the surprise comes: Christ’s peace means more than obeying commandments and helping others; with the introduction of a single word we had never before heard connected with peace, the Peace of Christ is given it’s full meaning − that is the word DARE!

Christ DARED to do good by healing people in the synagogues even on the Sabbath, incurring the wrath of the Pharisees who accused Him of breaking the Sabbath Law.  Jesus dared to show His love for taxpayers, prostitutes and other outcasts, even lepers.  Jesus dared to do good, even good done at times and in circumstances in conformity with God’s Law but not with man-made laws; leading to His suffering and death.

Now, in this third century of our American Nation, wherein tyrants, elected under a guise of “change”, we are being challenged to follow Christ and promote His Peace, through DARING to do all that God wants us to do without fear and anxiety.

Even fear of great suffering and tribulation, possibly leading to imprisonment and death, must not deter us from standing against this tyranny and expose it as such, petitioning for redress of grievances, using non-violent means, until or unless government refuses to satisfy legitimate complaints; leaving possible revolution as a necessary, but last recourse. 

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#3 ON THE MERCY OF GOD

ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS JESUS CONTINUALLY WARNS US NOT TO CONDEMN AND JUDGE OTHERS IS THAT IN DOING SO WE TOTALLY IGNORE HIS MERCY!   WE ARE SOMETIMES QUICK TO CONDEMN, QUICK TO JUDGE; WE HATE SIN AND THOSE WHO SIN, ESPECIALLY WHEN WE CONSIDER THE SIN TO BE GREAT.  

JESUS MADE IT CLEAR HE LOVES SINNERS; HE ATE AND DRANK WITH THEM.  EVERY CONTACT WITH A SINNER WAS AN OPPORTUNITY TO HEAL THAT SINNER IF ONLY THE SINNER DESIRED IT;  THE POWER OF CHRIST WAS HIS DESIRE TO GRACE SINNERS TO REPENT SO HE COULD HEAL AND FORGIVE THEM.  SO IS THE MERCY OF GOD;  HE WANTS NO SOUL TO BE LOST!  CAN WE SAY THE SAME? 

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   #4  An essay on Time.

I picked up a book when I went to Barnes & Noble's the other night and it was written by a physicist trying to explain the origin of time.

He proposed many ideas, many theories: that time must always have been (an eternity of time); that there could be many different kinds of universes with their corresponding times.  It seemed strange that this scientist could not come up with a beginning of time of some sort, as many scientists who believe the Big Bang was such a beginning of our universe.  He never claimed any beginning of time at all.

An answer for this could surely stem from his never mentioning God throughout the entire book. Proposing a beginning of time would most certainly, in this person’s mind, necessitate a Cause for such a beginning, which his beliefs would not allow him to accept.  His ability to understand only what he can see and measure is in definite contrast to the emerging belief of many scientists today that only the existence of God can assist them in attempting to understand time and the origins of things.

If one believes in the existence of God then it is possible to come to the conclusion that time is  finite, not infinite.  Time must have had a beginning if there is a God; when we think of God we think of God as the Creator of everything, material and spiritual, and in doing so we come to the realization that God created time also.  The beginning of time is, then, just the beginning of God’s creating.  But before time what existed?  Some think, well, there was a void.  But a void is something (or nothing) but is a thing; therefore even a void must be something that is created.

My response to this problem is that before time, time having a beginning, the only thing in existence was God, or more properly, the only thing in existence IS God.  We should  put it in the present tense since God is, or exists, through all eternity and He creates something outside of himself consisting of angels, a material universe or universes, animals, plants, humans and time; time being a measure of the existence of these finite material and spiritual things.

Now, here is something interesting.  How does God see what he has created?  God must see what he has created through all time; time is not something that God lives by; he sees the beginning of time and the end of time and everything in between so that it makes sense when we say that God knows even what is going to happen to us in the future because time, being a creature of God, He “sees” time and everything in the universe(s) as one, unlimited by time.  

The extraordinary thing is that we humans can only think of time and the beginning of the totality of creation only in terms of the past;  When was the beginning of time?  Of the universe?  When did God create the universe?  What was God doing before His creation?  Did God create things before this present universe?  

Why is this?  My belief is that we, as creatures, are governed by time, a creature of God; He is not so bound.  This is a cause of great confusion among us humans because we cannot conceive of anyone, God included, as being not bound by time.

I think of it as God looking at His creation in a sort of bubble and the universe, time and everything He has created is in that bubble and He can see it all from the outside, as well as from the inside, seeing it all at once because time is a creation of God and hence cannot be infinite; time has a beginning and an end − and God sees in eternity with time simply in the eternity of God with a beginning and an end whose measure is in accordance with God’s will.

Since we are not God we will never really come to a complete understanding of these mysteries but it is worth trying to come to a better understanding of them, at least in the material world; however we cannot, I believe, get a reasonable understanding without belief in God.

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#5 An Essay on the Trinity 

Last weekend was Trinity Sunday. The priest during his sermon spoke of the Trinity in terms of the impossibility of ever really being able to understand the Trinity since it is a divine mystery about which St. Aristotle has said - “trying to figure out or understand the Trinity is like pouring all the oceans’ water into a small bucket”.

But I wonder whether it isn't possible to at least have an understanding of, maybe not the mystery itself, but an understanding that three persons in one God does make sense in a certain way.  Let me suggest this: 

God is pure love; meaning He is always pouring out His love. But love demands an object.  If God is pure love and loves through eternity, to whom is that love directed? There must be a person to whom He directs His love.  That recipient person cannot be a creature, bound by time, but a person existing in eternity and therefore must be God Himself, but a different Person, the second person of God, whom we have come to know as Jesus Christ.  So it makes perfect sense that there has to be a second person, who is God, because God must have, through his love, an object of his love.

The third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is looked upon as fire, as a flame, as the fire of the love between Father and Son. This fire, the Holy Spirit, can be understood as the source and recipient of the Fire of Love between Father and Son and must therefore be a third Person of God and is God.  (In simplistic terms this fire of Love cannot be just released from God;  it must be held within God, and being the fire of God love, must involve a third Person who is God.)

So this is my way of at least understanding that it is not impossible to understand that the Trinity of God makes sense; that it just doesn't make any sense at all, as some would say, does not mean we cannot have some acceptable image of one God and three Divine Persons.  It does make sense to think of it this way; so to me I would not, in trying to explain the Trinity to someone, emphasize the impossibility of really understanding deeply that mystery of the Trinity;  I would at least want to show that the Trinity makes sense.

So when we speak to or of God we can imagine which of three masks He is using.

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