Thursday, March 7, 2013

Prosperity

Walk in all the ways that I command you, so that you may prosper.  This is crystal clear.  There is no ambiguity about what the Lord is telling us to do.  The ways He commands us to walk in are found clearly in the teaching, the dogma, the doctrine of the Catholic Church.  Yet so many claim ambiguity in teaching.  These claim that Church teaching is up to interpretation.  These are the people who desire to prosper  by their own hands.  When it comes to abandoning themselves to God's Providence, or humbly submitting to the authority of the Church, these people claim that the Church is out of touch with today's society.  These same ones can be heard telling priests and religious to live in the real world.  By which they mean their world, according to their values, and their judgements as opposed to God's ways.  It is not surprising then to see that supposed prosperity fashioned by the hard work of men has lead to the total degradation of the human person.  Our present prosperity is no prosperity at all.  Only by doing what God commands can we prosper.  In the West we have banished God from society, from school, and from government.  This is the recipe for disaster not prosperity.  It has led to sin, slavery, vice, and death.  It is impossible to recognize the wonder and the beauty of creation if one does not recognize the Creator.  Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in our refusal to recognize the true dignity of the human person made in the image and likeness of God.  Because we believe that dignity is based upon ones ability to produce, in other words to prosper, those who cannot produce have nothing to offer to our prosperity.  In fact many are seen as a drain on our prosperity.  Many prospering at their own hands believe in trimming the fat.  They believe in eliminating those who drain our society of wealth, opportunities, and resources, and allowing others to be harnessed that the engines of prosperity and progress may be kept spinning.  Thus what we have produced is a culture of death.  This is the work of our hands:  a land that revels in cheap goods, even religious goods, made by what amounts to slave labor, a land that has elevated sexual depravity to a human right, a land that murders infants in the womb and outside as well, a land where none take responsibility for their own actions, a land where the most sought after counsel is from a lawyer, a land that claims to be spiritual but is devoid of compassion, a land built by immigration that seeks to keep people out, a land where politicians on every level lie cheat and steal with reckless abandon, a land that ignores the elderly and despises the disabled, a land that exploits it children, that abuses its children, and often drugs it children, a land that wages war and forsakes collateral damage believing our ends justify our means, a land that exports vice and death, a land steeped in innocent blood.  This is our land.  This is supposed prosperity.  Still we do not listen.  Still we think we know better than God.  Still He calls us to repentance.  He gives us His Bride the Church to teach us, and guide us in the way of True Peace and Prosperity.  He gives us this holy season of Lent.  This time to turn from sin and once again walk in His ways.  We are not free of blame.  We have contributed to this land, this society with all of its ills.  We have enjoyed this supposed prosperity, the good life, but that is not our calling.  We are called, each and every one of us are called to live holy lives.  This is the life of the Church.  This is the calling of our Lord.  We must listen to the voice of the Lord.  We must walk in His ways.  Then we will prosper, and in seeing true prosperity our brothers and sisters may come to know and believe what we already know and live.  That the Lord is kind and merciful.   

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