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Angels In Heaven, Bride Of The Lamb
The Lord is God of the living, not of the dead. He is a God of life. We humans aspire to become gods, as it says in the Book of Genesis. This is the very lie that Satan told Eve: If you do this, you will be as gods. You will know what is right and what is wrong. Eve ate of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because she wanted to determine what was right and what was wrong, and that brought death into the world. We are still eating of that fruit today; we are still bringing death into the world. We have become gods indeed - gods of death. We become gods of death when we assume we have the right to take away another person’s life, or even our own. We do this when we murder, yes, when we kill, yes, but we also do this when we engage or support mercy killing, termination of pregnancies, capital punishment, human embryonic stem cell research, and human cloning. We set ourselves up to be gods of death, but we are not real gods. If we were real gods with the power over death, we could prevent death from happening to someone living. And we are not gods of life either, because if we were, we could give life to those that are dead. We don’t have that kind of power, but the Lord does. He has the power to raise people from the dead. Truly he is God of the living. We only have power to bring about death. Small wonder then that Pope John Paul II calls this the culture of death. Directly related to the culture of death is how we view sex and love. Is there anybody reading this who can claim that he or she would be alive now if it weren’t for sex? Anyone? No. Because if it weren’t for sex, we wouldn’t be alive. The reason that sex plays such an important role in all of our lives is because sex is directly linked to life. It is where life begins. And this is sacred, because the Lord is God of life. He is literally the God of sex. He made it! Why did God make sex? Why did God make men and women? We see a fraction of the explanation in today’s gospel reading. Jesus tells us that when we rise from the dead, there will be no marriage. We will all be like the angels in heaven. The angels in heaven were created to be with God for all eternity. So are we humans, through a different path. We are created to be with God for all eternity. That is our purpose. While we are alive in the world, we retain that purpose and we have desires. We desire not to be alone, so we seek out someone to be with, for the rest of our lives. We marry them. This marriage reflects the reality that we are being prepared for - the reality of being with God for all eternity. That is why when we are raised from the dead, there will be no more marriage - because we will be married to God. We the Church, are the bride of the Lamb, as it says in the Book of Revelations. The basic unit of society is the family. A family is formed when a couple has kids. A couple has kids by having sex. Now if Someone wanted to destroy human beings and their chance for happiness, where would this Someone attack? We only need to look at what is being most profaned today to realise that this Someone has already been attacking us. This Someone has been destroying the meaning of sex (through contraception), the meaning of marriage (through divorce), the meaning of family (through homosexual unions). What do you think is next to fall? Pope John Paul II, in The Gospel of Life, tells us, “It is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not… accept and experience sexuality and love and the whole of life according to their true meaning and their close inter-connection.” (The Gospel of Life, 97) Indeed, if the Lord is truly our God, then we too must be on the side of life; we must be pro-life. All Catholics, all Christians in fact, are bound by Christ to be pro-life. That is why politicians who support abortion are not in full communion with the Church and the Lord, because the Lord is God of the living, not of the dead. Catholic Writer
5.moon.sky was here at 2:24 pm
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