Catholic Bible 101

So let’s all start being the Church Militant, and start imitating the saints with true evangelization, which has always included speaking up and admonishing (NEVER judging) the sinner. Helping people get into heaven sometimes includes overturning tables in our own temples (bodies), as well as in our neighbor’s!  Father Manning, my parish priest a long time ago, once said during a sermon, loudly, “GOD DOESN’T WANT GOOD PEOPLE. HE WANTS SOLDIERS FOR CHRIST!”  And that is exactly what we became at Confirmation!

In each and every country where artificial birth control was allowed, abortion, or the murder of a child in the womb, soon followed. In America, the Pill came out in the early 1960’s, and the Supreme Court “passed” the abortion law in 1973 (I know the Supreme Court doesn’t pass laws, but in effect, that’s exactly what they did.) It seems that artificial birth control doesn’t work every time it’s tried, so our highest court provided a backup plan for the sexually active among us. So, now we not only have the mortal sins of adultery and fornication to deal with that are committed with the Pill, in addition, murder can also be had as a result of disobedience to God’s everlasting command to “be fertile and multiply.”  Strangely, the newly discovered constitutional “right to an abortion” is based on the invisible constitutional “right to privacy.” By the way, I’m still looking for that in the US Constitution. Now with all of the NSA snooping going on with our smartphones, I’m pretty sure privacy is not an inherent right of all Americans. Maybe someone should tell that to the Supreme Court so that we can do away with abortion. It seems to me that Satan so hates the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the womb in which she bore Jesus, that he attacks the fruit of the womb with a vengeance. We are made in God’s image and likeness, after all, and this so infuriates Satan that he attacks mankind in the womb while this image and likeness is being created. The Bible does say that women will be saved through motherhood (1 Timothy 2:15), after all, and Satan wants all women (and men too) in hell, by denying them motherhood.

This concept of eating something from a tree and never dying is a biblical reference to the cross and the Eucharist as well. Peter says in Acts 5:30 that “The God of our ancestors raised Jesus, though you had him killed by hanging him on a tree.” The cross, then, becomes the New Testament tree of life, because the great sacrifice of Jesus on that tree leads to eternal life for us all. In Matthew 26:26-28, Jesus gave us the Eucharist, or Himself, to eat of, so that we will never die (which counteracts Satan, who roams throughout the world seeking someone to devour). Therefore, the Eucharist is the fruit of the tree known as the cross. This is a kind of “bookend theology,” where mankind in the New Testament is saved by the exact same method as mankind fell in the Old Testament – by eating something from a tree.

The term “Wise Man” should also make us think of the wisest man in the Old Testament, King Solomon, who had a lot of gold and who also built the original Temple in Jerusalem. One of the gifts that the three Wise Men brought Christ was gold. It’s almost as if the former wisest man in the world, King Solomon, is now coming by proxy to worship the eternal King of Israel, Jesus, with his gold.

Jesus, by the way, also declared His body to be a temple (John 2:19) in Jerusalem!  And then the three Wise Men worshiped the baby Jesus with Mary holding Him. They didn’t tell Mary to take a hike while they gave glory to Christ alone.   Mary, who is not divine, is always united with Christ (1 Corinthians 6:17). She was full of grace when Gabriel appeared to her, she was full of grace when the three Wise Men came to view Jesus, and she is still full of grace today!