Another meditation about God's love

Here is another thought about that subject, so that it can help you to better understand God and his mercy (which is not extended to the blatantly unrepentant, but that's another subject). God is the source of and the capacity for infinite love, on such a dimension of vastness that humans cannot comprehend. Here is a real life recollection of mine so you can compare (and also see things a bit from my point of view).

Years ago I had great affection and ardor for a man who did not return it (and indeed, was quite insincere). One of the women who worked for me, and who was on a friendly basis with me (though I cannot call it a friendship as she would never socialize with me beyond the occasional work luncheon) commented basically the following to me:

She said, with some disdain (kind of like she thought I was a rather pathetic sort) something like "I would find it a great turn-off to love someone who didn't love me in return." In other words, she thought it rather stupid and pathetic of me to care for someone who did not care for me in return.

I thought, but could not say at the time (since as my regular readers know, I was not public in my witnessing at that time, since it was both not my time yet and also a matter of my safety): "Wow, it's sure a good thing for YOU and for everyone else that God does not feel the same way!"

You see, God is used to loving humans who do not love him in return. In fact, if you think about it, there's no human that deserves his love at all, yet he continues to pour it onto them, mostly through the constant urging and nudging of the Holy Spirit, who tries to reach and soften even the hardest of hearts.

If God felt the way this lady suggested, there would be no human beings at all, none would be created and none would be alive.

God understands that no one can love him the way he is able to love a human. He doesn't expect even a fraction of what he can extend in love. But constant scorn and negligence of God is not only foolhardy but also such a wasted opportunity, since God extends such leeway in the amount of love that he would find pleasing from any human being. If God was "turned off" by a human not loving him in return, well, let's just say earth would be abundant in plant and animal life, a garden of Eden, with no non-loving humans!

But God created humans in his own image and as a result 1) they all have the capacity to love God and 2) the Holy Spirit works constantly to touch the heart of every human being with love, whether they believe or not, and whether they love in return or not.

For you idiot cult believers, she was a Libra ha ha, you know, the sign of "relationship experts" har har har.

How can humans ever spiritually advance, say nothing of being saved, if they consider love a "you first then maybe I will love in return" game?

Really, it is sad.

Another thought, what if before Jesus was born, Jews were given ballots with a brief description of him in advance, and could vote whether he was worthy of their love before "allowing" him to be born? Like I said, if God waits for the love first, none of you would be around, alive, at all, that is for sure.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

And, to show you I always think of you.... Hey again, my young people readers and fans! I wish that I could speak with you in person. When you wrestle with love and its issues, be sure to think of what I just said, which is that God loves you first, no matter how much love you offer him in return. Believe me, if you begin to know God as he really is, you would not be able to halt in loving him, no matter how much you tried! :-)

Christmas meditation

I'd like you to think about something, so I'm presenting it as a meditation, one that is easily applicable to anyone who believes in the one true God and the Holy Spirit. It's particularly appropriate to think about on Christmas Day, however, it is something that I try to explain to people in my spiritual direction ministry all the time.

While the Holy Spirit must and needs to be defined in a number of ways in order to be truthfully understood, there is a meditative image that is also proper and essential, which is to think of the Holy Spirit as God breathing outward and exuding pure love.

Many Christians think that they understand God's love because they are grateful to God for the gift of salvation, after suffering and rejection on their behalf, of God the Father's Son Jesus Christ. Friends, here is what I am trying to share with you. Even if you fully understand and appreciate God's love in the form of Jesus Christ's love for you and sacrifice on your behalf, you only understand a fraction of God's love.

Loving God through Jesus Christ is good and it is correct, but understand it this way. To consider yourself completely aware of God's love only through the gift of Jesus Christ is like loving your parent because he or she gave to you an awesome and perfect present. You are still in danger of only loving your parent, and in this case God, because he gave you the best gift that you ever had. You still are not loving God, and thus, not feeling in return, all of God's love that you could experience, just as you are not appreciating the parent for all that he or she does because of the awesome one time for all gift.

In other words, I am telling you that you can understand and experience God's love directly, which is the source of the gift of Jesus Christ. In addition to loving God for having given to you, to all of you, Jesus Christ, you should also love God, and receive his love, simply for being God day after day, minute after minute. God is constantly exuding, through the Holy Spirit, a purity and constancy of love that few, except the most special saints through the ages, have comprehended even exists. But the Bible is complete with beautiful words, often those of God himself, expressing his love before he sent the best gift of his love in the form of Jesus Christ.

Do not love God because he gives you things, either real or imaginary (as you assume to have "abilities" that you presume are from the Spirit) because even as correct or well intentioned that love is, it is only a fraction of the entire spectrum of love that constantly beams down from God in the heavens upon you. That is another useful analogy. Loving God for all he has given to you is good, and correct, but if you love God only for the good things you have received (or hope to receive) it is like loving just the yellow visible band of light in the light spectrum, without loving the light itself.

If one experiences even for a few seconds a genuine acceptance and reciprocation of God's pure love through the Holy Spirit, it is amazing beyond belief and makes all other imagined loves (and transcendental experiences) fade in comparison into nothingness... but here's the thing. God's pure love through the Holy Spirit does not rival earthly attachments but enhances them in their goodness too. In other words, you do not become addicted to being totally within God's love through the Holy Spirit, rather, you are able and empowered to experience genuine earthly love... you do not need continual "hits" in order to carry on. Once one realizes in one's heart the amount of love that is available from God through his Holy Spirit, it does not have to be "re-administered" as if it were a ritual or a "high," but it makes you aware of the light in its fullness, even as you continue to live in the partial reality of material and earthly life.

When you feel the pureness of the Holy Spirit's God bearing love for you, it rocks your world and changes you forever. Rather than detaching and diminishing it makes you more protected and secure within actual reality, including life in an imperfect world. Too many modern "meditations" lead people away from attachment to the source of all pure love, which is God through his Holy Spirit. As one thinks one is reaching spiritual enlightenment and spiritual strengthening, one is actually detaching not only from the reality of the world, but the reality of God's personal and individual love available to you.

Here is another analogy to help. Suppose that your mother gave you an awesome gift, the best gift you could ever have, and it is a good thing to have, for it is godly and worthy. But suppose by having that gift you are immensely grateful to her for giving it to you, but you forget about all the times she bound your wounds when you fell, encouraged you in your homework, gave you hugs and kisses even when you considered yourself too grown up for them, when she went without new things of her own in order to provide for you, etc. You have become so blinded by the one awesome gift that she gave to you that you no longer notice how she does the other 99 percent of the time things of love and sacrifice FOR you, not given to you. Likewise you could love your father for something great that he gave to you, but forget that he labors in a job he detests but endures in order to support you.

That's how it often is with God. Even the most godly person is overwhelmed with gratitude for God's gift of the Savior Jesus Christ so much so that he or she no longer gives or seeks God's day to day love, in its most awesome and even knee shaking form, the pure love of God given to you through the Holy Spirit. It's like even the most godly people are so focused on being (correctly) grateful to God and the things he has given to them (both individually and also in the form of the Savior) that they never experience and thus do not feel even a fraction of the awesome purity of God's love like a beam of the purest gold and silver enfolding them in wings. If you catch the Holy Spirit's eye in genuine love, not trying to "summon" its "force," the purity of love will just about bowl you over and it will change you and your understanding of God forever.

Understanding God: wrath or love?

This is going to be quick as I want to get going to prayer meeting tonight, but I just thought of this analogy/explanation to get past a stumbling block many encounter when understanding or even believing in God.

I got the realization how I can help with this problem when I started thinking of some anti-religious and anti-God comments in an online news article. They, posted by the usual advocates of non-belief in God etc, took the familiar tack of citing every time God smited or punished someone in the Bible, or encouraged the Israelites to kill and conquer the natives of Canaan, as evidence that God is "mean" or "cruel." Hmm, I've heard this so many times and rather than the usual way of approaching the truthful explanation, here's an analogy.

Suppose you are a parent and someone asks you why you had a child. Suppose you answered them "So I could pay for them going to college." What? That's not even biologically honest, LOL. A parent had a child because 1) they had sex and a child resulted. I mean, that's the bottom line, no? Whether the child is loved or not, wanted or not, treated well or not, the "reason" every parent has a child is that they had sex with someone who was fertile. Duh!

One would never explain that one had a child by giving the questioner a snapshot of what you are doing with that child in the present moment, in this analogy, paying for a college education.

When one tries to understand God by citing difficult to understand actions that occur well along in the relationship between God and humans, one is making the same error. The only way to understand God (and even the "bad" parts of the relationship) which is to start in the beginning, which is love. You must understand God by understanding his foundation with human beings is love.

The proof is in the existence of both the angels and first humans, Adam and Eve. God did not create the angels so that he could have difficulty with them later. He created them, let them choose to serve or not, and those who chose not to serve him followed their leader, Lucifer, to the world, and to their abode hell. (Notice Lucifer spends very little time in hell, since he wanders the earth, while the others are all stuck in hell). So God created unbelievably immense numbers of angels (beyond quadrillions of them) out of love, not because he wanted to combat with the handful that refused to serve him.

Likewise Adam and Eve were created and God made known in his understandable true form to them for love and companionship. It was a fertile relationship, like the angels, where the fertility is love. God did not create humans so he could boss them around, be mean to them, or play games with them, or to have to pay for their college (!)

So whenever someone (maybe yourself) is tempted to try to understand God by starting out with listing with your own righteous indignation all the "bad" and "mean" things God did, and thus must supposedly be, and hence just a trick to make humans obey law and doesn't really exist, think of my analogy to bail you out of that error in mindset and time frames. Did a parent have a child just so he or she could pay tens of thousands of dollars to a college someday? That's what they had in mind when the baby was conceived? "Hey, I want to give $50,000 to NYU, so let's have a baby and send the baby to NYU!" Duh, no. God created angels and humans out of the fertile and mutual love that God is in his totality of existence. Listing the hardships, "payments" and "mean discipline" that God rendered later hardly begins to truly enlighten anyone to God's true nature.

I hope you have found this helpful! (Hi young friends, always thinking of you...)

Understanding prayer to the saints/miracles

Here is a quick explanation of how to understand the reality of deceased Christian saints and their role in the occurrence of miracles in present times. Now, when I say saints, I do not mean the individuals who form the body of the faithful even though Christians have great comfort and assurance that those true to the faith are “all saints,” just as they belong to the commonality of priesthood. In this particular blog posting I am referring to those individuals who are declared saints because of their extraordinary sanctity (remember, this being living life in service to God and keeping one’s purpose holy as best as possible, whether of the laity or ministry) and who have demonstrated extraordinary gifts from God through grace, such as martyrdom or the performing of miracles when they were alive. For example one of the disciples of Jesus, Stephen, became the first martyr after Christ’s death and resurrection, as detailed in the Book of Acts, thus he is in the rolls, “canonized,” St. Stephen. In modern times, however, there has grown increased confusion among many (mostly due to poor faith formation and inter-denominational resentment and misunderstanding) about 1) why do “Catholics pray ‘to’ saints when one should only pray to God and 2) how can dead saints perform miracles. I will clear this up for you here.

First of all, all Christians who study the scripture recognize that only God performs miracles. God has freely, as is His right, chosen human instruments to perform miracles. It is the human hands and the human faith that put the miracle in motion, but God is the cause, the source and the fuel of the miracle. This was true when Moses performed miracles (and you can read in the scriptures how God gives Moses precise instructions what to do), when the prophets performed miracles and in its culmination, when the Son of God, Jesus Christ, performed miracles. By the way this is one of my reflective types of blogs where I’m not going to leaf through the Bible for references, since I know that you can find them yourself J

We know that Jesus Christ performed miracles at God’s behest because there is extensive dialogue where the preparation that Jesus made (such as praying and fasting) is documented in the Gospel and, further, how Jesus coaches the Apostles and the disciples when they are also called upon to perform miracles, such as the casting out of demons. So you can read those parts of the Gospel and recognize that Jesus was given fullness of miracle fulfillment by God, from God alone, so that Jesus’ authority was unquestionable. Jesus would, for example, move into a village or region and cure all of the sick who were brought to him. Yet you can read that there are times Jesus both cannot and will not perform miracles because there was so little faith by the people.

This does not mean that Jesus’ “magic” or “tricks” were not working, or that his ability to perform miracles was less than perfect. This means quite obviously that God would not reward those of no or little faith with the incredible gift of a miracle. Why in the world would God, through Jesus, perform miracles where people were openly of no or little faith. Ironically, as you recall from the scriptures, it was in Jesus’ own hometown where he could do the least in miracles because of their low faith and open disbelief. This is, by the way, as an aside, instructive for you to understand another example of how the Bible teaches what really happened even when it doesn’t detail specifics. What I mean is that by using faith and reasoning you can better understand the “mystery” of “how Jesus spent the first thirty years of his life.” Well, duh, obviously he was not performing miracles, or the belief of his hometown would be higher than elsewhere, rather than lower. So when the scriptures report that Jesus followed in his earthly father Joseph’s footsteps and was a carpenter, well that is what he was doing. The Bible does not need to say “Jesus was a carpenter and because it was not yet time for his public ministry he did not perform any miracles.” I mean, a little common sense, please!

Jesus started performing miracles during his public ministry because that is when God gave him the authority to speak and preach for Him and also to demonstrate as a gesture of faith that he is indeed who he claimed to be, and this was through miracles. Jesus explains that himself, praising those who believe after seeing a miracle, but praising even more those who believe without seeing a miracle.

Therefore Jesus accordingly was empowered by God to allow certain Apostles and disciples the ability to perform miracles. This was greatly increased after Jesus died and resurrected, just as he said would happen, because he sent from God the Holy Spirit to aid them at Pentecost. This is another way for you to see what the Bible does not have to explicitly detail for you that the ability to perform miracles comes from God through the Holy Spirit. Neither St. Peter nor St. Paul’s miracles were of their own doing, of course, but they “worked” because of their faith, their understanding of what to do as Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit have taught them, and also using the power of God through the Holy Spirit. Performing miracles is neither in the “DNA” nor is it “talent.” The reverential authors of each book or epistle in the Bible frequently acknowledge and glorify that what they do is through the Holy Spirit from God, not their own ability.

So you can read in both the Old Testament and the New Testament many examples of God giving the instructions and the authority and the grace to the prophets and the early Christians to perform miracles where it is necessary to be done in order to increase faith and win souls. God does not confer miracles as shortcuts through the difficult realities of life. How do we know that? We know that Jesus cured many who were crippled and lame. If God intended this to be a “shortcut” through a difficulty of life, God would simply have allowed Jesus to miraculously forbid all human bodies to ever have broken or twisted limbs again. If miracles were for anything other than increasing the people’s faith, when Jesus cured the woman of the hemorrhage he could have simply miraculously changed the chemistry and biology of how blood clots or does not for everyone all at once. It is abundantly clear throughout the Bible and most particularly through the many words and deeds, with explanations, of Jesus that the performing of miracles exists at all in order to periodically reinforce faith.

This is because human beings are such limited broken vessels that God, of course, knows that they need visible signs through the ages. Even the Apostles, who had every reason to have ironclad faith since they saw the progression of the thousands of miracles that Jesus performed, would be “wowed” by a particular one and have a further strengthening of faith. I am thinking of how awed they were when Jesus calmed the stormy seas, and walked on the water, even though they had already seen much of the power of God that he exhibited beforehand. No, God most certainly does not allow miracles just for some few, or the many, to have shortcuts through normal difficulties of life, such as illness. God uses miracles as the instrument of faith that he knows human beings always crave and always must have on a periodic basis in order to believe what they cannot see, which is God and His heavenly Kingdom at work.

Now that you understand more clearly how to interpret the very real miracles that are documented in the scriptures by Jesus, the prophets and the saints while they lived, now you can better understand how God allows participation by deceased saints in miracles to strengthen faith.

Again, one must use all: scripture, faith and reasoning in order to understand, as much as possible, God’s ways and his will in these matters. Examine the Book of Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse. God “delegates,” to use a modern term, roles to individual angels. Why is that? I mean, if God is all powerful, which does God have angels perform certain tasks for him? Why doesn’t God just chastise using his own hands the disbelievers on earth during the final days? No one can really say why God does what he does and that is not the point. One is supposed to, like good and observant children, observe what God does and says and learn more about him accordingly. We learn from the Book of Revelation that even in heaven God assigns tasks, for whatever reasons he has, to individual angels! All of the power and the determination of what is to be done is entirely God’s; the miracles and the chastisements are all God’s will, all God’s power, and all God’s implementation. For whatever reasons God has, however, even in heaven God uses individual angels to accomplish his will.

That is an important fact of knowledge one must glean from the scriptures. We can all understand why God sends angels in those extraordinary times that form the scriptures of our faith history to speak to humans directly, as when Gabriel came to speak to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Why, though, would God in heaven delegate activity to angels in heaven? Because that is how it is in heaven. God’s will animates and keeps alive all the eternal spirits who live in heaven, both angels and humans who achieve salvation in paradise. We all know that God created humans in the first place to know him, to love him and to serve him. Does this service stop in heaven, when those blessed by being in heaven are closer to him than ever? Of course not, since that does not even make sense, to think that when alive humans know, love and serve God but when in heaven they know and love him but no longer serve him! Because it is not necessary for faith to know the details of how and why, God does not include the details in the scripture. But we do observe in the Book of Revelation that 1) angels perform tasks for God in heaven and 2) St. John is able to see some humans in heaven, specifically the elders before the throne who cast their crowns down in front of God and worship him.

Having a crown means a person is kingly and glorified. To take one’s crown off and cast it at the feet of another means that one is in total service to the other. That is the message of why St. John was permitted to see that activity in front of the throne, so that he can transmit through what he saw increased faith that 1) humans are indeed in heaven and 2) they continue to serve God.

So, no, it is “not in the scripture” that “dead saints can perform miracles.” But what is in the scripture is that 1) living saints performed miracles at God’s authority and instruction, 2) angels serve God in heaven in heavenly and earthly tasks and 3) blessed human elders in heaven are observed casting their crowns in service in front of the throne of God. There is far more reason to believe that God permits the participation of saints in heaven in God’s tasks, including when he determines a miracle is appropriate on earth, than there is evidence to the contrary.

This is why through the centuries the Church believes the testimony, after great discernment regarding its reliability, of those who have received a great blessing such as a miraculous cure after prayer directed to a saint. The saint is not being worshipped. Prayer is a petition to ask for favor and proper prayer to a saint, such as St. Peter or St. Paul, centers upon asking for their strength of example in earthly matters and their loving intercession with God in heaven. One does not worship St. Peter or St. Paul; one asks St. Peter to be a role model, for example, or for St. Paul to intercede on one’s behalf with God. So let me repeatedly clear up that misunderstanding that praying to a saint is worshipping them.

In fact, people “prayed” to each other all the time in old English. “Do, pray tell,” would be an expression one person would say to another when what that person was doing was earnestly requesting someone to disclose something. “Pray” would mean, “Pretty please, I really want you to” do something. Pray thus became a synonym for asking God for something, even if it is just his attention as one prays to him.

Why, then, have centuries of people reliably testified that prayers to, very frequently, St. Joseph, St. Mary (the Blessed Virgin Mary) and St. Jude, one of the Apostles, delivered often miraculous “results?” God is obviously in control and is the one who hears and answers the prayerful petition. Obviously that even if one prayed to St. Joseph, our Lord’s earthly father, for example, God is the one who hears and grants or does not grant the prayer. If it displeased God that the saints be approached for their intercession, then believe you me many of your ancestors would not be around! God has a way of letting people know through the generations what displeases him. Instead we have a solid, documented two thousand year history of average people praying to individual saints and some, at times even many, of them have had their prayers answered by God. Obviously it was the “wrong” thing to do, God would not grant their prayers. The angels repeatedly tell humans in the scriptures not to worship them when they appear, but to worship only God. People who pray to the saints and ask for their help are not worshipping them: they are asking for their intercession with God. Again, you can never go wrong by following the example shown in the scripture. Do not worship anyone but God, but you can and should petition anyone holy to intercede with God, especially if you know that person is in eternal service to God.

Does anyone here reading this blog think that St. Paul, for example, is not in heaven? OK, that’s good. Now, if you were traveling with St. Paul when he was alive, would you have a problem if he were the one to pray to God on behalf of all of the travelers? For example, can you imagine being with St. Paul as he preached to the Gentiles, risking his life and the lives of those (like you) who travel with him, and everyone feels really good that St. Paul is the one praying to God on behalf of everyone present? Is that not, in fact, what happens when a pastor leads a congregation in prayer? Do you jump up and say, “No, I’ve got to pray to God directly myself all the time; you cannot be my ‘go between?’” Of course you would not think like that. Likewise, I invite you to imagine being one of the many thousands of Christians who personally accompanied men and women who would become saints when they were alive. How many of you do not think that everyone with them felt really good when they were the prayer intercessor to God on behalf of the group? I mean, duh.

So now St. Paul is dead these past several thousand years and most certainly in heaven. If he would, and did, gladly pray intercession for those of the faithful who traveled with him on earth, why do you think that he would stop doing so in heaven? Would he mind? Would God mind? This is the beautiful and glorious intersection of faith and logical reasoning capabilities.

Two human expressions come to mind: “No one is ever insulted by a good tip” and “Put in a good word with the boss for me.” If a saintly and holy person while alive would lead a group in prayer, using their service and obedience to God as a way to “put in a good word with the boss” on behalf of all together, why in the world would anyone think that they would be even more stingy, rather than more generous, in that in heaven than on earth? Who when evangelizing or doing missionary work in dangerous areas would be insulting God or St. Paul if they prayed to St. Paul for strength, guidance and intercession with God, he, Paul, who had set the example to be followed in his tireless and painful evangelizing? To not pray to St. Paul for help seems to me like refusing to use the person who “wrote the book,” so to speak, on what you are trying to do! You are not worshipping St. Paul nor bypassing God when you pray for his intercession, any more than you would be worshipping St. Paul or bypassing God if when a living companion of Paul’s in their travels sat nearby as Paul prayed to God and interceded on everyone present’s behalf! How much more so is St. Paul’s ongoing service to God in the strengthening of faith when St. Paul is for all eternity in God’s presence, perhaps casting his crown at His feet!

This is why generations of Christians, and remember, Protestant or not, we were “all Christians together” for one thousand five hundred years, prayed to St. Joseph for intercession in fatherly matters, to St. Mary (the Blessed Virgin Mary) in motherly matters, to various saints for help in health, in matters of virtue, in time of war and grave peril, and to help them in their faith and their carrying the Gospel into dangerous lands and times. Many generations of Christians who could not read or write and who lived primitive lives had a better understanding that they were 1) not worshipping saints and 2) were tapping into the good will of the intercession of the sanctified with God and not bypassing God than modern people seem to be today. Rather in glorifying in the richness of the sanctified who care only about serving God and increasing the faith among those alive, too many have a distrust and a total misunderstanding of their own faith forefathers!

So, then, what can we logically reason, based on our faith, is the reason that God does answer prayers that have been directed to his saints who are in heaven with him? First of all, if you truly are as strong in your faith as you say that you are, you totally understand that God never does anything mean or evil; God is goodness and all goodness comes from God. What kind of God would not answer a request that he is inclined to grant just because it “arrived through a saint.” I mean, what? One must examine one’s own lack of faith in God’s goodness if you feel that a specific same request he would grant if the person prayed “to God alone,” but would “turn down” “because it came through a saint!” Christians need to do much better at witnessing to the all mercifulness and goodness of God. God is not churlish nor is he a jealous bureaucrat. Rather, as Jesus taught, God loves and considers family those who hear him and believe. God simply would never “resent” or rebuff a prayer that “comes to him” (which he of course knows about even before you realized you were going to make that prayer) through one of his beloved family of the faithful.

As an aside, speaking of delegation in heaven, did you notice in Luke 16 that the poor man Lazarus who died and went to heaven is being held in Abraham’s bosom? Why not God’s alone? God’s is big enough, hmm, as he is infinite and thus can hold and comfort all humans who arrive in heaven. Jesus himself states that this man Lazarus is being held in Abraham’s bosom. Abraham, we know, as the forefather of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, who served dinner to God, who argued with God on behalf of the sinners in Sodom and Gomorrah, is much loved by God. Anyone of any faith and Biblical knowledge has to concede that. How does God reward such a man when he arrives in heaven? One could say that just being with God for all eternity is enough reward, and it is. But no human can understand the infinity of God’s love and generosity. Jesus by telling this story not only makes the point about the punishment in hell of the rich man who neglected Lazarus, but Jesus is also implicitly telling all who hear him and understand that God’s work of love continues in heaven, and he shares that joy and that work with those who gain heaven. Abraham in heaven is able to personally comfort an unknown man who was alive centuries after him, treated like the dregs of the earth, suffering and starving to death, when that man reached heaven.

That is one reason that Jesus was cautioning when the mother of the Apostles James and John wanted to delegate in advance that they sit at Jesus’ right and left hand in the Kingdom. We focus on the main points of that particular scripture when we realize that Jesus is staying 1) if they follow me they will be martyrs and 2) only God dispenses who sits at the right and left hand of whom in heaven. But you cannot miss, especially when you combine this with another passage I will mention next, that Jesus is saying that much more goes on in heaven under God and God’s alone direction than humans realize. Remember the disciples asked Jesus the theoretical question about a woman who is widowed and remarried many times, which husband she is married to in heaven? Jesus responds that people are not given in marriage in heaven. Like the question about the right and left hand of Jesus in the Kingdom, Jesus is, without elaborating, letting people understand that God has purposes and plans in heaven too. So Abraham may, or may not be, at any given point in heaven, hanging around with Sarah, his wife. Abraham is also serving God by comforting in blissful heaven a poor peon of a man who had been abused and died nameless and in shameful neglect on earth.

And now I tie the loop together for your understanding the scripture even more. The man in hell asks Abraham if he will allow Lazarus to send to him a drop of water to ease his torment. Do you notice that the man in hell is not saying that God will be mad at him if he asks for intercession through Lazarus or Abraham? I am being a little droll here, but only a little. The Bible says and demonstrates what it says and demonstrates, and Jesus Christ says and demonstrates what he means, what is the truth of what actually happens and “how it works.” The man in hell is now humbled, in eternal torment, and he well understands that the man he neglected, who is now in heaven, is precisely the person to ask for intercession as, obviously, is Abraham. Jesus is sharing a snapshot of “how it looks” and how it “works,” both in heaven and in hell, in this crucial passage in the Gospel. Jesus is not only making the main point that even a presumably pious Jew who is a believer, but who neglected his neighbor, will end up in hell, but Jesus is also giving a snapshot that God shares the bliss in heaven and that the saints/prophets are still active in their service to God, in ways that humans can’t really understand. Abraham is not sitting around with a harp. The forefather of all the monotheistic faiths is comforting in person a man who was the lowest of the low in how he was treated on earth.

If one really reads the passages that I have alluded to above, I’m not sure how anyone can think that the saints, the holy servants of God, are not alive and in his active service in heaven for all eternity. If you would not hesitate to have one of them when they were alive pray to God in leadership and intercession for their companions, including you, if you had been there, why would you doubt the merit and reality of their petitions to God as they are beside him in heaven?

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Understanding God: advice and role models

In my previous post in the series “understanding God” I explained how the error of predestination is the result of misunderstanding the attribute of God’s all knowingness. I want to dovetail a related concept here, just to build upon this basis of understanding.

God is impossible to fully understand, not because he keeps part of himself secret, but because his vastness of “perspective” is genuinely unknowable. In fact, the more that the great religious minds have come to know God, the more they are in awe of all that is unknowable by the human mind, which is bounded by limitations of matter, energy and time. Saint Thomas Aquinas is the shining example of the saint who most used intellectual and logic capabilities to explain faith and through the centuries many have revered and studied him for precisely that reason. He is the one who has brought generation after generation to God through “the human mind.” Thomas Aquinas left volumes of writings, all based on faith and logic through reasoning, which are treasures today. Still, what was the thing that enraptured him so much that ultimately he stopped writing? It was the mystery of God in the Holy Mass, specifically in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. The way that God reveals himself, physically and spiritually, in the Holy Mass, in all its mystery and simplicity was what gave Aquinas more understanding, and at the same time more awe of the mystery, than any intellectual progress in understanding God.

Before I continue on my main point, let me make an aside. Many people outside of the Catholic Church misunderstand why Catholics venerate the saints so much. There are two reasons, one of which is related to how we understand being part of their community, the “communion of saints,” even as they are already in heaven and we are still alive here on earth. The other reason that I want to explain to you is that the saints are teachers and role models, not just as examples of holiness and redemption, but also in the many varied ways that each of them grew in their understanding of God. There are many techniques, for lack of a better word, for individuals to better understand God and often one or two saints are role models that a person can relate to in their progress themselves toward understanding God. St. Thomas Aquinas has for centuries been the inspiration for those who desired or needed to approach their understanding of God through a rigorous path of logic and reasoning. He is one of the thirty-three Doctors of the Church. Yet in direct proportion to his logic, reasoning and intellectual approach to God, Aquinas also had an intense and mystical communion directly with God, one that yielded miraculous fruits. Thus one of his titles is “The Common Doctor,” for he leads the average person to reason their way to God, while another of his titles is “The Angelic Doctor,” for his mystical qualities are comparable to how the angels themselves know God. I cannot recommend St Thomas Aquinas highly enough, therefore, to modern generations for veneration and role modeling in emulating his intellectual approach, and being inspired by the divine gifts that he, in parallel, received.

In his prologue to his best known work, The Summa Theologica, he wrote: Since the teacher of Catholic truth must instruct not only the advanced but also the beginners, according to the word of St. Paul (1 Cor. 3:1-2), “as to little ones in Christ, I fed you with milk, not with solid food…” so that the purpose and intent of this work is to treat those things that pertain to the Christian religion in a manner suitable to the instruction of beginners…with confidence in the divine help, try to present the contents of sacred doctrine as briefly and clearly as the matter allows.

Father Rengers in his book “The 33 Doctors of the Church” comments that “St. Thomas, who fought fro and is remembered for his emphasis on the place of reason in theology, relied primarily on the guiding hand of divine love” and quotes St. Thomas, “Ardor precedes illumination, for a knowledge of truth is bestowed by the ardor of charity.”

Just as another aside, Shiite Muslims have a similar understanding of saints with Catholics, where they understand that saints are to be revered, but not worshipped, and that saints are the role models for not only their virtue but also their methods of learning about God and teaching accordingly.

Therefore, St. Thomas Aquinas, who has such an intellectual approach to teaching about God, role models and articulates two important things to bear in mind,. One is to always remember that “baby steps” are needed in understanding and teaching about God, not demonstrations of one’s supposed intellectual prowess and “sophistication” of thought. He critiques previous works as being too difficult and agenda driven for many to learn from, and that is a problem that moderns are especially vulnerable toward. Indeed there is an entire industry of very marginal people writing books about God and faith who have little if any solid factual education, particularly in Christianity, yet peddle to the public books filled with the most bizarre and arcane claptrap, presented as “lofty” and sophisticated “spiritual insight.” In contrast, the greatest “expert” in God in modern times, Thomas Aquinas, always built his writings on solid intellect and baby steps, ensuring that neither his doctrine nor the readership goes even one inch astray. When Aquinas taught he started with the basics, from truly the very beginning, such as why God created humans, and what are the attributes of heaven, not with sweeping declarations of his “personal revelation” and condescending “wisdom.” The true geniuses, especially those on the subject of God and faith, are always remarkably humble and allow only one step at a time on solid factual and theological foundation that is not of their own invention.

The second thing that Aquinas role models and articulates is that when writing about God, one cannot, no matter how intellectual, write from a perspective of no love. No one can accurately discuss or represent God if one does not have or actively aspire to having love of God. At the face of this, moderns might object that loving God presents then “bias” into written works about God, but on examination that is ridiculous. God is love and all of love comes from God. One cannot genuinely write about God, including in a strictly intellectual way, without having love of God, “ardor” as St Thomas calls it or at the very least is seeking to have love of God, acknowledging that as his or her objective in writing and study. To attempt to write about God without loving God as God exists (and not how you wish him to be) is like a chemist trying to write about chemistry but not believing in hydrogen, or a physician writing about the treatment of wounds and refusing to believe that bandages exist, or a home builder who seeks to build a shelter but refuses to believe there is such a thing as walls and a roof. Thus one cannot explain or study God without feeling love of God as he is, since ultimately the sum total of understanding God is understanding and feeling love of God. One can no more understand God without loving God than one can hope for rain in a drought yet not believe in water.

So to understand God one must take baby steps based on sound and factual basis of reasoning, but one must also have love of God in one’s heart as one’s motivation, even if that love is painfully imperfect at first. One other error that moderns make is the excessive focus on God, specifically in Jesus Christ, as some sort of symbol of unconditional “love,” a love that excuses sin, and is not actually directed toward genuine love of God or genuine, rather than self serving, loving charity of neighbor. If one reads the Gospels, yes, Jesus preaches a great deal about love and charity, but he also in equal measure dishes out a great deal of criticism and reminder of the penalty of failure and of a continually sinful and godless life, which will end in being burned as the chaff. Moderns, ever since the so-called hedonistic “Love Generation,” ignore the reality of what Jesus taught about God and instead portray Jesus as some sort of pastel colored ever forgiving and ever accepting love machine. In order to write intellectually honest and correct works about God, one must have genuine love of God as either one’s reality or one’s objective, and not an agenda driven self serving interpretation of the “endless boundaries” of God’s love.

For example, many of the saints loved to read about God and write about God. But there is a remarkable difference between their motivations and the motivations of many today. The saints loved to read about God because they loved God, not because they were trying to analyze, dissect and understand him with the intent of controlling his powers. For example, when one is truly in love one wants to know more about the object of one’s love because love creates the desire to know more and immerse one’s self in the loved one’s milieu. One should not, however, wish to read more and more about one’s loved one as a way to manipulate and control him or her. Thus one who is well balanced seeks to read about God because one loves God, or wishes to love God or love him even more, and not to wrest imaginary “secrets” out of God as a way to accomplish some sort of secondary agenda in one’s life.

Likewise the saints loved to write about God because, again, they loved God and wished to share their love of God with others. Similarly, many moderns also misunderstand and misuse their own motivations for writing about God. Far too many, especially in the so-called New Age arena, write about God in order to show off their supposed enlightenment and cash in on it. I’m not saying that one cannot charge money for a book, to earn a living or to at least break even in the cost of publication. What I am saying is that too many so called “spiritual” writers write about God or their New Age “spirit” as ways to self promote. They often proclaim their “humility” while at the same time puffing up their possession of spiritual “insight” and “gifts.” Thus you have New Age Hindus or Buddhists or whatever actually writing and marketing books about Jesus Christ, and then doing the “talk show circuit” as “spiritual experts.”

Think again about my example of the chemist who wants to write a chemistry book but does not believe in the existence of hydrogen. Would you want to read anything that he or she has to say? Would you want to conduct any of his or her experiments? I mean, go ahead, light up that cigarette since hydrogen does not exist, LOL. That would be irresponsible and crazy enough, to be a chemist who does not believe in the existence of hydrogen and teaches accordingly. However, imagine this. Suppose it is a biologist who writes that chemistry book and the biologist is both is not a chemist, but also does not believe in hydrogen! So that author would not even be an irresponsible expert; he or she would be an irresponsible non-expert, a uneducated intruder into the field of chemistry.

Now imagine that a biologist writes a book about chemistry where not only do they not believe in hydrogen, but they think that neon has been treated “unfairly” and does not get sufficient “attention,” and thus pushes a “neon agenda” throughout their chemistry book. “It’s not fair that neon is an inert gas,” the author thinks, and decides to insert neon into many equations and chemical reactions in the place of the actual element that occurs there. They do not believe in hydrogen, and they think that neo does not get enough attention. Thus they teach that the chemical formula for water, H2O, is actually Ne2O. Need some water? Smash some neon and oxygen together!

To understand God one must understand God the way God actually is, based on the facts of God’s interaction with the faithful and his inspired words on the subject, not on how someone wants God to be in order to enable their own agendas. The saints are the reliable way who show the genuine path to understanding and loving God, and that is why thousands of these role models exist. The saints have all come to God in a myriad of lifestyles and life experiences, so there’s a saint that resonates somewhere for anyone in any station of life. However, they all come together in one commonality, which is orthodox and reliable, faith and reasoning based understanding and love of God. None of them, no matter where they came from in life, “made up” out of their own minds their own theology and their own “interpretation” of God. They found their way on their own paths to the same God; they did not invent different Gods as the result of “going their own way.” I cannot believe how foolish people are today when some of them basically say they are finding the “right” God who “suits their needs.” I’m sorry, but there’s only one God, the powerfully eternally consistent one, who is waiting when your life is over and you are judged, and it’s not the “convenient” God who was “best suited to your lifestyle.” God is God and the same God, no matter what people are doing on earth, or even if this planet is blown to smithereens. God never changes and it does not matter one iota if you think that God is not “suitable to your present needs.”

To summarize, just as one learns how to drive a car from someone who knows how to drive, one can rely on studying one or more of the saints for ideas about how to better understand God and make him real in your life. Do not let “the blind lead the blind.” People used to read about and study the saints so that they would have ideas and role models about how to learn about God, not to follow the saints to the stake, LOL. Many saints were not martyrs and had even ordinary and non-dramatic lives, with the problems and challenges that all average people encounter in life.

Let me give an example of how that works best, and how that might be misunderstood. St. Paul has been through the centuries one of the most frequently role modeled of the saints, but there is a correct way to role model St. Paul and an incorrect way to role model St. Paul. Remember that Paul, when he was still Saul and a violent persecutor of Christians, was an ardent believer in God. Saul was extremely God fearing and very studious in his Jewish faith. It was this love of God that became extremist zealotry which motivated his erroneous persecution of Christians. In a way Saul was like the Pharisees who persecuted Jesus because obviously the Pharisees believed very much in God. So both Saul and the Pharisees were filled to overflowing with belief in God’s existence and in the tenets of their faith. In a way Saul was better than the Pharisees because he was not a hypocrite. Saul did not have the material and prestigious benefits of the wealth of the priesthood, for example; he was a tent maker. However, obviously Saul was worse off than those Pharisees who only argued with Jesus but who personally did not seek his death, leaving that to the other Pharisees. Saul did not argue with Christians; he sought to arrest them and have them killed. Then Saul was thrown from his horse on the way to Damascus by the light and the voice of the resurrected Christ, and he was converted.

Therefore St. Paul has been a role model for many generations of Christians who relate to several aspects of his life: his belief in God but disbelief in Jesus, his dramatic conversion rather than one based on gradual study, his transformation from a destroyer of a faith to a planter of churches, and his suffering for the faith through many trials and pains after his conversion to Christianity. However, I have noticed that St. Paul has been somewhat popular as a modern role model for those who did not believe in God at all. I’m not saying that such moderns are not welcome to use St. Paul as a role model, far from it, I welcome it. But I need to point out that an important aspect of understanding St. Paul is that he always was a God fearing pious believer. The resurrected Christ’s confrontation with him did not prove to Saul that God existed, since Saul always believed that, but was irrefutable proof of the identity of Jesus Christ as specifically the Savior and the Messiah. Moderns who do not believe in God but seek him through St. Paul’s role modeling tend to make one mistake accordingly. Moderns who do not believe in God and role model themselves after St. Paul tend to maintain an inner weakness toward disbelief and pagan practices. This is because St. Paul does not offer in his own life a refuting of total disbelief or of pagan superstitions because he himself had no need of that witness and testimony in his own life, since he always believed in God.

Thus selection of a “role model” saint is very important to proper faith formation. People who have no belief in God or cultist pagan New Age temptations are often better off emulating saints who grew up in pagan households who then converted. They can surely, and should, venerate and honor St. Paul studying, as all aspiring and actual Christians should, his life and his writings. But for moral support and for approaching God through the proven path that is most near one’s own actual situation in life, one should look at the other saints for guidance and both moral and intellectual support. For example St Justin Martyr is one of the best known and helpful of the saints to those who come from a disbelieving, pagan, or excessively secularized pseudo-intellectual background. Justin Martyr lived circa 100-165 and was of a very educated pagan family. As a pagan teacher of philosophy, rhetoric, history and poetry he was inspired by an old man who had met to study Christian Scripture. He became a Christian at the age of thirty, debated with pagan philosophers, and opened a school of philosophy. Justin Martyr was raised as a child, became an intellectual, a teacher and ultimately converted when paganism was by far the majority, and Christianity was the radical, persecuted minority. Thus someone with a very godless background, especially one that was intellectual, can especially relate to Justin Martyr and his existing writings.

For many generations Christian men, whose vocation was to have an average married life with children looked to St. Joseph, spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary and stepfather to Jesus, for their path and inspiration, even though Joseph authored no testimonies or sacred literature. During the generations where many did not read or write, who were poor, and who attempted only to do the best they could for their families, the deeds of St. Joseph, his obedience to God, and his love of Jesus were all the inspiration that they needed. They read about the Apostles, studied the Bible and their catechism, but they simply loved St. Joseph. I still remember the time when millions of men looked to St. Joseph for their support and strength, finding God through St. Joseph’s humble and unique example. Oddly we live in times where people buy St. Joseph statues and bury them in the ground upside down so that they can have “better luck” in selling their real estate properties. Maybe that has not been the right approach to God, no? St. Joseph is often forgotten except as a pagan practice to shill someone’s real estate. How sadly the times have changed. As St. Joseph has fallen away as a role model for the average Christian man, we have a real estate crisis (where his statue was used for pagan purposes, not totally a coincidence) plus we have the epidemic of stepfathers and “boyfriends of the mother” brutalizing and killing infants. A generation of humans is very much like the saints that they emulate, and, to their detriment, the saints that they ignore or defy in role modeling. I can think of no more stark example, except for the degrading of God himself, of the downfall of an entire category of humans (men) and their falling away from the best human role model they ever had, St. Joseph, spouse of Mary and step father to Jesus.

Thus to better understand God it is obvious that hundreds and indeed thousands of saints who have already found their way there can and must provide role modeling and example setting to people from a full diversity of life experience and perspective.

Further, one does not better understand God by omitting one’s God given intellect and believing any baloney that anyone makes up and sells to you, including your own self delusion. Far from abandoning reason and intellect, Christianity, Islam and Judaism are rich in the opportunities to use your brain, not put it in mothballs (or some other chemicals).

Additionally, love of God, even if it is unknown to you or painfully incomplete, must be your motivation for seeking to understand God. Motivations other than love of God all lead to truncated, misleading or dead ends and great error in interpretation. Likewise, however, the love of God must be understood correctly, and not as human labeling of weakness or hedonism as being justified by some open ended sloppy agenda based philosophy of supposed “love.” God’s love is infinitely strong and infinitely pure, and one cannot understand God if one has an unwillingness to understand that. God is both understanding and forgiving, but one must also remember that God’s purity of love is never compromised. Thus that which is stained and full of sin, no matter how much God “loves all his children,” cannot enter heaven.

The many paths to finding the one true God as demonstrated by the thousands of saints, both famous and mostly unknown, demonstrates again that God wishes all to find him, and does not “predestine” anyone to heaven or hell. Like evolution and natural selection has developed many thousands of species of birds in nature, for example, each person finds the same God in their own heart and soul through various paths. What is important to remember is, however, that the paths are all real and grounded on actuality, not self invented delusion. The saints demonstrate that people can and do come to God in various directions at various times in their lives: some were child saints, holy at even a small age, while others became saints late in life after much error and sinfulness. Obviously if people were “predestined” God would not have allowed such many examples of those who individually find sanctity and role model to others. Just to close this topic, here is the statement of the Catholic Church doctrine regarding predestination:

1037. God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of the faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance”:

Father, accept this offering
From your whole family
Grant us your peace in this life,
Save us from final damnation,
And count us among those you have chosen.

More information for "astrology" believers

First, here are some comments by the Pope. Even if you do not believe his words are helpful in using an analogy that helps you to understand how we view the cosmos.

http://www.zenit.org/article-24710?l=english

snip

Benedict XVI explained that "Christian thought compares the cosmos to a 'book,' -- Galileo himself said this -- considering it as a work of an Author."

According to this book, he said, "divine love, incarnated in Christ is the fundamental and universal law of creation. This should not be understood in a poetic, but in a real sense."

Dante also understood it this way, the Pope said, noting how the author concludes "Paradise" with a definition of God as "the love that moves the sun and the other stars."

"This means that the stars, the planets [and] the entire universe are not governed by a blind force, [and] do not obey only the dynamics of matter," he said. "Therefore, cosmic elements shouldn't be divinized, but on the contrary, in everything and above everything, there is a personal will, the Spirit of God, who in Christ revealed himself as love."


I've written the rational reasons why one should not and indeed must not believe in occult practices and forces such as astrology. Just to quickly link what the Pontiff says here to something I've pointed out before, consider this. The motivation of God is love, and he has created the cosmos based on the pure love that only he possesses and humans cannot understand. Thus the motivation of the entire cosmos and all that is within it is love.

What I've pointed out before is that occult practices assign portions of life to various topics, both good and "bad." Thus in tarot cards, for example, one fourth of the cards are assigned to "bad" categories, making 25% of tarot cards indicative of something bad. This is not consistent with one's day to day life, where one certainly is not having 25% of one's time taken up by tragedy day after day, year after year, and further, as you can now see with the Pope's analogy of a book being written totally about love, tarot cards, for example, dictate that one fourth of the pages of the book are not based on love but about misfortune and tragic events.

Do you see what I mean? Any divination or occult practice "assumes" through its use of numbers, assigned suits, astrology "meanings" and so forth that "bad" and "unlucky" events operate independent of the context of love. That is why the occult is totally contrary to God and his will. Occult practices "assign" proportions of "good" and "bad" "events" totally outside of the context of both divine and humanitarian love. People are therefore reduced to "bottom line" status ("good" or "bad") without giving consideration at all to the ongoing nature of their life.

Here is a simple example. Suppose an astrology reader "assesses" jobs and careers only based on money, future promotion, power and how "happy" you will be. However, are there not millions of people who work in not so great jobs in order to support their families and have a better future? Where is that in a "sword, pentacle, rod or cup?" Occult practices were never developed with day to day normalcy in mind. Ironically, people nowadays crave some stability and normalcy, and less "drama" not more. Yet the occult strips away all the reality of normalcy for a totally unreal worldview that is proportions of unrealistic expectations and bleakness.

With that as an introduction, here is another mental detox exercise I've prepared for those of you trying to, thank God, wean yourselves from astrology. I know many of you have or are working on it, and bless you for that. But it's pernicious and as bad as any drug. So I continue to offer to you who are working on it and those of you who still do not believe helpful exercises in logic to wean you away from occult "thinking" and back to reality.

In astrology there is the assumption that certain bodies in the cosmos called "planets" (whether they are planets or not) "cause" certain types of events to happen. In other words planets have "specialties" and "govern" areas of life. The same is true of the signs of the zodiac, where each of the twelve signs have "specialities" and "govern" areas of life. Thus Mercury is viewed as being "in charge of communications" (even though it is just a dumb rock orbiting the mindless sun). Astrologers care about where Mercury "is" including in which of the twelve signs it is "traveling through." For example, astrologically speaking Mercury is now "in" Aquarius.

Of course Mercury is not "in" Aquarius since Aquarius does not even exist. Aquarius is a bunch of stars that are not even together in space, but are viewed as forming a shape in the same general direction of the galaxy. Suppose you are standing in New York City and have magical eyes so you can see for thousands of miles around the globe. You have someone standing in front of you in New York, and over his or her shoulder see someone standing in London, and over his or her shoulder someone in Russia. They are all in a line. Um, are they "together?" No, obviously not. But this is what astrologers "believe." They take the names and meanings that ancient people gave to stars that appear in the same part of the sky and view them as being "together" in both their meaning and their supposed "influence" on people's lives and events.

So whenever a planet "moves" from sign to sign its "areas of control" and the events that are supposedly "caused" changes in nature and tone since it supposedly picks up the characteristics of the sign it is "in." But that is an optical illusion because the planet is not "out there" among the stars, but just circling our important but boring sun. Like an actor walking across a stage with scenery a planet is seen against the backdrop of stars, but the stars themselves are not even connected together in a meaningful way. Here is an analogy. Suppose that you are standing in your kitchen with your back to the wall that is opposite the doorway to the kitchen. Suppose that by facing the door you are facing west. That means your back and your rear end are against the wall that is to the east. What does any of that mean? Nothing. When astrologers draw their charts all they are doing is using the earth as the back wall that you are leaning your butt against and looking at the door, in this case what direction each planet is in.

Now with very slow planets, such as Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, astrologers are all ga-ga whenever they are in a sign, calling it a "huge" "shift" and a "generational" impact. So when Pluto spends like ten years "going through" a sign astrologers expect and project upon the big events of humanity the "influences" of that sign. So according to western astrology Pluto has just entered Capricorn. Now astrologers "expect" and "demand" that humanity now has "typical" "Pluto in Capricorn 'behavior' and 'events.'" Here is the problem with such garbage.

Suppose I stuffed you into a rocket ship and took you to the actual planet Pluto. You are now in orbit around Pluto. As you orbit around Pluto, Pluto is not "stuck" in Capricorn. In fact, you see Pluto "framed" against each of the twelve signs in turn. Thus while you are orbiting you see Pluto "in" Aries, then travel more in your orbit and see Pluto "in" Taurus, and then you travel more and you see Pluto "in" Gemini, and you travel a little further and see Pluto "in" Cancer, and so on through each of the twelve signs as you finish one orbit, and your next orbit starts with seeing Pluto "in" Aries again.

Doe that make you Master of the Universe? I mean, if you are out there all by yourself in the rocket that I sent you out on and you can just move your spaceship to any part of your orbit and thus have Pluto, the slowest planet, now moving from sign to sign in a matter of hours, should you not be able to just kind of do whatever you want, make Pluto "serve" you in all ways?

If Pluto goes "into" a money sign, should not money fall into your lap no matter what you do? Except, oh yeah, wait, earth is back over thar in that thar direction and you are sitting in a rocket. I mean, you actually have to be among people and do things, right? So when you move your ship a little more and Pluto is in your most compatible love sign, should you not know find your perfect "soul mate" and have the most powerful love? Oh yeah, except for one problem. Earth and its humans is back over thar in that thar direction and you are alone in your stupid rocket ship. And what if Pluto is now a few hours later in a sign that indicates "war?" And you duck down and cover your ears and worry about the fighting starting. Oh, but wait, you just are thinking Pluto is "doing something" in that "war sign" because you are just a dummy sitting in a spaceship (which I provided to you) so you can orbit it and watch Pluto seem to be in one sign after the other in a matter of hours. Nothing has changed on earth no matter where Pluto "is" or where you are or where you "think" Pluto "is." Except anyone sane who actually cared about you is sad that you are in your stupid spaceship believing still in astrology. (And I worry about how much it has cost me, especially the fuel bill, in letting you go and "see for yourself" that astrology is a bunch of steaming cruel crap).

When one orbits a planet, as the International Space Station is now doing on earth, one has challenges such as, if you are Muslim, which direction is toward Mecca on earth to pray. This is another prosaic example of how the planets do not "move" into "areas of influence" but instead, people just gaze at the rocks and stars in the cosmos from different places and perspectives. The Muslim has to get his or her bearings in space to know in which direction Mecca lies so they can be prone in the correct direction and pray. But it does not change Mecca that Aries is "behind the earth" at that part of the orbit, or that a few hours later Taurus is "behind the earth" and so forth through the signs. Prayers to Mecca are prayers to Mecca, one just needs to point to Mecca. Astrologers "believe" that the chunks of cosmos "work together" in areas of speciality to influence human lives and events. That is so demonstrably wrong and stupid that it would be funny if I have not seen it harm so many people.

So the next time that you read some astrology crap about a planet or a sign and what is supposedly is going to do "for" you or "against" you, imagine getting in a rocket ship and flying to that planet. What would that do for you? After all, you can then see that planet in all twelve of the zodiac signs in one day as you orbit the planet. What would an astrologer say to that? Take my advice and don't ask and don't even read the daily paper's horoscopes for a laugh, because it stopped being funny a long time ago.

I hope you have found this helpful and that someday all people will see what believing orthodox Christians, Muslims and Jews see, which is the cosmos as the sign of God's love for life.