Things hard to understand

It is a good thing for some of us that people will not get into heaven according to how much they understand of the deep theological truths of Christianity. Even Peter found the letters of Paul difficult in some places. (See, 2 Peter 3:15-16)

We need to read the letters of Paul, difficult as they are. You may not always understand everything you read, but it will point you in a direction.

Just because we do not fully understand a thing, does not mean it is not true. If there is something we do not fully understand, we have to just carry it. God has the answer; we will come to it some day.

If we take all the mystery out of our world, we will take God out of it. That is not an answer.

We do not need to dogmatize our opinions of the deep things of our religion. Church leaders have done this in an attempt to prevent people falling into error on a faith or intellectual level, but it has brought hordes of people into the moral error of disunity, fragmenting the body of Christ over definitions.

Yet we do need to try to fathom the richness that we find in the word of God. It needs an approach that is humble enough to acknowledge our limitations; and it needs an insight that includes the perception of our spirit together with the understanding of our intellect.

In Romans 8:16 we read, ‘The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.’ Note that it says the Spirit bears witness with our spirit, not to our intellect, though of course, the intellect will also want to grasp it.

The Eucharist

(This is going back to earlier this year.)

Yesterday, on 18th February 2007, I attended Mass at the Cathedral and after receiving communion and returning to my place it just came upon me that God had done something in this Eucharist. God had acted and man had received.

I saw it as something like a power encounter and it affected in some way everyone who was there taking part. No matter how well the priest and the people had performed the Eucharist, or how poorly, God had acted and his power had come somehow into people’s lives and into their families.

It did not come upon me so very, very strongly, but enough for me to sense it and pick it up. This gave rise to some questions within me.

In God’s church, or in the kingdom of God, is there such a difference between charism and sacrament?

Are they all power encounters?

Are the sacraments ritualized charisms?

Are the sacraments power encounters that have lost most of the power by repeated ritualistic action and authoritative over-regulation?

If God is sending the Holy Spirit upon his church to renew it, that will include as well the renewal of the sacramental life of the church.

I have been waiting a long time to see how the Renewal is going to affect the sacraments. The bottom line may turn out to be, ‘sacraments are for believers’, no great problem there. Or, ‘for the sacraments to be genuinely effective in peoples’ lives, those who take part in them must be born-again, Spirit-filled Christians’, I do not think some of the churches could take that one, not for the moment.

The opposite of ‘genuinely effective’ would mean, not excluding some basic action of grace, yet lacking anything that can easily be seen to make a difference in a person’s life. Some see this as the difference between the sacraments as practiced in the traditional churches and the charisms as experienced in the Renewal.