How to Respond to Christ's Call

“Love has three and only three intimacies: speech, vision, and touch. These three intimacies God has chosen to make his love intelligible to our poor hearts. God has spoken He told us that he loves us: that is Revelation. God has been seen: That is Incarnation. God has touched us by his grace: That is Redemption. Well indeed, therefore, may he say: “What more could I do for my vineyard than I have done? What other proof could I give of my love than to exhaust myself in the intimacies of love? What else could I do to show that my own Sacred Heart is not less generous than your own? If we answer these questions aright, then we will begin to repay love with love. Then we will return speech with speech which will be our prayer; vision with vision which will be our faith; touch with touch which will be our communion.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Eternal Galilean)

Which exactly is why we must respond to God in the same way, If God comes with speech, vision, and touch.  Should we not respond to him in the same way? Fully? Full body and soul? Speech (prayer and consecration), Vision (sacramentals, vestments, relics) and touch (sign of cross, holy water, laying on of the hands) .

 To respond to God, we should respond not only to Jesus the incarnate, but the Father and Holy Spirit. To do this, we must listen, gaze, and reach out. Listen to the Father in prayer, gaze at the Jesus incarnate, and reach out our spirits to the Spirit. Simple speech and profession is not a response to the Cross! Even the demons know the cross.

   Just as told in the parable of the talents, we are not just to receive the gifts, but do something with it!

The Parable of the Talents

14 “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants[a] and entrusted to them his property. 15 To one he gave five talents,[b] to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. 17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. 18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. 19 Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good andfaithful servant.[c] You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 22 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked andslothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A14-30&version=ESV

I am not holier than thou

I am not holier than thou ...

I AM

which I am not

Only He is that IS

I am just a crock-pot

I simmer, slowly

And am not done

until time passes

Long passed hunger as fun

He IS 

And has been

He is unmoved

Niether to nor fro

Always, Forever

I am however

I am always slow

Slow to see

Slow to believe

Slow to consider

If His home is

where I am meant to go

When I get a passage

Do I pass it on?

Or do I think of ideas

Like milkened honey and lepracauns?

No, I sit and think to only me

What it is that I am suppose to conceive

I give me the power you know

It's logic

It's me whom shall grow

It's my time

To let flow

It's my rhyme and songs

I sing and row

Row, Row, 

Rowing down the stream

I row so much

I forget what rowing means

I sing tunes

And the tune is nothing less

Than what it all means

I digress .....

Have I forgotten the note?

The builder of those?

Or have I jumped to the excitement

And leave it all unwrote

So the tunes mean more

Than the root of hope

Which is the root of all songs

That we all like to note

We sing to daze

We sing to dazzle

We sing to praise

We sing to praisal

But why do we sing to all that jazz?

Where did it all come from?

Do we bother to ask?

Biblical Confession

Two verses in the Old Testament show that God is the one who forgives, but this does not mean that He does not (rather has before) used a priest to offer petition for sins. This especially demonstrates that this is in no way contradictory.

Old Covenant: psalm 103 (God forgives )   Leviticus 19 : 21-22
                                    
²¹ but he shall bring a guilt-offering for himself to the Lord, at the entrance of the tent of meeting, a ram as guilt-offering. ²² And the priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of guilt-offering before the Lord for his sin that he committed; and the sin he committed shall be forgiven him.


But that is the Old Covenant, of course:

New Covenant:

jn 20: 21 - 23

²¹ Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ ²² When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

acts 19 : 18
  Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done.



2 corin 2 : 10
   Anyone you forgive, I also forgive. And what I have forgiven--if there was anything to forgive--I have forgiven in the person of Christ for your sake,


2 corin 5 : 17-21
 
¹⁷ So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,^[a] not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. ²⁰ So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹ For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.


Clearly, Jesus came to forgive sins

During His public ministry, Jesus preached about the forgiveness of sins: remember the parables of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:11) or the Lost Sheep (Lk 15:1), and His teaching that "There will likewise be more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over 96 righteous people who have no need to repent." (Lk 15:7) Jesus Himself forgave sins: remember the story of the woman caught in adultery (Jn 8:1) or the woman who washed His feet with her tears. (Lk 7:36) He also taught us to pray for forgiveness in the "Our Father."

His mission of reconciliation would climax in His passion, death and resurrection: Jesus suffered, died and rose to free us from sin and death.

On the first Easter Sunday evening, Jesus appeared to His Apostles, "breathed on them," and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive men's sins, they are forgiven them; if you hold them bound, they are held bound." (Jn 20:21-23)

Jesus called the sinner to realize the sin, to repent of it, and to be reconciled with God and neighbor.

God and neighbor. Sin is not only against God, Himself, but against His creation.  We must ask for forgiveness from God, but also from our neighbor, and we do this through the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corin 5) with a priest who is in the person of Christ (2 Corin 2).

Christ is in the Church, the priest is in the person of Christ, so therefore all sin is against God and His Church, and severe sins must be forgiven through the instrument of a priest before God as they are mortal sins:

 1 John 5 : 16 -17
¹⁶ If you see your brother or sister^[a] committing what is not a mortal sin, you will ask, and God^[b] will give life to such a one—to those whose sin is not mortal. There is sin that is mortal; I do not say that you should pray about that. ¹⁷ All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not mortal.

Marked with a Cross

My shield, I raise
My heart protected
My rage behind the Sovereign
That He may reign me behind
His domain governed

Oh Governor!
Oh merciful Lord
Oh knower of my soul
I withhold my sword
As you heal the soul departed

Bare upon me your eternal wish
So that I may stand for thee
Amongst the wretched unguarded

Show me the strength of thy blow
So that I am able to avoid
Destruction from treachery
May I be a stone for you, Oh Lord
A jewel of devotion amidst all folklore
Which degrades your mastery

Allow justice to rule the pike
The avenging charge
Against your works
Let the greatest of beauty
Remain and abound
Also with and regarding
Those burdened and frowned
That they seek the founding yet
Of the purest fountains
and the sensible grounds
That all may be rectified
In all befouled grades
For right are we who service
That which thee has made

For this we are courteous
Giving out the due towards the other
As we are not instructed
To do away with our order
And give part to any who
Meet the same creed
That the one of the fellowship
Is a brother to me
This I might, This I breathe
That who ever is worth
Your molding
Is worth everything to me

Harness this!
Glide into step
Tarnish not the flesh
Uphold it in grip
Ground it in the soil
Of the manly wit
So that he may
Advocate
All he cherishes
Out of his lips
And see to the day
That his approach
Is signified
And that he is equipped

Grant the possessions
That he may sow
And well in tranquility
That he may flow
From the bleeding of his heart
And not a quip of what has been bestowed
But prudently may he abide
In the shadows of his faint pride

Never more thought
Of championing against men
As a launch of his libido
To serve his honor
As is sin
And not as a currency
Or to embargo the hen
Let him seep to the shallows
So that he may drink from the cup again

Abstract the blow
against me along with the kin
We are to be brigades
Of hunters in the faithful glen
Cast aside all perilous loss
That we may regain the cost
Of waging a strike
Chivalrously
At the dark patron
That his and the unfaithful departed
Can quiver when we mark with the Cross

Gracing Water

Lay thee down
You, conqueror of none
Lay thee low
Beneath the earthly seems
As it is you who neglect
The gracing water's regime

What good is water without the salt
Which purifies and give taste to the washing sea

Lone Bellow! Lone Sores!
Never setting foot on the shores
Only sailing where the wind will blow
Where art thou?
Thoust don't know

Shiver in the wind
Sink below currents
You are not Anointed
You were made to cease

Cease not as Othello
Live armored
Be not hollow
Cry Aloud!
For Salvation
in the Lord
never repeats
never recedes
As He is life
Living on!

Never impede
His grace
with shallow orders
Wash with a purified
Living Water