Think Like a Catholic!!!

Greetings

Our culture focuses on the person as they see themselves. Everything is seen and understood through the prism of my relationship to the object. That means that any external reality is only important as it affects me. That means I am able to give meaning to all external reality. It also means that any real meaning ends up being how something psychologically affects me.


In Religion and faith this has very dire ramifications. I become the one who creates and determines truth. Rather than looking at the world and finding truth, I am the one who assigns truth ‘For ME’. Worship becomes ‘What do I get out of it?’ Doctrine and Dogma became nasty words because we are the ones who determine truth. And following rules of faith become anathema because it seems to go against our warped view of freedom.

As Christians we must set aside the self, and look first at external things: GOD, GRACE, and the INCARNATION. We should meditate on God and who he is. We should meditate on the incarnation and God becoming Human. We should immerse ourselves in salvation history so that we can think with a biblical imagination. We should enter into worship with the thought of worshiping God, interceding for other, and offering ourselves in spiritual sacrifice rather than looking for a psychological tingling. We should think like a Christian. We should search for the truth rather than try to make up the truth.

The most important thing necessary to think like a Christian is to pray. Without prayer Christianity will end. It is more important to Pray to God than to think about God: Why? Because it is in prayer that we love God, and God is love. We know God through love. Every Christian should strive to love God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength. This happens in prayer. Every Christian should strive to be a contemplative. Christianity is a life of prayer and union of God lived out in our world. This is very clear in the Second Vatican Council’s call to universal holiness. As Leon Bloy said: “There is only one sadness; it is not to be a saint.”

Peace