I. Dangers facing the Christian
A. There are dangers that face the Christian in the spiritual life. Among them are spiritual blindness, pride, and mortal sin which can lead to Hell.
B. “Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same sufferings. The God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory through Christ [Jesus] will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you after you have suffered a little.” (1 Peter 5:8-10)
C. The “mystery of iniquity” (Pope John Paul II) – why God allows evil
a. Story of the parish in Maryland after September 11
D. “For God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.” (St. Paul in Romans 11:32)
II. Spiritual blindness
A. A story: the Pope in the Big Apple?
B. Doubt
a. Voluntary doubt is a disregarding or a refusal to believe what is revealed as true, and is a sin against Faith, against the First Commandment.
b. Involuntary doubt is a hesitation in believing.
c. A certain amount of involuntary doubt is common, even normal. Doubts can be overcome by asking questions, prayer, Confession, and active participation at Mass.
C. Blindness
a. If unchecked, doubts can lead to blindness. Blindness is a form of rejection of God where we prefer our own ideas to revealed truth.
i. “They had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. He enjoined them, ‘Watch out, guard against the leaven of Herod.’ [The disciples] concluded among themselves that it was because they had no bread. When he became aware of this he said to them, ‘Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?’” (Mark 8: 14-18)
ii. Notice that the Lord connects the sin of blindness-something in the eyes-to a condition of the heart, that is, “hardness.”
iii. Blindness is the sin of Herod and of Pontius Pilate, who had Christ right in front of them-all the evidence they needed-and who yet refused to believe in the Son of Man.
b. It is easy to fall into a condition where we see what we want to see, not what God is doing (perhaps a mild form of blindness that afflicts almost everyone at one time or another).
Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?
-God in Evan Almighty
(The protagonist, Evan’s wife, wasn’t seeing what was really going on.)
III. Pride
A. Pride is a deviation of the legitimate feeling that allows us to prize what is good in us, and to seek the esteem of others. While we must prize the good in us-this brings self-respect-we must not go too far by attributing this good to our own actions. God remains the source of all goodness and all our gifts.
B. Persons suffering from this defect have an inordinate love of self-that is, big egos. They think they are their own beginnings and their own ends. Pride is a kind of idolatry, a sin against the First Commandment.
a. “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’ Their deeds are loathsome and corrupt; not one does what is right.” (Psalm 14:1)
b. Pride is the sin of Satan himself, who refused to submit to God, making himself his own rule and measure. St. Thomas says that pride is the gravest of sins.
c. It is possible to fall into pride implicitly, by acting as though the gifts one has been given did not come from God, even while acknowledging that in theory all comes from Him.
d. Another form of pride seeks excessive praise, as if our actions were exclusively our own work.
C. Pride is the mother of several vices, including presumption, ambition, and vanity.
a. Presumption is an inordinate desire to do things beyond our strength
b. Ambition is the inordinate love of honors, dignities, and authority over others
c. Vanity is an inordinate love for the esteem of others
d. Note the term “inordinate”: of themselves these traits are virtuous, even holy
D. Story about Hitler and the Cardinal Archbishop of Munich
E. Remedies for pride
a. The main remedy is the recognition that God is the Author of all good, and that therefore all honor and glory belong to Him. Of ourselves we are nothingness and sin, and merit nothing.
b. This remedy is accomplished practically by growing in the spiritual life, by allowing God to show us who we truly are. Remember that we have names that are ours for all eternity. “To the victor I shall give some of the hidden manna; I shall also give a white amulet upon which is inscribed a new name, which no one knows except the one who receives it.” (Revelation 3:17)
IV. Hell: Eternal loss
A. Hell: a “radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself.” (CCC 1861)
B. To go to Hell, a person must commit a mortal sin and persist in it unrepentant until death. In doing so he is committing an eternal sin, “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 12:31)
C. Hell is something many Christians wish weren’t there, but Jesus himself explicitly warns us about it dozens of times in the Gospels. From the Sermon on the Mount: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna.” (Matthew 5:29-30)
D. Why does Hell exist?
a. Hell is part of the Good News.
b. Without the possibility that a human being might ultimately and finally turn against Him, there is no possibility for that human being to ultimately and finally give God his love.
c. Hell exists because God wants each one of us in Heaven, where we will give God that ultimate and final love.
d. Hell exists because of our freedom; without it, we would be slaves, not men and women.
e. Anybody can commit mortal sin-but it is part of the Good News too that anyone can also turn away from that path. Story of the penitent woman saint.
E. Who is in Hell?
a. We don’t know that anyone specific is in Hell, not Hitler, not Stalin, not even Judas
b. We know that a great many people are in Heaven: “Then I heard something like the sound of a great multitude or the sound of rushing water or mighty peals of thunder, as they said: ‘Alleluia! The Lord has established his reign, [our] God, the almighty. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory. For the wedding day of the Lamb has come, his bride has made herself ready.” (Revelation 19:6-7)
c. But most sober, prudent Christians believe it would be a mistake to think that Hell is empty.
d. The visions of Fatima: At Fatima, the Blessed Virgin Mary told the three child seers that many souls go to Hell because they have no one to pray or make sacrifices for them. In her Memoirs, Sister Lucy describes the vision of Hell that Our Lady showed the children at Fatima:
“She opened Her hands once more, as She had done the two previous months. The rays [of light] appeared to penetrate the earth, and we saw, as it were, a vast sea of fire. Plunged in this fire, we saw the demons and the souls [of the damned]. The latter were like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, having human forms. They were floating about in that conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames which issued from within themselves, together with great clouds of smoke. Now they fell back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fright (it must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me). The demons were distinguished [from the souls of the damned] by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals. That vision only lasted for a moment, thanks to our good Heavenly Mother, Who at the first apparition had promised to take us to Heaven. Without that, I think that we would have died of terror and fear.” (www.fatima.org)
F. The punishments of Hell
a. These are more horrific than I really care to get into. If you feel led you can read them for yourself in an excellent article written by Fr. Paul Raftery, O.P., at http://www.rosary-center.org/ll57n3.htm
b. Chief among the punishments of Hell is its eternity.
c. Story of young monk caught in mortal sin.
V. A choice
A. A story: Beauty and Tragedy in the Arctic
B. “God predestines no one to go to Hell.” (CCC 1037)
C. Sirach 15:14-17: “When God, in the beginning, created man, he made him subject to his own free choice. If you choose you can keep the commandments; it is loyalty to do his will. There are set before you fire and water; to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand. Before man are life and death, whichever he chooses shall be given him.”
D. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” (Matthew 6:19-21)
E. “The one who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” The holy city Jerusalem gleamed with the splendor of God. Its radiance was like that of a precious stone, like jasper, clear as crystal. Then the angel showed me the river of life-giving water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” (Revelation 21:5, 11; 22:1)
