Dear listeners of daily meditations,
today I combine the answering of questions with a topic, which I have already raised several times and would like to comment again.
I am concerned about the situation of the Church and also about the uncertainty that believers express about some of the developments in this pontificate. These uncertainties come to me as concrete questions.
2 Macc. 12, 43–45
After this he took a collection from them individually, amounting to
nearly two thousand drachmas, and sent it to Jerusalem to have a
sacrifice for sin offered, an action altogether fine and noble, prompted
by his belief in the resurrection. For had he not expected the fallen to
rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the
dead, whereas if he had in view the splendid recompense reserved for
those who make a pious end, the thought was holy and devout. Hence,
he had this expiatory sacrifice offered for the dead, so that they might
be released from their sin.
Rev 7-2-4, 9-14
Then I saw another angel rising where the sun rises, carrying the seal of the living God; he called in a powerful voice to the four angels whose duty was to devastate land and sea, ‘Wait before you do any damage on land or at sea or to the trees, until we have put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.’ And I heard how many had been sealed: a hundred and forty-four thousand, out of all the tribes of Israel.
Rom 8, 31b-39
After saying this, what can we add? If God is for us, who can be against us?Since he did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for the sake of all of us, then can we not expect that with him he will freely give us all his gifts? Who can bring any accusation against those that God has chosen? When God grants saving justice who can condemn? Are we not sure that it is Christ Jesus, who died – yes and more, who was raised from the dead and is at God’s right hand – and who is adding his plea for us?
Lk 13, 22-30
Through towns and villages he went teaching, making his way to Jerusalem. Someone said to him, ‘Sir, will there be only a few saved?’ He said to them, Try your hardest to enter by the narrow door, because, I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed. Once the master of the house has got up and locked the door, you may find yourself standing outside knocking on the door, saying, “Lord, open to us,” but he will answer, “I do not know where you come from.”
How to start fasting?
This issue will always be addressed, because fasting is an important part of spiritual and ascetic life. In our Catholic Church, as we know, it has almost completely disappeared and is only practiced by individual people who perceive a call of the Spirit to integrate fasting into their lives. It is better in Orthodox Christianity, who know fasting before the holy liturgy and also practice physical fasting in various ways. Fasting is almost unknown to the Protestants, at most that individual persons take it up.
Dear listeners of our daily meditations.
When questions are asked which might be of general interest I decided towards the end of the month to answer them in the daily meditations.
Today two questions.
Lk 18, 9-14
He spoke the following parable to some people who prided themselves on being upright and despised everyone else, ‘Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, “I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like everyone else, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get.”
Rom 8, 1-11
Thus, condemnation will never come to those who are in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit which gives life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. What the Law could not do because of the weakness of human nature, God did, sending his own Son in the same human nature as any sinner to be a sacrifice for sin, and condemning sin in that human nature. This was so that the Law’s requirements might be fully satisfied in us as we direct our lives not by our natural inclinations but by the Spirit.
Rom 7 , 18-25
And really, I know of nothing good living in me — in my natural self, that is — for though the will to do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not: the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want — that is what I do. But every time I do what I do not want to, then it is not myself acting, but the sin that lives in me. So I find this rule: that for me, where I want to do nothing but good, evil is close at my side.
