Parenting Advice from St. Don Bosco....

I needed to hear this....

"It is better to punish our own impatience and pride than to correct the boys. We must be firm but kind and patient with them. Take as a model the charity of Paul which he showed to his new converts. They often reduced him to tears and entreaties when he found them lacking docility and even opposing his loving efforts.

"See that no one finds you motivated by impetuosity or willfulness. It is difficult to keep calm when administering punishment, but we must do so if we are to keep ourselves from spilling out our anger.

"Let us regard the boys as our own sons. Let us not rule over them except for the purpose of serving them better. This was the method Jesus used with the apostles. He put up with their ignorance and roughness and even their infidelity. He treated sinners with a kindness and affection that caused some to be shocked, others to be scandalized, and still others to hope for God's mercy. And so he bade us to be 'gentle and humble of heart.'

"They are our sons, and so in correcting their mistakes we must lay aside all anger and restrain it so firmly that it is extinguished entirely.

"There must be no hostility in our minds, no contempt in our eyes, no insult on our lips. We must use mercy for the present and have hope for the future, as is fitting for true fathers who are eager for real correction and improvement."

From the Mouths of Babes, Part 230591

Yet another "out of the blue" moment in our household....

Quinn: "Mom, I understand who God is."

Me (in my head):"Sure. You're 7 years old. The greatest minds in all of history haven't understood God, the best theologians can't even begin to wrap their minds around the concept of God.  You spend 95% of your time making fart noises.  But go ahead, little kid.  YOU explain God to me."

Me (what I actually said): "Oh, really?"

Quinn: "It's simple, Mom.  God is LOVE."

{{crickets}}  Mom thoroughly put in her place. 

Quinn: "I guess the big question is, Mom... what is LOVE?"

Enter the kingdom as a child.  Apparently so, apparently so.

Cue the Gregorian Chant: Religion vs Spirituality

Untitled from John Hollowell on Vimeo.

What If?

What if....

...there was a real-life, present-day Indiana Jones.  What if some quiet-mannered biblical archeologist stumbled upon one of the greatest finds of modern times, and lo - behold!  The Ark of the Covenant.  The REAL, undisputed, undeniable Ark of the Covenant - verified by scholars, perserved in a prestigious exhibit - in the realm of the here and now, available for all the world to see. 

It would specifically look like this, commanded by Almighty God Himself (Exodus 25:10-22)

¹⁰ “Have them make an ark^[b] of acacia wood—two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high.^{[c] 11} Overlay it with pure gold, both inside and out, and make a gold molding around it. ¹² Cast four gold rings for it and fasten them to its four feet, with two rings on one side and two rings on the other. ¹³ Then make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. ¹⁴ Insert the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark to carry it. ¹⁵ The poles are to remain in the rings of this ark; they are not to be removed. ¹⁶ Then put in the ark the tablets of the covenant law, which I will give you.
¹⁷ “Make an atonement cover of pure gold—two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. ¹⁸ And make two cherubim out of hammered gold at the ends of the cover. ¹⁹ Make one cherub on one end and the second cherub on the other; make the cherubim of one piece with the cover, at the two ends. ²⁰ The cherubim are to have their wings spread upward, overshadowing the cover with them. The cherubim are to face each other, looking toward the cover. ²¹ Place the cover on top of the ark and put in the ark the tablets of the covenant law that I will give you. ²² There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the covenant law, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites. "


So, not only was the best of everything to be used, but God specifically  designed this vessel, down to the tiniest detail and measurement,  using rare wood and  PURE gold, to carry the law of the Covenant.  It was here, between the cherubim's wings, that God Himself met with humanity.  The place where Heaven and earth met.  In a box.  And now.... in our little scenario.... we have it.  

Would you want to see it?  I would.  Absolutely.  Such a sacred, powerful object.  Millions of faithful and the curious would want to see it.  Some would deny it, distract from it.  Some skeptics would travel for miles to come see it, look at it, and say "oh, it's alot smaller than I thought."  Or  "it's an interesting historical relic, but nothing more."  Some would say "what's all the fuss about?".  And some, believing they were being righteous, would say "only God deserves this amount of attention" and attempt to minimize it's significance.

We know how the ancient world reacted to the Ark.  Moses knelt before it, in the central Holy Place where it was kept.  Aaron saw it but once a year, and only with special ceremonies.   King David danced before it, in joy. Enemies cringed before it.   Solomon's temple was built for the sole purpose of housing it. THAT was the reaction of the ancient world to the Ark.  Utmost respect, awe, and fear.

Know how I would react?  Well,  I guess I don't know exactly.  But I can imagine.  I can imagine I would be nervous standing outside the door of the exhibit, taking deep breaths, trying to prepare myself for meeting something Holy.  I would probably be praying.  Upon seeing it, I'm not sure, but I can certainly imagine falling to my knees in awe.  Getting weak with the overwhelming  magnitude of what I was seeing - the Holy of Holies.  Feeling utterly unworthy. Knowing myself, I guarantee you.... I would be in tears.  Can you imagine how you might react to such a thing?

Am I worshipping the Ark?  Did the ancient Hebrews worship the Ark?  No.  Am I in awe?  Yes.  Am I  showing great reverance and respect for a mere physical object?  Absolutely.  Why?  Because it's a gold box?  Not on your life.  It's not necessarily the box itself that garners the strong reaction - after all, other gold boxes from ancient times that I might see in a museum would not bring even CLOSE to that kind of reaction.  It's what it IS.  The vessel of the Covenant.  The meeting place of Heaven and Earth.  The dwelling place of GOD ON EARTH.  The box generates that much awe and reverance only because of the work of God that was done through it.  I am worshipping GOD, am in awe of GOD, and the covenant He made with His people.

You know what's interesting about the Ark?  When carried, the Ark was always wrapped in a veil, in tachash skins and a blue cloth (why animal skins?  why veils? why blue??? hmmmmm), and was carefully concealed, even from the eyes of the Kohanim who carried it.   It was set apart from the people, and was carried AHEAD of the Israelites, leading the way into battle, into new territory.  And what was inside?  According to Hebrews 9:4, the stone tablets, a jar of manna,  and Aaron's rod that budded. 

Now shift gears with me here.  The ten commandments were the sign of the Old Covenant.  What is the new?  What is the everlasting covenant?  Christ's blood is the new and everlasting covenant.  Blood shed for you and all men, so that sins might be forgiven.  So that we may belong to the Father forever.  The signs of the old Covenant, residing in the Ark were personified in the New Covenant - in Christ Jesus.  The stone tablets (the law), a jar of manna (the eucharist), and Aaron's rod that budded (the power of new life) - all wrapped in one, God's own divine Son.  " ¹⁵ For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. :" (Hebrews 9:15)

 So, what (or who) is the Ark of the New Covenant?   We see how specific God was in creating the Ark of the Old Covenant.  How it had to be pure, precious, perfect.  Would any believe that He would be any LESS demanding of what would be the Ark of the New Covenant?  Does God have any limits on His power, that He is not CAPABLE of creating something (or someone) pure and unstained to be the meeting place of Heaven and Earth in one, singular event that changed EVERYTHING?  To house Himself, in the person of His son???  Is that an affront to the Holiness of God to believe that He created something pure to house His own Holiness? 

And if we fall down in awe and reverance to this Ark of the New Covenant - am I worshipping a human as pagans do?  Or am I venerating the work of God manifested in mere earthly things, something as lowly as a humble peasant girl, made the meeting place of Heaven and Earth.   Someone who led the way before God's people in faith, obedience.  The first of whom the promise of the New Covenant was made.  Behold - the Ark of the Covenant.

Revelation 11:19-12:2

" ¹⁹ Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a severe hailstorm. ¹ A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. ² She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth."

Predestination and Free Will

Peter Kreeft puts succinctly and completely what I have been trying to stay in my rambling, unorganized way for years.  We are DESTINED, but not PRE-destined.  Because a sovreign God who loves us wrote our story so. 

By Dr. Peter Kreeft

If God is not love but only knowledge, then it is difficult or impossible to see how human free will and divine predestination can both be true. But if God is love, there is a way.

Freedom and predestination is one of the most frequently asked questions among my students—partly because of modern man’s great concern for freedom, but also, I think, for the largely unconscious reason that we intuitively know both these things must be true because they are the warp and woof of every good story. If a story has no plot, no destiny – if its events are haphazard and arbitrary – it is not a great story.

Every good story has a sense of destiny, of fittingness as if it were written by God. But every story also leaves its characters free. Lesser writers may jimmy and force their characters into molds, but the greater the writer the more clearly the reader sees that his characters are real people and not just mental concepts. The more nearly the characters have a life of their own and seem to leap off the page into real life, the greater a writer we have. God, of course, is the greatest writer of all. Since human life is his story, it must have both destiny and freedom.

Let’s look first at the side called destiny. Predestination is a misleading word, I think, for it concedes too much to our temporal way of thinking. God is not pre or post anything. He is present to everything. God does not look down rows of dominoes or into crystal balls. He does not have to wait for anything. Nor does he wonder what will happen. Nothing is uncertain to him, as the future is uncertain to us. There is not predestination but destination, not predestiny but destiny. This follows from divine omniscience and eternity.

But our free will follows from the divine love. To love someone is to make them free. To enslave them is always a defect of love.

Now since divine love is God’s very essence, while omniscience and omnipotence are only attributes of that essence, therefore if one of these two truths had to come first – in the sense of being more primordial and non-negotiable than the other – it would have to be freedom.

I do not think either truth needs to be compromised. I think we can do as much justice to the sovereignty of God as a Calvinist and as much justice to the free will of man as a Baptist. Yet it would not compromise the very essence of God to deny predestination. Arminianism, the theological viewpoint that denies predestination and emphasizes the role of man’s free will in receiving grace from God, may be wrong. But it is wrong at a relatively technical, theoretical level. Denying human free will, on the other hand, would cut out something immediately essential to the Christian life: personal responsibility. If I am a robot, even a divinely programmed robot, my life no longer has the drama of real choice and turns into a formula, the unrolling of a pre-written script. God loves me too much to allow that. He would sooner compromise his power than my freedom.

Actually, he does neither. It is precisely his power that gives me my freedom. Aquinas reconciles freedom with predestination by saying that God’s love is so powerful that he not only gets what he wants but he also gets it in the way that he wants. Not only is everything done that God wills to be done, but it is also done in the way he wants it to be done. It happens without freedom in the case of natural things like falling rain and freely in the case of human choices. A power a little less than total may get what it wants without getting it in the way that it wants it. But omnipotence gets both. And the way omnipotence wants human acts done is freely.

In other words, freedom and predestination are two sides of one coin. The omnipotent author chose to write a story about free human beings, not just trees or machines. That means we are really free. We are free precisely because God is all-powerful.

If love and power were not one, we would have the classic standoff, an unending conflict between the two. Once you see the center, love, everything else falls into place like spokes in a wheel.
The oneness of love and power is also why we need not fear God’s power: it is his very love.

Therefore, it cannot be used lovelessly. And it is also why we need not fear that his love will ever fail, for it is omnipotent. It is power. The very hands that tossed the galaxies around like grains of sand loved mankind so much that they let mere men nail them to the cross, all for love. The One who loved us even unto death, the supreme weakness, is infinite strength......

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Read more here.