I AM WHO I AM AND JESUS AND MARY DON'T LET ME FORGET IT...
YOU SHOULD NOT EITHER. SO, DON'T FORGET, DO NOT CRY AT MY FUNERAL.
The following is from Pope Francis...
"Our identity is not for sale.
Do not put it up for auction just because you want to be like everyone
else. Uniformity of thought is the fruit of worldliness and leads to apostasy. "The warning of Pope Francis on this
morning Monday, November 16, at the St. Martha chapel came as a strong slap to
the cheek not only of the laity but of the clergy as well. The Holy Father
thinks of the World as a place where "it is forbidden to be different,
where it is necessary for everyone to be equal," where "we change the
name of religious holidays - Christmas of the Lord for example - to delete our
identity." He calls this “Uniformity
of thought” and warns that it is the source of "destruction"
To explain the misleading effects of the Uniformity of thought, to
which he applies the traditional name of Worldliness, the Pope went to the
first reading of the day - an extract from the First Book of Martyrs of Israel
- speaking of the coming of Antiochus Epiphanes, the descendant of Alexander's
the Great, described as "a man of sin," who was seduced by unfaithful
men, and ended by gradually imposing pagan customs in Israel. He decreed that all the inhabitants of his
kingdom were to form a single people in a unique Uniformity of thought. It was controlled Worldliness. It gradually
began to seem so reasonable. Look, “we
are like everyone else, we are normal."
However, it turned into destruction. If anyone was found with a book of the Law to conform
to its rules, they threw the Book into the fire, tortured and killed the one
who dared be different and killed
"the guilty" one. Thus began a real "persecution" against
those who had the courage to resist.
Worldliness is indeed
deceptive and contagious.
Worldliness is to behave as
the world does. It is "to auction our identity." Pope insisted, "To be all the same"
as those Israelites who "disowned their faith and moved away from the Holy
Alliance." (1 Samuel 8:20 - Then we
will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before
us and fight our battles.) That’s
how we arrive at apostasy and persecution. Worldliness
is a "poisonous root" that leaves the Lord: "She goes off and slowly
grows, is justified, rationalized and contaminates" the Pope explained. And if "many evils come from there,"
he added, it is precisely because it is "misleading" and
"contagious." Worldliness is
the door to the Uniformity of thought - "everybody does it why not us?” This
humanism takes the place of Jesus, and destroys the specific Christian identity.
As he usually does, the Pope was true to his habit of inviting his
listeners to personal reflection, inviting them to ask themselves the question,
"What is my identity? Christian or worldly? Do I call myself a Christian
because I was baptized as a child or because I was born in a Christian country where
everyone is a Christian?” He concluded
with a special prayer for the Church, asking the Lord to protect her from
"any form of worldliness," and for the Church and the Catholic
faithful that they not lose their identity received through Baptism as desired
by Jesus Christ, and not to reject it on the grounds of being like everyone
else.
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