These Are The Books...

These are the books you don't want to read... but read anyway.

They never aspire to be easy yet they grab you by the throat and force you to finish them, milking the last bit of your attention to the issues they scream out.

These books talk about the things you, in your right mind, wouldn't want to know. About human immorality and the depravity it breeds. About stories that leave you both clutching your fist in righteous anger and lowering your brows to helplessness and utter resignation.

These are the books you don't enjoy, that were never meant to be enjoyed, but were written solely for the purpose of raising your awareness and calling you to action.

These are the books which talk about murder, slavery, rape, exploitation, of human suffering and human despair. These are the books best left shunned aside in a corner, well away from the coffee tables and the book shelves.

Yet, these are the books which cry out for redemption, a redemption which can only be won by you alone. They cry out to be saved, to be assured that, despite our propensity towards evil, the human spirit is essentially good and well.

These are the books that form a conscience.

Remembering The Plan

Rummaging through my things. Cleaning up my room. Saw my fourth year college retreat journal. Read through an entry. My ten-year vision. Before thirty, will have finished law school. Become a practicing attorney. Will have started a business. Be a millionaire by then. Become a thriving philanthropist. Enter a Jesuit seminary after ten years. Dedicate myself to God. Get married to the church. Smiling now. Plan didn't go exactly as planned. Was twenty when I wrote this. Now, I'm twenty four. Didn't enroll in law school. Had more important things to do. Like earning a living, for example. Starting a business. That's one thing from the plan. I'm actually doing it right now. Currently, thinking of pursuing further studies, but not Law. Become a priest by thirty? Yes, gave myself until thirty to decide. Anything can still happen. I have six years left. Practice philanthropy? Getting there. Still, the plan was just a plan. The goal still remains, however. But the way to the end is subject to revision.

Winning Our Salvation 2

How exactly did Jesus Christ win our salvation? Joseph Conti has another idea in mind. Although quite different from what I proposed awhile back, both ideas bear a slight similarity. That is, both affirm that salvation stems not primarily from Jesus Christ's death on the cross, as many Christians would like to emphasize:

"...Christ saves" - but from what? What are we being saved from? From death? From suffering? From sin? From exactly what? The answer that the Christian mystics supply is astonishing...The mystics teach us that at each stage of our journey to God, God saves us in a distinct way from a special limiting force that, at that stage of the journey, is blocking a fuller life in Him. Thus, in the first movement of our journey, God saves us from the wrongly-oriented ego.

He does this by sending awakening conversion graces, which invite us to see that our highest good is in Him. As we lovingly respond, God leads us to divine intimacy, which results in our coming to the illuminative Way, the ego's single-hearted attachment to God, and then beyond the ego to the unitive state. But God stil has more saving work in us to do. For though the unitive state is a state of Light, it is not fully transparent to the Light, in ways that we will explain presently. Thus begins the second movement to salvation.

This second and final Way God saves us is to deliver us beyond all self: for the medium of self, even the God-united egoless self, does not give us God as God is in Himself, but only God as God is in ourselves. The ultimate gift God wants to give us is to know Him as He knows Himself.

Joseph Conti
Holistic Christianity

Pause and pray.

Heaven As We Know It

Let me bring up a scene from the movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Irina Spalko, the movie's villain, finally arrives at the Temple of Akator. After she returns the crystal skull to one headless alien skeleton, the alien being asks her what she wants in return. She demands full knowledge of everything in the universe and what ensues is a scenario befitting the cliche, "Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it." Through psychic telepathy, the aliens bombards Irina with their immense knowledge. Unfortunately, her human brain isn't up to the task and she disintegrates.

I call this an interesting scene. From what I can infer, Irina's wish for ultimate knowledge can be likened also to the Christian's wish to go to heaven. Both wishes point to one desire, which is the desire for God, for the Absolute. Just as Irina aspires to gain unity with the Ultimate, so we aspire to be united with God.

Unfortunately, her desire proves to be her undoing. Because of her human limitations, she vaporizes right before her eyes. And so must we. For to know heaven as Christ knows it, we must cease being human, die, and become Christ himself. Hmmm...

I just discovered I won't be a good apologetic.

Speaking For What You Believe

This article just made my day. Rarely do you see young people speak with as much gravity and conviction over an issue as heavy as this. This also made me wonder what I was doing at her age (probably worrying about acne and all).

Here's the link to Lia Mill, a brave girl speaking her heart out about abortion.