It is a time for forty days of fasting and prayer: fasting
from food, yes, perhaps also fasting from negativity, a time of charity, giving
generously to the local food bank or perhaps of our time visiting the sick, the
lonely.
Throughout the season we journey ever more deeply into the
grace of Baptism, strive to live out ever more fully discipleship as living
temples of the Holy Spirit, members of the Body of Christ on earth, journeying
with Jesus from His time in the desert, throughout His public life, being with
Him in the Garden, on the Cross, awaiting at the tomb for His Glorious
Resurrection.
A good simple prayer
which can be prayed repeatedly throughout each day, taken from a longer prayer
of St. Ephraim: O God purify me a sinner
and have mercy on me.
For every human being we can also pray: For the sake of His sorrowful passion have mercy on us and on the whole
world, for Jesus tells us: The time
is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the
Gospel. [Mk. 1:15]
Caliphate: In a
recent article in The Atlantic, What
ISIS Really Wants, Graeme Wood gives an in depth analysis of this genocidal
construct, of its fanatical adherence to a pick and choose interpretation of passages
from the Koran to justify an apocalyptic war against non-believers: that is
against anyone who does not believe as they do and dictate: in a word they are
at war against humanity.
In their blood thirsty pathology, among other things, ISIS
has as its goal to bring about an apocalypse that, according to the above
article: ….the caliphate will expand….Some
believe it will then cover the entire Earth….An anti-Messiah, known in Muslim
apocalyptic literature as Dajjal, will come….and kill a vast number of the
caliphate’s fighters, until just 5,000 remain, cornered in Jerusalem. Just as
Dajjal prepares to finish them off, Jesus – the second-most-revered prophet in
Islam – will return to Earth, spear Dajjal, and lead the Muslims to victory.
In regards to the above apocalyptic notion: in the first
instance it betrays an absolute ignorance about the Second Person of the Holy
Trinity, Jesus, true God and true man, our Risen and all-merciful Redeemer : "For God so loved the world, that He
gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but
have eternal life.” {Jn. 3:16}, and secondly like all apocalyptic movements
throughout history several themes are common: self-righteous arrogance,
assertion of being the ‘chosen’ few and an utter hatred, a murderous hatred, of
everyone else and, of course, a sort of being smarter than God who, in their
minds, is too slow off the mark in bringing about the destruction, of and harsh
judgement upon, His own creation, His own children.
ISIS by fermenting hatred, by its use of violence, is in
bondage to its own self-created delusion, a form of active despair and
reduction of the human person to a mere chess piece on the board of a bent
toward self unfolding of history’s demise.
It does appear ISIS members, and others of like mind,
measure themselves by their capacity of hate and their obsessive love of death.
Hope: Christians,
hope-filled children of light, of life, bearers of love, we measure ourselves
not by any ideology, philosophy, nor even theology, but by a person and view
His life as template for every human life.
Jesus shows us by His very life, as well as in His words,
that we are called not to hate but to love, not to kill but to heal through
forgiveness, not to dominate over others but to serve, reminding us that the
greater love is to lay down our lives for other. [ see the entire Gospel]
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