Imprimatur: Archbishop Cyril S. Bustros, Eparch of Newton, 25 January 2011.

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At the Wedding Feast of His Divine Son

Have you ever wondered what the saints do in Heaven?

The Bible tells us that the saints in heaven worship God. When they look upon the glory of God who is the Source of all beauty, all goodness, all truth, and all love, they are perfectly happy worshipping Him.  They love and adore Him, and they love all creatures in Him.

When St. John the Evangelist was taken up into Heaven, he saw all of the Holy Angels and Saints, worshipping before the throne of God:

And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures, and the ancients; and the number of them was thousands of thousands, Saying with a loud voice: The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and benediction. And every creature, which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them: I heard all saying: To him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, benediction, and honour, and glory, and power, for ever and ever.(Revelation 5:12-13)

Jesus Christ stands at the center of heavenly worship because He is both God and Man.  He is the One who makes it possible for all human beings to share in eternal life with God.  He is the One who offers Himself as a pure offering, in atonement for our sins and for the sins of the whole world.  He is the One who makes it possible for us, in union with Him, to give God our Father perfect praise in the Holy Spirit.  Jesus called Himself the “Heavenly Bridegroom” because He is the One who unites God and Man, Heaven and Earth, His Heart and the hearts of His disciples, in a marriage that brings forth the fruit of happy, holy lives.  The Bible calls the worship of God “liturgy”; and the divine worship that Jesus presides over in Heaven is rightly called “Divine Liturgy”—because it is not of human origin: it is inspired and empowered by God.

Jesus taught us to pray that God’s Will be done “on earth as it is in Heaven.”  And there is no better way to do God’s Will “on earth as in Heaven” than to join in the wedding feast of the lamb, the heavenly wedding banquet of the Lord Jesus, which He instituted on earth and continues in Heaven, to the praise and glory of God, our Almighty Father.

The Wedding Feast of the Lamb Foretold

It will be easier for you to appreciate the great honor that God is giving you by inviting you to His wedding feast if you understand how long and lovingly He prepared this feast for you.  The wedding feast of the lamb was first foretold in the Garden of Eden, when God sacrificed animals and clothed our first parents Adam and Eve with their skins after they sinned (Gen. 3:15).  In this way, God showed Adam and Eve that “the wages of sin is death” and that the blood of an innocent Victim would be required to cleanse men from their sins.

Righteous Abel offered animal sacrifice to God as did Noah after the Flood.  The mysterious Melchizedek offered a sacrifice of bread and wine to God in Abraham’s presence, foreshadowing the sacrifice of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and wine.  Abraham prepared to offer his only son Isaac in sacrifice on Mt. Moriah when an angel stopped him and showed him a ram caught in a thicket.  At God’s command, Moses and the heads of all of the Hebrew families sacrificed a spotless lamb and placed the blood of the lamb in the form of a cross on their doorposts as a sign to the Holy Angels to pass over them when dispensing divine justice.  For fifteen hundred years, from the time of Moses until the Incarnation, the Hebrews offered the Passover sacrifice, even as they prayed for the coming of the Messiah who would redeem them from their sins.

In the eighth century B.C., the Prophet Isaiah foretold that the Redeemer of Israel would come as a Suffering Servant who would suffer for the sins of the people, like a “lamb led to the slaughter.”

During the fifth century B.C., the Prophet Malachi foretold a day when a pure offering would be offered continually in every place on earth:

From the rising of the sun even to the going down, My Name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to My Name a clean oblation: for My Name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts (Malachi 1:11).

According to Malachi, there will be only one sacrifice, but it will be offered all over the world. Only the Catholic Church fulfills this prophecy in her Divine Liturgies, where the sacrifice of Christ is offered for our salvation. Our Lord Jesus Christ plainly identified His offering of Himself to the Father under the appearance of bread and wine at the Last Supper as a “new and everlasting covenant” in His Blood, so that the sins of all men, past, present and future, “might be forgiven.”

Jesus Institutes the Holy Eucharist

We have seen that for thousands of years after the Fall of our first parents God prepared mankind for a renewed relationship with Him, so that man could once again be united to God, and do God’s Will on earth as “it is in Heaven.”  Jesus referred to this renewed relationship between God and man as a “covenant,” a pact in which God and man pledge unconditional love for each other and become one in heart and mind, sharing one life together.  Throughout the Gospels, Jesus indicates that this covenant is a marriage covenant between Him and His disciples, and He uses the symbolism of the Jewish ritual of betrothal and marriage to express the intimacy that He longs to have with His disciples.

In the Jewish betrothal ceremony, a prospective bridegroom paid a bride-price for his bride-to-be, after which she went down naked into a “mikvah,” or pool of water, symbolizing her death to her old identity; and she came up out of the water with a new identity, now belonging to her husband.  According to Jewish tradition, the bride came out of the water with “dove’s eyes,” an allusion to the fact that doves do not have peripheral vision, and that the bride would henceforth have eyes only for her husband.  The betrothed couple would also share a glass of wine from a common cup, symbolic of their intention to share one life, one bed, and one blood for the rest of their lives.  When Jesus instituted the sacrament of baptism, He established a mikvah for His disciples, whereby they would go down naked into the waters of baptism, die to their sinful selves, and rise out of the waters a “new creation,” an immaculate bride of Christ, purchased with the “bride-price” of the Precious Blood of Jesus, with “dove’s eyes” for Christ alone.

Just as the engaged couple consummated their betrothal ceremony by the mutual gift of their bodies, so Jesus consummated the betrothal instituted by the Holy Mystery of Baptism by instituting the Holy Eucharist, so that He would be able to consummate His union with His disciples by the mutual gift of their body and blood in Holy Communion.

Jesus chose to institute this Sacred Mystery of Holy Communion between Him and His disciples during a Passover meal, which, as we have already seen, looked forward to a future fulfillment by Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.  During this sacred meal at the Last Supper, Jesus made perfectly clear that He was giving His Body and Blood to His disciples, under the appearance of bread and wine.  According to the evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus took bread and wine in His sacred hands and said “This IS my body and blood” (Matt. 26:26-28; Mark. 14:22,24; Luke 22;19-20; 1 Cor. 11:24-25).

When Jesus established the New Covenant in His Blood at the Last Supper, He also gave His Apostles a command to “Do this in remembrance of Me.”  With this command, Jesus gave His Apostles and their successors the power to make present the Sacrifice of Jesus’ Body and Blood on Calvary as a perfect offering of praise, thanksgiving, and atonement for sin to God the Father.  With this command Jesus gave His Apostles and their successors the power to change bread and wine into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Risen Jesus.  In this way, His disciples could become one Body, one Spirit, with Him, through Holy Communion, receiving the power to live united to Jesus in thought, word, and deed. 

Come and See! 

The Holy Eucharist stood at the center of the life of the Church from the very beginning. The Melkite Greek Catholic Church is one of a number of churches that trace their origin to the ancient city of Antioch, where the disciples of Jesus were first called “Christians.”  It is also one of a number of churches within the Catholic Church which preserve the Byzantine liturgical tradition, a form of worship that was developed in Byzantium, the ancient Eastern capital of the Roman Empire, and which preserved the essential elements of Jewish Temple worship while giving them a new meaning in the light of the Gospel.

In the time of Jesus most Jews worshipped God every Saturday and Holy Day in synagogues.  Many of these synagogues were decorated with paintings or mosaics of scenes from salvation history, like the Red Sea Crossing or Abraham’s Sacrifice of Isaac.  Below you can see a beautiful wall painting of the story of Esther in the Old Testament from the famous Dura-Europos Synagogue where Jews worshipped in the time of Jesus.  Just as Queen Esther interceded for her people and obtained salvation for her people from the King of the Persians, so Christians have always regarded Mary, the Mother of Jesus, as their true spiritual Mother.  From the time of the Resurrection, Christians also regarded Mary as their most powerful intercessor, through whose prayers Jesus continues to work miracles—just as He did at the Wedding of Cana when He changed water into wine at His Mother’s request.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/9169347/THE-DURA-EUROPOS-SYNAGOGUE-THEOLOGY-OF-ART-AS-TEXT

The Jews of Doura Europos did not look upon these paintings as decorations.  In their eyes, the synagogue paintings “made present” the realities they represented—the Red Sea Crossing, the Sacrifice of Isaac, the intercession of Esther.  In the same way, Christians of the first millennium made holy icons, or images, of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of Mary His Mother, of the Holy Angels and Saints, and of the great events in salvation history and in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  And like the Jews of the time of Jesus, they believed that these sacred icons “made present” the spiritual reality of the person or scene it represented.  This is why, when you enter a Melkite Greek Catholic church or other Byzantine church, you will find yourself surrounded by the real presences of Our Lord, and of His Blessed Mother, of the Holy Angels, and of the Saints; and of the real mysteries of salvation history and of the life of Jesus.

The Jews of the time of Jesus worshipped God mainly with their voices; and the Christians of the first millennium did the same.  In Revelation, St. John describes the saints and angels in Heaven worshipping God with their voices.  Similarly, when you enter a Melkite Greek Catholic Church or other Byzantine Church, you will hear the congregation chanting the prayers of the liturgy together, alternating their voices with the voice of the priest at the altar.

Before offering a brief description of the order of worship in a Melkite chapel, a brief description of the layout of the chapel may be helpful.  The physical structure of the Melkite chapel is essentially the same as that of the chapels of the early Church. The first Christian worship services were held in people’s homes and in synagogues, but also reflected the understanding that Jesus had fulfilled the purpose of the Jerusalem Temple.  Prior to the Passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus, the Temple had been the one place of lawful sacrifice for the Jewish people—the place where the Passover lambs were sacrificed and hung up to be drained of their blood at the very time of Our Lord’s crucifixion and death on the Cross.

According to the directions given by God Himself, the Jewish Temple was built on the same plan as the Tabernacle, which had been constructed under the direction of Moses in the wilderness.  It had a sanctuary where Jewish men could stand and worship God, a sacred area where priests and Levites could preside over rituals and sacrifices prescribed in the Torah of Moses, and the Holy of Holies, where only the High Priest could enter once a year on the High Holy Day of Yom Kippur, the “Day of Atonement.”  The Holy of Holies contained the Ark of the Covenant, a wooden box, plated with gold, which originally contained manna from the desert, the tables of the Law of Moses, and Aaron’s rod, which had miraculously blossomed as a confirmation of God’s election of Aaron and his sons to serve Israel as a holy priesthood.  On opposite sides of the Ark of the Covenant, the statues of two Cherubim stood in adoration before the Divine Presence which was believed to abide in a special way upon the Mercy Seat in the center of the Ark.

The Holy of Holies was separated from the rest of the interior of the Temple by a huge curtain.  According to the Gospel of St. John, this curtain was torn in two from top to bottom at the moment of the Lord Jesus’ death, signifying that the purpose of the Temple had been fulfilled and that reconciliation between God and man had been achieved through the Passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus.  The Hebrew prophets had predicted that the Messiah, the Redeemer of Israel, would show Himself in the Temple in Jerusalem, as Jesus did on numerous occasions.  But after Jesus had fulfilled the purpose of the Temple through His Sacrifice on Calvary and His Holy Resurrection, and had instituted the Holy Eucharist so that people of all times, places, and nations could worship God in Spirit and in Truth, the Temple was no longer necessary.  In 70 A.D. when Jewish rebels—men who had not recognized Jesus as the promised Messiah of Israel—attempted to overthrow the Roman government in Judea, Roman armies totally destroyed the Temple, thus fulfilling the prophesy that Jesus had made 40 years before, that “not one stone” of the Temple would be left standing upon another.

The destruction of the Temple confirmed the fact that Jesus had fulfilled and brought to perfection in Himself all of the sacrifices and rituals of the Old Law, making the Temple sacrifices unnecessary.  Nevertheless, when it became possible to build Christian churches, they were still constructed on the pattern of the Jerusalem Temple, with a sanctuary where men and women could worship together, an inner sanctum containing the altar of sacrifice, where the priests and deacons served, and a Holy of Holies, or Tabernacle, where the Blessed Sacrament of the Body of Christ was reserved. You will find all of these elements in the Byzantine churches in your area.

Many early Christian churches contained a row of columns between the sanctuary where the congregation stood and worshipped and the altar where the priests and deacons offered the Holy Sacrifice.  Over time, the row of columns began to be decorated with images of Our Lord, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the Holy Angels and Saints, of the Mysteries of the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus and of salvation history.  This became the “iconostasis,” or icon-screen, which is such a striking feature of Byzantine churches all over the world.

One other feature of Byzantine church architecture deserves mention—a feature that makes a Byzantine chapel both a continuation and a fulfillment of the Jerusalem Temple.  When God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning, He made the universe to be the Temple of His glory and the place of His covenant with mankind.  He furnished the Temple of the universe with an astonishing variety of creatures, and then set Adam and Eve over them all as the king and queen of a perfectly harmonious creation.

God made Adam to be the spiritual head of his wife and of the whole human family, and, with them, to offer back to God, on behalf of all creatures, the same love with which God had created them for man. When Adam disobeyed God and lost His friendship, his sin brought death, decay and deformity into the world.  Thus, the primary purpose of the Incarnation was to restore all things in Christ, things in Heaven and things on earth (Ephesians 1:10), so that men and women sanctified in Christ could in turn sanctify the whole universe and every creature, offering them back to God with the same love with which He had created them for mankind in the beginning.  The blue ceiling of the Byzantine chapel adorned with stars makes the church a microcosm of the created universe.  It is a sign that, in and through Christ and His Church, the whole universe is being restored to God—transformed into a “Temple of His glory.”

The Order of Service

Like the architecture and interior design of the church, the order of service in Byzantine churches closely follows the order of service in use since the time of the Holy Apostles.  Before taking part in the Divine Liturgy, the people must “examine themselves,” as St. Paul exhorted the Corinthians to do, to make sure that they have repented of all of their sins and made peace with their neighbors to the fullest extent possible.  Prayers for mercy punctuate the liturgy from beginning to end, as the people unite the offering of their lives to the offering of Jesus on the altar—and beg God to receive them as one offering on His altar in Heaven.

At the beginning of the Divine Liturgy, the congregation chants the psalms.  Then the Word of God, the Holy Bible, is carried in procession from the Holy of Holies around the sanctuary and back to the altar. Next, a deacon or other lector chants the Word of God, usually from a New Testament Epistle; after which, the children of the congregation and their parents come forward and gather around the priest or deacon who chants the Holy Gospel.  When the Gospel has been proclaimed, the faithful kiss the book of the Gospels and return to their places, so that the presiding priest can teach them how to understand and apply the readings for the day.

After the priest’s homily, the faithful make an offering for the needs of the church, and the priest celebrant goes behind the iconostasis to prepare the gifts of bread and wine for the Holy Eucharist. The people stand and sing their intention to “set aside all earthly cares” and to “mystically represent the Churubim and Seraphim before the Throne of God.”  Then the presiding priest and his altar servers make a procession, bearing the gifts of bread and wine from the inner sanctum around the sanctuary through the Holy Doors of the Iconostasis to the altar to begin the Liturgy of the Holy Eucharist.

Now priest and people face to the East—“ad orientem”—in the direction of Paradise and of the Lord’s Second Coming.  The priest exhorts the people to “lift up their hearts to the Lord,” and together they join the Heavenly Host in singing the thrice holy hymn:

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord,

God of Power and Might,

Heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Hosannah in the highest!

Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord.

Hosannah in the highest!

Now the presiding priest unites Himself with Jesus at the Last Supper and pronounces the words of Consecration over the gifts of bread and wine.  “This is My Body, which will be given up for you” and “This is My Blood, the Blood of the New and Everlasting Covenant; it will be shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins.” Now the faithful unite themselves with Jesus and the priest in offering their thoughts, words, and actions, their bodies and their souls, to God the Father together with Jesus.  As they do this, they beg the prayers of the Holy Theotokos, the Virgin Mother of God, who brought forth God the Word.  They rely on her prayers, just as the Holy Apostles relied on her prayers and motherly presence in the upper room in Jerusalem, where they received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.

After chanting the Lord’s Prayer and begging the Lord for their daily bread—in Greek epiousios, or “supersubstantial,” bread—the congregation prays  special prayers of preparation for Holy Communion.  Everything culminates in this.  If we have participated well in the Divine Liturgy, we offer our bodies as a “living sacrifice” to God in, with, and through Our Risen Lord Jesus Christ.  He then enters into us, fills us with His Holy Spirit, and empowers us to live a divine life with Him—loving all creatures as He loves them, with His own divine love.

As Jesus at the Last Supper instituted a “New Covenant” and used bread (arton, in Greek) rather than the unleavened azymes of the normal Passover meal, so the Byzantine priest dips the Sacred Host under the appearance of bread into a chalice containing the Precious Blood and “feeds” his “lambs.” In keeping with the practice of the Apostolic Church, even little babies receive the Body and Blood of Jesus, having received all of the Sacraments of initiation—Holy Baptism, Chrismation, and Holy Eucharist—at the time of their Baptism into the Family of God.

Strengthened by the Body and Blood of the Risen Lord Jesus, the faithful sing:

May our mouths be filled with Your praise O Lord, so that we may sing of Your glory.  For You have deemed us worthy to partake of Your holy, divine, immortal and life-creating Mysteries.  Keep us in Your holiness so that all the day long, we may live according to Your Truth.  Alleluia!

Having received the life-giving mysteries of the Lord Jesus Christ, the faithful receive a final blessing from the priest and depart to spread the kingdom of God wherever they go and to everyone they meet.  As the faithful depart, in most Byzantine churches they see an icon of the Final Judgment above the doors as they exit the church.  It is a solemn reminder of the unmerited Divine Mercy that Christians receive in Christ, and of the terrible Judgment that awaits those who refuse to repent and believe in the Gospel.

You Have a Standing Invitation

Now that you have learned about the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, you know why Our Lord Jesus Christ has invited you to His Heavenly Banquet.  You know that He longs to share His life with you in the Holy Eucharist; and He longs for you to share your life with Him, so that you can become one body, one Spirit with Him.

If you are a Catholic who has been away from the Church, come and be reconciled to the Lord.  If you are a non-Catholic who would like to become a full member of God’s Family, we are ready to welcome you and to help you to do everything that you need to do to become a full member of Christ’s one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.

Archimandrite Fr. Constantine Belisarius, Pastor

Melkite Greek Catholic Chapel of the Holy Innocents and the Holy Family in Exile

Northside Professional Center (in the back)

1516 N. Shenandoah Ave

Front Royal, VA 22630

If you have any questions about the information contained in the pamphlet or would like to speak with a member of our congregation, please feel free to send us an email at howen@shentel.net or telephone us at 540-856-3356.

May the Lord Jesus Christ bless you and give you peace!

“Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

Imprimatur: Archbishop Cyril S. Bustros, Eparch of Newton, 25 January 2011.

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A Marriage Made in Heaven

Are you not looking for true love?

Every man, woman and child who has ever lived has longed for true, faithful, permanent, unconditional love.  That is the deepest desire of every human heart.

For most men, this longing includes a longing for the exclusive love of one woman.  For most women, this longing includes a longing for the exclusive love of one man.  But today, throughout the world, there is widespread confusion, as many men and women doubt that it is possible, or even normal, to be happily united to one man or one woman for life.  This, in turn, has led to endless misery—since people who do not believe that a thing is possible rarely invest enough time and effort to do that thing, even when it is perfectly feasible.  The purpose of this pamphlet is to show that the ideal of “one man for one woman united in love for life” is true and that the first step to attaining that ideal is to believe in it.

Origins of the Marriage Ideal

In examining any subject, it is good to start at the beginning.  Where did the idea of one man being united to one woman for life originate?  Was it a man’s idea? A woman’s idea? Or something else?

In most schools all over the world—in Africa, Asia, and Oceania, as well as in Europe, and North and South America—children are taught that human beings and apes evolved from a common ancestor somewhere in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago.  According to this view, the union of man and woman is little different from the union of a male and female monkey or chimpanzee.  It is something that developed as part of the struggle for survival.  And people who hold this view are quick to point out that there are many places in the world where it was normal for one woman to have many men or for one man to have many women, providing evidence, so they say, that “one man for one woman” is one of many arrangements that have been tried in the struggle for survival, and not necessarily better or worse than any of the other arrangements.  People who hold this view often look at animal behavior and determine what is normal or natural for human beings by studying what is normal or natural for animals in the world today.  If baboons practice homosexual play, then that must be normal for humans.  If a male sea horse takes care of the baby sea horse, then that must be a normal role for a male human being—and so on.

In the future people will look back at these ideas in amazement that intelligent human beings could have placed such faith in them.  Yes, it is a matter of faith—because, in reality, there is no proof whatsoever that man has evolved from a common ancestor with apes.  All of the evidence that has been touted for human evolution has failed to prove any link between human beings and sub-human ancestors.  Since this is a book about true love and not about evolution, I will not be able to present all of the evidence against the hypothesis of human evolution here.[1]  Instead, I have included a link to a website that exposes the flagrant errors of the hypothesis of human evolution so that you can examine the evidence and judge for yourself. But what can be stated unequivocally here is that according to virtually all of the cultural traditions in the entire world, the idea of one man for one woman for life was not a human invention.  It was God’s idea.

Male and Female He Created Them

And the Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise

for pleasure, to dress it, and keep it.

16  And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise

thou shalt eat:

17  But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt

not eat. for in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou

shalt die the death.

18  And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone:

let us make him a help like unto himself.

19  And the Lord God having formed out of the ground all the

beasts of the earth, and all the fowls of the air, brought

them to Adam to see what he would call them: for

whatsoever Adam called any living creature the same is its

name.

20  And Adam called all the beasts by their names, and all the

fowls of the air, and all the cattle of the field: but for

Adam there was not found a helper like himself.

21  Then the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he

was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs, and filled up

flesh for it.

22  And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam

into a woman: and brought her to Adam.

23  And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of

my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken

out of man.

24  Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall

cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.

25  And they were both naked: to wit, Adam and his wife: and

were not ashamed.

This account of the creation of the first man and woman is taken from the book of Genesis, the first book of the Holy Scriptures of Christians and Jews.  But the idea that the first marriage was made in heaven is not unique to Christians and Jews.  All over the world, countless cultures have handed down accounts of the creation of the first human beings.  Although they differ in details, most of these agree in recounting the creation of one man and one woman who became the ancestors of all of mankind.   Under normal circumstances, the integrity of a packet of information will deteriorate during transmission.  In the light of this truth, it is all the more remarkable that many accounts of the origins of man and the universe that agree substantially with the Genesis account have been preserved until recent times without Jewish or Christian influence.  For example, one of the first Christian missionaries to modern-day Myanmar (formerly Burma) was a Baptist named Adoniram Judson.  According to one account:

Judson canoed down the Salween River back into the jungle to a tribe called the Karen, whose pagan traditions were strangely amenable to the gospel—they had a Creator of man, and woman from his rib; an ancient temptation and fall; expectation of a white man’s appearance with a sacred parchment . . .When Adoniram Judson died, there were 8,000 believers and 100 churches in Burma, which today, known as Myanmar, has the third-largest population of Baptists in the world, mostly the Karen and Kachin tribe. (Andree’ Seu, “Gospel Cyclone,” World (May 31/June 7, 2008).

The idea of one man and one woman united in love forever is God’s idea, not man’s (or woman’s) idea.  And, because it is God’s idea, and He created us, we reject it at our peril.  The great Christian Father of the Church St. John Chrysostom expressed the common conviction of the Christian community when he commented on Moses’ words, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder,” arguing that God

gave this command that the one man should be joined to the one woman. But if it had been His will that he should put this one away, and bring in another, when He had made one man, He would have formed many Women. But now both by the manner of the creation, and by the manner of lawgiving, He showed that one man must dwell with one woman continually, and never break off from her.” On Matthew, 62:1 (370 CE), in NPNF1,X:382

The book of Genesis make clear that God created man and woman for each other—equal in dignity but with different and complementary gifts.  The great German saint Hildegard of Bingen wrote that:

After God had created Adam, Adam experienced a strong sense of love, when God sent sleep over him. And God created a figure to love for the man out of his rib, and so the woman is the love of man. As soon as the woman was shaped, God gave man the procreative instinct, so that through his love for the woman he would father sons. For when Adam saw Eve, he was completely filled with wisdom, because he saw in front of him the mother through whom he was to father sons. But when Eve saw Adam, she saw him as if she was seeing heaven, and as the soul lifts up desiring the heavenly, for her hope was resting in man. So also only mutual love and no other shall and may be between man and woman.

In this passage St. Hildegard beautifully summarized the complementary callings of man and woman—of the man to be the spiritual leader of his wife and family; and of the woman to be the help-mate of her husband and the nurturer of her family.  With the insight of a true mystic, St. Hildegard saw that God had created the union of man and woman for their mutual sanctification (“as the soul lifts up desiring the heavenly”) and for the procreation and sanctification of their offspring.  As partners in this union, Adam and Eve enjoyed equal dignity but distinct roles.  To Adam in his role as head of the human family, God gave the task of guarding and caring for his wife and their home in paradise.  To Adam alone God gave the commandment not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Eve received this commandment from God indirectly through her husband.  Her obedience to the commandment depended on her faith in the Word of God as she had received it from Adam.

The Fall of Adam and Eve

The Bible teaches that God created everything in the universe for man—man, made in the image and likeness of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God.  Not only did God make every kind of material creature for mankind; He also made a host of spiritual beings to serve Jesus Christ the Incarnate Word and the men made in his image.  The Bible teaches that a great angel named Lucifer, or the light-bearer, rebelled against God.  According to the Fathers of the Church, the foremost commentators on Holy Scripture, Lucifer rebelled because he—a great spirit—did not want to serve creatures of flesh and blood.  In his rebellion against God, Lucifer dedicated his angelic intelligence and energies to driving a wedge between God and His human creatures, so as to drag as many of them as possible to eternal damnation in hell.  Lucifer’s first attack was directed against Eve, since she had received the Commandment of God indirectly through her husband and was more vulnerable to Satan’s clever manipulation of the Word of God.

The Bible tells us that Satan did not immediately tempt Eve to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Instead, he twisted God’s words so as to make them appear unreasonable and self-contradictory, and only then, after he had sowed a seed of doubt in Eve’s mind concerning the goodness and trustworthiness of God, did he appeal to her pride and selfish delight in the appearance of the fruit.  In this way, her selfish delight in the appearance of the fruit overwhelmed her reverence for the Word of God and for the authority of her husband through whom she had received God’s commandment.  According to Genesis:

1   Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of

the earth which the Lord God made. And he said to the

woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat

of every tree of paradise?

2   And the woman answered him, saying: Of the fruit of the

trees that are in paradise we do eat:

3   But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of

paradise, God hath commanded us that we should not eat;

and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die.

4   And the serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die

the death.

5   For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat

thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as

Gods, knowing good and evil.

6   And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair

to the eyes, and delightful to behold: and she took of the

fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband who

did eat.

God had set Adam over his wife as her protector and guide.  According to the Fathers of the Church, if Adam had corrected Eve and brought her to repentance, she could have been restored to God’s grace.  But Adam failed in his duty toward her, and, by placing her will above the Will of God, he followed her into disgrace and disobeyed God.

And to Adam he said: Because thou hast hearkened to the

voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I

commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the

earth in thy work; with labour and toil shalt thou eat

thereof all the days of thy life.

18  Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou

eat the herbs of the earth.

19  In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou

return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken: for

dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.

Commenting on these words, St. John Chrysostom added:

You are head of your wife, and she has been created for your sake; but you have inverted the proper order; not only have you failed to keep her on the straight and narrow but you have been dragged down with her, and whereas the rest of the body should follow the head, the contrary has in fact occurred, the head following the rest of the body, turning things upside down” (St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 17:17, English version, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 74, p. 231).

As long as Adam and Eve remained in the grace of God, they were able to love each other unselfishly with His divine love.  But as soon as Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they lost His divine grace and lost control over their thoughts and passions.  The light of God’s glory, which had shone around their bodies from the moment of their creation, now dimmed, and exposed their nakedness.  The husband and wife who had been created in union with God, with each other, and with creation, now found themselves alienated from God, from each other, and from all created things.  The Original Sin of Adam had brought divorce into the world. 

The Memory of Eden

Virtually every culture on earth retains a memory of the first marriage made in heaven and of the misery that entered the world through the first couple’s disobedience.  In spite of the sadness that followed their sin of disobedience, most of the traditions concerning Adam and Eve teach that they remained faithful to each other for the rest of their lives—some 900 years or so!  Considering that Adam lived 930 years from his creation, it is likely that his marriage to Eve was the longest-lasting marriage in the history of mankind.  And there is no doubt that it established the pattern of faithful, exclusive, monogamous love that all of their descendants have aspired to.

The sin of Adam and Eve had devastating consequences for relations between man and God, between man and woman, and between mankind and creation.  However, God promised to send a New Adam and a New Eve who would restore these relationships and bring creation to its fulfillment.  Over the course of the centuries, God prepared a people for Himself through the descendants of Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so that the Redeemer of the world could ultimately be born of one of their descendants, a virgin, a descendant of King David, who would give birth to Him in the city of David—Bethlehem.  During this period of preparation, God’s prophets expressed God’s love for His people in the language of a bridegroom.  One of the most beautiful love poems ever written, the Song of Songs, described the love of a man and a woman but was also understood to describe the love between God and the soul.

In the fullness of time, Jesus fulfilled God’s prophetic words and became a man in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Jesus described Himself as a Bridegroom and performed his first public miracle at a Wedding by changing water (a symbol of humanity) into wine (a symbol of divinity)—a beautiful symbol of the marriage between God and man.  Later, the Apostle Paul compared the union of husband and wife in marriage to the union between Jesus and the Church.  As Jesus laid down his life for the Church, joined Himself to her in the Holy Eucharist, and made her fruitful by the gift of His Holy Spirit, so He created man to lay down his life for his wife and children—to be their spiritual head and support.  And, just as Jesus loves his Bride the Church unconditionally, endlessly, and without limit, so He expects husbands and wives to love each other in the same way.  This is why when asked about divorce, Jesus had insisted that divorce was not a part of God’s original plan for mankind and reminded His hearers: “In the beginning it was not so.”

Jesus the Bridegroom at the Wedding of Cana

In his letter to the Ephesians St. Paul developed the comparison between the marriage between Christ and the Church and the marriage between a husband and his wife.  In the light of this understanding, St. Paul made a remarkable statement in his letter to the Hebrews, exhorting them to keep “the marriage bed undefiled.”  To the Hebrews, the only place where sacrifice could be offered to God—and, consequently, the only place that could be defiled—was the altar of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.  By teaching that the marriage bed could be “defiled,” St. Paul identified the marriage bed as a sacred place, like the altar in the Jerusalem Temple.  In doing so, St. Paul also acknowledged that the one-flesh union of husband and wife in holy marriage reflected the inner life of God.  In the light of this understanding, St. Paul pronounced God’s judgment upon fornication and adultery not just as unlawful or immoral acts, but as acts of sacrilege—as desecrations of a union so holy that it can only be compared to the union between Christ and His Bride the Church.

The Mystery of Fruitful Love

In the mystery of the inner life of God, the Eternal Father eternally generates a perfect image of Himself. God the Son; and the Infinite Love that flows between God the Father and God the Son is so great that It is a Divine Person, the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father through the Son.  God created Adam and Eve to love each other with divine love so that when they came together and had children the fruit of their union would be a holy child.  In this way, the family of Adam and Eve would become a perfect finite reflection of the Most Holy Trinity.  In order to reflect this inner mystery of God, a holy marriage must also be permanent, exclusive, and fruitful.  Jesus unequivocally condemned divorce—except where a marriage was unlawful to begin with.  He and his Apostles and their successors also taught that a holy marriage must be fruitful in two ways—first, through openness to the gift of children and, secondly, through works of charity, both in and beyond the family circle.

When the disciples protested that permanent, exclusive marriage to one spouse was “impossible,” Jesus answered that God would give spouses the power to do the impossible—to love each other with His divine love.  Through the Gift of the Holy Spirit in Baptism and in the other mysteries of the Church, Jesus gives all of His disciples the power to love as He loves and to live as He lives.  When two Christians are joined together in Holy Marriage, Jesus confers a special sacramental grace upon them to give them the power to be faithful and fruitful as long as they live.  Married couples who have lived the grace of their marriage sacrament can testify to the divine power that Jesus has given them to be faithful and fruitful—in spite of numerous sufferings, trials, and tribulations.  In the words of one husband—married to the same woman for 37 years (with whom he has raised nine children)—“Only Jesus can explain how we can love each other ‘more each day than the day before.’”

From the time of the Apostles, the Church has always insisted on the necessity of openness to life within marriage.  Genesis 38 tells the story of Onan, who spilled his seed on the ground to avoid having a child, and was struck dead by God.  All of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church taught that any attempt to frustrate the natural consequences of the marriage union by actively preventing conception was gravely sinful.  According to St. John Chrysostom:

The procreation of children in marriage is the ‘heritage’ and ‘reward’ of the Lord; a blessing of God (cf. Psalm 127:3). It is the natural result of the act of sexual intercourse in marriage, which is a sacred union through which God Himself joins the two together into ‘one flesh’ (Genesis 1-2, Matthew 19, Mark 10, Ephesians 5, et. al.). The procreation of children is not in itself the sole purpose of marriage, but a marriage without the desire for children, and the prayer to God to bear and nurture them, is contrary to the ‘sacrament of love.’” 19

In a homily he preached in 391 as the Patriarch of Constantinople, St. John added:

Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility [oral contraceptives], where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well… Indeed, it is something worse than murder, and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you condemn the gift of God and fight with his [natural] laws?… Yet such turpitude… the matter still seems indifferent to many men; even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife.¹⁸

In keeping with the constant teaching of the Church, the Catholic Church allows married couples to practice Natural Family Planning, which involves abstaining from the marriage act during the fertile periods of a woman’s cycle, to avoid conception for serious reasons—such as to allow a mother to nurse her baby long enough before becoming pregnant again—but without frustrating the purpose of the marriage act and without hurting the woman’s body or reducing her to a sex object.  Author Janet Smith tells of the many testimonies she has heard from men and women whose marriages have been resurrected through the practice of Natural Family Planning.

[one woman told] of the miserable childhoods she and her husband had. Hers was marked by repeated, sexual abuse and neglect; her husband’s father was a brutal womanizer who eventually divorced his mother. The couple had been sexually active before marriage and had used contraception for the first seven years of their marriage. They had never used NFP, among other reasons, because they “never heard it promoted at Mass, and we were active churchgoers, not infrequent guests.” She notes that “priests gave us conflicting opinions on unnatural birth control.”

Beginning a family initially helped her recover some appreciation for the meaning of sexuality and helped her cope with suicidal thoughts, but it wasn’t until she and her husband started using NFP that her life and marriage was transformed. She allows that it may seem implausible that the use of NFP would be so effective in healing the personal wounds of herself and her husband and in improving their marriage immeasurably. Persuasively she observes, “just as something as simple as not working on the Lord’s Day can enrich family life, so can NFP enrich a marriage.”

Years ago, a woman challenged me to stress the “therapeutic” power of NFP more strenuously. I asked her to explain what she meant. She said that in her view, most women in our culture have been sexually abused in some way, either literally by some family member or neighbor, or they have been exploited by boyfriends, or they have felt sexually inadequate because of the sexual saturation of the media. She said she had been sexually abused by a family member but that her husband’s willingness to use NFP had made her feel revered by him. This I have heard countless times from women, that the use of NFP makes them feel that their husbands greatly respect and cherish them and value them for much more than their sexual availability.

Males have also spoken to me of the healing power of NFP. Our culture attempts to turn males into sexual predators. Rather than cultivating the natural propensity of males to protect women and children, our culture serves to suppress that instinct and to give full range to the baser tendency to be sexually self-indulgent and exploitative.

Males in our culture are made to feel sexually deficient if they value chastity and are made to feel super-masculine if they are out of control sexually. The use of NFP assists males in recapturing the sexual self-mastery that promotes their self-esteem and allows them to become truly self-giving attentive spouses to their wives — and they are delighted by the rewards they reap.

For nineteen hundred years, from the Resurrection of Jesus until 1930, all Christian leaders—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant—condemned contraception as a crime against God and the sanctity of marriage.  In 1930, the Anglican Church became the first Christian community to allow contraception to married couples, and since then virtually every major Christian community outside of the Catholic Church has reversed its historic position and allowed contraception.  The devastating effects of contraception were predicted with great accuracy by Pope Paul VI in the encyclical Humanae vitae and have been well summarized by Dr. Janet Smith, among others.  But perhaps the greatest testimony to God’s wisdom in forbidding contraception can be found at the Physicians for Life website http://www.physiciansforlife.org/content/view/193/36/  which cites the results of studies showing that couples who abstain from contraception and practice Natural Family Planning have a 0.2% divorce rate, as compared with Christians of communions that allow contraception and Catholics who practice contraception in disobedience to the teaching of the Catholic Church.

www.adherents.com/largecom/baptist_divorce.html

Since it is generally recognized that parental divorce is the greatest tragedy that can befall a child,[2] the vanishingly small divorce rate among those who follow God’s law as it was understood by all of the Fathers and handed down to us from the Apostles is a good indication that much of the scandalous or mediocre behavior one sees in professing Christians is actually the fruit of their failure to accept the whole Christian Faith as it has been received and handed down to us from the Apostles.

Contraception has contributed greatly to a sexual revolution that has made many young men and women lose faith in the possibility of a “marriage made in Heaven.”  Once the sacred one-flesh union between husband and wife is reduced to a sterile thrill shared briefly by two selfish individuals, the very possibility of a permanent, exclusive and fruitful union between one man and one woman begins to fade.  The Internet and media are full of advertisements by dating services promising to connect their customers with the “perfect match.”  But most of these end up being nothing more than glorified prostitution services.  Only Jesus Christ, the Heavenly Bridegroom holds the key to a marriage made in Heaven, and only those who follow His ways and obey His commandments can find that key.

The Key to a Marriage Made in Heaven

God revealed the key to a marriage made in Heaven in the book of Genesis.  First, He created Adam in His image and likeness, in a state of glorious holiness, so that Adam’s every thought, word, and action was animated by the Holy Spirit and gave glory to God.  While Adam was in that state, God placed him into a deep sleep and formed the body of Eve from his side.  In short, God was able to provide Adam with a perfect help-mate, even delivering her to him while he slept, simply because Adam was intent on doing the Will of God.  The lesson is crystal clear.  Men and women who want a marriage made in Heaven—and who want God to be their Matchmaker—need only be mindful of one thing: the perfect Will of God.  God has given us His pledge in His revealed Word—that those who are called to the state of Holy Marriage and who stay focused on doing the perfect Will of God will receive their “marriage made in heaven” from the Heavenly Bridegroom.

Louis and Zelie Martin

Louis Martin was a watchmaker in Alencon, France, in the nineteenth century.  Louis was baptized, confirmed and made his Holy Communion in the Catholic Church.  He studied and practiced his faith, and, wanting to serve God above all things, he sought entrance to a monastery. In Louis’ home town, meanwhile, a young woman named Zelie also sought to dedicate herself to God as a religious sister.  Eventually, both Louis and Zelie were refused admission to the monasteries where they had sought to consecrate their lives. Now it was God’s turn to play the Matchmaker—as He had done for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden:

Zélie had decided that if God did not want her as a religious she would marry and have many children who would all be consecrated to Him. She turned to Our Lady and asked her how she should earn her dowry. On December 8, 1851 she received her answer in the form of an interior voice which said, ‘Make Alencon point lace’. Zélie went to a professional school to learn her craft; she quickly excelled and left to start her own business.

One day when she was crossing the Bridge of St. Leonard, Zélie noticed a man passing by and again heard that interior voice. It said, ‘This is he whom I have prepared for you.’ The man was Louis Martin, whose mother had noticed Zélie at the lace making school. On July 13, 1858 Zélie and Louis were married; she was nearly 27. http://www.sttherese.com/Parents.html  A Short Life of Venerable  Zélie Martin Mother of St. Thérèse  J. Linus Ryan, O. Carm.

The marriage of Louis and Zelie had its full share of sufferings, but it was abundantly blessed by God.  By the grace of God that they received in the Sacrament of Holy Marriage, Louis and Zelie remained faithful to God, to each other and to their children as long as they lived—and fruitful with children and works of charity both in and beyond their family circle.  Of their nine children, four died in infancy.  But of the five surviving children, four became religious sisters, and one of them, St. Therese of Lisieux, became one of the greatest saints of modern times.  Zelie died soon after having her ninth child, and Louis never married again.  Today, the Catholic Church honors them both as models of holiness.

Your Marriage Made in Heaven

No doubt you are thinking, “What does all of this have to do with me?”  But it has everything to do with you.  Don’t forget that Louis and Zelie did not come together in marriage—nor did they remain faithful and fruitful unto death—through their own strength.  They would be the first to testify that all of these blessings were purely the grace of God.  There is nothing that God did for them that He will not do for you—if you let Him—if you remove the obstacles in His way.

Let’s examine your situation and see how easily you can begin your path to a marriage made in Heaven.

If you are a young person, who has not yet been married, the path is wide open to you.  If you are not yet a member of the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church that Jesus founded, we can show you how to become a member.  First, you must repent of your sins, and ask Jesus to give you the grace to follow Him and to do His Will all the days of your life.  You will need to learn the basic truths of the Catholic faith, and then you will be able to receive the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Eucharist. Once you are a member of the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church, dedicating yourself to doing God’s perfect Will each day, ask Him to show you His plan for your life.  And, if He has called you to Holy Matrimony, He will send you your perfect match. He will give you your “marriage made in Heaven.”

If you are already married, the path is wide open to you, too.  You need only follow the same steps, but have your marriage sanctified in the Church, to receive the grace to be faithful and fruitful together as long as you live.

If you are married and divorced and have married again, a good priest can still help you to discover God’s Will for your life.  Contact us, and we will be happy to help you.

And what if you are too old, too sick, or too broken-hearted to marry?

Even then, you can have a marriage made in Heaven—a marriage between your soul and God: a marriage between you and Jesus Christ, your Heavenly Bridegroom.  It is He who longs to be the Bridegroom of your soul—and of every soul.

Behold, I stand at the gate, and knock. If any man shall hear My voice, and open to Me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me (Revelation 3:20).

May the Lord Jesus Christ, the Heavenly Bridegroom, bless you and give you peace!

Hugh Owen, Director of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation

Email: howen@shentel.net

Imprimatur: Archbishop Cyril S. Bustros, Eparch of Newton, 25 January 2011.

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Are you looking for lasting happiness?

You are not alone.

Every man, woman, and child is looking for happiness — not just the happiness of a week, or a year — but a happiness that will last forever.

Can such happiness be found?

Or is it a fairy tale invented by wishful thinkers?

Take five minutes to read this pamphlet, and you will see that lasting happiness is not a dream.

It is real.

And it can be yours.

Eternal Happiness

Happiness “happens” when you satisfy a desire. If you desire a cool drink on a hot day, a glass of ice water can make you happy. If you desire a million dollars, winning the Jackpot can make you happy. If you desire fame, winning a gold medal in the Olympics can make you happy — for a while. But eventually a cool drink, a million dollars, or even an Olympic gold medal becomes a memory. None of them lasts forever.

Lasting happiness can only exist if there is something in this world that has no limits, that can be enjoyed forever. The common name for a Being that has no limits and that can be enjoyed forever is GOD.

But how do we know that God exists?

Evidence for the Existence of God

There are many ways to know that God exists. Some of them were first written down by Greek philosophers more than 2000 years ago. We will briefly look at six arguments for the existence of that perfect, eternal, infinite Being that we call God.

Argument Number One: The First Cause

Common sense tells us that everything in the universe has a cause. Plants come from seeds. Birds hatch from eggs. Nothing in this world brings itself into being. If we trace everything in the universe back to its source, we find that there must be Something that existed before anything else came to be — something that gave rise to the whole chain of being — a First Cause: God.[i]

Argument Number Two: The Grand Design

Common sense also tells us that where there is design there must be a designer. Look at an electronic calculator. Could something so intricate and well-organized occur by chance? Of course not! And the universe contains things a billion times more complex and organized than a calculator! Thus, the design of the world points to a Designer — God.[ii]

Argument Number Three: No Effect Greater Than Its Cause

Have you ever read a novel by Mark Twain? If not, you have probably heard about his novel Huckleberry Finn. The characters in Huckleberry Finn resemble Mark Twain and the boys that he grew up with in Hannibal, Missouri in the 1800′s. By reading the novel you can form a good idea of Mark Twain’s personality. If someone were to ask whether one of Mark Twain’s characters was smarter or funnier than Mark Twain, common sense would tell you that no character can be smarter or funnier than its author! In the same way, we know that nothing in the universe can be greater than its Creator. All the intelligence, beauty, power, and goodness in the universe must come from a greater source of Intelligence, Beauty, Power, and Goodness. Otherwise, we would have to believe that a character in a book could be smarter than his creator, or that an effect could be greater than its cause.

Scientists explain this same truth in fancier words — by appealing to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. According to this Law, any closed system of energy tends to become less orderly when left to itself. In other words, if there were no higher form of Being — God — who took matter and organized it into something as complex as a human body, all of matter would naturally tend to become disorganized. The fact that matter in the universe is preserved in complex life-forms like human bodies points to the existence of God who organized matter into those life-forms and who holds all things in being — in spite of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Argument Number Four: The Reason Why

We humans not only ask “Why?” We ask “What for?” From the time we are babies, we want to know the purpose of things. If the characters in a Mark Twain novel could speak, they would not be able to tell us the end of the story, the reason why they were created. Only the creator of the story can give it meaning and purpose. Our desire to know the purpose of human life points to the existence of a Creator who made us with a purpose in mind.

Argument Number Five: The Witness of Conscience

The fifth sign pointing to the existence of God is the voice of conscience. All human beings possess an inner sense of right and wrong. Almost without exception, every human society on the face of the earth praises bravery, honesty, and loyalty and condemns cowardice, lying, and treachery. For all their differences, every major religion in the world condemns murder, lying, cheating, and stealing. The literature of every civilized nation shows that people who do these actions suffer from a guilty conscience. There is nothing in the material world that can account for this inner sense of right and wrong If there were no God, it would be impossible to explain the fact of conscience.

One of the main reasons why many people do not believe in a Creator-God is the problem of evil. But notice that only human beings even understand the problem of evil. We humans have an inner sense that something is wrong inside of us and inside of other people — that causes us to lie, cheat, murder, and steal. There is nothing in matter that points to anything evil in these things. Dogs, cats, and chimpanzees do not worry about the “problem of evil.” The fact that all human beings recognize the existence of good and evil shows that our inner sense of right and wrong comes to us, not from the material creation around us, but from the Creator who, being perfect and infinite, must exist above and beyond the things He has made.

Argument Number Six: Desire for God

One last sign pointing to the existence of God is the fact that no human being can be satisfied with any limited, created thing. Power, pleasure, money, and fame — no matter how great — eventually wears off and leaves us with a deep desire for something beyond this world — for something infinite — for God. Common sense tells us that every normal desire can be satisfied by something real. For example, our hunger can be satisfied by food. Our thirst can be satisfied by drink. Our fatigue can be satisfied by sleep. But what can satisfy our desire for endless happiness? Only the existence of a perfect, unlimited, eternal, and lovable God explains the existence of our desire for endless happiness.

How Can I Know God?

“All right,” you say. “I believe that a perfect, eternal, infinite Being created the universe. But that doesn’t tell me much about God. If my eternal happiness depends on knowing God, how can I get to know Him as He is — not just as some vague force that made everything?”

That’s a good question. But don’t underestimate what you already know.

Suppose you wanted to know more about Mark Twain. The easiest thing to do would be to read all of his books. By reading them carefully, you could learn all kinds of things about his life and personality — his likes and his dislikes, his strengths and his weaknesses. Through the characters in his novels, you would catch glimpses of the inner workings of his mind.

In the same way, if you want to know God the Creator, study His creation. In the beauty of the ocean, you will glimpse His Beauty. In the force of a hurricane, you will glimpse His power. In the thoughts of a Leonardo Da Vinci, you will glimpse His Intelligence. In the love and the goodness of a Blessed Damien the Leper, you will glimpse His goodness and His love.

Just as every sentence in Mark Twain’s novels reflects his character to some degree, so every created thing in the universe reflects God’s character — to some degree. (Even evil-doers must misuse God’s good gifts of life, intelligence and free will to do evil.)

God Reveals Himself To Us

But suppose you finished all of Mark Twain’s novels and you still wanted to know him better. What then? Twain’s inmost thoughts and feelings are not written in any book. For you to find them out, he would have to reveal himself to you. If he were able to come back from the dead to answer your questions, you could find out his inmost thoughts.

The same is true of God.

If all that we knew about God were the things that He made, we wouldn’t know Him very well. We would only have second-hand knowledge. But God wants us to know Him. He wants us to know Him so badly that He became a human being like us so that we could know Him, and love Him, and enjoy His friendship forever.

In this case, the proof isn’t an argument.

It’s a Person.

A Divine Person.

Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ: True God and True Man

Many people think that Christians believe that Jesus Christ is God by a leap of blind faith. But Jesus did not expect people to believe in Him blindly. (Once we have the gift of faith, we must trust in Him blindly — but that is another matter.) Of all the prophets and religious teachers who ever lived, Jesus is the only one who ever claimed to be God and who backed up his claims by doing things that only God can do.

Faith in Jesus is a gift. But it is reasonable to ask for the gift of faith because of six simple facts.

1) We have reliable first-hand records of a man named Jesus who lived 2000 years ago in the Middle East. The authors of these records were willing to die rather than deny the truth of their statements.

2) Jesus claimed to speak for God and to be one with God.

3) Jesus proved His divinity by performing public miracles.

4) After announcing that He would suffer for the sins of mankind and rise from the dead, Jesus suffered, died, rose from the dead, and appeared to more than 500 witnesses.

5) Jesus made Peter and the Apostles — and their successors — the leaders of His family, the Church. He gave them the power to teach, rule, and sanctify the Church in His Name.

6) Jesus promised eternal happiness to all who believe and obey His Teachings.

Let’s examine these facts, one at a time.

Reliable Records

Our records of the life and teachings of Jesus are reliable for several reasons. First, we know that three of the four Gospels were written within thirty years of the Resurrection and that they were based on eyewitness testimony. Second, there exist copies of the Gospels that date to within a hundred years of the Resurrection. The most ancient copies of the Gospels differ only in minor details from later versions, proving that the records of the life and teachings of Jesus were carefully preserved. Third, the men who wrote or supplied the information for the Gospels believed that their eternal happiness depended on their telling the truth about the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus. Non-Christian historical records prove that the writers and preachers of the Gospel gave their lives rather than deny the truth of their testimony.

The Claims of Jesus

Jesus made no secret of His claims. The Gospels are full of them:

The Father is in Me and I am in the Father. (John 10:38)

Unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you shall not have life in you. (John 6: 54)

The Father and I are one. (John 10:30)

If you have seen Me you have seen the Father. (John 14:9)

Before Abraham was, I AM. (John 8: 58)

There is no way to “tone down” or “explain away” these claims. There are only two choices. Either Jesus is God as He said He was. Or He is a fraud.

The Miracles of Jesus

Jesus did not expect people to believe in Him blindly. He performed miracles as proof of His claims. Before hundreds, and sometimes thousands of witnesses, He raised the dead, gave sight to the blind, cured lepers and paralytics instantly, calmed storms, multiplied loaves and fishes, and brought His mutilated Body back to life after a barbaric death by crucifixion. No wonder Jesus told His critics:

If you do not believe Me, believe the works that I do. The works which the Father has given Me to accomplish, these very works that I do, bear witness to me, that the Father has sent Me.

The down-to-earth men who recorded the miracles of Jesus demanded facts, reported facts, and gave their lives in witness to those facts.

The Resurrection

Most of the Apostles and Gospel writers were simple, plain-speaking men who did not believe in the possibility of Jesus’ Resurrection until He proved it to them. On Easter Sunday, none of the Apostles wanted to believe in the Resurrection. When they were told that Jesus’ Body had disappeared, their first reaction was to dismiss the report. Jesus appeared to the Apostles and disciples when he chose to do so, never at their request. According to St. Paul, over 500 people saw the Risen Jesus at one time. On several occasions, Jesus ate and drank with His Apostles, and even allowed them to put their hands in the marks of His glorified wounds. The fact that the Apostles later testified to the Resurrection and suffered torture and death for their testimony proves that the Resurrection was not an hallucination, but an objective FACT.

Jesus and the Church

By His Miracles and His Resurrection, Jesus proved His divinity. Since Jesus is the source of all Truth and Goodness, it is reasonable to trust Him completely. (In fact, it is unreasonable not to trust Him.) Jesus invited all people to believe in Him, to repent of their sins, and to accept the forgiveness that He won for them by His suffering and death. To all who would accept Him as Lord, Jesus promised a share in His own divine life, so that they could follow His commandments and enjoy eternal life with Him after death.

Jesus did not ask His disciples to place their trust exclusively in Him, however. On the contrary, He gave His divine authority to Peter and the Apostles, the leaders of His community, the Church. Before His Ascension into Heaven, Jesus told Peter and the Apostles:

All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and behold I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world. (Matthew 28: 18-20)

With these words, Jesus gave His Apostles the power to give men a share in His divine Life through Baptism. He also promised to be with the Apostles and their successors, the bishops, until the end of time. In this way, people could share His Truth and Life by obeying Peter and the Apostles — and their successors, the Pope and the Bishops loyal to him. During the first centuries after the Resurrection, God guided the Pope and the Bishops in deciding which of the many books and letters written about Jesus contained the pure Truth. In a series of councils, or general meetings, the Popes and the bishops loyal to them approved the 27 books of the New Testament which, together with the books of the Old Testament, make up the Holy Bible.

The Rock of Peter

Jesus made sure that all of His followers understood Peter’s special role as Pope, or leader of the Apostles. In the presence of all the Apostles, Jesus told Peter:

I say to you, Peter, you are rock, and upon this Rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 16:18-19)

Later, Jesus gave Peter and the Apostles an additional share in His divine mission by giving them the power to change bread and wine into Himself (a mystery, yes, but not an impossibility for God!) (Luke 22: 19-20), the power to forgive sins (John 20: 22-23), and the power to give other men of their choosing these same powers by laying hands on them (2 Timothy 1:6; Titus 1:5). By the laying on of hands, these same powers have been passed from Peter and the Apostles to the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and to the bishops in union with him.

Eternal Life

Among the many truths that Jesus revealed is the truth that God is Love because He is a Trinity of Persons Who share the same divine nature. (By way of explanation, a nature is what someone is; a person is who someone is. For example, if I asked, “Reader, what are you?” the answer would be “A human being.” If I asked, “Reader, who are you?” the answer would be “John Foltz” or “Mary Garcia.”) God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are three distinct Persons who share the same divine Nature. From all eternity, the Father begets, or brings forth the Son, who is the perfect image of the Father. And from all eternity, the Father and the Son love each other with a love so real that it is a Divine Person — the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

One day, Jesus stood by a well in the desert and told a Samaritan woman,

Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. He, however, who drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst; the water that I will give him will become a fountain of living water, springing up unto life everlasting. (John 4: 13-14)

The “living water” of which Jesus spoke was the Divine Life of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This infinite, eternal divine life is the only thing that can satisfy the human longing for lasting happiness. To give us this divine life, Jesus instituted seven special signs called “sacraments” which fill us with God’s life, or “grace”: Baptism, Penance, Holy Eucharist, Chrismation (or Confirmation), Marriage, Holy Orders, and Anointing of the Sick.

Through Baptism, men are “born” into the life of grace as members of God’s family. Through penance, we renew God’s grace within us when we have lost it through sin. Through the Holy Eucharist, we grow in grace by receiving Jesus Christ Himself under the appearance of bread and wine. In Chrismation (or Confirmation), we receive the grace to bear witness to Christ. In Marriage, we receive the grace to be faithful spouses, and to raise holy children for the kingdom of Heaven. In Holy Orders, men receive the power to change bread and wine into Jesus, to forgive sins, and to guide and teach souls. In the Anointing of the Sick, we receive the grace to endure sickness and death in union with Jesus. In addition to the sacraments, through the gift of his Holy Spirit Jesus guides the thoughts, words, and actions of his disciples so that they can bring his divine love, wisdom, and truth to the whole world in their every-day lives. Christ-like acts of love are the infallible sign that Jesus lives in his disciples.

Contrary to the false teaching of reincarnation, Jesus tells us that “it is appointed to man once to die” (Hebrews 9:27) After death, each soul will be judged according to its actions. Those who die with God’s life in their souls will go to heaven — either immediately, or after some period of purification. The joy of heaven will be infinitely greater than any joy we can experience on earth because we will see, know, and enjoy God without interruption. The happiness of heaven will last forever; in heaven, our desire for God will finally be fulfilled. Those who die with God’s life in their souls but without having been freed from all the effects of sin and selfishness will go to a place of purification where the human soul is purged of all selfishness. Those who die without God’s life in their souls will remain separated from Him forever in eternal misery.

But Jesus came so that you might “have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). No matter what sins you have committed, no matter what abuse you have suffered, no matter what pain you have endured, Jesus bore the pain, the shame, the guilt, and the punishment for you and for all. He is ready and willing to forgive you and to heal you, if you will confess your sins, accept His forgiveness, and declare your willingness to forgive your enemies and to follow His perfect plan for your life.

To everyone who comes to Him in this way, Jesus promises a new life with Him and in Him, a life of love, joy, and peace that passes understanding. St. Paul tells us that we are “God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus for good works, that He has prepared beforehand that we might walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Jesus wants to teach you how to become that “masterpiece” that God created you to be. He wants to show you how to live by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, doing everything for the glory of the Father, and offering all of your thoughts, words, and actions to the Father with Jesus, out of love for all mankind. To do this is to “do God’s Will on earth as in Heaven”—it is to experience “heaven on earth.”

Faith and Obedience

Common sense can lead us to believe in God. And common sense can lead us to believe that Jesus is God. But common sense alone cannot lead us to everlasting happiness.

To share in God’s life before and after death we must believe and obey all of His teachings. In the first century after the Resurrection, the family of the followers of Jesus, united under the Pope and the bishops loyal to him, began to be called the “Catholic Church,” from the Greek word “Catholicos,” meaning “all.” The Church is “Catholic” because it teaches all that Jesus taught, to all kinds of people, at all times, and in all places. Through the Bible, which the Church wrote, assembled, and approved, and through Sacred Tradition — the authoritative teachings of the Popes and bishops down through the centuries — the Pope and the Bishops in union with him teach the whole truth about God and our relationship to Him. Those who enter the safety of the Catholic Church enjoy the fullness of God’s truth and life. They experience the fulfillment of God’s promise:

Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

If you would like to receive the fullness of God’s truth and life in the Church He founded 2000 years ago, pray the prayer at the bottom of this page, and e-mail us as soon as possible. We will direct you to a priest in your area who can give you additional information about membership in the Catholic Church. If you are a Catholic who has been away from the Church, please say the prayer and email us, indicating that you are a Catholic who has been away from the sacraments.

Prayer for Divine Mercy

Lord Jesus, I believe that You are truly the Son of God who suffered and died to save me from sin and death.

I am sorry for all of the sins of my past life and I forgive everyone who has ever hurt me.

Lord Jesus, I place my life entirely in Your hands.

I want to do Your Will from now on — not my own.

I want to receive Your divine life by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the sacraments of Your Church.

Give me the grace to love and obey You always.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me now and at the hour of my death.

Amen.

Contact: Archimandrite Fr. Constantine Belisarius, Melkite Greek Catholic Chapel of the Holy Innocents and the Holy Family in Exile, Northside Professional Center (in the back)

1516 N. Shenandoah Ave, Front Royal, VA 22630. Email: howen@shentel.net