Catholic during the Great Apostasy

“God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. He added his commandments and precepts. If thou wilt keep the commandments and perform acceptable fidelity for ever, they shall preserve thee. He hath set water and fire before thee: stretch forth thy hand to which thou wilt. Before man is life and death, good and evil, that which he shall choose shall be given him.”

Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 15:14-17 (Douay-Rheims Bible)

Is our life given to us as a ready-made script?

No, because that would deny the fact that God endowed us with free will. Nothing is written for us – we ourselves shape our lives through our own choices. Of course, God knows us better than we know ourselves and therefore can easily predict where these choices will lead us. Besides, you don’t have to be God to realize that they lead to nothing good.

Always to the same thing – to terrible punishments and the destruction of the temple.

Always the same sins: pride, greed, and lust. Lies that kill the truth. There’s nothing new here, and you don’t even have to be a prophet to predict the consequences of putting man on a pedestal. Building a new Tower of Babel is the only goal of people, because that’s all they are capable of.

Why is the Apocalypse not important?

Because it is just another cataclysm that we ourselves cause. The Flood, Babylon, or the Romans – what difference does it make who or what destroys the world. It is enough that we know for sure whose actions will cause it. People’s!

The fact that Satan suggests various solutions and evil things does not mean that he is directly to blame. People must bear responsibility for their choices. At this point, it should be mentioned that those who hide behind listening to another person, even if he is called a pope, think very wrongly. Everyone is responsible for their own actions, but above all for the state of their own soul – and only their own, not the neighbor’s. As we know, we should first completely remove the beams from our own eye, and only then think about the specks in others’.

God cares very much that our free will remains undisturbed even by His intervention. Although it is certain that hundreds of times He reaches out to us to help, but He does not force us to do anything. How often we do not notice it – only those who have converted know, because only after conversion do we see exactly what has been visible for a long time.

It can be said that the script of life is given to us, but it is a script written by God. We also have a second script – written by Satan or by our own dreams, which almost never differ from each other. People do not like simple answers, which is why they so often choose something in between yes and no. The two simple paths visible at the beginning of our life – one uphill leading to heaven, the path down leading to hell – become a tangle of turns that we cannot untangle ourselves.

“Make straight the paths” – the prophet calls, and what do people do? Exactly the opposite. They say they are going straight because they follow people who started, for example, by stealing cigarettes or apples. It is hard to find logic in their behavior, but they find it. Satan now has an easier task – it is enough for a person to get slightly moved and like a moth to the light, he rushes to the fire.

Faith must be accepted with reason and heart, that is, simply with the soul. If you accept it only with reason – it is bad, because you deprive yourself of spiritual experiences, but it is still wiser than with the heart, which is fleeting, susceptible to momentary elations, and above all little resistant to psychological manipulations. Love without reason is simply blind. God does not make the choice for us – we do it in our blindness, or even stupidity. We ourselves destroy the beautiful script that was written for us and become like the bad thief on the cross. Of course, it does not look as simple as in the Gospel. People complicate everything and deceive themselves.

Gestas directly blasphemed and cursed, which in sum meant that he did not deceive himself and others, did not show a mask – only the truth about himself. That is still better than what so-called Catholics represent today, or more precisely people who call themselves Catholics, but have no idea what it means.

Why?

Because they talk about love, and hate everything related to the true teaching of Christ. The mercy they talk about with tears in their eyes concerns only their sins and they do not care about mercy for them, but about justification and assurance of no punishment for their deeds. Pure calculation, not love. Just let someone try to question their false theories – then you quickly find out that hatred is what guides them.

Returning to our topic – we ourselves shape our lives. If we show such will, God helps us, but not by force – only responds to our requests, prayers. In some cases He intervenes to turn us back from the bad path, but these are not direct interventions, rather hints and logs thrown under our feet – like an attempt to show that we are wrong and on the wrong path. God can do everything, so those chosen by Him must turn back – even in the belly of the whale.

I repeat once again: God loves us and His scripts for our lives end in heaven, but the choice is ours and that is why there are always only a few. Free will is not fiction – it is a law that is observed by God and exploited by Satan.

We choose constantly and although the choice is always simple, our choices are often very bad.

If we accepted that the scripts of our lives are imposed on us, we would have to assume that God condemns most of us to eternal damnation – and that contradicts His love for us.

Our daily choices lead us to ruin, not our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us remember this very well and never forget it.

We shape our lives through suffering and truth. We strive for spiritual immortality and let us focus on that.

“See, I have set before thee this day life and good, death and evil, […] I call heaven and earth to witness this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose therefore life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

Deuteronomy 30:15, 19 (Douay-Rheims Bible)

Arkadiusz Niewolski