Wake-up calls

May 19 Monday of the 5th week of Easter: A thought for those who want to reveal the risen Jesus in their lifestyle.

Acts 14:5-18; Psalm 115:1-2, 3-4, 15-16; John 14:21-26

“The Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name will remind you of all that I told you.” John 14:26

The Church has kept intact the “deposit of faith”—the teaching of the Apostles—for two thousand years. But she does not actively teach all of it all the time.

There are some teachings she just doesn’t focus on, Catholic beliefs that in practice bishops and preachers ignore. There are doctrines that approved theologians distort by failing to see them in relationship to others. And there are truths the Church has proclaimed and later forgotten about.

What the Church does not say has as much influence on our lives as what she does say. The most dangerous laws are often the unwritten ones which proclaim by their absence that something is permissible when it is not.

At different times official (but non-infallible) Church teaching has justified slavery and racial discrimination, denied freedom of conscience, encouraged torture and execution of heretics, forbidden then allowed soldiers to fight in wars, accepted then condemned the death penalty. To this day some teachers and preachers blaspheme the love of the Father by what they confidently identify as “mortal sin” and dogmatically declare that God will punish for all eternity in Hell.

That is why we need prophets inspired by the Holy Spirit to “remind us.”

PRAY: “

O God, by the light of the Holy Spirit instruct the hearts of your faithful.”

PRACTICE: Distinguish between dogmatic teachers and dogma.