Sometimes, we may benefit from boiling down the vastness of Catholicism to:
1. Over 300 prophecies refer to the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
2. Jesus came, where He was predicted to arrive.
3. He performed many miracles as He fulfilled the many, many meticulously preserved prophecies that described Who He was, what He would do, and how He would die and what would happen later.
4. He had disciples. He wanted them to continue to provide access to God through the Sacraments that He, Jesus, provided. To just one of those disciples, He said, “Thou art Peter, and on this rock, I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” He said those words to one man, the first Pope, about one Church. One. Not 34,000!
5. The Church, under the direction of the first Pope, developed the liturgy and doctrines for those who would believe and obey Him so fully and completely that they would follow His instruction: “If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood, you do not have life in you.” Obeying that, most bizarre of commands, is how He separates the truest and most obedient believers from the great unwashed.
6. He left a Church, with living links to the Disciples He ordained. His Church may be entered by those who choose to do so. About those who would join or ignore The Catholic Church, He said: “You are My friends if you obey My commands.” Applying that truth to Step 5, we understand that He is telling us that we should receive Catholic Communion. Why? How else can we receive His actual Body?
As we review, there are: Six simple steps to saving our soul. We can only fail to become Catholic if we are too vain to obey, too attached to earthly friends to leave them for an hour a week, too attached to sins to renounce them, or just plain slothful. There is no good reason not to be Catholic.
