When Paul wrote Romans 14:7-12 to the early Catholics in Rome because believers in every other religion persecuted them for being a danger to their incomes. “Brothers and sisters: None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”
Catholics know “we are the Lord’s because we have obeyed His Call to Catholic Communion that lets us “live” in Him and Him in us by repeating 14 times, “If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.” If we “die” to the world, we are His!
He explains: “For this is why Christ died and came to life, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” Then, he asks every Catholic two questions: (1) “Why then, do you judge your brother or sister?” and (2) “Or, you, why do you look down on your brother or sister?”
Paul tells us not to go to God’s Judgment with feelings of superiority over others! “For we shall all stand before The Judgment seat of God; for it is written (Lk 20:38; 2 Cor 5:15; Gal 2:20; 1 Thes. 5:10): ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bend before Me and every tongue shall give praise to God.'”
Paul concludes: “So then each of us shall give an account of himself to God.”
Jesus let God’s Prophecy in Today’s Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14 come true! “I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.” Those “good things” include The Catholic Church and Her Seven Sacraments that let us see “The LORD is my light and my salvation… my life’s refuge“.
That Prophesied “refuge” is The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church that He Who Fulfilled that “light-giving” Prophecy Spoke Into Being with His Church-Creating Word to His First Catholic Pope! “And I say unto you thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven.”!
The preciousness of every human soul is then explained by Jesus, at the end of Luke 15:1-10: “Just as a shepherd is filled with great joy to find one lost sheep, . . there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” just as there is Clearly, “repentance” opens the door to the God-Given “refuge”, The Catholic Church.
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Today’s Simple Rhyme: “Today we see ‘repentance’ / begins to end our sentence / of death.”
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