Today’s Catholic Reading begins with the words of one good Catholic Saint to another! Saint Paul wrote this to St. Timothy, the first Catholic Bishop of Ephesus, and to all who are blessed to respect Jesus enough to “Be As Catholic As We Can!”
2 Timothy 3:10-17 begins: “You have followed my teaching, way of life, purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, persecutions that I endured.”
Paul tells us that persecutions from anti-Catholics are a blessing! “Yet from all these things, The Lord delivered me. In fact, all who want to live religiously in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”
All “persecutors” of Catholics descend on this “downward path”:
“But, wicked people and charlatans will go from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived.” That prophecy has come true in the past hundred years, when anti-Catholic denominations went from “bad to worse” as they tolerated, ignored, and often blessed such awful sins as disobedience, divorce/remarriage, fornication, and abortion.
Billions of people on earth see where they are on the “Downward Path”: “My ancestors were Catholic. Political and social pressure led them to become Protestants. Then, environmentalists. Now, they want children to live in every kind of sin .”
Catholics are blessed to have followed Paul’s instruction to Timothy and to us! “But you, remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from Whom you learned it, and that from infancy you have known the Sacred Scriptures, which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
Paul then tells Catholics: “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”
Catholics are blessed to be the only people on earth who are blessed to guide our thoughts, words, and lives by The Only Church-Creating Word of Jesus in “Scripture” to His First Catholic Pope. We do not let ourselves be led astray by “wicked people and charlatans” who want us to give money to them and reject 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.'”
Catholics are specifically prophesied by Today’s Psalm 119:165, which foretells the joy of Being Catholic: “O Lord, great peace have they who love Your law.”
Catholics know that it is we who are blessed by Today’s “Alleluia” from John 14:23, “Whoever loves Me will keep My Word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him.”
That is a “Hidden Prophecy”! It predicts the billions of Catholics who would be blessed to “keep” the Word of Christ’s Call to Catholic Communion, which Jesus Christ, Himself, repeated 14 times: “If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood, you do not have life in you.” Being Catholic is “Being Alive!”
It is also a “Hidden Prophecy” that God will not “come” to those who do “not keep” The Church-Creating Words of The Son to His First Catholic Pope!
Catholics actually have God “come to them” every time we receive His Body and Blood by God’s Miracle of Transubstantiation. That changes bread and wine into The Body And Blood of He Who Fulfilled the Messianic Prophecies. Sadly, many let themselves be too confused by “wicked people and charlatans” to see That Power of God and be as blessed as Catholics to have Him in us!
May every person on earth be blessed first to consider, and then, to realize, that God does live in every Catholic blessed to obey God’s First Commandment, and “Have no other gods before Me.”
Today’s Short Reading concludes with the Gospel from Mark 12:35-37. ‘As Jesus was teaching in the temple area, He said, ‘How do the scribes claim that The Christ is the Son of David?’ David himself, inspired by The Holy Spirit, said, ‘The Lord said to My Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand until I place your enemies under your feet.’ David, himself, calls him ‘Lord’, so how is he His son?”
As we ask God to let us understand that Jesus is the Son of God Who Took Human Form through the DNA of David, we are more grateful to The Loving Programmer for choosing us to answer His Call to “Be Catholic!”
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Today’s Simple Rhyme: “One God is ‘before’ me: / The Blessed, Holy Trinity!”
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