Jesus gave “the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven” to The First Pope. St. Peter has told us for 2,000 years that Catholics are “chosen” by God.
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Question 1: “Why do Catholics believe St. Peter is The First Catholic Pope?”
Answer: “Catholics respect Every Word of Jesus, including His Specific Decree that put Peter and his Successors in charge of The Only Church Jesus Spoke Into Being with His Church-Creating Word! ‘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.’”
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Question 2: “Did St. Peter tell us that Catholics are ‘God’s Chosen People’?”
Answer: “Today’s Reading shares The First Pope’s Words in Acts 10:39-41. ‘We are witnesses of all that He did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put Him to death by hanging him on a tree. God raised This Man on the third day and granted that He be visible not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance.’ Those ‘witnesses’ include The First Catholic Bishops. We know they shared His Holy Food because they ‘ate and drank with Him after he rose from the dead.'”
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Question 3: “How does that connect with Catholics, today?”
Answer: “For 2,000 years, all who bear ‘witness’ to Catholic Teachings have been chosen to be among those who follow The Teachings of : ‘the witnesses chosen by God in advance.’”
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Question 4: “How do Catholics prove our actual ‘connection with Jesus’?”
Answer: “Catholic Communion! Only Catholics are ‘chosen’ to obey The Call to Catholic Communion that Jesus repeated 14 times: ‘If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.’”
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Question 5: “How does receiving Catholic Communion from a Catholic priest prove that we are ‘chosen’?”
Answer: “Catholics are the only people in every generation who ‘ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead’!”
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Question 4: “How have Catholics known for the past 2,000 years that we were ‘chosen by God in advance’?”
Answer: “Only Catholics are ‘chosen’ to realize that Jesus has The Power to authorize His priests to provide His Body and Blood through The Miracle of Transubstantiation at Every Catholic Mass. That is why Catholics are the only people on earth who can truthfully say that we ‘ate and drank with Him after he rose from the dead.’”
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Question 5: “Did The First Pope give us another reason to understand that Catholics are ‘chosen by God’ to be saved?”
Answer: “St. Peter told us that This Word from John 20:23 described The Specific Power Jesus gave to His Catholic priests to provide Absolution: ‘Those whose sins you forgive on earth are forgiven in Heaven.’
The First Holy Pope explains another connection that only Catholics are ‘chosen’ to obey: ‘He commissioned us (His Catholic priests and religious) to preach to the people and testify that He is The One appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead. To Him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in Him will receive forgiveness of sins through His name.’”
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Question 6: “Doesn’t Peter say that ‘everyone who believes in Him will receive forgiveness of sins’?”
Answer: “Catholics are those ‘chosen’ to connect That Word of The First Pope to This Word of another Catholic Bishop, James 2:19: ‘You believe that God is One; you do well. Even the demons believe, and tremble!’
Catholics are also ‘chosen’ to see that John 15:14 also tells us that ‘belief’ without ‘obedience’ is a self-serving excuse for disobeying Any Word of Jesus they want to avoid: ‘You are My friends if you obey My commands.’”
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At Easter, Catholics are reminded: “We are ‘God’s chosen people’ because we both ‘believe’ and try to ‘obey’ Every Word of Jesus!
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Happy Easter! Two free books to read and share:
https://catholicfundamentalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Saint-James-the-Less-Is-More.pdf
The best book of the last Century is <em>“The Diary of St. Faustina”</em>. It lets each of us realize how much Jesus loves our soul: http://www.seraphim.my/divinemercy/diary/text/DiaryI.htm
