All who take The Bible seriously are helped by 1 Timothy 15-17! “Beloved: This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
Paul, an early Catholic convert, knew he was the worst of “sinners”! “Of these sinners, I am the foremost.” He had traveled far to persecute and put Catholics in jail!
Christ’s forgiveness of that awful sin led Paul to realize: “But, for that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost (of sinners) Christ Jesus might display all His patience as an example for those (even the most vicious anti-Catholics!) who would come to believe in Him for everlasting life.”
Paul was guided by Peter, James, and the other Disciples. After three years of study, St. Paul invented a new definition of God: “To the King of Ages, incorruptible, invisible, the only God, honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”
St. Paul was blessed to live by John 14:23, the “Alleluia” of today’s Catholic Reading. “Whoever loves Me will keep My Word, and My Father will love him and We will come to him.”!
Catholics “keep the Word” that He Who Fulfilled The Prophecies specifically decreed 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.”
In Today’s Gospel, Luke 6:43-49, “Jesus said to His Disciples: ‘A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. . . . A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.’”
Jesus identifies those who let worldly approval keep them from “the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven” with a simple question: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’, but do not do what I command?”
Jesus describes Catholics: “I will show you what someone is like who comes to Me, listens to My words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when the flood came, the river burst against that house, but could not shake it because it had been well built.”
Then, Jesus tells us the fate of those who do not “act on His Words”! “But the one who listens and does not act (become as Catholic as they can) is like a person who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, it collapsed at once and was completely destroyed.”
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Today’s Simple Rhyme: “Those who do not understand / avoid the rock and build on sand.”
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