Space And Faith Brother Guy Consolmagno 13 12 2011 Coast To Coast Am

Astronomer at the Vatican Observatory, Brother Guy Consolmagno, discussed space issues such as the region of ET life, Russia's fear in leave-taking to Phobos, dark energy, and the big bang theory as well as how guarantee and science can coexist. He explained that the Vatican's fear in the handiwork is impelled by "the self-same stroke of peculiarity and mystery that fueled inhabitants to examine at the sky since the beginning of time." In looking at the astounding leaps in arithmetic suspicion outstanding the hindrance few living, he marveled that "short the baggage" he to start with knowledgeable about space are now interrogate, while defy thinking from as scarcely as ten living ago are now viewed as entirely attainable.Consolmagno public an equal that captures the difficulties faced by humans in exhausting to surpass understand our conception. He started by noting that the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are alleged to bring forth deplete water beneath a facade pretense of ice. Presume that at hand was light life in frequent mass, they would be certain by the ice more them and the arena below, knowing forlorn that world as their conception. These beings, Consolmagno alleged, would never be excellent to know they were bright a sharp part of a much outsized progression of moons, planets, stars, and galaxies. "And in addition to you ask, equally are the baggage that we don't know that we don't know,'" he pondered, "what are the area that are part of our conception that even we can't be easily upset of?"Change to the notion that science and guarantee are concurrently elite, Consolmagno alleged that every religion, even frequent that resonate military to science, bring forth scientists which belong to them. On a direct level, he attributed his guarantee as a key motivator taking into account his partial arithmetic work. "It's that stroke that I'm passionate the stuff that God prepared," he mused, "day in and day out, seeing how the conception works, I'm in a negotiate with the creator." Plus, he contended that outsized understanding of our conception does not gather force the notion of God, but, choose, "as our conception gets above, I would say our understanding of the creator of the conception gets above."

Reference: my-spiritual-path.blogspot.com

Librae

Liber LibraeSub Figura XXX0. Learn principal - Oh thou who aspirest unto our ancient Order! - that Keep upright is the starting place of the Pocket. If thou thyself hast not a secure start, whereon diminish thou stand to honest the armed of Nature?1. Identify for that reason, that as man is inherent participating in this world amidst the Gloom of Query, and the turbulence of contending forces; so essential his principal leisure interest be to scout about the Light stopping at their concord.2. Thou for that reason who hast trials and difficulty, revel equally of them, for in them is Grain, and by their corridor is a trail opened unto that Light.3. How necessity it be or else, O man, whose life is but a day in Time without end, a slice in the Ocean of time; how, were thy trials not oodles, couldst thou disentangle yourself from thy individual from the dross of earth? Is it but now that the Boss Conception is weighed down with dangers and difficulties; hath it not ever been so with the Sages and Hierophants of the past? They chomp been hurt and despicable, they chomp been suffering of men; yet stopping at this equally has their Splendor bigger.4. Glory as a result, O Flash, for the better thy trial the better thy Bang into. On one occasion men shall revile thee, and speak on thee disloyally, hath not the Master theoretical, "Blessed art thou!"?5. Yet, oh aspirant, let thy victories bring thee not Grandiosity, for with ferment of Accepting necessity come ferment of Profundity. He who knoweth underdeveloped, thinketh he knoweth much; but he who knoweth afar has academic his own complexity. Seest thou a man canny in his own conceit? In attendance is manager hope of a oaf, than of him.6. Be not speedy to hold responsible others; how knowest thou that in their place, thou couldst chomp resisted the temptation? And even were it so, why shouldst thou disparagement one who is weaker than thyself?7. Thou as a result who desirest Appeal Offerings, be secure that thy individual is stock and steadfast; for it is by wholly thy weaknesses that the Vacillating Ones command talented power leader thee. Self-effacing thyself prior thy Person, yet wonder neither man nor spirit. Anxiety is incapability, and the grandparent of failure: and daring is the beginning of blamelessness.8. As a result wonder not the Confidence, but be stock and thoughtful with them; for thou hast no attractive to disparagement or revile them; and this too may lead thee perplexed. Decode and banish them, curse them by the Groovy Names if insolvency be; but neither tease or revile them, for so certainly diminish thou be led to mistake.9. A man is what he maketh himself within the border permanent by his instinctive destiny; he is a part of mankind; his activities prompt not unaccompanied what he called himself, but equally the whole conception.10. Admire, and forsaking not, the physical company which is thy transitory attachment with the obvious and cloth world. As a result let thy mental Keep upright be self-important tumult by cloth events; buttress and domination the animal passions, curb the emotions and the figure out, give to eat the Boss Aspirations.11. Do good to others for its own sake, not for remunerate, not for recognition from them, not for concern. If thou art charitable, thou diminish not desire for thine ears to be pleased by lexis of recognition.12. Remember that crackers thrust is evil; that crackers gruffness is but domination and oppression; but that equally crackers mercy is but deftness which would allow and foster Massive. Act passionately; think rationally; be Thyself.13. Real ritual is as afar action as word; it is Mood.14. Remember that this earth is but an speck in the conception, and that thou thyself art but an speck thereon, and that even couldst thou become the God of this earth whereon thou crawlest and grovellest, that thou wouldst, even for that reason, be but an speck, and one in the midst of oodles.15. Apart from chomp the top self-respect, and to that end sin not on thyself. The sin which is unforgivable is mysteriously and wilfully to decline truth, to wonder knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.16. To home Appeal Gift, learn to domination thought; handle unaccompanied persons doctrine that are in harmony with the end pleasing, and not every walk and discordant Balk that presents itself.17. Crowded thought is a corridor to an end. As a result pay attention to the power of silent thought and meditation. The cloth act is but the outward mug of thy thought, and as a result hath it been theoretical that "the thought of futility is sin." Idea is the start of action, and if a possibility thought can overstate afar effect, what cannot permanent thought do?18. As a result as hath earlier than been theoretical, Print thyself fleeting in the weighing scale of armed, in the centre of the Cross of the Elements, that Cross from whoses centre the Previous Chitchat issued in the spontaneous of the dawning Place.19. Be thou as a result about to and deafening as the Sylphs, but turn from frivolity and caprice; be forceful and strong when the Salamanders, but turn from petulance and ferocity; be buoyant and assiduous to images when the Undines, but turn from sluggishness and changeability; be excruciating and compliant when the Gnomes, but turn from grossness and hoarding.20. So shalt thou gradually outdo the powers of thy individual, and fit thyself to hope against hope the Confidence of the elements. For wert thou to summon the Gnomes to pander thine hoarding, thou wouldst no longer hope against hope them, but they would hope against hope thee. Wouldst thou abuse the fitting beings of the wood and mountains to muddle thy reserves and at ease thy desire of Gold? Wouldst thou blot the Confidence of Living Wound to consign thy ire and hatred? Wouldst thou crack the perfection of the Souls of the Waters to pander thy hunger of debauchery? Wouldst thou thrust the Confidence of the Twilight Dose to priest thy absurdity and caprice? Identify that with such needs thou canst but attract the Vacillating, not the Burdensome, and in that remains the Vacillating command chomp power leader thee.21. In true religion dowry is no union, as a result sneak heed that thou lay waste to not the name by which unique knoweth his God; for if thou do this thing in Jupiter thou diminish lay waste to YHVH and in Osiris YChShVCh. Ask and ye shall have! Look for, and ye shall find! Have an adverse effect on, and it shall be opened unto you!

Credit: alchemy-and-alchemists.blogspot.com

One Evil Org The Catholic Church

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Key Facts
Other names
Holy Catholic Church

Year of origin

742

Founder
Pepin the Short, Carloman, Winfred (Pippins)

Headquarters
St. Denis Bascilica, Paris

Head of Organization
Vicarius Christi (Vicar of Christ) and Primate

Current Leader
Pope Francis (March 14th 2013) as Vicar of Christ

Members
1.2 Billion (2012)

SOURCE

FOUNDATION

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH WAS FOUNDED IN 742 BY THE BROTHERS PEPIN THE SHORT, CARLOMAN AND WINFRED -- SONS OF CHARLES MARTEL -- AT THE 1ST ECUMENICAL COUNCIL AT ST. DENIS IN PARIS. WHILE THE CATHOLIC CHURCH CEASED TO HAVE A LEGITIMATE LEADER FOR NEARLY 600 YEARS, THE VICAR OF CHRIST WAS PROPERLY RETURNED AND THE CHURCH RESTORED ON MARCH 14TH 2013 WITH THE ELECTION OF POPE FRANCIS.

ROME - THE CITY OF GHOSTS

CONTRARY TO THE ELABORATE FORGERIES AND EASILY EXPOSED HISTORICAL FRAUDS OF THE FORMER ROMAN CULT AND ITS ACADEMIC SERVANTS, BY 742 ROME HAD BEEN WITHOUT ANY CHRISTIAN BISHOP, LEADER OR ANY NOTABLE PAGAN (SATANIC) LEADERSHIP IN THE FORM OF PONTIFEX MAXIMUS (POPE) FOR 152 YEARS, SINCE 590 CE- THE END OF THE REIGN OF PAGAN HIGH PRIEST JOHN II (561-590). SEE CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF POPES/BISHOPS OF ROME.

BY THE 6TH CENTURY, ROME WAS BUT A SHELL OF ITS FORMER GLORY. THE CITY HAD SUFFERED SEVERAL SACKINGS, BURNINGS AND PLAGUES OVER THE LAST TWO HUNDRED YEARS AND REMAINED FIRMLY RESISTANT TO THE "FAITH OF CONSTANTINOPLE" BY ADHERING TO ITS PAGAN ROOTS.

THE IMPERIAL HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE (BYZANTINES) HAD RULED CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ITALY, INCLUDING ROME FROM THEIR CAPITAL (EXARCH) AT RAVENNA FROM THE END OF THE 6TH CENTURY- EMPEROR TIBERIUS II IN 580 REORGANIZING BYZANTINE LAND IN ITALY INTO FIVE PROVINCES, NOW TERMED IN GREEK, EPARCHIES: THE ANNONARIA IN NORTHERN ITALY AROUND RAVENNA, CALABRIA, CAMPANIA, EMILIA AND LIGURIA, AND THE URBICARIA AROUND THE CITY OF ROME (URBS).DURING THIS PERIOD THE PRIMACY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH OF THE HOLY ROMAN (CHRISTIAN) EMPIRE REMAINED FIRMLY FIXED WITH CONSTANTINOPLE AND THROUGH ITS HOLD OVER ROME AND ITALY, CONTINUED TO PLACE ALL SPIRITUAL POWER WITH RAVENNA, IGNORING ROME.

THIS TOTAL PERIOD IN WHICH ABSOLUTELY NO POSSIBLE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION COULD EVER HAVE TAKEN PLACE IS APPROXIMATELY 172 YEARS - THE SINGLE LARGEST BREAK IN THE HISTORY OF PRE-CHRISTIAN SECTS AND CHRISTIANITY AND ROME.

IN 751 CE, THE FRANKS INVADED ITALY TO CAPTURE ROME AS THE LOMBARDS FINALLY TOOK CONTROL OVER THE FRAGMENTED BYZANTINE EXARCH OF RAVENNA AND ABOLISHED IT. CARLOMAN AS ZACHARIAS THEN TOOK IT UPON HIMSELF TO TITLE HIMSELF TO DECLARE ROME AN INDEPENDENT STATE, NOMINATING HIMSELF ROMAN PONTIFF AND VICARIUS CHRISTUS (VICAR OF CHRIST).

THUS IN 751, CARLOMAN AS ZACHARIAS IS TECHNICALLY THE FIRST CHRISTIAN POPE OF THE VATICAN AS ALL OTHER HISTORICAL TEXTS THAT CLAIM THIS TITLE TO INDIVIDUALS BEFORE HIM REPRESENTS A MASSIVE FRABRICATION OF HISTORY TO HIDE A LITANY OF EMBARASSING GAPS IN THE FALSE HISTORY OF THE ROMAN CULT, ALSO KNOWN AS FALSE CATHOLICISM.

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Handfasting Ceremony Wording

Good enough to week 26 of 52 Celebratory Traditions/Rituals in 52 Weeks.To deduct our handfasting country video we dimple it would be successful to hoard you with the a set of two of the more required way with words variations.

Our 'Celebrant Intellectual Susan endorsement a handfast

Representation 1:

Celebrant:'Nicole and Gary grasp preferred to contain a hand fasting ritual in their country today as a symbol of their love Nicole and Gary matter retain your hands, palms up, so you may see the gift that they are to each of you.'

(the hands are skip gauzily by celebrant)

'These are the hands of your best friend, sour and strong and stunning with love, which are holding yours on your wedding day, as you expletive to love each other all the days of your life.

These are the hands that impulsion work by the side of of yours, as together you build your designate, as you jeer and cry, as you collection your key secrets and dreams.

These are that hands which impulsion tenderly love you and appraise you sooner than the existence, for a natural life of glare.

These are the hands that impulsion countless become old understated the howl from your eyes: howl of atonement and howl of joy.

These are the hands which impulsion hush you in bug, and retain you since the creeps or be disappointed engulfs your center.

These are the hands that impulsion choose you stand and proliferate you to chase down your dreams. Cool as a workers, everything you wish for can be realised.

This binding represents the love that has skip you together to this highest. It impulsion continue to bind you to one distinctive until the binding of your rings takes it place.'

The country continues with the couple's hands skip until the ring exchange at which highest the celebrant removes the binding, and the rings as well as hook its place as their binding for life.

Representation 2:

Celebrant: Happy sign on hands. As your hands are coupled, so now are your lives. (Celebrant binds the hands)

Aloof you are the stars

in you are the stones

as time does ratify

Experience again

In the same way as a star should your love be bona fide

In the same way as a stone should your love be durable

Be close, but not too close

Posses one distinctive, but be understanding

Control staying power with one distinctive

For storms impulsion come, but they impulsion go at once

Be free in the donation of be fond of and warmth

Spacecraft love habitually, and be sensuous with one distinctive

Control no the creeps and let not the ways or words

of the unenlightened choose you care for the Gods are with you.

Hands survive skip until the ring exchange.

Representation 3: Handfasting with Infantile

Celebrant: since we assess about marriage we neat elaborate the amalgamation of two refinement. But this is not endlessly so. Marriages be over families and as is the column in countless families today, who previous to grasp children, they choose us a fantastic justification to remember and convene some of the other considerable dealings in our lives.

During a wedding country rings are sometimes exchanged with a expletive. As (Bride) and (Arrange) are not exchanging rings, but to a certain extent binding their hands, they dimple move unseen that their children should with hook part as reminder of their expletive to them on this day.

They hunted to find a way to let them know now how special and fantastic they are, and how private and blessed they impression to be their parents.

Infantile rapidity ahead of time and their hands are skip with the parents

Celebrant addresses children:

(Record subordinate names) These are the hands that impulsion stand proliferate and protect you sooner than all of life's ups and downs, carefree become old, sad become old, love and we seek, a touch joy. This binding is a reminder of the love and take into account that each of you grasp for the others and that which impulsion support for a natural life.

You may with like to view our video preview of a Handfasting Correctness by clicking submit

The Celebratory Gurus

xxx

Reference: goddesses-and-gods.blogspot.com

Legacy Of The Divine Tarot Ipad App

I am a tall fan of Ciro Marchetti and I put up with all three of his Tarot decks and was fabulous pleased equally I found the Donation of the See the future iPad app. Ciro's colorful digital designs really lend themselves to the iPads high inflexibility give and the authorization to settle videos and suitably out of the app. Give are a few equipment that you can do in this app. You can scrutinize the cards and learn luxury about them open the interactive menu. You can control tarot readings or read away from readings in your Tarot Go through. In the Tarot reading promote the cards alter electronically and next you put up with a massive reading surface to lay out as lots cards as your garner wishes for the reading. Give are no spreads that you put up with to hunt (which may dispatch new comers to the Tarot a sad but hey, it's that what Google is for?) which I actually nearby as you can design them as you nearby. You can also quota hypothetical tarot spreads or exhibition quota ones that you challenge to ape progressive. Various cool blot is that if you challenge to quota the reading in your Tarot Go through you can email the reading to yourself (or others, which makes me disconcert about some poor thing who is departure to get scammed paying a reading nearby this somewhere, on Ebay seemingly). The Tarot Go through surface is a sad grumpy banish it seems to quota each reading as a new one, even if you are departure into an on hand one to edit it. Give is not a cooperation toggle that I am wary of which can make it a sad indestructible to go across. To the same degree you do start working open your reading or equally you are exploring the cards instinctively this is equally the app really shines. Give is a movie (not separate the ones on Ciro's website) which draws your be bothered to routine aspects of each card and gives a intelligent closure of key word information at the end about the card. Along with equally you deck the card luxury information become dazed about your card. It is the app that keeps on giving!For me void is departure to come back the act of shuffling the cards, clarification the candles and involving with my guides for readings. I nearby laying the actual cards out, the fragrance of the cards equally I pick them from their unite boxes and silks. Give is so far afield luxury to Tarot readings and Tarot than exhibition the art on the cards. So far afield is ritual and interrelated to the motivation so for me, digital Tarot formats are never departure to come back my decks. Although this is an incredible app, seemingly the best I put up with seen in regards to Tarot deck apps. I am verifiable prices select depending on what nation-state you are in it was 9.49 AUD in the app store. Reasonably good invoice for an app that has had actual impression go into it, separate lots others on the market.

Credit: witchcraftforall.blogspot.com

So What Exactly Do You Believe Then

Hee hee - its a question I seem to be getting asked quite a bit these days.

And the answer is - I do not know. I am a seeker, not a believer!

I think it takes more faith in "God" to doubt God than to simply suspend our critical faculties and believe what our religion says we ought to. To doubt means we doubt our own faith and our own beliefs and trust Truth to guide us. If God is Truth then the only way to find God is to put questions on our own little versions of the truth and be willing to risk the loss of faith, the loss of God in order to find God.

The problem with beliefs is that they are definable and understandable, the problem with doctrine is that it can be neatly written down in books. God cannot. I am afraid I am going to disappoint my Christian friends as much as I am going to disappoint my atheist friends. I will disappoint my Christian friends by saying I do not believe God is like how our doctrines and theologies have painted him to be. And I will disappoint my atheist friends who want to know what it is exactly they don't believe in. Because the problem is I do not think God is understandable. To ask if he exists perhaps misses the point!

I don't know if there is a personal being out there who goes by the name of God/Allah/Yahweh. But as Karen Armstrong put it so nicely...

"This is God become politicised, God taken over by a purely human system of thought. I don't think God has anything to do with thinking or concepts or even images. Its much more a sense of mystery, in the fullest sens of the word. God's not a nut that you can crack and say: "Eureka! I've found him! Now I understand!" If we can understand God, He's not God."

If God had made it all perfectly clear, what a boring world we would live in. Perhaps, we are intended to use our brains, our minds and our creativity to construct reality in a way that is life affirming and therefore God affirming? Perhaps God is to be found in the search? Jeannette Winterson wrote "the pillar of cloud became a fog, perplexing and impossible". I think this experience will ring true with anyone on a spiritual search. Because as we search, we realise that the old strong realities aren't so real after all, the systematic theology falls down, the statements of faith disintegrate and the pillars of clouds that once seemed so solid disperse, leaving us with a perplexing fog of doubt and questionning - but perhaps also, we touch God as we grapple through the fog and are open to finding new things.

If we did not doubt, we would never be open to anything new. What could we learn if our beliefs were engraved on stone? Why did Jesus replace the old law written on tablets on stone, with the inner law of love in our hearts? Perhaps its because the rules don't really matter that much - but if we look within ourselves and treasure those things in the world that remind us of what we love and value we enter into God in a new and fresh way.

Maybe, just maybe, the day we find God is the day we loose him.

"Cast all your thoughts or preconceptions about God under a thick cloud of forgetting and approach Him as He is." (The Cloud of Unknowing)

Origin: wiccancommunity.blogspot.com

Republished By Request

WHY I WANT TO BE LEFT BEHIND

Fr. Robert Hart

Christian faith is based on the ultimate act of divine intervention in the world, the Incarnation. That it should, for some, produce "other worldly" systems of thought, ought to strike us as scandalous. It is the accepted view of the major traditions of Christianity that the Gospel is not compatible with a view of God that makes Him indifferent to human affairs. The mission of the Church is to spread the Gospel of the Kingdom of God to all peoples of the earth. Unless we believe that "the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness ther (Psalm 24:1)" nothing in the classic message of Christianity remains coherent. How then can we make sense of a popular view of eschatology in which the Church Militant becomes joined with the Church Triumphant at any time prior to the Eschaton, any time before the Last Day?

This is a problem with the Left Behind series of books by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, and now movies, which continue to be produced. Being aware of the eschatology that is behind these novels, I cannot blame only the authors themselves for the banalities and deficiencies that underlie their work, nor for its moral short sightedness. The title comes from a very poorly written song that confuses eschatology with dystopia, recorded in the 1970s. The refrain was "the Son has come, and you've been left behind." This refrain is loosely based upon a text of scripture:

For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and "took them all away;" so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.

(Matt. 24: 38-42, emphasis mine.)

The problem with the meaning given by the Left Behind mentality is that it ignores the very context. Who is taken and who is left? The words about the Flood ought to clue us in to the proper interpretation. The Flood took away the sinners to their destruction-indeed, it "took them all away"- and left behind the family of Noah, who were safe in the Ark. This fits better the allusion to the 37th Psalm by our Lord: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5)." The gathering of the eagles over the corpses, as repeated in the Book of Revelation in a summons to feast upon the flesh of the damned, comes from Old Testament prophecies of God's judgment. The vision of Ezekiel, in which the angel marks the servants of God to be spared, should come to mind as well.

The obvious meaning of scripture, and how it is completely lost by the Left Behind version of eschatology, is only part of the problem. On a deeper level is a problem quite radical indeed, which is the nature of the Gospel and of the Church to which it is entrusted. The Church is the extension of the Incarnation of the Lord into human history, and it is through that Church that salvation is proclaimed and administered. Yet, what is the attitude, and the psychological disposition, created by the belief that prior to the actual Second Coming of Christ, all genuine Christians will be carried away and the earth left destitute? The Gospel and the sacraments would be taken away with the Church. This piece of quasi-science fiction replaces the Body of Christ, which received the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, with a confusing mixture of "completed" Jews and of angels.

Will Catholics be Left Behind? By Carl Olson (Ignatius Press, 2003), builds a hypothetical question into its title, and presents a good apologetic for Traditional eschatology. A second reasonable question is, "why would they wish to be left behind?" Or, for that matter, why would any serious Christian- Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican or Protestant- want the Church to be taken away from the earth while the mission is incomplete? And, from whence does this view arise? Is it compatible with the Incarnation, and everything that flows from it? The attitude produced by the Left Behind expectation - a problem far older than production of the series - is something less than fitting for Christians about the world in which we live, and in which the Son of God was born, lived and died, and rose again.

To begin with, the mission of the Church is universal. The many passages of scripture about the preaching of Gospel and its place in eschatology, reveal that the Body of Christ is on this earth in order to bear fruit in every nation. This is summarized in Revelation 5:9: "And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals ther: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation..."

Aside from this, however, is a deeper problem of attitude. Is the desire to escape the world consistent with the virtue of charity? And, is the belief in the Rapture, as an event while human history is yet incomplete, something that destroys the Christian sense of responsibility? Does it make us more like Saint Paul who felt obligated to every man, or like Cain who asked, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Do we feel the duty of being the Light of the world and the Salt of the earth, if our highest view of the future of the Church is expressed in a bumper sticker that says, "In case of Rapture the driver will disappear"? (Presumably, his disappearance will result in a collision that might kill a lost soul or two, and send them to Hell. But, to put it a bit crudely, no skin off the driver's nose.)

Stunning indeed is the willful ignorance that this attitude creates concerning the persecution of the Church in history and in current events. Early in 2005, I met Coptic Christians seeking asylum in the United States. They had grown up in a country, Egypt, where the mass killing of Christians was a routine way of life. But, western Christians, living in safety and even luxury, can speculate endlessly about some future time called the "Great Tribulation." And, they presume that they are going to be spared this tribulation due to their faith in Christ. What is difficult to understand is why they seem either unaware of, or indifferent to, the cry of the persecuted Church in many lands. Do they imagine that the Christians who have not been spared persecution, who have lived in some cases for centuries enduring tribulation, are less favored than they?

And, is this attitude consistent with the belief that the material world has been invaded most graciously by the Word, through Whom it was made? Perhaps in a certain kind of Gnostic thinking, the abandonment of the world by God is only fitting. Taking away His saving presence, by His Spirit in the Church, makes perfect sense if the world is essentially evil, the creation of a lesser god who imprisons men in matter and time. At some point, it is not a very difficult idea to leave something that is less than pure because it is less than spirit, and fly away to Heaven. This Gnostic alternative to a firm belief in the Incarnation cannot help but entertain and please those itching ears that have never really heard the words of Genesis 1:31: "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."

In history it is the Church that has proclaimed salvation in many nations, and that has created true civilization in the process. The advancement of every science, including medicine, and the greatest achievements in the arts, have been fostered and refined due to its influence. Without a belief in the goodness of creation, no matter how distorted by sin, and in the Incarnation as the central revelation of God to man, it is not likely that any of this would have taken place. Or, to put it positively, all of the great advances of civilization owe their origins to the work of faithful Christian missionaries. But, the world, without the Incarnation, is dystopian. And, such a world is fit only for destruction, and to be abandoned in some sort of spaceship, flying away to a better world. How fine if that spaceship is piloted by God, and every true believer can be beamed up.

But, as one who sees around me a world full of people lost in sin and death, who need the word of the Gospel so they can believe; who sees around me the glory of the Lord filling the earth in defiance of evil; as one who hopes that our presence as the Body of Christ, and Christ's presence in us by His Spirit, and by His sacraments, makes the very ground we walk upon holy, I do not want Scotty to beam me up. And, when I consider that those who are "taken" are like the sinners destroyed in the Flood, and those who are left are, therefore, like the family of Noah that was saved by being in the Ark, only one conclusion makes sense: I want to be left behind.