Christ is the One, There is no other ; Vatican II—the Spirit

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the liturgical year of the Church, the beginning of our preparation for welcoming the birth of Christ at Christmas, the coming of the Lord to His people to set them free; free from error and from sin.

The theme of Advent is not only the coming of the Lord into the world at Christmas, the nativity, but the two comings-the second for which the first took place.

These are the words we pray in the preface of the Mass through most of Advent: “Now we watch for the day, hoping that the salvation promised us will be ours when Christ our Lord will come again in His glory.”

The salvation promised us is everlasting life and is a result of striving for perfection. Jesus words are clear and uncomplicated. “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For he who would save his life will lose it; but he who loses his life for my sake will find it.” Mt. 16:24. In the first instance is he who pursued his own interests and not God’s.

The Lord’s coming in glory from the words of the preface refers to His coming in glory, with His angels at the last judgment, at the resurrection. We can say that there are two other comings of Christ for each of us personally, that at the particular judgment at the moment of our death where the eternal state of our soul is to be determined, and the coming of Christ abiding with us moment by moment during our earthly striving.

The coming of Jesus at Christmas in his humanity and divinity is just the beginning of the final chapter. God the Father’s plan of salvation history our cooperation with this plan is necessary. We must utilize Christ’s blood shed on the Cross in the form of sanctifying grace in our lives. For the sake of seeing that the salvation promised us will be ours and will be the salvation of others as well through our prayers. Listen to St. Paul’s words in Phil 2:13, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who of his good pleasure works in you both the will and the performance.”

In Isaiah today we hear, “The Mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. Many people shall come and say: Come, let us climb the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob that He may instruct us in His ways and we may walk in His paths.”

Christ’ way is the way of the Cross.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the part on the Creed which speaks of original sin in paragraph 405 it says that “man has suffered the deprivation of original holiness and justice and even after Baptism. he is left weakened and inclined to evil which state summons him to spiritual battle.” Pray that you may not enter into temptation.

Many Catholics will say that for forty years following the Second Vatican council the Church has suffered from a misinterpretation of its documents in a purposeful effort called the Spirit of Vatican II, a willful effort to mislead. Those that oppose this trend are labeled, ridiculed and often times isolated, the impression of them is that they are ignorant, intolerant, judgmental and lacking in charity. When what they look for is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

One of the two constitutions among the 16 Vatican II documents is Lumen Gentium, the dogmatic constitutions on the Church. Chapter V is “The call to holiness” article 41 states this, “The forms and tasks of life are many but holiness is one. That sanctification which is cultivated by all who act under God’s Spirit, and obeying the Father’s voice, adoring God the Father in Spirit and in truth. Follow Christ, poor, humble and cross bearing, that they may deserve to be partakers of His glory. Each one however according to His own gifts and duties must steadfastly advance along the way of a living faith, which arouses hope and works through love.” In article 40 we are reminded, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Mt. 5:48

In PS 24 We read, “Who may go up the mountain of the Lord? Who can stand in His holy place? The clean of hand and pure of heart, they will receive blessings from the Lord, and justice from their saving God. Such are the people that love the Lord, that seek the face of the God of Jacob.”

Aside from the many things that our Catholic people must become reacquainted with, especially children and young people, the spiritual theology by which they may find spiritual Christian development is essential.

By means of this so called Spirit of Vatican II, we have lost the sense of each of us, as baptized, being members of Christ’s mystical body, relying on Him as our head and depending on His grace in all our needs and praying to our Mother Mary who is the mediator of all grace. Instead we have taken on the identity to be found in that phrase “The people of God” in which presents as a people of faith which is led by the Holy Spirit so that each person makes up his own mind. How we will live and what we will believe in so doing a supra magisterium has been set in opposition to the true Magisterium over seen by the Holy Father and the bishops in union with Him. Chapter III of Lumen Gentium is titled “The Church is hierarchical” It is therefore not a democracy.

The result of this glacial moment away from tradition has weakened the Church so that she has become sycophantic and has taken on the more of the secular world and is timid and afraid to speak the truth, this to the everlasting harm in many cases to souls.

The one purpose of the existence of the church and the mandate given to Christ by His heavenly Father is to save souls. His Kingdom is not in the people of God, but with each person made in the image of God in the silence of his or her own immortal soul.

This concept is a new form of pelagianism.

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches the man’s final beatitude in glory depends on two conditions: The total perfection of the individual and a knowledge of the good possessed in glory. The first condition is verified as soon as the just soul reaches heaven, for nothing imperfect or stained can enter into glory.

Salvation is achieved by all those who die in the state of sanctifying grace, even in a minimal degree, but this does not mean that all the souls of the just enter immediately into the beatitude of glory.

This is explicitly defined by the Church that those who die in the state of grace and are in no need of further purification will enter glory immediately after death. But those who still need to be purified will enter heaven only when their purification is completed. That need is the satisfaction of the temporal punishment due to sins even though for given in the confessional.

Therefore, today we begin our individual preparation so as to be ready to greet the Lord Jesus when He comes to us at Christmas, hoping that the salvation promised us will be ours when Christ our Lord will come again in His Glory. In these days of Advent, it would be beneficial for us to re-read Mt: 5, 6, 7. The Sermon on the Mount paying particular attention to Ch. 7 vs. 26~29 wherein Jesus says “And everyone who hears these my words and does not act upon them, shall be likened to a foolish man who built his house on sand, and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell and was utterly ruined.”

Catholics in the United States are members of the Roman Rite of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church under the headship of Peter. We share the 2000 year old traditions and teaching of the Patristic Fathers. The legacy of 21 ecumenical councils the sacred words of all mighty God and the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross in the holy Mass which restored us to God’s friendship and which provides us through His Church with the sanctifying grace we need to battle and to strive for perfection; for the holiness we need to reach the beatific vision.

In Lumen Gentium Chapter 11, “The people of God” article 14 says this, “The one Christ is mediator and the way of salvation. He is present to us in His body which is the Church. He Himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism. and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they cannot be saved who knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ. World refuse to enter it, or to remain in it.”

As we begin this Advent season, let us be filled with faith, hope and love in the anticipation of the two comings of Christ.

“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, For it is God, who of His good pleasure works in you both the will and the performance.”