The new age religion presents “a veneer of christianity…spirituality without sacrifice, without authority, without the cross!

http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/438/Gnosticism__New_Age__DaVinci_Code.html

Both the New Age movement and the The Da Vinci Code seek spirituality without sacrifice, without authority, without the cross.  They follow ancient Gnosticism in preserving a veneer of Christianity while emptying it of its heart and soul. 

 

A Syncretism of Christ and the anti-christ!

Irenaeus the Gnostic-buster: Irenaeus just used common sense

Irenaeus the Gnostic-busterAs strange as this whole religious system may seem to us today, it swept the ancient world and posed a great threat to the Church.  A bishop from Lyons (in modern-day France) named Irenaeus decided that someone had to take them on.  And so he wrote a lengthy work called Against the Knowledge Falsely So-Called (a.k.a. Against Heresies) that did more than expose the ridiculous and illogical doctrine of the Gnostics.  As an antidote to the poison of the heretics, Irenaeus offered a full exposition of the truth of the gospel.                                                                                                                                                First of all, he had to deal with the issue of legitimacy.  How are we supposed to know what Jesus truly taught and who he really was?  Who is to say that the Gnostic Jesus is not the original one? To the Gnostic argument of a secret tradition, Irenaeus did not respond with a sola scriptura argument.  He didn’t say “forget tradition–only Scripture is infallible.”  That wouldn’t have worked since it was hotly contested which gospels were the authentic ones.  Rather, Irenaeus just used common sense.  If Jesus had secret, deeper knowledge to pass down, wouldn’t he have entrusted it to the twelve confidants called apostles whom he personally selected?  And towards the end of their lives, would not these have entrusted these secrets to their successors, and so on?.  Yet, protests  Irenaeus around the year 185AD, the Catholic bishops of apostolic cities such as Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome, can all trace back their lineage in a continual unbroken line to the apostles.  Since they know nothing of the silly doctrines of the Gnostics, it proves that these doctrines did not come from Jesus and his followers.  And to give one example of how clearly each bishop knew his pedigree, he gives the example of the Roman Church and traces the pope of his day all the way back to Peter, naming every Pope in between. This doctrine of apostolic succession of bishops makes clear which Scriptures were authentic – namely, those continuously read in the churches founded by the apostles.  And it makes clear where the authentic Christian tradition is to be found –it is the tradition guarded by those churches, taught by the apostles’ successors. Having exposed Gnostic nonsense and established the legitimacy of the Catholic tradition, Irenaeus goes on to preach the true teaching of a material world that is a blessing, not a curse, a savior who truly becomes one of us, dies for us, and continues to nourish us through sacraments, material realities that become transmitters of holiness, vehicles for God’s saving power. So what happens to Gnosticism after  Irenaeus’ blistering attack?  Not long after his book is written, Gnosticism fades out of the picture .  When darkness is exposed, it vanishes, swallowed up by the light.  Though this esoteric religion initially appealed to a generation thirsty for spiritual life, it failed to satisfy. So the Gnostic gospels were lost, buried under the sands of time.  The only reason that we have the Gospel of Thomas today is because the sand that entombed it was the arid sand of Egypt, which is too dry for the bacteria that causes decay.  In 1946 a famous archeological dig unearthed a copy of this document that confirms Irenaeus’ description of ancient Gnosticism.   

What is Gnosticism? What do Christian Gnostics believe?

    http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/438/Gnosticism__New_Age__DaVinci_Code.html 

A Diverse Movement             In the second century, the Roman Empire had grown tired.  Under the Emperor Trajan (d.117AD) the empire had reached its greatest territorial extent.  For over a hundred years the Pax Romana had reigned over the Mediterranean world, a peace kept in place by the unrivaled power of the Roman military machine.  But the empire was far from its republican roots and republican virtues.  Sensuality and materialism were the order of the day.  Of course, no one took the religion of Jupiter, Juno, and the Vestal Virgins very seriously.  Worship of the emperor and the Roman gods was a matter of civic virtue, not of true religious devotion.  Affluence and corruption led to boredom and restlessness.In such an environment, people often look to far off, exotic lands for something new and exciting.  So it is no wonder that ideas from Persia, married to a mish mash of ideas drawn from Greek philosophy, magic, and other exotic sects, coalesced into a something that came to be known as “Gnosticism.”  Gnosticism was not a tightly organized religion, but rather a general way of thinking that characterized a wide variety of sects following different leaders and often disagreeing sharply on several points..The important thing here, though, is not what they disagreed about or even who they got their ideas from.  What we want to understand is the essence of Gnosticism, the basic ideas that people called Gnostics held in common. 

Christian Gnostics?

Some, hearing the Christian message that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” supposed that Jesus was the heavenly messenger bringing salvation through hidden knowledge.  To these, of course, the stories of Jesus’ birth and death could not be right.  No true heavenly being would ever defile himself with matter, for matter and spirit were utterly opposed.  So he just appeared to be human.   And the story about Golgotha was either left out entirely, or was said to be based on mistaken identity.  Certainly the bearer of heavenly revelation had no body and therefore couldn’t have died.

 Salvation was not, after all, accomplished through sacrifice, but through knowledge.

                So how did these folks deal with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?  Some tossed out all Gospels save one, regarding the others as forgeries.  For Marcion, who was not a thorough Gnostic but held many of their ideas, the Gospel of Luke minus the infancy narratives was the only gospel.  Others liked the view of Jesus as the wandering guru who uttered  profound discourses full of riddles, and John seemed to fit the bill.  Others championed  gospels by other names, such as the Gospel of Thomas.

But all the so-called Christian Gnostics had one thing in common: theirs was a Christianity without the cross.  The crucifixion was either explained away or, in the case of the Gospel of Thomas, left out of the story.  If salvation was by knowledge, why did they need a story at all? All that was needed was a collection of parables and sayings.  And that’s exactly what we find in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.

So what kind of life-style should the true Gnostic lead?  Here is where the various sects diverged a bit.  They all agreed that the body was of no consequence.  Some said, therefore, we must deny it as much as possible, even starve it.  Their ideal was an ascetic life-style of severe fasting from food and sex. 

Others drew the opposite conclusion.  Since the body is just a hunk of meat that has no relationship to the spiritual life, what we do with the body simply does not matter.  That means there is no law–anything goes.  So some Gnostic sects celebrated this license through ritual orgies.  It would appear that the Nicolatians, condemned in the book of Revelation, were an early form of such a sect.(Rev 2:6, 14).

                But how could the Gnostics claim that their vision of Jesus was the true one?  Simple.  Jesus realized that most couldn’t take his true teaching, so he secretly confided it to a few chosen confidants.  And these passed on this secret tradition to those who were worthy of it, from generation to generation.

New Age thinking and the heresy of Gnosticism: Christ without the Cross!

When the lie replaces Truth and falsehood infiltrates the sacred space that is God’s province, heresy replaces sacred teaching and doctrine and leads many into the hands of the father of lies. 

“Qoheleth said it well: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.” Eccl 1:9. 

The New Age movement imports exotic religious ideas from the East into middle class America. A best-selling novel paints a picture of Jesus far different than what we read in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, based on the authority of a secret tradition….The New Age  is really not so new… back quite far. . . to the Second Century in fact. . . to a loose but very widespread religious movement in the ancient world called Gnosticism.”                    Dr. Marcellino D’Ambrosio     http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com

Good Friday “The Church is fashioned from the blood and water flowing from Christ’s side just as God fashioned Eve from Adam’s side.

The Blood and Water from His Side

Liturgy of the Hours     Office of Readings   St. John Chrysostom 

Early Church Father and Doctor of the Church This reading is an excerpt of The Catecheses (Cat. 3, 13-19; SC 50, 174-177) by St. John Chrysostom, one of the greatest Early Church Fathers of the 5th Century.  It is used in the Roman Church’s Office of Readings for Good Friday with the accompanying biblical reading of Hebrews 9: 11-28 and is a powerful meditation on the passion.  But it also tells us much about the connection between the passion and the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist which flow from the paschal mystery and connect us to its saving power.

If we wish to understand the power of Christ’s blood, we should go back to the ancient account of its prefiguration in Egypt. “Sacrifice a lamb without blemish”, commandedMoses, “and sprinkle its blood on your doors”. If we were to ask him what he meant, and how the blood of an irrational beast could possibly save men endowed with reason, his answer would be that the saving power lies not in the blood itself, but in the fact that it is a sign of the Lord’s blood.  In those days, when the destroying angel saw the blood on the doors he did not dare to enter, so how much less will the devil approach now when he sees, not that figurative blood on the doors, but the true blood on the lips of believers, thedoors of the temple of Christ.   If you desire further proof of the power of this blood, remember where it came from, how it ran down from the cross, flowing from the Master’s side. The gospel records that when Christ was dead, but still hung on the cross, a soldier came and pierced his side with a lance and immediately there poured out water andblood. Now the water was a symbol of baptism and the blood, of the holy eucharist. The soldier pierced the Lord’s side, he breached the wall of the sacred temple, and I have found the treasure and made it my own. So also with the lamb: the Jews sacrificed the victim and I have been saved by it.       “There flowed from his side water and blood”. Beloved, do not pass over this mystery without thought; it has yet another hidden meaning, which I will explain to you. I said that water and blood symbolized baptism and the holy Eucharist.  From these two sacraments the Church is born: from baptism, “the cleansing water that gives rebirth and renewal through the Holy Spirit”, and from the holy Eucharist. Since the symbols of baptism and the Eucharist flowed from his side, it was from his side that Christ fashioned the Church, as he had fashioned Eve from the side of Adam Moses gives a hint of this when he tells the story of the first man and makes him exclaim: “Bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh!”  As God then took a rib from Adam’s side to fashion a woman, so Christ has given us blood and water from his side to fashion the Church. God took the rib whenAdam was in a deep sleep, and in the same way Christ gave us the blood andthe water after his own death. Do you understand, then, how Christ has united his bride to himself and what food he gives us all to eat? By one and the same food we are both brought into being and nourished. As a woman nourishes her child with her own blood and milk, so does Christ unceasingly nourish with his own blood those to whom he himself has given life. 

   St. John Chrysostom was a monk who was ordained a priest and ultimately, against his will, selected as Patriarch Archbishop of Constantinople.  His call to repentance and moral reform won him the enmity of the nominally Christian Empress who got him deposed on trumped-up charges and exiled.  But his preaching inspired the hearts of the people of Constantinople and won him the title “Chrysostom” meaning golden-mouthed.  St. John Chrysostom, who died under the harsh conditions of his exile in 407, will always be remembered as one of the greatest of the Early Church Fathers and one of the greatest preachers of all time.  His beautiful but always practical bible teaching has earned him the title “Doctor of the Church.”    

“The Daffodil Principle” taken from Celebration! by Jaroldeen Edwards

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Principles of Economics in God’s Kingdom

http://www.atthewell.com/daffodils/

 The story of “The Daffodil Principle” originally appeared nearly ten years ago in Jaroldeen Edwards’ book Celebration! It is now available for the first time as an illustrated gift book, with artwork by Anne Marie Oborn.  Every year, high in the San Bernardino mountain range of Southern California, five acres of beautiful daffodils burst into bloom. Amazingly, this special spot, known as “The Daffodil Garden,” was planted by one person, Gene Bauer, one bulb at a time, beginning in 1958. The Willow Fire of 1999 destroyed the Bauer’s A-frame home, its surrounding shady trees and garden. Miraculously, the daffodil bulbs were not damaged.

Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, “Mother, you must come to see the daffodils before they are over.” I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead “I will come next Tuesday”, I promised a little reluctantly on her third call.

Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and reluctantly I drove there. When I finally walked into Carolyn’s house I was welcomed by the joyful sounds of happy children. I delightedly hugged and greeted my grandchildren.

“Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! The road is invisible in these clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and these children that I want to see badly enough to drive another inch!”

My daughter smiled calmly and said, “We drive in this all the time, Mother.” “Well, you won’t get me back on the road until it clears, and then I’m heading for home!” I assured her.

“But first we’re going to see the daffodils. It’s just a few blocks,” Carolyn said. “I’ll drive. I’m used to this.”

“Carolyn,” I said sternly, “please turn around.” “It’s all right, Mother, I promise. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience.”

After about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small gravel road and I saw a small church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand lettered sign with an arrow that read, ” Daffodil Garden .” We got out of the car, each took a child’s hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path. Then, as we turned a corner, I looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most glorious sight.

It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it over the mountain peak and its surrounding slopes. There were five acres of flowers.

“Who did this?” I asked Carolyn. “Just one woman,” Carolyn answered. “She lives on the property. That’s her home.” Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A -frame house, small and modestly sitting in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house.

On the patio, we saw a poster. “Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking”, was the headline. The first answer was a simple one. “50,000 bulbs,” it read. The second answer was, “One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet, and one brain.” The third answer was, “Began in 1958.”

For me, that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than forty years before, had begun, one bulb at a time, to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop. Planting one bulb at a time, year after year, this unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived. One day at a time, she had created something of extraordinary magnificence, beauty, and inspiration. The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principles of celebration.

That is, learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time–often just one step at time–and learning to love the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things.

“It makes me sad in a way,” I admitted to Carolyn. “What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty years ago and had worked away at it ‘one bulb at a time’ through all those years? Just think what I might have been able to achieve!”

My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way. “Start tomorrow,” she said.

She was right. It’s so pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson of celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only ask, “How can I put this to use today?”

Use the Daffodil Principle. Stop waiting….Until your car or home is paid off…Until your kids leave the house…Until you finish school..Until you organize the garage…Until you clean off your desk…Until you lose 10 lbs…Until you get married… Until you have kids…Until the kids go to school…Until you retire…Until summer…spring, winter…or fall.

Plant Your Bulbs TODAY!

The Daffodil Principle and the Daffodil Prayer

The “Daffodil Principle” really touched my heart. 

Prayer for   Tuesday, March 4, 2008.  (4th week of lent)  

    May the Spirit of the Living God, the Lord and giver of Life, pour His sweet anointing into the cup of your heart, fill us to overflowing with the oil of joy as we share at the Eucharistic Table of the Lord.  When we have had our fill, may we follow God’s lead to the place which He has chosen for us, the one with our name inscribed in GOLD.  Once we have taken our place, I pray that the Holy Spirit will unwrap His gifts deep within us so that we may give GLORY to God the Father as we enter more deeply into the ongoing celebration of the Incarnation of His dearly Beloved Son.  From all eternity, our Father God has longed to be with to be with us, his beloved children in whom He delights. There are a total of seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit:                         Wisdom…Understanding…

Counsel… Knowledge…Piety…Fear of the Lord… Fortitude (or courage)            

           In the silence of our hearts, we may even hear God the Father whispering how He delights in us as he shares the desires of His heart which is to bring us into the fullness of His Blessing .

Fruits of the Holy Spirit:       Charity           Joy        Peace      Patience          Benignity    Goodness   Long-suffering     Mildness         Faith      Modesty      Continency     Chastity

 Check out the following blogs if you’d like to read more.

http://theotokoshandmaids.wordpress.com/wp-admin/index.php

http://theotokoslourdes.wordpress.com/wp-admin/index.php

In for a penny, in for a pound!

Believe! Hope! Love!

 Believe!   Believe!  Believe!        Hope!  Hope!  Hope!         Love!  Love!  Love! 

Faith invites God to plant miracles in the soil of our life. 

Hope nourishes and nurtures them. 

Love sustains them. 

Holy Spirit Freedom 

       In my prayer time yesterday, I was called to re-read words written during a day of retreat more 2 years ago.  (I include them below.)  When I receive words such as these when I pray, I take them very much to heart.  They are like water pouring into a dry well.  They accomplish many things within me.  They  comfort, enlighten, explain, guide, strengthen, reveal.    The words I share with you today fall into this category.  Although I received them in September 2005, they are fresh, they bless and call forth. 

“Let it begin with me.”

      In order for my prayers to be answered, to “restore what the locusts had eaten” in the community of our family, I needed to begin with the only person I am called to change, me.   I needed to offer my heart with no holds barred and no strings attached.  I was challenged to enter places deep within my heart that had never seen the light of day and which I had learned to protect from being exposed throughout my whole life.  

             The time “to come clean” had arrived, my moment of Truth.  No room for cowards here.  The loneliness, desolation and despair, dressed up in designer fashion and fine jewelry, bottled up by spirits of darkness and decay and fed by addiction to behaviors that starve and leave you bereft were being revealed for what they were.  The only way that my damaged core was going to get healed was to remove the veil of secrecy that kept it from being seen, bring it into the light of day, and offer my broken and battered true self to the One who became Broken and Batterd for me on the Cross.

Reverse the curse—don’t rehearse it!

       If I wanted things to change, I needed to take ownership and responsibility for my actions.  I needed to acknowledge what had really happened in my lifetime, not default into the universe of denial.    I needed Courage and lots of it. The only place to find this Courage was beyond personal obstacles and architected horizons .  The past 12 years of my life have been the most challenging of my life and the most fruitful.  They called me to step out of the comfort zone and to give up the ghost.   Our family is on its way to becoming a community (in the true sense of the word) of people growing in love for one another.   No matter what!      Alleluia!  

     .    

                                                             December 27, 2005

A member of the Christ the King retreat team described these wrods as  “the prophecy we received through Mary Denise in September, 2005… a call to community. “Friday, September 23, 2005              Today the Lord calls us to come together to join our hearts so they will form one heart, like the solitary heart of our dear Blessed Mother when the angel Gabriel was sent to her by God, the Father.  Her heart lived for God alone. Our hearts were created to do the same.    Just like 2000 years ago, we children of God, Our Father, are being asked to receive the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the very Word and Image of the Father, into our individual hearts and then submit to merging our hearts to form a seamless womb in which His Mystical Body can continue to be formed and delivered through our thoughts words and actions.             In the past, our prayer time and ministry with each other was personal, individual, illuminating, and healing.  Our time together called forth many of our Charismatic gifts and were a source of great blessing. We came together collectively to minister to each other individually.            My sense is that the Lord is asking us to offer our “single” hearts to become ONE with His heart and one with each other.  It is this Union of hearts that He will fill to overflowing with Himself.  Each of us will receive simultaneously the full portion for which our individual hearts hunger.  We all will be changed   in as many different ways as there are different hearts and souls among us, as well as differences that exist within us.                Today we are being asked to TRUST Him.   He invites us to surrender our desires, expectations, wants, wills and memories of all that happened in the PAST. He calls us to co-create with Him today, and to live in the present.  He promises that we will not be disappointed.  In fact, we will experience the dance of a lifetime and fall head over heels in love with Him like never before.  We will experience His union with us to our depths which will be broad and expansive because of our MANY hearts becoming ONE.  We will all share in what happens to each one of us though the power of the Holy Spirit.   1/27/2007       It’s like the ongoing miracles of the Multiplication of the loaves and fishes and the Marriage Feast of Cana all at the same time.  He provides for our needs and changes our human spirits into consecrated wine.

Faith enlightens the Intellect, Hope heals the Memory and Love forms the Will