Chapter 8 - A, The Paradox between 

Either Dire Suffering Existence or Salvation  

Balik Sa Panginoon: Turn Our Ways Back to the Lord

Balik Sa Panginoon (Back With God) 

Luke 4:16-21

Jesus went back to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as usual he went to the meeting place on the Sabbath. When he stood up to read from the Scriptures, he was given the book of Isaiah the prophet. He opened it and read,

"The Lord's Spirit has come to me, because he has chosen me to tell the good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners, to give sight to the blind, to free everyone who suffers, and to say, THIS IS THE YEAR THE LORD HAS CHOSEN."

Jesus closed the book, then handed it back to the man in charge and sat down. Everyone in the meeting place looked straight at Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, "What you have just heard me read has come true today."

The Paradoxical Face/Coin of Suffering, Dire Existence or Salvation!

Suffering as the Conflict between Human Disorder and the flipped-up “Lamb-like Living on Earth

Meditation Chapter Eight: Not to Opt for Sin, but to Choose to be on God’s side – choose to live with Profound Peace of the Heart  

(Combined “Corollary Chapter 8-A” & “Chapter 9 On Sinfulness and the Kingdom of the World”) 

Part One

In the beginning when God created man, man lived a life God gave him which was         already all the other things of creation were good. And Adam and Eve surely saw they had a very good deal from God for themselves and their would-be off-springs. Their life was practically an absolute bounty! As God's chief creatures on earth, they were well endowed with everything they would need and want as human beings. But because they owed their creation from God they were limited by one condition of God, a condition that God emphatically told them shall greatly displease Him if broken. They could absolutely comply with the condition; and it was by no means depriving them their complete satisfaction and happiness in the life God had given them. Their existence was called a Paradise. They were not to get sick; they were incapable of worrying about any necessary provisions or wants'; and they were not to die! These spell out what might be our bottom-line definition of earthly living in any place at any later time of history! We tend to hear, and think, what people say would make them happy and content in life: "If only I have all the money in the world that I need!" "If only I'll never get sick!" "If only I have the most beautiful/most handsome/strongest mate in life!" And the first human beings had all these needs given them, and met with! Indeed, they got it made!

But they failed to obey the one condition asked of them by God; and so God punished them and took away from them the "Godly life they were living, were cast out of that paradisiacal Eden habitation, and were banished to living the imperfect living separated from God, i.e. separate from the goodwill and graces of God.

Ironically, instead, what has befallen them and their off-springs were the human fate of hardships, conflicts, and suffering. This negative character of life on earth is a day-to-day and moment-to-moment story of human existence about which we have elaborated in our Salvation Mission Series.

How only appropriate that human beings suffer on account of their sinfulness. As God, Jesus is above suffering while we as mere creatures are necessarily involved with suffering. Since the fall of our first parents, we, or all their offspring have to suffer anyway. It has become our fact of life. Whether we like it or not, after our first parents’ fall, we have to suffer in life! 

In accounting for the sins of men and women of this age, and as a matter of fact, of every age we dwelt a little more lengthily on this topic of sin. We have pointed out how when sinfulness came it overcame the lives of men from the time of Adam and Eve throughout all generations up to their last would-be- descendants before the End-Time. We have, in the other sections of this series, discussed this tragedy of the "original sin" upon mankind, the account about the very first offense of man against God: Adam & Eve’s disobedience of God. It is this curse of "original sin" upon mankind which is the root of primordial conflicts within and throughout existence and world/human realities

It was on account of the Devil that our first parents got into the mess of the "original sin"; the Devil was directly influential at getting Adam and Eve fall away from the goodwill of God. Consequently, as all descendants of Adam and Eve inherited the "original sin", continuously, thus, the Devil and all its demons are again at work messing up all human beings born from Adam and Eve. As repeatedly referred to in different chapters of our Salvation Series man or human life has become flawed or made corruptible, both in the physical and psychological/spiritual sense. It was this characteristic of human nature which St. Paul often called man’s life of the flesh. The same reason why he himself confessed of his personal weakness: how no matter how he resisted against it this flawed characteristic of the human nature shamed himself for his natural inability to overcome it; (saved by the grace of God). This is thus, the same ordeal, handicap, or/and death state and predicament each man and human is encumbered with from generations to generations. Prior to baptism all men or all descendants of Adam and Eve all over the world and throughout the entire human temporal existence were, are, and will be beset by this predicament. All of mankind from the beginning of human history until the End-Time is dead spiritually until they are born again in spirit and in water per baptism into the life of Christ. St. Paul preaches about this again and again in his many Epistles. He belabors on and on this antithetical, even contradictory relationship between living in the flesh versus the living in the Spirit, which he also calls living in the life of grace. (All our other chapters in this Salvation Series are inter-related elaboration/explanation about the life of the Spirit or about the life of grace.) In this chapter, and particularly at this juncture of this chapter we are belaboring to expound on the meaning and the real experiencing of and by man of the life of the flesh.

With unbelievers and non-believers, this is exactly no other than the living in sinfulness or in sin, which is the main topic of Chapter Thirteen, a reference to the City of the World, i.e. City of Sinners. Indeed, without grace, or without our being in the state of sanctifying grace, we are dead spiritually. In other words, if we are without grace, then we are WITH sin. Either we are alive in grace or are dead in sin. (It is on account of this dire reality that it is scary and horrible to die unless we are duly receiving of sanctifying grace. What a terrible moment to be at the moment of our death unprepared without grace inside of us!

Like the many other examples, which we try to illustrate in Chapter Thirteen, and the many more which we even much more graphically stipulated here and on the other 9th Chapters, they are truly but a short list of the seemingly endless prevalent images of life shortcomings human ordeals sufferings, all on account of the sin infected living in this world.  Just picture multi million men and women behaving any second according by their 'weak flesh'; and presto there add those further countless acts of people offenses against one another. 

On the other hand, off hand, the real consolation here for the believers is the grace of faith to have the assurance of the praise-worthy fact that along or together with them, and through the grace power of Jesus, the God-man, human suffering is borne and is truly shared by him precisely as part and parcel of God’s Plan in saving man. This topic has been tackled on in the other chapters of my Salvation Mission Series, or in another venue. But, to repeat what we have stated previously, indeed, directly or indirectly, our examples of suffering are results and manifestations of our sinful nature. And, when the suffering is indeed directly the result of a sinful act like aids, gonorrhea, incarceration or any trouble with the law, most abortions, criminal convictions due to falsification of documents, stealing and robbery, assault and abuse of someone, or any other criminal act, then the suffering is even more painful. The individual is pained by both the punishment and the guilt of the act. And indeed, oftentimes, our suffering is the result of our own doing, whether individually or collectively. At other times, they are caused directly by our fellow human beings even if without any fault of ours. And yet during many other times suffering is caused simply by our being members of the blemished and turned-imperfect creations: the predicament of a thousand-fold of human shortcomings. Plain and simple, thus, we are imperfect beings; and our world is an imperfect world. Nothing will seem to be right ever; and nothing will seem to be enough ever. We just have to suffer having to put up with this human predicament.

In the Salvation Mission Series, on the one hand, we have described suffering as this "fundamental phenomenon of brokenness" either within the person or between persons. Through those examples we could decipher the individuals’ experiencing of being cut inside them – whether physically or emotionally, of being torn apart from someone or others, again spatially or emotionally or culturally, and/or of any other similar experience of the destroying of individuals and communities or inter-relations on account of, along with other human shortcomings, natural selfish oppositions or irreconcilable differences. We say an individual suffers when certain parts of his body breaks up, e.g. like bruises, and wounds, or like a broken heart as in hurt or injured feelings. Moreover, individuals suffer when between each other some separateness exists, or conflicts take place. Thus, we could generally denote suffering as human conflicts within man himself, or conflicts with others. Within oneself man is always burdened by fears, worries, and uncertainties that always clouded and foreshadow man’s day to day living notwithstanding any amount of caution and diligent efforts about dealing with them. Then as regards his relations with others, every individual has no guarantee he won’t be betrayed by somebody no matter if he be his/her "best friend" or his/her closest blood relation. The individual selfish interest will always dictate an individual’s bottom-line behaving with respect to others. How sad it is to experience the moment when a promise is broken, or our trust betrayed!

But like we state, from its fundamental Scriptural aspect human suffering is a revelation account related to the "serpent’s"/the devil’s biting of Jesus’ heel, and consequently of each believer’s heel thus resulting in a damage inflicted by evil upon Jesus and upon mankind. We call this both the phenomenon and the mystery of human suffering and Christian-human sacrificing. This is the main brunt of discussion on part 1 of the Chapters on Suffering. In the previous earlier chapters, we put in context how it all began: both sin and the devil are getting into the mix of human and earthly existence. We refer to it as the fall experience and fate of Adam & Eve along with their entire descendant human race. (For purposes of faith we are, however, to bear in mind throughout this chapter discussion of  God’s gratuitous mercy, whereby it has been permitted by Divine destiny how the serpent/devil was to have bitten Christ and all Christians in order that with the "bite’s" death effect upon Christ and the Christians, Jesus Christ and believing Christians are able to manifest Christ’s and the Christians’ victory over that "death-experience" with Christ’s resurrection, and the Christians’ re-birth into the new life in Christ, including their promised physical resurrection during Jesus’ Second Coming.) But to place all of these in context, this serpent’s bite consisted initially in the devil’s successful tempting of Adam & Eve, and Adam & Eve’s consenting to the temptation, which led to their losing their beginning life of grace, divine life, given them in Eden upon creation, and to the consequential banishment into Earth’s sin-tainted natural/human existing, i.e. the total earthly-human predicament of conflicts & suffering. By temporal order Adam & Eve’s conniving with the devil took place first; yet per eternity, the Lord’s being "bitten by the serpent", i.e. Christ’s being ordained to be assaulted by both the devil’s act of tempting of Adam & Eve and our parents’ act of consenting to the devil’s temptation, has been all along pre visited, preordained, and predestined by God’s forgiving love and mercy to have to take place. God knew in all eternity how certain bad Angels would have rebelled, and would have tempted Adam & Eve, and would have seen Adam & Eve yielding to the devil’s temptation. Thus, by God’s omniscient nature, he has known it would take his having to send a Savior to earth to have to save Adam & Eve and their offspring from their having disobeyed him during their initial life of blessedness in Paradise, which necessitated his Divine Wisdom and Divine Loving Mercy to have to provide for mankind a new Divine Plan for union with him via the Son of God’s Incarnation and Redemption of mankind. Hence, the story of this Savior having to suffer and his letting man to suffer with him both as his act of ransoming of man, and as man’s act of retribution for their own sins. Nevertheless, it has been the suffering that, to repeat, would integrally spell out and lead to their salvation in Christ.  This is the paradox of human suffering in Christ. On the one hand, human suffering embraced and borne per the redemptive merit of Christ is the mark of and the condition to our getting saved by Christ; yet on the other hand; human suffering will continue to characterize interval moments of human existence until before its ultimate permanent riddance in the End-Times.  Christ's resurrection gained for man the inner victory over the choice of sin; yet it does not transform earthly existence yet back to its paradisiacal former condition, nor does it bring on yet Christ's promised New-Earth and New-Heaven human destiny.  This will be for later upon Judgment Times, upon the conclusion of saved mankind's pilgrim living on earth.   

Nonetheless and sadly for the unbelievers, their tragic fate to suffer has not any salvific value whatsoever. By their choice, it remains their deal that conflicts of all varieties and with all levels of anguish and pain come across them exactly for what they are: nothing less than the negative non-liberating brokenness, i.e., actually destructive meaningless and value-less agonizing and hurting suffering. The fact is – it is not uncommon among unbelievers/non-believers to commit suicides. Persisting rejecting of God, namely a living that neither refuses to abdicate a public lifestyle of sin, nor acknowledges need for repentance of their sins cast these souls in the cage of darkness, as they find themselves more and more helpless & miserable captives of evil and by all its working. Indeed, "The wages of sin is death", says the Scripture. Like we have discussed in Chapter 4, the ‘un-holy’ living that denies the truth of Jesus Christ and the voluntary disavowing of the truth has got un-believers stuck in un-stopped entanglements with the manacles of evil forces. (In effect, their human activities, in themselves, create and generate all forms and shades of human and social conflicts & damages, i.e. our topic of discussion here). Thus, their abandoning of the truth prevents them from being freed by the truth. Consequentially, for their continuing embracing of sins they heap life troubles and wasted living upon themselves. And under such conditions, they are only become left to their own helpless element. Under the circumstances, they easily turn self-described cynics or pessimists, while stuck and trapped in their unrepentant ways. And for being completely blinded by the deceptions and allurements of evil, they could not care less if they actually cohort with the Devil himself. And it is, truly horrific the most heinous deeds they can be capable of committing, the evil deeds that could cause tremendous wrongs and unhappiness around others but especially upon themselves. Paradoxically and unfortunately, they are the villains making our living on this world even more "a valley of tears". They are often instrumental at creating the unpleasant circumstances in our life whether at work, at play, and even within supposedly familial surroundings.

Really and truly the peace of God surely cannot rest upon such individuals. And under such particularly devil manipulated human environments without the peace of God, there is only turmoil and fear.

But with our reference to Christian suffering as the paradoxical salvation necessity, ultimately for our own good, with respect to this holy dimension, there’s the necessary real act of suffering: the act, or the many, many acts of self-denial: that hardest thing for a man to accept and to do, i.e. to completely abandon his will to God, and thereby deny himself.  For this is the ultimate call of God to every human being, this is again that toughest act for every human being to bear. Indeed, Christ spoke of self-denial in the same breath with man's carrying of his cross. Really and truly, self-denial is initially where every man begins to carry his cross, and ultimately where he/she crucifies himself/herself. In many instances of real life, self-denial often involves the act of self-denial in relation to other people that come along his/her way. But it is his decision to completely surrender of himself/herself to the will of God in relation to others that he gets to love God, and be in union with God. This sense of suffering thus is fundamentally the main task and work of every human being all through his/her life. And it is in this sense that the act of suffering is and will be a recurring activity in any human spiritual life. It is clearly an instrument of penance, cleansing, purification, and sanctification for a human being on his track to God and salvation.

Now, some simplistic recapping on the evil behind human suffering.

Number One.

We have discussed about evil and sinfulness in general and their universal manifestations in human lives.

Number Two.

The referencing to the great sins committed by individuals, or people against other people, as well as the sins easily people turn to commit by themselves. These on account of man’s separation from God whether from the point of view of "having", "deeds", or "by what they are, being a man" ALL as in state of separation from God.

Number Three.

Universal effects of this universal separation or disunity with God: the separation between men, including the disorientation between men, and disorder or disunity between men. One phenomenon of human psychosis: physical shame as evidenced and referred in Genesis: human embarrassment about nakedness — implying human "alienation" between each other or the state of separateness between men, e.g. we are ashamed or afraid of being totally exposed to others whether for our looks, our errors or shortcomings, poverty, stupidity, etc..

These also translate in terms of our overall differences and strangeness to each other. The dilemma of marital unity, of sex, of race, culture, of government, etc... Bottom-line, every manner of interrelation or non-interrelating between human beings attest to the struggle in all human relationships or inter-personal dealing. Beginning from essential marriage hurdles, going into all kinds of oppositions and conflicts between two individuals or more man bear witness to the difficulty by men at arriving into agreement or reconciling.

Number Four: The fearsome ‘meddling by the Evil One’.

St. Paul warned us we are ultimately and precariously dealing with an enemy much stronger than humans: the principalities of Evil Spirits, Bad Angels.

Number Five:

Ultimately, evil or sin consists in judging or acting by exclusive natural standard and with the imperfect and flawed human faculties. This inescapably unravels into necessarily time and space constricted perceiving or achieving. Sans the faith element accompanying and even actually elevating the "judging" or "acting" to their fullest dimension and capability, such restricted and faith incapacitated human activities are bound, surely, to reckon with mere temporal and visible or tangible dealing with reality. It can only be surmised how easily and falsely human existence would have become characterized. In other words, atheistic and agnostic attitude and behaving naturally follows under such existentially restricted dealing with reality, regarding with both facts and ideas.

Sans faith and grace, or without God, consequently it becomes an open city for the evil spirits to occupy that realm of human existing. Another way to look at it: the Devil has been given a free hand over the lives of such unbelieving & non-believing people. And to their tragedy, they then have unraveled their lack of God in their lives by the consequential chaotic and troublesome living of their lives. The last paragraph above preceding this synthesizing outline illustrates this dire and tragic effect of a life cast into the power and dominion of the evil spirits.

Combined “Corollary Chapter 8-A” & “Chapter 9 On Sinfulness and the Kingdom of the World” 

                                                     Part Two

Chapter 9, On Sinfulness and the Kingdom of the World

What is meant by "Two Kingdoms"? What is The Kingdom of the World?  Does it recognize The Kingdom of God?  What is also called The 'City of the World'? How it is opposed to the 'City of God'?

A Presentation on Human Sinfulness

    We said Saint Augustine divided the people that live in the world between the citizens-proper of this world, and the pilgrim citizens who are yet looking forward beyond this world but are nevertheless citizens firmly set afoot equally in this world. In effect, Saint Augustine divided this world between two cities, the City of this World, and the City of God. Why did Saint Augustine come up with having to have two cities or two types of citizens in this world? It was simply because of the distinct differences between the "ratio d etre" of the two cities, or of their two types of "citizenship." The City of this World, according to Saint Augustine, is the world whose people are avowedly attached to, and are realistically embracing this world literally, and absolutely. Hence such people are appropriately called the citizens of this world. On the other hand, the City of God covers each aggregate of people, who by faith are primarily calling themselves a pilgrim people on earth. They profess themselves to be bound for Heaven, or to be with God's company of Angels and Saints in the Heavens. Nevertheless, as Christ by his Incarnation has opted to save the good people of this world, these people together with Christ have also aimed to salvage communities of fellow believers from conforming to the absolutely secularized or worldly attached people of this world. Because of their heavenly orientation Saint Augustine call them "citizens" of God, or temporary citizens of this world who long for the Heavenly HOME. In another chapter of this Mission Series we made reference to the Kingdom of God, or the City of God as the Kingdom where its "unitive" and "illuminative" characteristics exist. But where these characteristics do not exist we referred to them as appropriately the Kingdom of this World. Again, to paraphrase the above paragraph Christ's sacrificial love, and teachings of truth, wisdom, understanding, and knowledge mark the Kingdom of God. While the Kingdom of the World is marked by hatred by and between its people, by the people's coziness at accepting lies in place of the true, accepting falsities in place of wisdom, accepting people manipulations in place of understanding, and accepting security blanket of myths and biases in place of real knowledge. Also whereas The Citizens of God turn to Christ as their Ruler and King, the Citizens of the World embrace the Prince of this World, the Evil One by their clinging fast to the seductive and illusory goods of this world. The Citizens of the City of God in baptism receive the New Life, or the Graces of the new life, and live this life abundantly manifesting lifestyles of charity, compassion for others, and lives lived in virtues. On the other hand, the Citizens of the City of the World tenaciously cling to this world as they continue to live un-repenting of their sins, unliberated from the concupiscence of the flesh, and ever under bondage to the Prince of the world as manifested by their lifestyles of all sorts of addictions and depravities in their lives. In contrasting the Two Worlds, or the Two Kingdoms in the world, let us expand our understanding of what Saint Augustine called the City of the World.

The City of the World

How do we really describe the City of the World? What identify the Citizens of the World? The way to comprehensively understand the City of the World, or simply the World is to be undoubtedly clear in understanding where we find sin or the embracing of human sinfulness. And off the bat that they that find this world their home are the ones who, indeed, openly embrace the living in sins; And so typically wherever the practice of sins are parlayed manifestly, that is where sinful people live, and that the world they belong. And so belong to this world is to where sin is openly embraced.

And as we account for the sins of men and women of this age, and as a matter of fact, of every age we are being brought to uncovering a little more lengthily what is it all about sin? We are expounding here how sinfulness came it overcame the lives of men from the time of Adam and Eve throughout all generations up to their last would-be- descendants before the End-Time. We did discuss this tragedy of the "original sin" upon mankind, the account about the very first offense of man against God: Adam & Eve’s disobedience of God. It is this curse of "original sin" upon mankind which is the root of primordial conflicts within and throughout existence and world/human realities, which we have been treated in diverse aspects in the other chapters of our Mission Series on the Good News of the Coming of Jesus as in Chapters 12, and the set of the 9th chapters A, B, and C.  These sub-sets of Chapter 9 depict the wages of sin: namely suffering and actual death.

Nevertheless, in a special way, we are touching on this topic of sin on this early chapter as we highlight new very special dimensions of the phenomenon of conflicts within the universe, but especially within human life where spiritually and cosmologically this inherited human sinfulness finds its habitat. Before discussing human sinfulness in its general scope, we are specifically going to single out the particular sin: the taking of human lives.

In some chapters we repeatedly referred to, and necessarily go back to, the Genesis’ event of Adam & Eve’s falling away from God as being the "original"/root cause why conflict had befallen man; or why conflict had happened to mar existence in the universe.

Crime & SIN of Murder against God

Thus, aside from the often appertained to universal human hurting or suffering which resulted from the Genesis fall of man, in particular and most importantly as regards a coming Savior,

The predicted Deliverer himself was to have to face off with the enemies in the salvation of mankind. He has been put on notice how as the

Deliverer, who was to be wounded, hurt, and put to death by the enemy. "He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel..." Gen. 3:15 We have discussed this as pertaining to Jesus, the Son of the new Woman/new Eve – Mary, which Jesus has become victorious in ransoming man’s bondage and slavery to the Devil by the sacrifice of his life, by his precisely becoming nailed to the cross. (In other words, Jesus was literally struck at his heel by the Devil’s cohorts, by his sinful crucifiers on Calvary). It was the primary and the worst act of sin of and by mankind that it murdered Jesus, who has not committed any crime, who was actually without sin, and who was truly destined and sent by the heavenly Father to ransom from guilt his very

Own killers, and all of mankind for their inherited "original sin" and for all their sins actually committed through all generations and in all of history. But that man, by destiny, was capable of

Putting to death the "representative" of the Father, who is his very own Son, was indeed the highest of sins. It was the committing of an act of offense against God himself.

Man’s SIN of Killing His Neighbor

The 5th of the Ten Commandments states, "Thou shalt not kill". We are commanded by God never to put out the life of any human being. In the very beginning when man was created by God among other things that He created God intended man to a special living being, God created man in order to have a life, a special kind of life. After the fall of the first human beings, Adam & Eve, man lost, among others, their special life, namely the immortality of human life.  Indeed, this was one major effect of the first sin of man against God: the change from a supposed immortal life into a mortal life, i.e. the replacing of their immortal body with a mortal/corruptible human body. This is why we have pointed out poignantly often in this series: Adam and Eve’s tragic fate that whereas God made them initially as human beings with a body that won’t die, by their own fault God let their body change into a human body that now dies.  Yet the fact remains all human beings born after Adam and Eve were, are, and will always remain still human creations beloved to God. Life was God to give; but still never just a thing for man to give away. Only God gives and takes away. Hence, the 5th Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill". And precisely part of God’s providence and consequential command was that we are our brothers’ keepers; hence, that we are to care and mutually preserve each others’ lives.

Sadly, indeed, generically and randomly we bear witness to countless demonstrations of the acts of human or people conflicts since the time of Adam and Eve down to all there would be descendants, right from their very first dwelling place outside of Eden down to all the places of the world. For the first and foremost violent act between human beings was Cain’s killing of his brother Abel, the first born killing the second born of the human race. Then we could move on to millions of all sorts of quarrels and fights, including battles & wars involving individual men & women, tribes & villages, kingdoms & states, countries & nations, and inimical inter regions of the world. We are going to cite a few of these known human/people conflicts of the world. Standing out were the last World War II and World War I, the

American Civil War, the long lasting Union war with the native American Indians, the Irish Catholics vs. Protestants conflict, the people’s struggles under the or during the rules of fascist states, (notably the Russian & Italian fascist reigns – plus the offshoot ideological people struggles under Communism, both in the Soviet Bloc Countries and affiliated Communist nations of the world like Cuba, Vietnam, and specially China ), victims of conquests and spoils in the many wars of the Roman Empire, the French Revolution & the Napoleon Bonaparte Imperialist conquering of Europe, the terror attacks by both the European and African Barbarians, similar pillaging of people villages by the sea coast Pirates, particularly from the Northeast Viking countries, the victims of the battles between dynasties in Asia, and in China, and the long lasting wars between Mediterranean kingdoms or races, specifically between the Jewish people and the Arab/Palestinian people. Then we could add to these contemporary conflicts and wars, including people’s struggles against or within Dictatorial Rules, particularly in South America And South Africa, We need to make special mention of relatively recent world events of mass massacre of people by repressive regimes, e.g. Sadam Hussein’s murderous reign over the Iraqis, the killing of political victims in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Argentina, etc... Then we are not to forget the ethnic cleansing killing in Romania, and Bosnia/Yugoslavia, as well as the senseless massacre in Rwanda, and the periodic victims of terrorists & Jihadists in the name of religion & culture, including the US 9-11 victims. We might include too the lateral damage, (incidental victims), in the American war against terrorism.

Moreover, also on account of "original sin", we are to lamentably reckon with all other forms of personal violence, assault, abuse and exploitation committed by men and women against each other.

In another special section we will take the specific topics of suicide, abortion & infanticide, and mercy-killing of the aged sick or elderly.

We are now, in general, going to map out far-reaching extent of human sinfulness, as characterized by man’s hereditary flawed character and ‘fleshly’ concupiscence of or within man in all time and in all places or races of the world. Thus, in Chapter 4, in our referencing to sin, we say sin is equivalent to a life of hell. Reiterating this predicament of human sinfulness, I write in Chapter 14, "Methodologically, we could understand Jesus and his teachings either from the point of view of what he forbids, or what he commands on us. Negatively, thus he told us, "What you sow you shall harvest." If men love to commit evil deeds, they shall multiply their evil deeds in their lives. They will remain in evil. They are without holiness. They are without God. Isn’t this almost like hell? Scriptures also state, "The wages of sin is death." This is more of the same thing. If man sins wantonly, his soul dies. Unless man repents; if he/she lives a lifestyle constantly flirting with places and situations that occasion sins his/her soul is endangering its permanent death. Such an environment will be characteristically sans air of sanctification, and sans genuine living; hence, again seemingly a state of being deserted by God, which situation by practical purposes is almost like, again, being in hell already.

Consequently, it is also said, "How you live so shall you die. Thus if man lives in sins he shall physically die, like possibly bring unto himself all kinds of sicknesses and maladies, both physical and psychosomatic, while simultaneously already being spiritually dead. And so again, this is to say such an individual is already living some moments of hell on earth." Indeed, being in the state of sin, mortal sin, is being without the life of sanctifying grace or precisely being dead spiritually. This was the state of man before baptism, or before forgiveness through penance after each time falling to a mortal sin.

Aside from the present discussion here in Chapter 13, we have referenced elaborately this state of sin or state of separation from God in Chapter 12, and by the consequence of this state in all subset chapters of Chapter 9. In there the following statements would summarily paraphrase the chapter, "...this is the main flaw attributable to the fall experience), and man will not always choose to opt for what is good. Either he/she will not want to do anything at all, or he/she will not choose to do that which is good, or/and he/she will not decipher what is good for him/her, or willfully decide to do what is bad. However, thanks be to the Heavenly Father, at the very least man retained that faculty, but with the aid of grace, to will or not to will the good. For this minimal existential prerogative and for 'all those' other residual physical and mental as well as ambiance possibilities in existence, some individual human beings, like we state above, force and delude themselves with the referred-to-sort of contentment and complacency. Perhaps, they figure they might pull it a longer lifetime possible a hedonist living they have become addicted to? This is granting God stretching for these individuals so much 'lease' of mercy!

Man’s SIN against Love

We pointed out in Chapters 7, 8, 13, and 14 how the Lord Jesus specified in what will consist the fundamental sin man can commit, and will commit, that will determine the sinner’s condemnation into hell. This is namely the sin of not loving Jesus, or of being without love for Jesus on account of not loving or being without love for the least of his brothers and sisters. Hence the irrevocable verses, which we quoted in Chapter 10, "... he categorically forewarned us how we shall fail our eligibility of entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, his Kingdom if we, acting and behaving like the world does, fail to love him by failing to love ‘the least" of his brothers, the needy of/in the world. How scary and pathetic to be among them he shall have to condemn into everlasting fire along with the Devil and his angels, because, as he says, "I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was away from home and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing. I was ill and in prison and you did not come to comfort me". When asked when they had seen him hungry, or thirsty, or away from home, or naked, or ill, or in prison and had not attended to him in his needs; he answered them with the following truly unexpected accusation. "I assure you as often as you neglected to do it to one of these least ones, you neglected to do it to me."

In essence, thus, in every sin man commits he is guilty of the above failure to comply with the Lord’s command of love when we fail to directly love God, or when we fail to love him in our neighbors.

It would seem like the failure to love our neighbors shall heavily make man liable and punishable with condemnation. But it is really the failure to love God that will cause an individual to lose heaven, and to fall into hell. The Lord must have been just stipulating the most marginal factor which will separate men forever from God, other greater or greatest sins put aside. For altogether, the sin consists in failing to love God. Ultimately, it is man’s failing to love God himself that shall count against man during his time of reckoning with his Maker. We repeat what we stated in Chapter 5 about the metanoia characteristic required in the love of God. God wants all of ourselves, and so we are to give him all that we are, i.e. nothing shall stand in the way of our love for God. We stated that; our love is exactly what is, "...the equivalent of the first of the Ten Commandments: the loving of God with all our heart, mind, and body, i.e. our giving God our loving best alone, and for no one else. After all this is, to the utmost, very much the human description of fidelity in romance. There’s only one object of preoccupation in the heart and mind of the lover, which is his/her only love. To look away even for a second from the gaze, "adoration" of the beloved is an act of romantic betrayal. As a human ability, this is just about the most natural thing men might exert efforts at in a supposed love between God and human creatures. God is a "jealous lover". He doesn’t settle for anything less than all of our being. The first commandment requires this of man at the very least.  Recall, thus, the words from Scriptures state, "I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. You shall not have other gods besides me. You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them. For I, the Lord, your God, AM A JEALOUS GOD, inflicting punishment for their fathers’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation; but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation, on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments." Ex. 20:1-6</I> the following is Jesus wording of the same first commandment, when asked by one Scribe, "Which is the first of all the commandments?" Namely, "... The Lord our God is Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with your entire mind, and with all your strength. This is the second; you shall love your neighbor as yourself."

In the process, in order to have a clean slate in our heart for God, for Jesus whom we want to follow, we logically and consequently turn away from everything that stands in the way of a perfect following of Jesus. This process will necessarily involve giving up all unholy or un-Jesus-like ways of living. Or put another way, the process means abdicating all opportunities and rights to the Kingdom of the world, but embracing instead right now and right here the Kingdom of God. The two are diametrically opposed. We cannot have two masters, two Kings; we can only have one King, and we can only belong to one Kingdom."

As we continue our investigating of all possible occasions when or where we fail to love God, we shall uncover them many, many instances of man’s acts of separating or drawing away from God, or sinning against God. As we try to understand Paul’s writings, we could surmise likewise what he would say to be the opposite prohibitions to his teachings about love of God, which if we practice will be tantamount to sinning against God. Sin is being impatient. When we cannot wait for the right time and the right place to receive from God what he wills for us, and thus, force our way to grabbing our heart’s desire we’re sinning. Sin is being unkind. When we wantonly and vainly hurt others because we refuse to expend some extra effort which alone will make the difference at generating the needed favor to our neighbor we are sinning in our lack of genuine generosity. Sin is being jealous. When we desire against our neighbor’s procuring what is deigned by God to be for their good, we are sinning against God’s providence for others. Sin is putting on airs. When all we intend to do is to show off, and make good appearances without the internal will to generate good as God wills we are sinning in so far as we demonstrate God being unproductive in us. Sin is being snobbish. When we by our own wit make ourselves greater over others than what God has willed us to be we are preempting the Divine scheme for each one of us. Sin is being rude. Akin to being unkind, and being snobbish, being rude is sinning whereby we make our personal vain demeanor the forcible rule of making others yield to our petty aggressiveness. Sin is self-seeking. Sin is putting our individual interest over all other interests even if we are without real need for it. Sin is being prone to anger. Sin is when we needlessly summon violent emotion that is uncalled for, or that is entirely without just cause. Sin is brooding over injuries. It is sinning when we attribute any greater harm than was actually done, no more, no less. Sin is rejoicing in what is wrong, in not rejoicing in what is true. This sinfulness consists in having a twisted sense of value. This is as it were refusing to testify to the truth, and conspiring to make a stand for the false. Sin is putting a limit to love’s forbearance, to its trust, its hope, and to its power to endure. For in so far as God is ultimately the guarantee of forbearance, of hope, and of endurance, to put a limit upon such positive possibilities is to put a limit upon God.

One principal area where man has been guilty of many sins is the matter of deceit, lies, cheating, or different forms of fraud or acts of defrauding other men. This brings to mind the stark realities of injustice done by men upon his fellow men, whether by individuals, by institutions, or by governments. On a large scale, we are faced with, baffled, and shamed, including victimized prevalently by universal and generational practice of corruption in man’s use of all sort of leveraged powers for his favor or benefit as solicited or exploited through the leveraged power. It is not at all far-fetched to say corruption is one major reason for poverty in the world. Whether through plain hoarding of goods, or overpricing of commodities for sheer profit, or any other manner of manipulation of the market or market products for some people’s exclusive benefiting, all these necessarily contribute to the impoverishment of the un-leveraged and disadvantaged people. Corrupt practices in all other services industries or businesses account for undesirable and burdensome red tape or bureaucratic delays of rendering public services. Sometimes corruptions within this domain of supposed public service lead to actual disservice to certain individuals or even outright tampering with the records or names of individuals. Corruption across the board is definitely one cause hindering the progress of the much smaller countries, which only put them to a greater disadvantage in the trade with or coping up with the much more affluent or much richer countries to the detriment or harm of their poor citizenry.

Another type of fraud or defrauding of fellow men, so very sinful in the eyes of God, is in the limiting, even depriving of, and the poor opportunities of social uplift. The practice of slavery, both the trading of slaves, and the abusive use of slaves were violation of these people human rights and a deprivation of their social enfranchisement or economic benefiting. In the same light, world economic policies and laws abetting unfair labor practices and unfair markets for products, especially stuff produced with hard labor by the masses are other means of impoverishing the people mass particularly of the poor countries.

The worst kind of fraud or deceits are the outright schemes and ploys of criminal elements who prey like predators upon unsuspecting or even simple trusting people unjustly robbing them or exploiting them. Unskilled laborers in foreign land are common victims of such abuse.

In general, all forms of the taking advantage or neglecting of the poor of the world, like the foreigners, children, women, orphans, widows, elderly, the sick, or the homeless are most unlawful and loathsome to the eyes of God. Hence, the evil of child-abuse, sexual abuse, elderly abuse, neglect of the sick, and indifference, like the ostracizing of the homeless are all most displeasing to the Lord.

The bottom-line sin of fraud or injustice is any other manner of neighbor discriminating for any reason of difference or lesser stature of body, endowments, faculties, or positions in society.

A special sub-topic we will treat later is the issue about honesty or accountability with regards to dealing with property, time, or money indirectly under individual/individuals’ personal control or discretion, e.g. Accountants making judgments affecting the contrary interests of the company versus that of the public, or even the contrary interest between that of the company versus that of the individual employee, etc..

We shall also take up the issue about lies and the so-called white lies.

We cannot humanly enumerate and itemize all the sins man has committed and will commit. The realm of sinning is the realm man shares with the authors of sins, the devils. And whereas the devils are supernatural beings, their ways and means belong to the supernatural order. That was the way they were created initially by God before their own turning away from God. Yet, up to a time, the Lord permits the devils the possession of, and the use of the faculties of the supernatural, i.e. above-natural-order abilities and means, including & precisely in the manner of concocting devious ways and means of doing evil, which they pass on upon willing or sinning human beings to commit. Hence, we bear witness to the realities of the multitudinous nefarious ways of sins man can commit according to the influencing of the devils.

It was on account of the Devil that our first parents got into the mess of the "original sin"; the Devil was directly influential at getting Adam and Eve fall away from the goodwill of God. Consequently as all descendants of Adam and Eve inherited the "original sin", continuously, thus, the Devil and all its demons are again at work messing up all human beings born from Adam and Eve. As repeatedly referred to in different chapters of our Mission Series man or human life has become flawed or made corruptible, both in the physical and psychological/spiritual sense. It was this characteristic of human nature which St. Paul often called man’s life of the flesh. The same reason why he himself confessed of his personal weakness: how no matter how he resisted against it this flawed characteristic of the human nature shamed himself for his natural inability to overcome it; (saved by the grace of God). This is thus, the same ordeal, handicap, or/and death state and predicament each man and human is encumbered with from generations to generations. Prior to baptism all men or all descendants of Adam and Eve all over the world and throughout the entire human temporal existence were, are, and will be beset by this predicament. All of mankind from the beginning of human history until the End-Time is dead spiritually until they are born again in spirit and in water per baptism into the life of Christ. St. Paul preaches about this again and again in his many Epistles. He belabors on and on this antithetical, even contradictory relationship between living in the flesh versus the living in the Spirit, which he also calls living in the life of grace. (All our other chapters in this Mission Series are inter-related elaboration/explanation about the life of the Spirit or about the life of grace.) In this chapter, and particularly at this juncture of this chapter we are belaboring to expound on the meaning and the real experiencing of and by man of the life of the flesh. For this is exactly no other than the living in sinfulness or in sin, which is the main topic of this Chapter Thirteen in reference to the City of the World, i.e. City of Sinners. Indeed without grace, or without the state of sanctifying grace in us, we are dead spiritually. And, if we are without grace, what we have is sin. Either we are alive in grace, or we are dead in sin. (It is on account of this dire reality that it is scary and horrible to die unless we are duly receiving of sanctifying grace. What a terrible moment to be at the moment of our death unprepared without grace inside of us!)

However, if St. Paul himself talked about his succumbing to the weakness of his flesh; yet later was able to profess that no longer living in him was himself, but Christ that was already living in himself. Likewise, all of us – human being – will experience the infinite compassion, understanding, and mercy of God. God has unique allowances for each one of us about how to, perhaps gradually or at a certain point, get to finally live not according to the flesh but by the ‘magic’ of Christ’s grace. Let us recall how many great followers of Christ initially and, for some, for quite a while, sinned and lived as sinners. Recall that St. Peter betrayed the Lord three times. Call to mind the Apostle, St. Thomas’ unbelief. Imagine whatever the brothers, St. James and St. John, were fancying in considering themselves on a pedestal above all the other fellow apostles during the Lord’s ‘awarding time’ of Jesus’ followers. Imagine what kind of life St. Magdalene lived before knowing Jesus. Then, again, St. Paul was a persecutor & "murderer" of Christians before his conversion. Research on most of the prime time life of St. Augustine; and see how he lived with some degree of ‘debauchery’. (Thus, from sinners, all these became great saints.) And whereas we are to realize the truth that no man can choose to be good or do good except by the grace of God; nevertheless, (it is the power of the grace of Christ that upon conversion, i.e. upon man’s believing and following Christ the same man is radically changed and empowered to choose to do good or to be good/holy. Jesus said emphatically, "I have overcome the world". Christianity is victorious over sin, and over man’s accompanying dying because of sin. As Christ rose from death, Christians not only live a new life; but they shall raise again body and soul when Christ comes during the end of the world.)

Perhaps, some people would question, "I have long heard of the Ten Commandments. But it seems nobody really keeps them all. Or, people only keep them at some time; but put them aside most of the time?" Some others, sympathizing with Jesus’ early disciples about how tough it was to be saved, might echo a similar question by some of the disciples of Jesus during his preaching to them about keeping God’s commandments in order to enter heaven. "Lord, who – (alone) – can be saved?" The implication here is indeed that it is a tough act to become a saint of God. Some preachers or even regular spiritual people speculate that is why God allows most people to live relatively longer lives. It takes a great deal to be converted to holiness; that is why, by God’s plan; it usually takes longer years before many a man is called to face his Maker. For it would most likely take all that span of life given each man/woman before he/she finally get to bounce back for good to be good. This fact teaches us, and encourages us never to give up trying to be good. The same makes us realize that God is merciful. He loves us so much he will give us all the chances that we need so that we could come back to him. Hence, the Scriptural verse: Greater is the rejoicing in heaven for one sheep that was lost; but was saved, than over 99 who are already saved!"

In the above context may we invoke mercy and compassion if perchance we are among them who experience lasting struggle over our passion; or who belong to them who could not seem to stick to their New Year’s resolutions with respect avoiding some sins they are having problem to avoid, or to some virtues they are having problem to practice. It may also be the case that we always aim well spiritually; but somehow always end up faltering in our weakness, or into our vices? Pretty sure, there are those moments when we feel like God is nowhere around amidst manifest secular situations. It most like-lily happens it is a struggle at a great many times to read a spiritual book, or to say our prayers? The Scriptures has warned us that either the bird will pluck away the seed of the Gospel, or the ground (the soul) it will be fallen upon will be rocky, or it will be outgrown by the weeds crowding it out altogether?

It surely is God’s desire for each one of us to become saints now; and be ready to be united with him in heaven. But it is also God’s great mercy that sees us falling into sin; but promptly responding to the grace of reconciliation with him in the sacrament of penance. It is also God’s great and infinite generosity that when we unwittingly place ourselves often into tempting situations, and into even outright evil stuff, he told us to pray, "... and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

During our moments when we find ourselves, thus, being led by our ‘passion’, or when we find ourselves yielding to our ‘flesh’, we just have to go ask for help. Ask our Guardian Angel; ask our individual patron saint; ask Mary - Jesus’ Mother, who is also our Mother; and ultimately ask Jesus. A Priest once recommended a very effective prayer, "Mercy, Jesus! Mary, help!" It goes without saying, we also need to invoke the Holy Spirit, the 3rd Person of the Triune God, who is Christ’s Agent-Alter Ego sent by him to earth precisely teaching and working for us on his behalf after he ascended into heaven. And we are to pray not only when we are tempted, or when we are in trouble. St. Paul said we are to pray non-stop. St. Peter said the devil is lurking at every corner of our life, and at every chance of our weakness ready to devour us. Hence, our need to ever be ready and armed by grace, and by prayer.  But if and when we do fail the love of God and commit sin we are to acknowledge the fact why Christ was sent to us by the Father in the first place that we do need Christ's saving help, and that we do need to turn to him both for his continuing forgiveness of our sinfulness and his restoring us to God's reconciliation through grace filled remorse & contrition and amendment not to sin again, and to the constant re-reunion with God in the sanctifying life of grace.   

But, like Saint John of the Cross wrote, even if we have received the grace of faith, and the grace of conversion; nonetheless, there will still be the days of tests: those ‘dark nights of the soul’. During those ‘dark nights of the soul’ we shall be tested like gold is tested in fire if we are going to persevere in our faith, and practice of the faith. Hence, we shall be tempted turning into ‘doubting Thomas’s’.

But the one chief evil act man is capable of is to persist in spiritual death, i.e. to continually refuse chances and opportunities of repentance for sins and to continually refuse to trust the merciful God. The graces of God abound even and specially for the greatest of sinners. But when a sinner lets go of each single opportune means to use God’s actual graces, which can lead them to repentance and to the infinite mercy of God, all the more they are sinning for their missed chances for the life in sanctifying grace. Thus to ignore prophets that come their way, to be blind to acts of kindness done to them, to treat casually no-incidental moments of being safely delivered from accidents or harms, and thus not making a bit of an act of saying, "Thanks!" These are moments of God’s passing their way to offer them a turning away from their state of sinfulness. But to let go of them: moments of God’s real visitations, and simultaneously commit further heinous acts of sins; while cursing God for their "alleged" bad lucks in life is the greatest sin of all sins, namely, the sin against the Holy Spirit. This is that sin of remorseless defiance of God, and utter despair and unbelief in the merciful Go. God forbid numerous individual souls falling into the trap of this "unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit"! But whatever sin is involved, whether this sin against the Holy Spirit or all the other very grievous sins against God, sin ultimately is a matter of the heart of the individual. No great intelligence of an individual can prevent man from sinning. On the other hand, it is not the ignorance, nor any degree of impoverishment that forces a man into sinning interminably. Ultimately, it is how man’s human heart responds to the mercy of God, if not to his goodness. What every man must be wary ultimately is how he/she handles or maneuvers his/her heart vis a vis sinful deeds or sinful situations. A proud heart is the greatest impediment to turning away from sins. In this consists the fundamental sin of the atheists and agnostics: it is their persisting orientation and will to demand God for God's sign in their human & natural terms, namely the most rational, albeit scientific, presentation and definition by God of himself to man's natural perceptions.  This is precisely the human pride to even conceive of confining the Infinite God to the finite, poor, and inept human descriptions and formulations. This human pride consists in completely & casually ignoring God at all, and in failing to posit God's intervention within the sphere of the human, or of the "spiritual" in man.  This human sin consists in the sin of unbelief.  For the reality and possibility of seeing God is the exercise of the gift of faith, which alone is given by God precisely to the believing, trusting, loving simple hearts by the power of the Divine Spirit per the instrumentality of the grace of Christ.  Indeed, this act of faith is only given to them humble of heart, to the poor in spirit, to the simple human beings.  For the humble heart, God will not abandon.  During these mid years to 2020, it is the greatest risk, danger, and menace that both the media and the liberal culture are seriously tainted and infected with: the wages of human sinfulness and carefree yielding to the deceptions of the father of lies, the Devil.

Now the following would be some generic categorization of what fall as types of sins in all of human history plus in the present world milieu. They are individuals or peoples, who through ambiance, situation, relationship, projects & activities, agenda & social programs deny even the least semblance of the presence of Christ, or deny the least of His teachings. Concrete followers of this City of the World are the following:

Individuals and peoples of countries involved in national practice, promoting, or sanctioned killing of unborn children.

Individuals and peoples of countries involved in national practice, promoting, or sanctioned assisted suicides of the elderly.

Individuals or peoples of a country or countries involved in national practice, promoting, or sanctioned kidnapping, terrorism of people, open sabotaging of public places of gathering, or absolute approving of violent sacrificing of human lives for ideological agenda e.g. setting up of human bombs.

Individuals or peoples of a country or countries involved in nationwide producing of drugs for abuse, or large scale commercializing of drugs for money or politics.

Individual or peoples of a country or countries involved in nationally dissolving family union or structure, or cutting off young children away from their parents for political reasons, like perchance in some communist countries.

Individual or peoples of a country or countries involved in absolutely making profit or money as primordial over individual rights, individual liberties, and individual welfare.

Syndicated enterprise of callous businessmen engaged in human trafficking that enslave women and children for money, or as sold for sheer amusement of high paying customers, or even underground politicians.

Further syndicated shady business organizations catering illegal private entertainment where men, or even muscular females, are pit against men or similar females, or even youthful boys against boys --- in bloody fights for money; likewise, the same sporty illegal venue by competing gangs to monopolize territorial mafia-like money extorting business.

Cultural practice among, perhaps, bored members of the high-class sectors of the society engaging among themselves the participating in, promoting, or approving of social promiscuity, and sexual depravities for, as it were, privileged pleasure, or also for money.

Communities of people that practice, promote, or approve of children abuse.

Communities of people that establish and promote as social norms treating of special individuals with higher privileged respect over others because of possession of money, physical strength, intellectual acumen, beauty, social position, or special talent.

Or vice-versa, communities of people that establishes and promote as social norms treating of the less fortunate members of the society as second class of citizens or outcasts of the society.

Individual or peoples which foment, and even enforce situations or social settings of open disobedience to proper authorities, or in disunities within families, at work or leisure places, and especially in places of legitimate worship of God.

Organizations, even movements of people, which foment and even implement situations or social settings curtailing human rights and liberties, e.g. the continuing license to abort unborn children.

Individuals or peoples who foment, and even implement situations or social settings for distortion of the truth and true

Principles manipulating by some governments through indoctrinating with falsities against what is true, suppression of honest-to-goodness ethics beliefs, including religious beliefs, or the institutionalized substituting of valid knowledge with myths and favored biases.

In the history of the world and civilization of men atrocious examples of such Godless kingdoms of the word are the Roman Empire with its practice of sexual excesses and depravities, the Soviet Communist Block with its expressed state prohibition of religion, Hitler's German Reich Era with its remorseless annihilation of the Jewish people, and the early contemporary philosophical culture with its professed teaching of atheism, and agnosticism. The present era of modern civilization is precariously leaning towards its brand of practical atheism with its licit tolerance for violence against the helpless and quite voiceless members of the human populace, e.g. the unborn children and the very sick elderly prone to suggestion of assisted suicide. Moreover, the present times are dangerously inclined towards practical atheism with its easy confidence in the all "mighty" dollar, i.e. the orientation that money will solve all of human problems especially if the society could be rid of all moral hindrances along the way of progress, prosperity, and dynamic governance. The Bible says that The Kingdom of the World belongs to the Prince of this world. Behavior in any world communities, therefore, that demonstrate influences by him, the Evil One should mark such communities as The City of the World.

The SIN of the City of the World against the City of God

De facto, these communities of the world make enemies of the City of God, or of the Citizens of the City of God. Thus Citizens of the City of God expect hatred from the Citizens of the City of the World. The following verses from John illustratively picture for us this mutual repulsion between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the World. John 15:18-22 "If the people of this world hate you, just remember that they hated me first. If you belonged to the world its people would love you. But you don't belong to the world. I have chosen you to leave the world behind and that is why its people hate you. Remember how I told you that servants are not greater than their master. So if people mistreat me they will mistreat you _... People will do to you exactly what they did to me. They will do it because you belong to me and they don't know the one who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have no excuses for their sin." The above verses, thus, reveal the fate of the `citizens' of the City of God. They are to be hated by the world, and are to be treated/abused by the world the way the world already treated/abused Christ. That Kingdom of the World deals to the people of God all forms of hatred, and all manners of abuse, including their murder. It shall persecute the Citizens of the Kingdom of God. It shall do all sort of evil things against the people of God. And because the `citizens' of the Kingdom of the World have only love for themselves they will commit these sins against God and against men. In fact the Citizens of the Kingdom of the World break every single one of the 10 Commandments. But, like already noted above, chiefly, they break the law about the love for Jesus.

One more time, we are to reiterate and emphasize this God’s law of love, we said that the Lord Himself explained by the people’s failing to do what is asked of them for the least of His brothers and sisters that they are guilty of failing their love obligation to Him. Because they are starkly selfish and so full of themselves as they saw their neighbors naked, hungry, thirsty, sick or in prison, jobless, homeless, sad, downtrodden, etc_ they did nothing to alleviate their helplessness and misery. And according to the Lord failure to love the needy is failure to love Him. Consequently they have become guilty on the following counts: They did not clothe the naked. They did not feed the hungry. They did not give drink water to the thirsty. They did not visit the sick or the imprisoned. They did not provide help to the jobless. They did not shelter the homeless. They did not comfort the sad. They did not lift up the downtrodden. Etc_ Instead, they were a people cold and indifferent to, and even outright hateful of others.) 

Finally, these Citizens of the Kingdom of the World in so far as they live the "old life of the flesh" are precisely of this world. For unless they are born again in water and in the Spirit they do not live the New Life, are without the life of grace, and are not empowered by the power of grace from the Risen Christ. Without the life of grace, therefore, they are foreign to the Kingdom of God. Also because they do not have the life of grace in them; consequently all their natural gifts from creation, their human faculties, their human strength, resource, and wealth are "per se" inadequate to satisfy their genuine human want and needs. Any flaunting of or elevating, thus, of these natural powers and potentials with airs of self-sufficiency, human glory, and social complacency are bound to be exercises in vanity and self-deception. To repeat, the bottom-line mark of the Kingdom of the World or the City of the World is the state of separation from God. In other words, it is the persisting state of sinfulness. And wherever God is nowhere to be found but sin it is a world of meaninglessness, a world that has no life, no directions, and no peace and fulfillment. Its people live in chaos and disorder inside and out. No matter how they look busy, active, and determined. And if the people refuse to turn to God for relief from such emptiness of life, then their life in the hereafter will only be the endless perpetuation of the same internal misery and hopelessness, or an everlasting suffering of condemnation.

Meditation Chapter 8 - A, The Cross of Temporal Suffering with Christ  

(A Positive Element the Earthly Kingdom of Christ, 

Its Fundamental Theological Significance

Also, suffering As the Church’s Exaltation of the Holy Cross)

During this Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross we are going one more time to tackle the topic of suffering or Christian suffering, which is this same topic as the crosses of our lives. Let us refresh the Good Friday ejaculation: "We adore Thee Oh Christ, and we bless Thee! For thy Holy Cross you have redeemed the world!"

The cross is only a symbol, but it is a sacramental symbol; it symbolizes the very essence of Christ’s mission on earth: the redemption/salvation of the world, which, thus, is the prime significance of the symbolism of the cross.

Beginning from the searching and finding by St. Helena, the Mother of the Great Christian Roman Emperor – Constantine, of the cross upon which was nailed and hung our crucified Lord Jesus, through the years the Church has venerated this sacred icon and artifact. Likewise, each individual Christian is to venerate the cross and the fundamental meaning and message it was instrumental to convey to all of mankind, the pricey cost of our getting saved from our sins: the very excruciating manner of dying of Christ in atonement to the Father for our sins.

The Cross stands for Christ’s suffering, i.e. for all the human pains, anguish, and sadness of Jesus especially during the very last moments of his human existence on this earth. Quickly and rationally, the world ridicules Christians for such symbolism as the culture of the glorification of pain, or what they call "masochism". But Christians look to the Cross as the sacramental sign by which is expressed the Son-of-God’s loving sacrificing of himself on behalf of sinful mankind to the Father to bridge back the separation of man from God. Clearly, for the Christians the Cross was not just a negative image; it was the most positive memorial of their deliverance from the bondage of sins, and their restoration into the good will of God. Rev. Fr. Music says, "The cross is the assurance that when we embrace dying in whatever forms it may come to us, we will find in Christ new life."

As we touch on this topic one more time, we highlight this dimension of conflicts within the universe in a much wider sense, but particularly in the light of human life, or according to the special perspective of man that he is loved by God specially, for whom has been sent God’s only begotten Son that man may be saved.

And as we go back to the Genesis’ beginning angle why conflict has befallen man or human existence in the universe, from Genesis, early on, in reference to the coming Savior’s facing off with the enemies of salvation it has been revealed how the Deliverer shall be wounded, and hurt by the enemy. "He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel..." Gen. 3:15 This pertains to Jesus, the Son of the new woman/new Eve – Mary –, which Jesus, who was victorious in ransoming man’s bondage and slavery to the Devil by his life, was precisely nailed to the cross (.. was struck at his heel by the Devil’s cohorts: by them sinful crucifiers at Calvary). Literally, indeed, this Jesus, the Son of God and the Son the Woman, was put to death, was made "t-o   d-I-e".

Consequently, since then it has been carried over through generations of mankind that with Christ’s redeeming of man per his Incarnation and passion, death, & resurrection man has become participant in his salvific act and mission of Calvary. Since then it has become God’s scheme that all men’s dying process and experience get to become meritoriously beneficent through its incorporation with Christ’s redemptive act in the Paschal Mystery of Salvation. And since then, for each believer, the human fate of death or dying also becomes the prelude to the promised individual resurrection of all men of faith. In the believer’s following and imitation of the life of Jesus, man’s death & dying experience – united with Christ – becomes the rite of passage towards his/her own resurrection at the appointed time. This, thus, is the good news about being a Christian. But the bad news is, not very unlike the non-believers’ or un-believers’ death or dying experience, the Christians’ experience will not be any less the experience that it is: the same experience of human mortality and fragility. Indeed, all men, believers and un-believers alike have died, are dying, and will continue to be dying. For when the serpent bit the heel of the New Eve’s offspring, along with him are bitten, retroactively in time, all men & women, who by faith & grace were crucified with him on Calvary: all of Christendom.

For each one of them believers, crucified along with the Son of Man, like it has been for him, their united crucifixion with the Master remains an agonizing and painful act. Thus, it is each man’s inescapable fate to have to suffer death, to have to face up to with this human brokenness experience. Since time immemorial every man gets to bear with this human brokenness, or the brokenness within man, which denotes literally the physical separating of the body from the human spirit during death, as well as all the physic-psychological breaking up within man, and between or among men in life.

Thus, as have we discussed suffering on the first part of these Ninth Chapters and other related chapters initially, via our many illustrative examples, we have described suffering being fundamentally this phenomenon of brokenness either within the person or between persons. Through those examples we could decipher the individuals’ experiencing of being cut inside them – whether physically or emotionally, of being torn apart from someone or others, again spatially or emotionally or culturally, and/or of any other similar experience of the destroying of individuals and communities or inter-relations on account of, along with other human shortcomings, natural selfish oppositions or irreconcilable differences. We say an individual suffers when certain parts of his body breaks up, e.g. like bruises, and wounds, or like a broken heart as in hurt or injured feelings. Moreover, individuals suffer when between each other some separateness exists, or conflicts take place. Thus, we could generally denote suffering as human conflicts within him or conflicts with others. Whereas in the present treatment, we relate to the "serpents"/the devil’s biting of Jesus’ heel, and consequently of each believer’s heel as the damage inflicted by evil upon Jesus and his followers. We call this both the phenomenon and the mystery of human suffering and Christian-human sacrificing; this is the main brunt of discussion on part 1 of chapter. Initially, though, in the referred to 3rd, fourth, and 5th other chapters, we put in context how it all began: both sin and the devil’s getting into the mix of human and earthly existence. We refer to it as the fall experience and fate of Adam & Eve along with their entire descendant human race. The serpent/devil was permitted to have bitten Christ and all Christians in order that with the "bite’s" death effect upon Christ and the Christians, Jesus Christ and believing Christians are able to manifest Christ’s and the Christians’ victory over that "death experience" with Christ’s resurrection, and the Christians’ re-birth into the new life in Christ, including their promised physical resurrection during Jesus’ Second Coming. (To place all of these in context, this serpent’s bite consisted initially in the devil’s successful tempting of Adam & Eve, and Adam & Eve’s consenting to the temptation, which led to their losing their beginning life of grace, divine life, given them in Eden upon creation, and to the consequential banishment into Earth’s sin-tainted natural/human existing, i.e. the total earthly-human predicament of conflicts & suffering. But by Christ’s incarnation & redemptive Paschal Mystery of salvation of man, the Lord Jesus willed to embrace the bitten humanity, including its death fate precisely in order that by his Divinity, he can reverse the effect of the serpent’s bite, and restore humanity into their sharing of the life of God, the life of Christ in grace.)

In continuation of our treatment of the topic of conflicts & suffering, we have repeatedly stated how they permeate everyday’s fact of life. All men have to face up with this universal phenomenon of conflicts of all kinds: conflicts inside man’s psychosis and physiology, and outside man, i.e., between men’s constantly polarized inter-relating in thousands of varied and inexplicable ways.

However, with universal human brokenness or universal brokenness of all mankind, the essential truth, nevertheless, is that human brokenness could radically work as a healing & wholeness medium and tool for the believers. It could serve to be its own virtual remedy to the conflict.  Unlike them, the unbelievers remain to deal with conflicts coming across them exactly for what they are: nothing less than the negative non-liberating brokenness, i.e., actually destructive meaningless and value-less agonizing and hurting suffering. The fact is – it is not uncommon among unbelievers/non-believers to commit suicides. Persisting rejecting of God, namely a living that neither refuses to abdicate a public lifestyle of sin, nor acknowledges need for repentance of their sins cast these souls in the cage of darkness, as they find themselves more and more helpless & miserable captives of evil and by all its working. "The wages of sin is death", says the Scripture. Like we have discussed in Chapter 4 regarding the ‘un-holy’ living that denies the truth of Jesus Christ, their voluntary disavowing of the truth has got them stuck in un-stopped entanglements with the manacles of evil forces, (which human activity, thus creates and generates all forms and shades of human and social conflicts & damages, i.e. our topic of discussion here). Thus, their abandoning of the truth prevents them from being freed by the truth. Consequentially, for their continuing embracing of sins they heap life troubles and wasted living upon themselves. Under such conditions, they are left to their own element. Under the circumstances, they easily turn self-described cynics or pessimists, while stuck and trapped in their un-repentant ways. And for being completely blinded by the deceptions and allurements of evil, they could not care less if they actually cohort with the Devil himself. It is not hard to imagine the most heinous deeds they can be capable of committing, which evil deeds could cause tremendous wrongs and unhappiness around others but especially upon themselves. For the peace of God surely cannot rest upon such individuals. And without the peace of God, there is only turmoil and fear.

On the other hand, while we have universally accepted all men being victims of and subject to life’s conflicts, whether internally or externally/publicly, and while we have realistically to reckon with the pernicious grievous wrongdoings by evil people, it serves believers to remember the following admonition from St. Regarding inescapable human suffering, St. Peter writes, (1Peter 4:15-16), "See to it that none of you suffers for being a murderer, a thief, a malefactor, or a destroyer of another’s rights." In other words, as we suffer it should not be on account of ourselves perpetrating evil deeds like the worst of sinners do. In this context, though suffering like all others, as believers suffer, they are not to suffer necessarily without peace and necessarily feeling un-assured or protected, and even if they suffer, maybe, with more than regular dosage that others have. We already acknowledge by faith our living in this imperfect world, having to bear the ill effects of Adam & Eve’s fallout from Divine favor. But while no one member of the human race is exempted from this mess of Adam & Eve’s original sin, from this stuff of man’s fallen existence; on the other hand, each man could freely by grace opt for suffering’s liberating means per participation in the most wonderful sacramental uniting with Christ’s Paschal Mystery.

And so unless we believe, while we do suffer ‘the storms of life’ will come; there is not much we can humanly do to naturally stop them, there is no natural tool to hold back he torrents of suffering crested inseparably in our hard-to-change circumstances of living. Hence, each one of us is to take them in stride, and cope with them – live or die.

Surely, we do eagerly welcome and we tend to lavishly celebrate these life’s sunny days and cool times in fun and festiveness. Yet these sunny days and cool times, as they come now, they are also gone next. And the stormy season invariably is back again wreaking havoc at will.

Thus, we are wont to say ‘we feel blessed’ when we are overwhelmingly receiving and celebrating all sorts of material and earthly gifts of life, particularly as we openly appreciate them, and even a bit indulge in them.

Then when the time to hurt, to cry, to agonize, or to die comes, we must take them too – as we say – in stride and in full resignation as a fate beyond our power and control; though definitely not without hope and trust in the Lord’s ever watchful care. And, in an honest-to-goodness reckoning, this is where we do not fake happiness when we are sad; or where we do not sugar coat bitter or sour ordeals and predicaments but accept them for what they are. We are to remember that the Lord Jesus agonized in the Garden of Gethsemane, that the Lord Jesus was scourged in the Palace of Pontius Pilate, that the Lord Jesus was crowned with thorns right before the same majestic Governor Pilate, who condescended and implicitly sentenced the Lord Jesus to carry the cross and to crucifixion death. This was the same "hand-washing" Pilate, who was untruthfully condescending about imputed Christ’s guilt as to be sentenced with a horrible death punishment. But our Lord was resigned to this Divine fate.

When they, conflicts & real heartaches, blizzard us thus in avalanche, during such time or season of crying and agonizing, or aching - whether physic-psychologically or spiritually; in whichever inescapable ordeals we find ourselves, we, oftentimes shall simply have to abandon ourselves in helpless human insufficiency, inadequacy, and utter necessity but yet in total trustful dependence upon God.

And beset, thus, by life’s "valley of tears", it is even aggravating that occasionally, there would present to us the Pontius Pilates of our time, who, like pontificating critics, casually drop us a line about our inability to hide life sadness and occasional spirit of depression with words like, "... un Santo triste y un triste santo" – (What an unhappy saint!) The connotation being our being a sad saint kind of belies and nullifies the joy of the holiness in the Lord. These casual one-liner droppers, who are either humanly carried away by their rather subjective interpreting and perceiving of the individual’s honest emotions,, or who are simply uncharitably and arrogantly airing their superiority complex, tend to forget that Christ himself "agonized in the Garden". They tend to forget Jesus calls man to live on this earth with the command never to be off-track in the journey of the cross, in the journey of self denial, and in the journey of total obedience to God’s will no matter if or when the process involves precisely painful and hurting dying moments to oneself. For, surely, death or the dying to oneself per the varieties of Calvary moments for each man are the paths for everyone ‘to die’ to oneself in order to ‘rise again’ into a new life of Christ. And these moments of dying to oneself could come under the form of life ‘Calvary’, or in the form of retributionary suffering in place of equivalent Purgatory suffering after death.

From Christ’s ‘passion & death’ act & mission it has become the believers’ follow-suit act to carry & take on their own ‘passion & death’ call, or their call how to realize their ‘baptismal’ new birth. Christ has made it known Christian believers have to have to share in his passion and death if they are to share in the glory of their own resurrection & living of the new life in him. This, like for him, has to be every Christian’s rite and path of passage from the natural life on earth into the ‘heavenly characterized’ supernatural life after death, and even before actual death.

This was the reason Christ actually resigned himself not to ask the Father to take his disciples out of the world, and to insulate them away from the rejecting world. Implied here is that Christ knew there would be the necessary hurting, and agonizing by his disciples, as he left them at the mercy of the world’s rejections and persecutions. But he did ask the Father to protect them, and to care for them amidst their hurting and agonizing from their rejections and persecutions. And throughout most of our Good News Salvation Series Chapters, particularly the 10th chapter, which covers Divine Providence in the material/earthly way, we have comprehensively discussed how God actually intervenes in man’s daily or moment to moment needs in varied sacramental, spiritual, and providential ways. Indeed, his unfailing assurance, as was often quoted already in the mission chapters, is to be remembered from his words, "Come to me you who labor and are burdened. I shall give you rest; for my yoke is easy, and my burden light."

Hence, as we are under the ever watchful care and loving providence of God, our attitude and orientation should be to submit with confident resignation to the care of God. God will at the very least buffer us against them shortcomings, troubles, and persecutions. Our presence of mind and heart should be that we are in the hands of God. The troubles and the heartaches before us are oftentimes beyond our control. More than likely, all the bad elements in the universe, both the preternatural forces, – the evil spirits & demons, and the worst of human malice & misdeeds are involved in their conspiracy at creating the problems causing man great grief. But in the face of such formidable setbacks, much as we would attempt usually futile and vain human solutions, our best recourse is with the supernatural power. God is at all times our best ally against superhuman harm, danger, barriers, and actual evil deeds.

In the midst of all these we might as well get used to, if need be the embarrassment, the hurt, and even the injury.  And any of these could seem to preoccupy us specifically whichever is most hurting to us. And so it may happen, for some of us we would be forgetful a while of the Divine and Omnipotent presence of God, and of his watchful dominions of Angels cordoning us against real dangers. The fact is the experience would seem to be harrowing dying experience for us. But so be it! We are never to stop believing, never to stop turning to our faith in Jesus Christ, our Savior. Surely that is why he is our Savior. He is there at all times and in all our needs precisely in order to be our saving Power over all our enemies and in lieu of our human weakness. Our Lord told us, "Be not afraid!" And our Pope John Paul II, of recent memory, has constantly re-echoed this hope assurances of the Lord by his ever repeating Christ’s exhortation: "Be not afraid", indeed!

And so back to the referred to one-liner, a sad saint being an unhappy saint, we are not to be ashamed and to lose face and honor if we get ridiculed by our being weak to cry and being saddened for the evil done to us by our adversaries. It does not essentially belong to us to defend ourselves, or to be strong for ourselves. The Lord Jesus Christ alone is our defender, is alone our very strength how and when we would find solace, joy, and even some relief according to his providential time and Divine scheme for our own good and for the greater glory of God.

Besides, when we attempt to maximize the recourse to human and natural means and tools in redressing the world triggered personal wrongs & grievances or setbacks, how often do we experience and realize how puny and small we were versus the total affront and conspiratorial attacks of the enemy, whether from the seen/human enemies or the unseen/spirit enemies.

From 1 Peter 5:9, St. Peter writes, "Resist him, solid in our faith, realizing that the brotherhood of believers is undergoing the same sufferings throughout the world."

Of course, we are not prevented from not leaving any stone un-turned in trying to apply all the legal and appropriate assistance that could provide us protection and defense. But we are to realize, as we are to remember always, that oftentimes what we are against are enemies working by forces beyond us: principalities and powers.

Remember again that the Scriptures say: if God is with us, never mind who could be against us.

Now, we are to repeat here the idea and the necessary act of our identifying and uniting our own human suffering with the Divine sacrificial Lamb Suffering offered up to the Father with Christ according to the design, plan, and realization of God’s work of salvation. I.e. our suffering is to be participation in that Divine plan & mission of restoring back to God the order of the whole universe, beginning with man.  The world will keep treating us cursed under our particular state of grave suffering, and thus for it will mark us as a pariah people: ex communicated away from them by them, and reduced to nothing in life.  But in reality, if our particular state of suffering is the will of God for us, this is the ultimate ticket required of us by God if we are to belong with His Son into Heaven.  And in life this and no other is the way of passage from this earthly life into the eternal life, in the life of Christ through grace.  Remember well: the narrow path, not the wide road, is the way to the Kingdom of God. 

With the invoking of the Holy Spirit let us be enabled with the understanding of human suffering as symbolized by the ‘crosses’ of life. Let us engage Christ’s irrevocable call that we carry the cross. Let us indeed embrace this opportunity to do participate in Christ’s loving sacrificial atoning to the Father for our sins and the sins of our fellow men. And let us by this way be enabled to effectually gain the Father’s pleasure & gratification. And likewise, let us receive God gifting us back with his Son, man’s heavenly food for our souls via the sacrament of the Eucharist, which we receive back upon our offering up with Christ our own personal sacrificial life suffering. For this is the most gratuitous and marvelous reality according as Jesus has prefaced his actual breaking up of his Body with his breaking up of his bread of life for us at then at the Last Supper right before he was lifted up on the Cross, and continually on each re-celebrating per his command of the same Eucharistic Calvary sacrifice. For, while to the Father goes up our united offering of suffering together with Christ; and from the Father comes back to us Christ’s physical uniting with us per the Eucharist. And so being united with Christ per the Eucharist via our own Calvary of the Cross with Christ we become empowered. Rev. Fr. Edwin Music says, "Through the cross, Jesus gives us grace that is stronger than sin, stronger than temptation, and stronger than death".

And so like we have stated from the outset this Christian iconography, the imagery of the cross, or of the crucifix: Christ hanging on the cross is a most elevated artistic and religious iconography. For the world, it is ever an object of scandal and ridicule; but for the believers it is an object for reverence and a memorial of faith.

However, our crux of the message here is precisely what it has stood for at all times, and what it continually stands for: the reality of Christian suffering in the reality of salvation.

We already mentioned St. Peter warning us against inappropriate suffering; but he also encourages us as Christians, however, how we "...ought not to be ashamed to suffer". He said, we "...should rather glorify God in virtue of that name...” Further on, he writes in verse 19 from the same verses above, 1Peter 4:16, "...Accordingly, let those who suffer as God’s will require continuing in good deeds, and entrusting their lives to a faithful Creator."

                                               Part II

 And the Appropriate Church’s Exaltation of the Holy Cross

(The Cross of Temporal Suffering with Christ, A Positive Element in the Earthly Kingdom of Christ, Its Fundamental Theological Significance)

During this Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross we are going one more time to tackle the topic of suffering or Christian suffering, which is this same topic as the crosses of our lives. Let us refresh the Good Friday ejaculation: "We adore Thee Oh Christ, and we bless Thee! For thy Holy Cross you have redeemed the world!"

The cross is only a symbol, but it is a sacramental symbol; it symbolizes the very essence of Christ’s mission on earth: the redemption/salvation of the world, which, thus, is the prime significance of the symbolism of the cross.

Beginning from the searching and finding by St. Helena, the mother of the Great Christian Roman Emperor – Constantine, of the cross upon which was nailed and hung our crucified Lord Jesus, through the years the Church has venerated this sacred icon and artifact. Likewise, each individual Christian is to venerate the cross and the fundamental meaning and message it was instrumental to convey to all of mankind, the pricey cost of our getting saved from our sins: the very excruciating manner of dying of Christ in atonement to the Father for our sins.

The Cross stands for Christ’s suffering, i.e. for all the human pains, anguish, and sadness of Jesus especially during the very last moments of his human existence on this earth. Quickly and rationally, the world ridicules Christians for such symbolism as the culture of the glorification of pain, or what they call "masochism". But Christians look to the Cross as the sacramental sign by which is expressed the Son-of-God’s loving sacrificing of himself on behalf of sinful mankind to the Father to bridge back the separation of man from God. Clearly, for the Christians the Cross was not just a negative image; it was the most positive memorial of their deliverance from the bondage of sins, and their restoration into the good will of God. Rev. Fr. Music says, "The cross is the assurance that when we embrace dying in whatever forms it may come to us, we will find in Christ new life."

As we touch on this topic one more time, we highlight this dimension of conflicts within the universe in a much wider sense, but particularly in the light of human life, or according to the special perspective of man that he is loved by God specially, for whom has been sent God’s only begotten Son that man may be saved.

And as we go back to the Genesis’ beginning angle because conflict has befallen man or human existence in the universe, from Genesis, early on, in reference to the coming Savior’s facing off with the enemies of salvation it has been revealed how the Deliverer shall be wounded, and hurt by the enemy. "He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel..." Gen. 3:15 This pertains to Jesus, the Son of the new woman/new Eve – Mary –, which Jesus, who was victorious in ransoming man’s bondage and slavery to the Devil by his life, was precisely nailed to the cross (.. was struck at his heel by the Devil’s cohorts: by them sinful crucifiers at Calvary). Literally, indeed, this Jesus, the Son of God and the Son the Woman, was put to death, was made "t-o   d-I-e".

Consequently, since then it has been carried over through generations of mankind that with Christ’s redeeming of man per his Incarnation and passion, death, & resurrection man has become participant in his salvific act and mission of Calvary. Since then it has become God’s scheme that all men’s dying process and experience get to become meritoriously beneficent through its incorporation with Christ’s redemptive act in the Paschal Mystery of Salvation. And since then, for each believer, the human fate of death or dying also becomes the prelude to the promised individual resurrection of all men of faith. In the believer’s following and imitation of the life of Jesus, man’s death & dying experience – united with Christ – becomes the rite of passage towards his/her own resurrection at the appointed time. This, thus, is the good news about being a Christian. But the bad news is, not very unlike the non-believers’ or un-believers’ death or dying experience, the Christians’ experience will not be any less the experience that it is: the same experience of human mortality and fragility. Indeed, all men, believers and un-believers alike have died, are dying, and will continue to be dying. For when the serpent bit the heel of the New Eve’s offspring, along with him are bitten, retroactively in time, all men & women, who by faith & grace were crucified with him on Calvary: all of Christendom.

For each one of them believers, crucified along with the Son of Man, like it has been for him, their united crucifixion with the Master remains an agonizing and painful act. Thus, it is each man’s inescapable fate to have to suffer death, to have to face up to with this human brokenness experience. Since time immemorial every man gets to bear with this human brokenness, or the brokenness within man, which denotes literally the physical separating of the body from the human spirit during death, as well as all the physic-psychological breaking up within man, and between or among men in life.

Thus, as have we discussed suffering on the first part of these Ninth Chapters and other related chapters initially, via our many illustrative examples, we have described suffering being fundamentally this phenomenon of brokenness either within the person or between persons. Through those examples we could decipher the individuals’ experiencing of being cut inside them – whether physically or emotionally, of being torn apart from someone or others, again spatially or emotionally or culturally, and/or of any other similar experience of the destroying of individuals and communities or inter-relations on account of, along with other human shortcomings, natural selfish oppositions or irreconcilable differences. We say an individual suffers when certain parts of his body breaks up, e.g. like bruises, and wounds, or like a broken heart as in hurt or injured feelings. Moreover, individuals suffer when between each other some separateness exists, or conflicts take place. Thus, we could generally denote suffering as human conflicts within him or conflicts with others. Whereas in the present treatment, we relate to the "serpents"/the devil’s biting of Jesus’ heel, and consequently of each believer’s heel as the damage inflicted by evil upon Jesus and his followers. We call this both the phenomenon and the mystery of human suffering and Christian-human sacrificing; this is the main brunt of discussion on part 1 of chapter. Initially, though, in the referred to 3rd, fourth, and 5th other chapters, we put in context how it all began: both sin and the devil’s getting into the mix of human and earthly existence. We refer to it as the fall experience and fate of Adam & Eve along with their entire descendant human race. The serpent/devil was permitted to have bitten Christ and all Christians in order that with the "bite’s" death effect upon Christ and the Christians, Jesus Christ and believing Christians are able to manifest Christ’s and the Christians’ victory over that "death experience" with Christ’s resurrection, and the Christians’ re-birth into the new life in Christ, including their promised physical resurrection during Jesus’ Second Coming. (To place all of these in context, this serpent’s bite consisted initially in the devil’s successful tempting of Adam & Eve, and Adam & Eve’s consenting to the temptation, which led to their losing their beginning life of grace, divine life, given them in Eden upon creation, and to the consequential banishment into Earth’s sin-tainted natural/human existing, i.e. the total earthly-human predicament of conflicts & suffering. But by Christ’s incarnation & redemptive Paschal Mystery of salvation of man, the Lord Jesus willed to embrace the bitten humanity, including its death fate precisely in order that by his Divinity, he can reverse the effect of the serpent’s bite, and restore humanity into their sharing of the life of God, the life of Christ in grace.)

In continuation of our treatment of the topic of conflicts & suffering, we have repeatedly stated how they permeate every day’s fact of life. All men have to face up with this universal phenomenon of conflicts of all kinds: conflicts inside man’s psychosis and physiology, and outside man, i.e., between men’s constantly polarized inter-relating in thousands of varied and inexplicable ways.

However, with universal human brokenness or universal brokenness of all mankind, the essential truth, nevertheless, is that human brokenness could radically work as a healing & wholeness medium and tool for the believers. It could serve to be its own virtual remedy to the conflict.  Unlike them, the unbelievers remain to deal with conflicts coming across them exactly for what they are: nothing less than the negative non-liberating brokenness, i.e., actually destructive meaningless and value-less agonizing and hurting suffering. The fact is – it is not uncommon among unbelievers/non-believers to commit suicides. Persisting rejecting of God, namely a living that neither refuses to abdicate a public lifestyle of sin, nor acknowledges need for repentance of their sins cast these souls in the cage of darkness, as they find themselves more and more helpless & miserable captives of evil and by all its working. "The wages of sin is death", says the Scripture. Like we have discussed in Chapter 4 regarding the ‘un-holy’ living that denies the truth of Jesus Christ, their voluntary disavowing of the truth has got them stuck in un-stopped entanglements with the manacles of evil forces, (which human activity, thus creates and generates all forms and shades of human and social conflicts & damages, i.e. our topic of discussion here). Thus, their abandoning of the truth prevents them from being freed by the truth. Consequentially, for their continuing embracing of sins they heap life troubles and wasted living upon themselves. Under such conditions, they are left to their own element. Under the circumstances, they easily turn self-described cynics or pessimists, while stuck and trapped in their un-repentant ways. And for being completely blinded by the deceptions and allurements of evil, they could not care less if they actually cohort with the Devil himself. It is not hard to imagine the most heinous deeds they can be capable of committing, which evil deeds could cause tremendous wrongs and unhappiness around others but especially upon themselves. For the peace of God surely cannot rest upon such individuals. And without the peace of God, there is only turmoil and fear.

On the other hand, while we have universally accepted all men being victims of and subject to life’s conflicts, whether internally or externally/publicly, and while we have realistically to reckon with the pernicious grievous wrongdoings by evil people, it serves believers to remember the following admonition from St. Regarding inescapable human suffering, St. Peter writes, (1Peter 4:15-16), "See to it that none of you suffers for being a murderer, a thief, a malefactor, or a destroyer of another’s rights." In other words, as we suffer it should not be on account of ourselves perpetrating evil deeds like the worst of sinners do. In this context, though suffering like all others, as believers suffer, they are not to suffer necessarily without peace and necessarily feeling un-assured or protected, and even if they suffer, maybe, with more than regular dosage that others have. We already acknowledge by faith our living in this imperfect world, having to bear the ill effects of Adam & Eve’s fallout from Divine favor. But while no one member of the human race is exempted from this mess of Adam & Eve’s original sin, from this stuff of man’s fallen existence; on the other hand, each man could freely by grace opt for suffering’s liberating means per participation in the most wonderful sacramental uniting with Christ’s Paschal Mystery.

And so, unless we believe, while we do suffer ‘the storms of life’ will come; there is not much we can humanly do to naturally stop them, there is no natural tool to hold back he torrents of suffering crested inseparably in our hard-to-change circumstances of living. Hence, each one of us is to take them in stride, and cope with them – live or die.

Surely, we do eagerly welcome and we tend to lavishly celebrate these life’s sunny days and cool times in fun and festiveness. Yet these sunny days and cool times, as they come now, they are also gone next. And the stormy season invariably is back again wreaking havoc at will.

Thus, we are wont to say ‘we feel blessed’ when we are overwhelmingly receiving and celebrating all sorts of material and earthly gifts of life, particularly as we openly appreciate them, and even a bit indulges in them.

Then when the time to hurt, to cry, to agonize, or to die comes, we must take them too – as we say – in stride and in full resignation as a fate beyond our power and control; though definitely not without hope and trust in the Lord’s ever watchful care. And, in an honest-to-goodness reckoning, this is where we do not fake happiness when we are sad; or where we do not sugar coat bitter or sour ordeals and predicaments but accept them for what they are. We are to remember that the Lord Jesus agonized in the Garden of Gethsemane, that the Lord Jesus was scourged in the Palace of Pontius Pilate, that the Lord Jesus was crowned with thorns right before the same majestic Governor Pilate, who condescended and implicitly sentenced the Lord Jesus to carry the cross and to crucifixion death. This was the same "hand-washing" Pilate, who was untruthfully condescending about imputed Christ’s guilt as to be sentenced with a horrible death punishment. But our Lord was resigned to this Divine fate.

When they, conflicts & real heartaches, blizzard us thus in avalanche, during such time or season of crying and agonizing, or aching - whether physic-psychologically or spiritually; in whichever inescapable ordeals we find ourselves, we, oftentimes shall simply have to abandon ourselves in helpless human insufficiency, inadequacy, and utter necessity but yet in total trustful dependence upon God.

And beset, thus, by life’s "valley of tears", it is even aggravating that occasionally, there would present to us the Pontius Pilates of our time, who, like pontificating critics, casually drop us a line about our inability to hide life sadness and occasional spirit of depression with words like, "... un Santo triste y un triste santo" – (What an unhappy saint!) The connotation being our being a sad saint kind of belies and nullifies the joy of the holiness in the Lord. These casual one-liner droppers, who are either humanly carried away by their rather subjective interpreting and perceiving of the individual’s honest emotions, or who are simply uncharitably and arrogantly airing their superiority complex, tend to forget that Christ himself "agonized in the Garden". They tend to forget Jesus calls man to live on this earth with the command never to be off-track in the journey of the cross, in the journey of self denial, and in the journey of total obedience to God’s will no matter if or when the process involves precisely painful and hurting dying moments to oneself. For, surely, death or the dying to oneself per the varieties of Calvary moments for each man are the paths for everyone ‘to die’ to oneself in order to ‘rise again’ into a new life of Christ. And these moments of dying to oneself could come under the form of life ‘Calvary’, or in the form of retributionary suffering in place of equivalent Purgatory suffering after death.

From Christ’s ‘passion & death’ act & mission it has become the believers’ follow-suit act to carry & take on their own ‘passion & death’ call, or their call how to realize their ‘baptismal’ new birth. Christ has made it known Christian believers have to have to share in his passion and death if they are to share in the glory of their own resurrection & living of the new life in him. This, like for him, has to be every Christian’s rite and path of passage from the natural life on earth into the ‘heavenly characterized’ supernatural life after death, and even before actual death.

This was the reason Christ actually resigned himself not to ask the Father to take his disciples out of the world, and to insulate them away from the rejecting world. Implied here is that Christ knew there would be the necessary hurting, and agonizing by his disciples, as he left them at the mercy of the world’s rejections and persecutions. But he did ask the Father to protect them, and to care for them amidst their hurting and agonizing from their rejections and persecutions. And throughout most of our Good News Salvation Series Chapters, particularly the 10th chapter, which covers Divine Providence in the material/earthly way, we have comprehensively discussed how God actually intervenes in man’s daily or moment to moment needs in varied sacramental, spiritual, and providential ways. Indeed, his unfailing assurance, as was often quoted already in the mission chapters, is to be remembered from his words, "Come to me you who labor and are burdened. I shall give you rest; for my yoke is easy, and my burden light."

Hence, as we are under the ever watchful care and loving providence of God, our attitude and orientation should be to submit with confident resignation to the care of God. God will at the very least buffer us against them shortcomings, troubles, and persecutions. Our presence of mind and heart should be that we are in the hands of God. The troubles and the heartaches before us are oftentimes beyond our control. More than likely, all the bad elements in the universe, both the preternatural forces, – the evil spirits & demons, and the worst of human malice & misdeeds are involved in their conspiracy at creating the problems causing man great grief. But in the face of such formidable setbacks, much as we would attempt usually futile and vain human solutions, our best recourse is with the supernatural power. God is at all times our best ally against superhuman harm, danger, barriers, and actual evil deeds.

In the midst of all these we might as well get used to, if need be, the embarrassment, the hurt, and even the injury.  And any of these could seem to preoccupy us specifically whichever is most hurting to us. And so it may happen, for some of us we would be forgetful a while of the Divine and Omnipotent presence of God, and of his watchful dominions of Angels cordoning us against real dangers. The fact is the experience would seem to be harrowing dying experience for us. But so be it! We are never to stop believing, never to stop turning to our faith in Jesus Christ, our Savior. Surely that is why he is our Savior. He is there at all times and in all our needs precisely in order to be our saving Power over all our enemies and in lieu of our human weakness. Our Lord told us, "Be not afraid!" And our Pope John Paul II, of recent memory, has constantly re-echoed this hope assurances of the Lord by his ever-repeating Christ’s exhortation: "Be not afraid", indeed!

And so back to the referred to one-liner, a sad saint being an unhappy saint, we are not to be ashamed and to lose face and honor if we get ridiculed by our being weak to cry and being saddened for the evil done to us by our adversaries. It does not essentially belong to us to defend ourselves, or to be strong for ourselves. The Lord Jesus Christ alone is our defender, is alone our very strength how and when we would find solace, joy, and even some relief according to his providential time and Divine scheme for our own good and for the greater glory of God.

Besides, when we attempt to maximize the recourse to human and natural means and tools in redressing the world triggered personal wrongs & grievances or setbacks, how often do we experience and realize how puny and small we were versus the total affront and conspiratorial attacks of the enemy, whether from the seen/human enemies or the unseen/spirit enemies.

From 1 Peter 5:9, St. Peter writes, "Resist him, solid in our faith, realizing that the brotherhood of believers is undergoing the same sufferings throughout the world."

Of course, we are not prevented from not leaving any stone un-turned in trying to apply all the legal and appropriate assistance that could provide us protection and defense. But we are to realize, as we are to remember always, that oftentimes what we are against are enemies working by forces beyond us: principalities and powers.

Remember again that the Scriptures say: if God is with us, never mind who could be against us.

Now, we are to repeat here the idea and the necessary act of our identifying and uniting our own human suffering with the Divine sacrificial Lamb Suffering offered up to the Father with Christ according to the design, plan, and realization of God’s work of salvation. I.e. our suffering is to be participation in that Divine plan & mission of restoring back to God the order of the whole universe, beginning with man.  The world will keep treating us cursed under our particular state of grave suffering, and thus for it will mark us as a pariah people: ex communicated away from them by them, and reduced to nothing in life.  But in reality, if our particular state of suffering is the will of God for us, this is the ultimate ticket required of us by God if we are to belong with His Son into Heaven.  And in life this and no other is the way of passage from this earthly life into the eternal life, in the life of Christ through grace.  Remember well: the narrow path, not the wide road, is the way to the Kingdom of God. 

With the invoking of the Holy Spirit let us be enabled with the understanding of human suffering as symbolized by the ‘crosses’ of life. Let us engage Christ’s irrevocable call that we carry the cross. Let us indeed embrace this opportunity to do participate in Christ’s loving sacrificial atoning to the Father for our sins and the sins of our fellow men. And let us by this way be enabled to effectually gain the Father’s pleasure & gratification. And likewise, let us receive God gifting us back with his Son, man’s heavenly food for our souls via the sacrament of the Eucharist, which we receive back upon our offering up with Christ our own personal sacrificial life suffering. For this is the most gratuitous and marvelous reality according as Jesus has prefaced his actual breaking up of his Body with his breaking up of his bread of life for us at then at the Last Supper right before he was lifted up on the Cross, and continually on each re-celebrating per his command of the same Eucharistic Calvary sacrifice. For, while to the Father goes up our united offering of suffering together with Christ; and from the Father comes back to us Christ’s physical uniting with us per the Eucharist. And so being united with Christ per the Eucharist via our own Calvary of the Cross with Christ we become empowered. Rev. Fr. Edwin Music says, "Through the cross, Jesus gives us grace that is stronger than sin, stronger than temptation, and stronger than death".

And so like we have stated from the outset this Christian iconography, the imagery of the cross, or of the crucifix: Christ hanging on the cross is a most elevated artistic and religious iconography. For the world, it is ever an object of scandal and ridicule; but for the believers it is an object for reverence and a memorial of faith.

However, our crux of the message here is precisely what it has stood for at all times, and what it continually stands for: the reality of Christian suffering in the reality of salvation.

We already mentioned St. Peter warning us against inappropriate suffering; but he also encourages us as Christians, however, how we "...ought not to be ashamed to suffer". He said, we "...should rather glorify God in virtue of that name...” Further on, he writes in verse 19 from the same verses above, 1Peter 4:16, "...Accordingly, let those who suffer as God’s will require continuing in good deeds, and entrusting their lives to a faithful Creator."