The Google heard 'round the world!

Hello, Coffee Talkers!

I don't know about you, but for me, the month of May has been speeding by at a rather alarming rate. Maybe it was all the anticipation over the predicted Rapture, or just that life has been full and busy, but whew! Can you believe it's almost JUNE? To be quite honest, I've only just gotten the hang of writing 2011 when I have to fill in the date on forms and such.

It's been a while since I gave a little blog stats update and a shout-out to all you Coffee Talkers 'round the world. So here y’all go!

This month, people from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Germany, Philippines, Bermuda, Denmark, Israel, Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and Poland have gathered together here in the blogosphere for a little international Coffee Talk. Thanks for reading, everybody!

And my favorite search that led someone to my blog was for this phrase: "Will my student loans be forgiven after the Rapture?" I love the thought of someone wondering about that, doing a Google search for some authoritative answer on the matter, and then ending up at Coffee Talk. Ahhh, the wonders of the internet.

Also, one other thing that I learned through my blog stats (which you all probably already knew long ago, but I'm still excited about it!) is that there is a Google search engine specific to each country. Fun, right? So when doing research about World Youth Day, for example, my search yields very different (and much better!) results if I search through Google Espana than when I search through regular ol' Google. And I'll bet that Google Australia yields superior results for kangaroo facts and photos -- does someone wanna check it out and report back?

As always, thanks for stopping by! Be assured of my prayers.


Peace and all good,
Leslie

We were ALL left behind! (Or why we are saved in bunches)

Hello, Coffee Talkers!

Alright, perhaps I've made few too many Rapture jokes, and now that it did not happen at the predicted time (or if it did happen, we were ALL left behind), I would like to share one final thought, and an article. First, my thought:

For as many jokes as I made about the Rapture (sorry to all of the people I was around these past few days who had to endure my ceaseless [but still hilarious?] Rapture-based humor!), there is something important that I realized. As a person of faith, I would never even want to be snatched up to heaven, knowing that others were left behind. Because our salvation is necessarily in community, or as a good professor of mine often said, "People are saved in bunches!"

God is all about relationships, and not just individual relationships, but relationships with all humanity. In the Old Testament, we see God working through covenants that He made with individuals for the sake of the entire people. And then He makes the New and Everlasting Covenant through Jesus, in the hope that all men might be saved. All men. Not just a few 'true Christians' to be snatched up, while the rest of us lousy sinners suffer a time of trial, tribulation, and judgment.

No, we are all in this together. Gentile or Jew, servant or free, woman or man. We are all called to solidarity with the entire human family, to spiritual bonds of friendship with all people. This is a radical way to think, and even more a radical way to live, but these are the demands of the Gospel. "Go out, therefore, and make disciples of all nations." We are all called to an apostolate of love, an apostolate of friendship.

If I want a Heaven, an eternity of complete love, joy, and peace, I don't just want it for myself, but for everyone. For this reason, the whole idea of the Rapture seems too elitist, individualistic, and self-centered to be the real deal of Christianity. Jesus spent His time hanging out with a whole lot of sinners. Lots of people weren't all that fond of prostitutes, adulterers, and tax collectors, for example. But Jesus befriended them. And let's not forget the 'good thief' who hung on a cross next to Jesus' own. The thief asked Jesus to remember him when He came into His kingly power, and do you remember what Jesus said?

"Tough luck, buddy! It's too late now. Only the 'true Christians' are gonna be snatched up, and that's not for a while still. I don't know when it's gonna happen, actually. But you're a bad man, and you're not gonna be there."

NO!!!

He said, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).

Lastly, I'd like to share an article by Fred Clark titled, "Disappointment, despair and Harold Camping." Clark makes the point, far more eloquently than I could, that Camping and his followers are also part of this human family, for whom we should also experience a fraternal concern, even as they mourn the loss of a prediction that never came to be.

As always, thanks for stopping by! Be assured of my prayers.

Peace and all good,
Leslie

Post-Rapture Pet Sitters, and The Church as the Pillar and Foundation of Truth

Hello, Coffee Talkers!

You know, since last night's post on my Five Reasons I'm Excited About the Rapture, I've realized a few things:

1. There are quite a lot of people who really believe in the Rapture, and in the prediction that it is going to happen tomorrow. Like these people who set up an apparently real registry for After-Rapture Pet Care!

2. Many non-religious people (atheists, agnostics, other 'fallen away' and 'former' Catholics and other Christians) think that all people who are religious are unthinking and brainwashed morons who have no ability to think rational thoughts.

3. While many people mock, disregard, and disrespect the authority of the Catholic Church and her Magisterium (or teaching office) in regard to matters of faith and morals, things like these Rapture predictions make clear the need for the Church's authority.

To be a religious person and to submit to the authority of the Church does not make someone a mindless automaton. I have many more thoughts on this (see, religious people can think!), but for now, may I recommend Blessed John Paul II's Fides et Ratio and Msgr. Luigi Giusanni's The Religious Sense? These works have been profoundly formative in my own journey as a religious person who strives for an integration of faith and reason in my daily life, and I suspect that they will change your lives and thinking as well.

From a Catholic Christian perspective, the idea of the Rapture comes from a misinterpretation of certain Scripture passages. There are many layers of meaning to Sacred Scripture, so the Church's authority does not prohibit people from understanding the Scriptures in various ways and having personal application of the Word of God in their lives. However, there are certain things that particular Scripture passages do not mean and support. The Rapture, for example. Or the idea that any person can predict when the world is going to end. Because that concept (much like the entire concept of sola scriptura) is itself NOT SCRIPTURAL. How and why could any Christians believe that someone could predict the end of the world is far beyond me, since Jesus said very clearly that no one knows the day or hour of his return, not the Son, nor even the angels, but God the Father alone.

The Catholic Church is an institution which is both human and divine, and the trustworthiness of her authority stems from the authority of Christ Himself, who founded the Church and passed on His authority through the generations by Apostolic Succession. It is the Holy Spirit which guards and protects the integrity of the Scriptures and the moral and ethical teachings of the Church. The Church, like it says in the first letter of Timothy, is "the pillar and foundation of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15).

A lot of people these days hate authority. A lot of people these days hate the idea of absolute truth. And a lot of people these days hate the Catholic Church. How can a Church with so many sinful people in it have authority, many wonder; how can it be rightly called "the pillar and foundation of truth"? Because God has established it to be so. If we accept the Scriptures as the Word of God, if we accept Divine Revelation at all, then acceptance of this authority also becomes necessary. Without the authority of the Church, we are left without a foundation for religious and moral truth. Without the authority of the Church, the Rapture is tomorrow.

Well, enough chatter for one night! Time to pray and sleep. I will be sure to keep all of you readers in my prayers, and certainly appreciate all of you who have prayed for me, as well!

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Peace and all good,
Leslie

Five Reasons I'm Excited About the Rapture!

Hello, Coffee Talkers!

By now, hopefully you've all heard what's happening the day after tomorrow -- the RAPTURE! That's right, everybody! And I, for one, am hoping it's gonna be just as exciting as I imagine the Left Behind book series to have made it out to be. So, without further ado, here are five reasons to be excited about the Rapture:

5. We won't need to do anymore dishes or laundry. Score.

4. I'm guessing that after the Rapture, all student loan repayments will be forgiven, so that's good news for a lot of people.

3. It's been difficult to figure out whether to keep out the winter or summer clothes with all of these recent weather changes. Now, we only need to pick out outfits for 2 days.

2. With the rising cost of fuel, being Raptured seems like a great way to get free airfare to a choice destination!

and the #1 reason to be excited about the Rapture is....

1. It does not exist! But the Second Coming does, and we don't know when it's going to happen.

Look, people, have any of you heard of a little book called the Bible? Well, there's one part where Jesus says this:

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” – Matthew 24:35-36

Hmmm. Interesting. NO ONE KNOWS. Not even Jesus. So how did Harold Camping figure it out?

Maybe he has his own translations of the Scriptures?

In any case, let me break this down for everybody:

• Some Protestants believe in a thing called "The Rapture," which refers to a secret coming of Christ to snatch up true Christians. This will precede the Second Coming, and thus those who are Raptured will be spared from the final judgment.
• Catholic Christians (and many others) do not believe this, as the theory is based upon the misinterpretation of Scriptures by a few Protestant Christians.
• Unfortunately, the 'Rapture' idea has gained a lot of popularity through the media, and for this reason lots of people think that this is what all Christians believe. (Has anyone read the books or seen the movie, Left Behind? I have not. Tell me about them!)
• Catholics (the original Christians) and many other Christian people hold the view that there will be only one Second Coming of Christ, at a day and an hour that no one (except for the Father alone) knows, and for which we should all be prepared by living good, virtuous, and loving lives and by repenting for what we have done wrong. 

Here is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about the Last Judgment:

V. The Last Judgment

1038 The resurrection of all the dead, "of both the just and the unjust,"⁶²¹ will precede the Last Judgment. This will be "the hour when all who are in the tombs will hear [the Son of man's] voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment."⁶²² Then Christ will come "in his glory, and all the angels with him .... Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left.... and they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."⁶²³

1039 In the presence of Christ, who is Truth itself, the truth of each man's relationship with God will be laid bare.⁶²⁴ The Last Judgment will reveal even to its furthest consequences the good each person has done or failed to do during his earthly life:

All that the wicked do is recorded, and they do not know. When "our God comes, he does not keep silence.". . . he will turn towards those at his left hand: . . . "I placed my poor little ones on earth for you. I as their head was seated in heaven at the right hand of my Father - but on earth my members were suffering, my members on earth were in need. If you gave anything to my members, what you gave would reach their Head. Would that you had known that my little ones were in need when I placed them on earth for you and appointed them your stewards to bring your good works into my treasury. But you have placed nothing in their hands; therefore you have found nothing in my presence."⁶²⁵

1040 The Last Judgment will come when Christ returns in glory. Only the Father knows the day and the hour; only he determines the moment of its coming. Then through his Son Jesus Christ he will pronounce the final word on all history. We shall know the ultimate meaning of the whole work of creation and of the entire economy of salvation and understand the marvellous ways by which his Providence led everything towards its final end. the Last Judgment will reveal that God's justice triumphs over all the injustices committed by his creatures and that God's love is stronger than death.⁶²⁶

1041 The message of the Last Judgment calls men to conversion while God is still giving them "the acceptable time, . . . the day of salvation."⁶²⁷ It inspires a holy fear of God and commits them to the justice of the Kingdom of God. It proclaims the "blessed hope" of the Lord's return, when he will come "to be glorified in his saints, and to be marvelled at in all who have believed."⁶²⁸

So hopefully, I'll see y'all on Sunday! In the meantime, I do plan to go to confession on Saturday. (That is, if I haven't been raptured or left behind.) Because while we know that a time of judgment is coming someday, we also know that this is the hour of mercy. So let's receive mercy, and be merciful to others, that all might be enraptured by God's true love.

Peace and all good,
Leslie