Can you be Catholic if you don't care about Salvation?

[In_Spiration]

Would God really ask me to choose between Him and those I love and protect?

I’m sorry, but I’ll never consider them to be my enemy. And I’ll never take up a sword against anyone either.

I don’t understand the meaning of this passage

Genesis 22:1-2:

After these things, God tempted Abraham, and said to him: Abraham, Abraham. And he answered: Here I am. He said to him: Take your only begotten son Isaac, whom you love, and go into the land of vision; and there you shall offer him for an holocaust upon one of the mountains which I will show you.

They are in a certain sense your enemy due to their innate tendency to draw your love and care with an equal or greater force or priority than your love for God alone (as well as the deceptive “righteousness” of doing so). In that respect, they are as evil as your natural inclination toward self-preservation and pride, which is the “greatest of all sins – Satan’s sin, and the sin of Adam” – precisely in the fact that your self holds the most tempting lure into sin. That is, the temptation to elevate yourself into a godly status.

You love God alone first and primarily; and you love your self, brothers and sisters secondarily, through the first and greater love. You do not love God through your love of your neighbor (or yourself), since that indirectly renders what is rightfully primary to a secondary status. The height of charity is when you wish to reach eternal life with Christ, not really in His being a good-for-yourself, but mostly with His being Good-In-Himself (which, yes, as it happens, does perfectly make up the highest good-for-yourself – and everyone, everything).

The paradox of the “lost vs. found self” lies in the notion of how we can only find this desired goal (self-identity) precisely when we cease to intentionally look for it. In other words, we must make a leap of faith, into absolute dependence on God, i.e., purely and unmixed with any worldly cares, even per se noble ones like love of family or self – which are all corrupt if not rightly placed below God. The truth of the paradox stems from the fact that we do not give ourselves life, identity, or existence. Any time we attempt to find or maintain ourselves, we do so with an idea of ourselves in mind which cannot be as perfect as God’s Idea of us. God created us as natural beings; we could only ever try to re-create ourselves, and we can strictly do so artificially, as inauthentic, imperfect attempts to compose ourselves (out of lesser parts) into our own image (which is inferior/sinful, even when we’re struggling to make ourselves into our best detailed idea of what God wants us to be)…

A couple other passages emphasizing the rejection of this world:

Luke 9:57-62:

And it came to pass, as they walked in the way, that a certain man said to him: I will follow you wherever you go. Jesus said to him: The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests: but the Son of man has not where to lay his head. But he said to another: Follow me. And he said: Lord, suffer me first to go and to bury my father. And Jesus said to him: Let the dead bury their dead: but go and preach the kingdom of God. And another said: I will follow you, Lord; but let me first take my leave of them that are at my house. Jesus said to him: No man putting his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.

Luke 18:29-30:

Amen, I say to you, there is no man that has left home or parents or brethren or wife or children, for the kingdom of God’s sake, who shall not receive much more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.

Forsaking great worldly goods, such as marriage and family, if done for the sake of God alone, is an even greater act of love, faith, and humility.

 

[mgreen77]

The paradox of the “lost vs. found self” lies in the notion of how we can only find this desired goal (self-identity) precisely when we cease to intentionally look for it.

Oh I do so love irony, and I do so get that. It’s like how smokers are always “quitting smoking” but never actually DO it, lol.

It’s quite the Zen thing to. “Polishing a stone will never make it into a mirror” and all that.

The ego can’t transcend the ego, because after all… what is it that wants to transcend?

The truth of the paradox stems from the fact that we do not give ourselves life, identity, or existence. Any time we attempt to find or maintain ourselves, we do so with an idea of ourselves in mind which cannot be as perfect as God’s Idea of us. God created us as natural beings; we could only ever try to re-create ourselves, and we can strictly do so artificially, as inauthentic, imperfect attempts to compose ourselves (out of lesser parts) into our own image (which is inferior/sinful, even when we’re struggling to make ourselves into our best detailed idea of what God wants us to be)…

I’ve spent a lifetime doing that. Trying to mold myself into something pleasing to Him, something beautiful. I hate ugliness. I adore beauty, even when it’s tragic beauty. I’ve changed so many things, I don’t think God is going to even recognize me.

I kinda get what you’re saying though. In fact, one of the reasons I’m here looking into Catholicism is because I’m realizing, more and more to my horror, that I’m really nothing. I think YOU know what I mean by that, I don’t mean it in a “I’m so insignificant” way, I mean “I” reallty am nothing. It’s the flipside of realizing you can be anything. It’s all made up, everything anyone does is invented, contrived, melodrama. Actors on a stage who’ve fogotten they’re acting and identify with their roles instead.

My very own Dark Night of the Soul… and I think it’s only around 10pm so far, lol.

Thank you for telling me things I don’t want to hear… but need to

 

[hansard]

Just a thought in regards to “what one does in Heaven”–
Some years ago, I fell under the spell of a Protestant/Pentecostal sect who had definite views on eschatological matters. One of their beliefs is that God’s plan is one of creation, but not just in a “God created everything” sense, but ongoing creation. There’s a big universe out there, and God’s plan is to “renew all things” (from somewhere in the Bible).
So, souls are not passively looking at the beatific vision for all eternity, or sitting on a cloud strumming a lyre, but actively involved in the business of creation.

It made a lot of sense to me at the time. Still does, in fact.