Incentive to be Catholic, "What is the Catholic Faith?"

  • Thread starter Thread starter OurGodIsWithUs
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
O

OurGodIsWithUs

Guest
Truthful statements about me:

I was born and raised a Catholic Male. I go to mass every Sunday, I pray, and I go to confession. I avoid things that displease God as much as I can.

Don’t baby me. If you want to say something rude, just say it straight to my face. I’ve been bullied before, and am pretty much insensitive to insults.

My Stance: I AM THAT LOYAL SON IN THE PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL SON (I’m no saint, I don’t really care about being one. But am speaking in the grand scheme of things). IN THIS POST, I COMPLAIN ABOUT BEING LOYAL, AND NOT RECEIVING ANYTHING MORE.
Is this the Catholic faith ? :

"Carry your cross, and carry it till they nail you shut, put you 6 feet under, forget about you, and the worms eat you out. Follow all these extra rules that others (non-Catholics) don’t follow, but EVERYBODY ELSE (those who were benevolent, kind and generous in their life on Earth, but NOT Catholic) will still make it to heaven! They will be given a chance to choose Jesus or Satan, and if they choose Jesus (they most probably will), Woo Hoo!!! They made it too!

You did all this extra work in vain! Ha ha, nothing special for you!"

Do I toil and strive to observe his commandments for nothing, when others get the easy way out?

If so, then shouldn’t we be baptized at the end of our lives, so that we can live however immoral and easy we want until then, (play tons of videogames, shopping etc.) and then become clean and go straight to heaven? After all, it makes no difference does it?

In the prodigal son parable, we never did find out what the loyal son got did we? They never mention that part to us do they? Did he become in charge of his brother, or the household?

I’m sorry if I sound harsh and brunt, but these questions are rushing through my mind. I appreciate your efforts in helping me. I was taught that everyone who accepts Jesus is saved anyway, no matter what they’ve done in the past, and I just want to know if It means anything special to God that I lived a good Catholic life.

Thank You, and God Bless You!

As I FINAL NOTE: DO NOT LEAVE THE CHURCH OVER MY POST. MY GUT TELLS ME THAT THE CHURCH IS RIGHT WAY TO GO. THIS IS JUST A CATHOLIC SEEKING SOME ANSWERS. I AM GRATEFUL, AND FOREVER INDEBTED TO GOD. I WILL NEVER LEAVE THE CHURCH.
 
Last edited:
Christ gave us the Church as the normative means of salvation and the Sacraments as vehicles of Grace.

We are bound to follow Him.

There may be some who reach heaven because they were invincibly ignorant. Neither you nor I am invincibly ignorant.
 
You’re forgetting that the loyal son in the parable you use, did enjoy lots of benefits - he enjoyed living in his fathers house, he enjoyed the privelege of wealth his family had (he also wasn’t a slave). So he enjoyed all the benefits of living with his father…

Catholics enjoy benefits during their life that non-Catholics don’t. We can be intimately united with Jesus who is GOD when we receive Holy Communion. We can visit and spend time with God when we make visits to the Blessed Sacraments. We experience His mercy and forgiveness each time we go to Confession for mortal sin, as well as through the Mass and Holy Communion for venial sin (oops left out those 3 little words by mistake… )

So in heaven we will be spending eternity with God. We can spend this life “with God” in the ways I put above.

And we can obtain either plenary indulgences or partial indulgences for ourselves to remove the temporal punishment due to the sins we freely decide to commit, to remove this either in full or in part - so through Jesus’s and all the Saints merits we could also go straight to heaven through obtaining a plenary indulgence.
(edited to correct typos)
 
Last edited:
In the parable of the prodigal son, the father tells the older, or “loyal”, son that because he was always with him, everything that he has is also his.

That’s the incentive.
 
It matters very much to God if you live a good Catholic life. Everyone struggles at some point and feels like they don’t have it easy. Not everyone who is a Christian is saved. Not all Catholics go to heaven, not all Baptists go to heaven etc. If you take up your cross, struggle through life the way Jesus wants us to, we get to spend eternal life with him.
 
Do:
  1. Go to adoration of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.
  2. Sit.
  3. Pray.
  4. Contemplate Him.
    Once you are convicted that He is there, you will be changed.
Do not:
  1. Look left and right at fellow sinners.
  2. Focus on Church scandals.
  3. Try to fit the faith into your politics.
 
Last edited:
OurGodIsWithUs said:
Do I toil and strive to observe his commandments for nothing, when others get the easy way out?
Click to expand...
You’re assuming that all others *do in fact * get the “easy way out” as you say. We can’t know that. There are many people who do not receive baptism at the end of their life before dying and “go straight to heaven.”
And those who don’t receive baptism at that point at the end of their life? And I would think there are many more of these, than those who do receive baptism. So souls who in these cases (leaving out baptism of desire for now), through a special grace that God would give them to be saved - there is still the matter of temporal punishment due to the wrongs they’ve done in life. And God will judge them according to the lights they had.

As I said in my earlier post, we Catholic have access to plenary or partial indulgences in this life to mitigate or remove temporal punishment - non-Catholics do not have this special gift.

I can understand where you’re coming from, but I think these are temptations from satan against the 10th commandment - which also includes coveting/jealous of/envy of others spiritual goods, it doesn’t just apply to earthly goods.

Quoting from this article - Sunday of the Prodigal Son
“The elder son stands in the background. He is bitter and angry and can’t get over his own anger to allow his father’s love to heal him as well. Pride holds him back. He desires his father’s love, but his own emotions are stopping him from getting it. He finds it unacceptable that his father has received the younger brother back with such celebration. He has been loyal, hardworking and done everything his father asked. But his words give him away, he complains that he has been working like a ‘slave’ for his father. All these years, while he thought he was being obedient, he had been doing the work of his father in anger. He had not worked in the love of his father or in the spirit of love. He had worked in the spirit of resentment and anger. It is the older brother who needs healing now and to experience the true joy and love of his father. He has some way to go. Even though he has always been in his father’s house, his inability to rejoice in the return of his brother demonstrates he is living in his father’s house without letting his father’s love touch him.”

An excellent article by Mons Charles Pope on this parable wherein he covers aspects of the older son, which I think covers the points you raised in your opening post - There was a man who had two sons: A Homily for the 4th Sunday of Lent - beginning at III. Resentful Son
 
Last edited:
OurGodIsWithUs said:
I was taught that everyone who accepts Jesus is saved anyway, no matter what they’ve done in the past
Click to expand...
Faith without works is dead. Nothing new here.
OurGodIsWithUs said:
I just want to know if It means anything special to God that I lived a good Catholic life.
Click to expand...
There is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church, so yes it does mean something special to be a good Catholic in this life.
OurGodIsWithUs said:
You did all this extra work in vain! Ha ha, nothing special for you!"
Click to expand...
I don’t think you are approaching this issue with the right mindset.
 
MATTHEW 20:1-16

Intriguing! I never understood how this was fair.

Shouldn’t we just leave and come back later then?
 
Last edited:
You forced my hand.

Suffering. Only Christ turns it into blessing. The great Saints - of which we are called to be - have enjoyed suffering for their love of God. Ponder that, as it is through suffering that we are most Christ-like.

Since 2008: 1 aggressive non-Hodkin’s Lymphoma three times; a mutation into 2 cancers, then 3 cancers simultaneously (PTCL-NOS, AITL, MDS), 20 chemotherapy/GVHD drugs in 11 regimens (4 of those drugs at least twice), 5 ‘salvage’ regimens, 4 clinical trials, A hematopoietic stem cell transplant, acute/chronic Graft-versus-Host-Disease, 5 post-transplant immuno-suppressant/immuno-modulatory drugs, the equivalent of 1,000 years of background radiation from 40+ CT series scans, about 24 PET scans and far too many lymph node, bone marrow and skin punch biopsies to remember. And numerous administrations of the Sacrament of Anointing.

Do I ask for relief…for deliverance from all of this?

No.

I ask for the grace to bear what suffering lies ahead - and I am guaranteed more suffering. I desire to suffer well.
 
Last edited:
Elaborating on what _ServusDomini posted above"-
Matthew 20:1-16 Explained Fr. Charles Grondin • 9/20/2017

Another good article is Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard: Summary, Meaning and Commentary - towards the bottom is says:- “The first being last and the last being first may be Jesus’ way of saying that whatever time a person comes to saving faith, they all will receive the same wages…since the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23a), the wages of repentance and trust in the Savior is eternal life (Rom 6:23b). The thief on the cross will receive the same reward of eternal life as those who labored for the Lord most of their lives. This doesn’t mean that they will receive the same rewards once they enter the kingdom since some will be given more responsibility and authority than others but all who trust in Christ will receive the same reward…eternal life.”
 
Thanks! For the first time in my life, I’ve understood this. I feel satisfied with that explanation.
 
One day when your life goes completely haywire due to circumstances beyond your control, you will be glad you have such a strong relationship with Our Lord.
 
I was thinking of this too. I really miss my husband and sometimes also my mom and dad. I have to remind myself that at least I had a good husband and a mom and dad for so many years, and God willing I’ll see them again. So many people had a parent who died when they were very young, or worse yet just ran out on the family. So many people don’t get to have a good long marriage, or their spouse is awful to deal with. Yes, I’m very alone and lonely now (Except for Jesus, Mary and the saints, and my cats) and I have other problems. But I have been very blessed and I need to always be thanking the Lord for that and doing everything else one day at a time.
 
I can’t pretend like I fully understand it either; nevertheless, what you propose doesn’t seem to be the point that Jesus is making.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top