Pomps.....

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Christian Moral Theology --is involved in living the Christian Life. Rejecting evil and doing good while following Christ and growing in virtue etc…The early Christians are a great example to us in living this in the current society.

The early Christians lived in a world…a culture where all sorts of evil things were going on…the gladiator games (and other “spectacles” as they called them which would be quite sinful)…idolatry etc. So in the baptismal rite there is the rejection of the the Devil and his “pompa”…his “pomps” …which include all these things…so the Christians would not go to these sorts of entertainments…such is still part of our life too in essence …(and we repeat every year our renewal of our baptismal promises…etc)

Now this does not mean one can not engage in any modern entertainments (or that one should enter into scruples on this)…but I think it does mean there are entertainments and other things that are sinful…etc which others go in for but we as Christians do not…even in the New Testament it says they are surprised that we do not go in for the things we used to…or that they do…

I think too that if one thinks about it …there are other things too…which simply are not fitting for Christians.…

As our society becomes more and more akin to theirs…let us look more and more to them and their joyful and firm Faith – especially during this year of Faith.

Here read this slowly to the end:
vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20060108_battesimo_en.html

Also I suggest as a way to keep this in mind and heart…every day renewing our baptismal promises…even in a very simple way such as “Lord Jesus Christ I renew my Baptismal promises and will follow you” (which would include of course the rejection of the Devil, and his pomps, and sin…)

Read too from the examples of the Martyrs earlychristians.org/testimonies_martyrs.html

 

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from the link (Pope Benedict XVI)

In the ancient Church these “noes” were summed up in a phrase that was easy to understand for the people of that time: they renounced, they said, the “pompa diabuli”, that is, the promise of life in abundance, of that apparent life that seemed to come from the pagan world, from its permissiveness, from its way of living as one pleased.

It was therefore “no” to a culture of what seemed to be an abundance of life, to what in fact was an “anticulture” of death. It was “no” to those spectacles in which death, cruelty and violence had become an entertainment.

Let us remember what was organized at the Colosseum or here, in Nero’s gardens, where people were set on fire like living torches. Cruelty and violence had become a form of amusement, a true perversion of joy, of the true meaning of life.

This “pompa diabuli”, this “anticulture” of death was a corruption of joy, it was love of deceit and fraud and the abuse of the body as a commodity and a trade.

And if we think about it now, we can say that also in our time we need to say “no” to the widely prevalent culture of death.

It is an “anticulture” manifested, for example, in drugs, in the flight from reality to what is illusory, to a false happiness expressed in deceit, fraud, injustice and contempt for others, for solidarity, and for responsibility for the poor and the suffering; it is expressed in a sexuality that becomes sheer irresponsible enjoyment, that makes the human person into a “thing”, so to speak, no longer considered a person who deserves personal love which requires fidelity, but who becomes a commodity, a mere object.

Let us say “no” to this promise of apparent happiness, to this “pompa” of what may seem to be life but is in fact merely an instrument of death, and to this “anticulture”, in order to cultivate instead the culture of life. For this reason, the Christian “yes”, from ancient times to our day, is a great “yes” to life. It is our “yes” to Christ, our “yes” to the Conqueror of death and the “yes” to life in time and in eternity.

 

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