“Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and I am with you always, even unto the end of the World… Amen”
said Jesus to His disciples. Matt 28:20
We might ask ourselves what the 4th Century scholar, intellectual, translator and theologian
St. Jerome
and the New Pontiff Benedict XVI have in common, and the answer is found in the strict adherence to the tenets of the Bible.
To those who claim that, when reading the Bible, they do not understand what it says, St. Jerome in his letter to Paulinus has assured us that in reading the Bible: “Whoever comes along can find instruction so that, in one and the same sentence, both the learned and the ignorant can find plain meaning.”
The second similarity can be found in the story of the two disciples on their way to Emmaus as narrated by Luke describing the lost sheep of Christianity, mainly these passages: “O fools and slow of heart to believe … He took bread, and blessed, broke and gave it to them … their eyes were opened, and they knew Him …Did not our heart burn within us, they said …while He opened to us the Scriptures?” Luk 24:13-35, which describes our disillusioned views, egoistic caprices and flagrant intransigence coupled with our audacity to disobey, revolt, and boast presumptuously of we-know-better-than-God our needs. Are we really and biblically breaking bread with the Lord so that He opens our eyes and hearts to His Love and His Truth, or just collecting some kind of leftover Christian crumbs falling from His table or fragmented butchered scriptures to invent a new Christianity?
Pope Benedict XVI is no different than any honest, pious and faithful Christian, who clings to the letter and spirit of the Bible. Popes and honest Bible abiding leaders of the different churches, as defenders of the faith, while hopefully to pass congeniality and spirituality rather than popularity contests, are not elected or ordained to do our will but the Will of God. Clergy and curia’s ultimate assignment is to invigorate the faithful and lead him/her to the narrow path of the green pastures of the Lord by living and preaching the biblical orthodox doctrines and dogmas of faith.
As much as we witnessed the global sadness for the passing of Pope John Paul II as well as the excitement of the whole world for the election of the new Pope, which both resulted in more universal evangelization and witnessing than the last 2000 years combined, thanks to cyberspace and ‘live’ and “instant” global coverage, we have nonetheless witnessed vicious attacks against the new Pope’s character, standing and governance, more from disgruntled so-called believing abiding Catholics than from non-Catholics. Some of the labels and outcries: Joseph, Cardinal Ratsinger, is a “Watchdog”, “Attackdog”, “Cop”, “Enforcer” and “Rottweiler”, an old man “Defender” of antiquated edicts and doctrines, “Uncompromising”, He is no Martin Luther. I was not aware that Martin Luther compromised any truth. In short, he is a “rat” antagonizing and riling against all liberal theologies. What is there to be compromised, when faith is a biblically tight reined journey achieved only through strict obedience, submission and conformity?
As Jesus said to the Emmaus disciples, who treated Him as a stranger and uninformed, many Christians are no more than strangers and unscriptured being fool and slow at heart as they are crippled with fancy secular clichés, paralysis agitans, abject myopia, blinding dyslexia and mental dyspepsia not to see that believing, unconditionally and submissively, in the fundamentals of the tenets of the Bible is the only way to imitate, obey and follow Jesus, to earn the title of true disciples.
Today’s Christianity is standing at a crossroad edging on blasphemy, mutiny and self-gratification. A wasteland Christianity that is devoid of discipline, humility, piety, submission and sacrifice. The Cross and Resurrection of the Lord are replaced by humanism, hedonism, feminism and secularism with a touch of communism, Marxism, fascism as well as Eastern mysticism.
