Thursday, August 30, 2007

Why the pictures?

We had a rather lively discussion today about Christ as the Judge of humanity. It seems that popular spirituality shoves this part of Christ's identiy under the rug and instead directs our attention to how remarkably merciful, loving, and downright friendly our Lord is. He is, in the popular view, "our brother."

True, we often need to be reminded of Christ's love and mercy, but if we fail to keep in mind that it is the love and mercy of God Incarnate, a God who by right could easily judge us all as sinners and condemn us to hell, then it ceases to be anything remarkable at all.

To be sure, the possibility of overemphasizing the role of eternal Judge exists, but this extreme is not one toward which popular devotion tends, at least not in the west. And so we must be on our guard. Do not let yourselves be deceived or led away from the Truth of Christ. See St. Paul's exhortation on not allowing the gospel to be "watered down" in his letter to the Galatians, particularly 1: 6 - 8.

Until next time,
Ad Jesum Per Mariam.
Mr. B.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like those pictures

Suki said...

your mom likes those pictures

Anonymous said...

actually she's never seen them

Suki said...

that's what she said