Chapter 1 Christ's Call

Christ is God, and thus the call of Christ is the call of God the Almighty Creator of all that is visible and invisible. Therefore, failure to think sincerely and logically about the Creator or chasing faulty Truth are not matters of opinion to be taken lightly, but serious decisions that lead either to a permanent life or permanent death. Therefore, the decision we make must be based on the ultimate judgment one can make in desperation gasping for the breath of life itself. In Christianity, Christ who points to the Creator, is both Man and God the Creator. Therefore, the ultimate goal for every person is to imitate Christ or at least to search with sincerity and an open heart for the answer to the why or the why not Christ. Christ, who is the way, provided us the means to Be Perfect. Otherwise, it would be an impossible task for Christ to call us to imitate the Creator whom no one saw or observed closely, except Christ. Moses also told us to “Be Holy,” but his interaction with God was quite brief in comparison with Christ who is God.

St. Peter repeated the call stating in 1Peter 1:15,

The call to Be Holy did not discourage the Apostles. The Apostles took the call to Be Holy seriously and frequently called on the followers of Christ to Be Holy. Saint Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4:7 reminds us that, “For God called us not for uncleanness, but in sanctification.” The Creator is holy and Christ who is one with the Creator is holy. Thus, to imitate Christ we absolutely must Be Holy.

 

Although holiness may sound impossible, Christ the “Emmanuel” (which is being interpreted as “God with us” (Matthew 1:23) only demands what is achievable by His disciples and does not demand what frustrates us or causes us to fail. We can be assured that He would ask what we can achieve and provide the necessary means to achieve it. Christ calls everyone who follows Him, including new followers, to “Be Perfect.” The demand for perfection may seem unheard of in view of the past weaknesses of the followers. I find in Christ's call to all His followers to Be Holy an assurance that sincere followers can expect to achieve the call to Be Holy. That is exciting for all followers of Christ to Be Holy as God – but how?

 

Be Holy includes the admonition to be good and avoid stealing, killing, deceiving, and committing atrocities. Yet Be Holy is not the same as be good, follow certain rules, abide by the Ten Commandments, and avoid immoral sins. God and Christ did not call only bad people to become good or to become his followers; God and Christ called everyone to be followers, including good and humble people. Christ called sinners to avoid sin as in John 8:11, “Go. From now on sin no more.” In many instances, Christ called ordinary good people such as fishermen, disciples of John the Baptist, shepherds, the paralyzed, physicians, the blind, the mute, and even Jewish priests to follow him and His ultimate call to “Be Perfect.” Christ calls all His followers regardless of their current or past situation to follow him and to “Be Perfect.” But how can we Be Holy as God is holy?

The creator called the people to imitate Him by “Be holy as I am Holy” (Leviticus 11:44) and that demand must be universal and for every culture.

 

Achieving perfection to the level of the Creator cannot be based on a statement that is repeated no matter how sincere the intent. Christ gave us the logical answer that, “No one is good—except God alone” (Mark 10:18). In other words, to Be Perfect cannot possibly be based on human actions whether by following a set of rules, following laws, or repeating certain phrases. The call to Be Holy must invoke the power of the Creator.

One may argue that invoking the belief in Christ or the Creator instantly makes the follower as holy as the Creator. While that can be true, it does not make the individual to be Perfect as the Creator. The words came out of the mouth of the individual but the Creator did not necessarily go into the individual. This is different than when Christ states to an individual, “Your sins are forgiven” or “today, you will be in Paradise.” In such an instance, the Creator’s words became the “Let there be” (Genesis 1:3) that created the individual in the “perfect” state. The initial call of the man to Christ to “have pity on me” still required that Christ respond back to the man. Verbalizing your belief in Christ in itself does not guarantee that Christ will find them sincere enough and heartfelt enough to reply back with His saving words. I am not undermining the importance of the statement that one believes in Christ, but pointing out that the statement cannot be what would make a person, “Be Perfect as your Father is Perfect.”

 

Although Christ asked for prayers, prayer cannot be the tool to imitate Christ who is God incarnate. Although Christ prayed frequently, God does not need to pray to anyone at any time. All God needs to do to create or do anything is to desire or will it as stated, “Let there be” and it will be as God desires and wills.

 

Ultimately Be Holy or “Be Perfect” means to be in union with God; God alone is holy and perfect. That is very difficult for a human to achieve because God works on the Spiritualistic nature but people function on the humanistic level. In the New Testament, Christ who is God gave us the means; He established that to Be Perfect is to have Christ unite within our bodies. In Christ, the hope is joy and ecstasy as “The Word became Flesh and made His dwelling among us” (John 1:14).

 

Therefore, the answer to everlasting life resides in Christ. The union between Man and God is a union that joins the human kingdom to the Divine Kingdom of God. God's Kingdom is the symbol of everlasting life, holiness, perfection, and absence of sin. The kingdom of mere humans is the cycle of death, unholiness, imperfection, and sin. Yet the creator demands that the human be in union with God which means to be in union with everlasting life, holiness, and perfection. As a result, un-uniting the incredible union between human and the Divine is death. Therefore, death can be defined as the un-union between the Creator and a human, because, the Creator is the only source of everlasting life. As such, all that is not in union with the Creator lasts as long as the Creator permits, but always comes to an end. Therefore, we can presume that everything can come to an end except the source of Life itself who is the Creator. As such, an un-union with the Creator is un-union with life itself and will end with permanent death regardless of whether death is delayed. The comforting part is that as long as anyone has not reached the end of life, anyone has the incredible opportunity to unite with the Creator on the Creator’s terms. Therefore, there is no need for anyone to end his/or her life or kill another human no matter how evil and wicked the person or evil spirit maybe. As a result, all suffering that a person may endure during life as a price to remain in union with the Creator is self-limiting and soon this form of suffering will pass. However, delaying a personal unity with Life (the Creator) is the most unwise, riskiest, most helpless, and most worrisome choice in an individual’s life. Likewise, an opportunity to unite with the Perfect, the Holy, the Creator who is everlasting life is the most generous and priceless gift imaginable. Everything that lacks eternal life, cannot do anything worthy enough to gain life; the source of life must bestow the gift of everlasting life and declare “Let there be life.”

 

The Creator, the source of life, can gift the union to anyone who chooses to have everlasting life as a union with the Creator. However, the person or the angel who has formed a union with life cannot on its own separate from the source of Life (un-union) and gift everlasting life to anyone else. Otherwise, the individual or entity that un-united with the Creator would become an independent everlasting life or a creator. Becoming an independent creator means that the entity or the individual can disobey the Creator without any risk of being destroyed. Based on that false hypothesis, obeying the Creator becomes meaningless and un-uniting from the Creator becomes a deception. As a result, the Creator could not declare that unholy will not inherit the everlasting life, because un-union with the Creator would not mean death or unholiness. A logical result of such a false belief is that unholiness is an everlasting life equal to holiness. However, truth alone is holy and everlasting life, while untruth is death and unholy. Truth and untruth or holy and unholy or life and death cannot possibly coexist in unity in the Creator or in those who are in union with the Creator. You are either in union or not in union with the Creator. You can be in a transition state as long as the Creator permits it, but it is a state that must come to an end either way. Eventually, you would either be in permanent unity with the Creator or permanent separation and un-unity.

 

The unity between a man and a woman gives us the visual example of that unity between a human and the Creator. The united man and woman create the result of their union in the form of their child. The child's Genetic code was blended from the parents and is inseparable by humans without jeopardizing the child’s life. This union between a man and a woman cannot be called a union if it is limited to wishes, words, or signed contracts without the physical exchange of their genetic codes in the marital act. In other words, without the physical bond of the parents' genetic code blended in some manner, their unity of words cannot form a child together. Likewise, we notice that God uses a physical form to unite Himself to humans. Christ, who is God incarnate, fulfilled the living human example by which God desires unity with human.

 

The normal method of unity Christ gifted us to gain the Creator's incredible grace of union with Man is Baptism using water. Christ called baptism a new birth and rightly so because now the baptized received the Spirit of God to overcome the original source of permanent death. But since man remains alive and untested even after this grace, man can freely choose to live with or without nurturing this unity of new-birth. It is like a husband and wife after their union; one may choose not to nurture this union. In like manner, a validly united man and woman may grow apart, yet the image of their blended union in their child cannot be separated into each parent’s contributed genetic code by any human being without killing the child. The only one that can separate this unity of the blended Genetic code of the parents living within their child without killing the child is God Himself. But such an act is contrary to God’s design of union or Be Holy and Be Perfect. This should explain the reason that Christ stated, “I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery” (Matthew 19:9). Indeed, a man and woman can have children without being validly united; nerveless any human on his/or her own power cannot undue a valid marital union.

 

The union between the human and the divine requires nurturing and strengthening. Only Christ can give us the special nourishment that will sustain the union between the divine and a human. We cannot possibly nourish the divine perfectly because humans are limited to humanistic abilities. However, we can try and should try our best to nourish the rebirth – the union between a person and the Creator. Likewise a newly formed union between a man and a woman requires appropriate nourishment to grow closer together. The most appropriate nourishment to unity is sacrifice. Gifts that require sacrifices from the giver are more valuable and more greatly felt by the receiver. Likewise in a valid marital union, sincere materialistic gifts, kind words, and forgiveness are greatly appreciated, but cannot surpass gifting one's virginity, or the genetic code (to form the child of the couple), or gifting one's kidney or the gifting one’s total self for another. As such, the gift of self is priceless and a gift of self to unite with the Creator is the ultimate treasure beyond comprehension. Although as humans we do not possibly have a worthy enough gift or sacrifice to offer to the divine Creator to unite with Him who is Life, we should always try to gift generously. The closest possible gift is to offer the Creator our own self which is the cycle of death, although that gift remains too little in comparison to the gift of everlasting life from the Creator to us. We can increase the value of our gift of self the better care we take of our total self (mind, words, choices, and suffering), the more we make ourselves as holy as possible, and the more sincerity and love that accompany the offer. However, all the gifts that have been offered to the Creator cannot possibly be as holy or as appropriate as the worthiest, holiest, and everlasting sacrifice that was the gift of Christ who is the Creator Himself. As such, the Creator offered us the incredible opportunity to offer Him His Holy Son Christ who is God incarnate. In fact, Christ is God Himself and the fulfillment of the holiest, worthiest, and everlasting Sacrifice that is the only possibility to satisfy our struggle of our imperfect sacrifices that we must continuously offer the Creator whenever we transgress against His Holy commands.

 

This relationship of baptismal unity between the human and the Creator is continuous. The baptismal unity resembles the newly formed valid union between a man and woman which requires not only the initial biggest sacrifice of self to each other, but ongoing daily sacrificial gifts and nourishment. Christ solved this incredible dilemma and offered us the opportunity to constantly grow and nourish our union with similar continuous sacrifices of Himself in a continuous nourishment to God the Father. Indeed, a divine union requires ongoing sacrificial divine nourishment. Certainly, our contribution of ongoing daily imperfect human sacrificial gifts is lovely and thoughtful, and is never rejected when offered sincerely. But they always remain imperfect and lacking. Therefore, the perfect and holiest ongoing divine sacrifice is the sacrifice of the consecrated Body and Blood of Christ during a valid authorized Mass.

 

A mere human sacrificial offering of bread and wine alone during any prayer celebration lacks the proper nourishment for the new union between the Divine and human if the bread and wine do not divinely change to the real presence of Christ’s Body and Blood. To live eternally in our new baptismal union, we need eternal nourishment that can only be possible by the sacrificial divine offering who is the Creator Himself. Those who argue that the True Body and Blood of Christ cannot possibly be the consecrated familiar human food of bread and wine, risk starving their baptismal union with the Creator, even if that union was valid, because of lack of Divine nourishment. Likewise, even if the union between a man and woman is valid (based on the initial sacrifice of the gift of each self to one another), the union could starve and the couple could risk growing apart without appropriate nourishment. In a valid union between a man and woman, the partners may repeat daily the words “I love you” and still grow apart. Saying the words without valid sacrifices is too little to nourish their union. Even the daily gift of a rose from the man to the woman would be of too little value to a rich man and would not properly grow and nourish the union to perfection. You see that the nourishment must be sacrificial and appropriate to the receiver. A gift of peanuts to a spouse who does not like peanuts is not appropriate to grow the special marital union. Not only one spouse should offer the ongoing sacrificial nourishment, but both spouses should offer generously and suitably.

 

Likewise, as a human I can and should offer my prayers, conversations, sacrifices, Scripture studies, praises, and wishes. I should abide by the Creator’s design and meditate on all the examples and teaching the Creator taught through all His prophets and especially through Christ. I must do all that I can do to nourish my union with the Creator, but my efforts remain too little and too imperfect. Precisely, what truly matters is the Creator’s gift and grace to freely unite Himself to me and to nourish my new incredible rebirth with the ongoing divine sacrifices of the Body and Blood of Christ. Note that the usual offering of sacrifices to the Creator has always followed the Creator's instruction – a blessing with blood and flesh or the symbol of bread and wine and in an elaborate feast that mimics the holy wedding and that is in actuality the Catholic Mass celebration. As such the best official method to offer our gift of self is to symbolically join ourself with the divine sacrifice of the Holy Mass. This sacrifice is similar to the most appropriate method of sacrifice a valid marriage can offer to each partner – the marital act of love within an intimate pure and holy marital bed.

 

Although Christ was crucified at a single point in time, Christ’s crucifixion instituted for us ongoing sacrifices of the worthiest and holist kind – sacrifices that must be offered to the Creator for our ongoing transgression and ongoing requirement of divine nourishment of our baptismal union. Likewise, we offer the Creator our ongoing daily sacrifices of ourselves, but we must combine them with the most perfect and holiest ongoing sacrifices of the validly consecrated Bread and Wine. The ongoing sacrifice that Christ instituted was on Thursday the day before His crucifixion naming it the “new testament” (Luke 22:20) which means the “new Covenant” which means the New Sacred Scripture in True Holy Flesh and Blood. Additionally, on the day of the crucifixion, Christ consecrated the ongoing sacrifice that He had already instituted in the last supper. In like manner a valid married couple would consecrate the “new marital covenant” to nourish and strengthen their ongoing marital union and bear fruits or “children.”

 

This celebration of the Mass is evident in the Church history and was repeatedly mentioned in the life of the Christians. Note that this “New Testament” was emphasized and practiced by the Church much earlier than the New Testament Books were written and collected. Note the wisdom of the Creator in instituting this incredible holiest sacrifice for it is universal in every culture regardless of the person's ability to read or have a printed authorized translated Scripture. Note, St. Paul wrote to the Christians emphasizing that every time the Church meets, it should not be to pray, enjoy fellowship, and eat regular food and drink as if a party. Rather the Church should meet to commemorate the divine Bread and Wine as stated in 1 Corinthians 11:26-27 and verse 34,

Christ is truly and wholly present in the validly consecrated Bread and Wine because He gifted it by His “Let there be” life giving words, “Take and eat; this is my Body.”...“Drink from it, all of you, for this is my Blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:26-28).

Indeed, my life is a struggle with ongoing transgressions piercing the heart of the Creator and leaving me in desperate need of sacrificial offerings and His ongoing nourishment for strength against the roaring of the devil. Christ gave us the most appropriate ongoing sacrifice and nourishment of Life from the one who is Life. He made it possible for the valid human union with God the eternal Life saying,

These words of Christ are the “Let there be” words of eternal life that Simon Peter professed, “You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). In other words, for the sake of nourishing our union, I offer humble gifts of love to the Creator in my prayers and in my meditations on the Creator’s words. But my actions and my offerings of my personal talents and my sacrifices are imperfect and incomplete. However, if I stop there, I am not taking advantage of the Creator’s choice to nourish our rebirth (baptismal union) with the worthiest divine Sacrifice and Life giving nourishment.

 

The Creator’s choice of the valid consecrated Eucharist is basically an ongoing celebration feast of the baptismal union; it is a symbolic marriage and wedding feast just as a valid union and marriage celebration between a man and a woman makes one flesh. The valid married man and woman celebrate the valid union not just once, but daily; although the daily celebration somewhat differs from the first bloody, flesh breaking, painful and joyous consummation of the marital union. Likewise, the ongoing marital celebration lacks the flesh piercing and blood and water shedding, yet it is equally a marital union and life giving nourishment. The same was true when Christ's heart was pierced as stated in John 19:34, “and immediately Blood and Water flowed out.” That is the water of life, the water of Baptism and the ongoing water of life mixed in the consecrated Blood that Christ told the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4: 14, “the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” That is the great design of the valid marital union with the Creator, the valid baptismal marital union with the Creator and the ongoing marital life giving sacrificial offering in the valid Mass feast.

I suffer a horrific forsaken feeling merely from imagining myself trapped in unforeseen circumstances that might deprive me of the daily Catholic Holy Mass celebration. I certainly invite you to nourish your baptismal marital union by celebrating the Holy Mass of miracles daily, if at all possible.

 

The question remains, who can validly consecrate a human nourishment of bread and wine into the divine Christ the Creator? In deed no one and no human being can declare “Let there be life” without the Creator or an authorized validly consecrated person acting in the True person of Christ himself. Reading the words of Christ does not in itself lead Christ to declare, “Let there be.” The one who can validly give life to the words, “Let there be” is Christ who is God. This leads us to declare that no person or prophet, even one who is in union with the Creator, can give everlasting life to someone else without the giver being in union with the Creator and acting in the Creator's Persona. Therefore, Christ is fully God and fully man. The union between a human and the Creator must be gifted by the Creator to the individual person. It is Christ who is God, who declared to the paralyzed, the mute and blind “your sins are forgiven.” It is Christ who declared on Thursday in the upper room, “This is my Body...This is my Blood.”

 

Therefore, I and those who had no chance to ask Christ in person and hear His life giving words of, “Let there be,” starve for the missed opportunity to hear Christ personally. We starve to hear Him just as he was heard by the paralyzed, the blind, the mute, the thief on the Cross, the tax collector, and sinners. Others and I in any country and at any century need the exact same opportunity to hear in our ears that our sins are forgiven. It is not enough to read the words that Christ forgave the sinners personally. From that I cannot automatically infer that my sins now are likewise forgiven simply by reading the Biblical forgiveness stories. Even if reading forgiveness stories documented in the Bible had the power to forgive the readers' sins, over the centuries not everyone had a copy of the translated Scripture and not everyone could read. Christ knows our needs before we ask and must make His saving message universal and not based on any action on myself. Therefore, Christ gave His authority to the Apostles and their successors to bind and loose his followers' sins saying, “whatever you bind and loose on earth will be bound and loosed in heaven” (Matthew 18:18). However, Christ gave the same authority to bind and loose and additionally the authority of His own persona in the symbolic Key to Peter and peter’s successors (see Matthew 16:19).

 

In fact no human being can mediate the forgiveness of one person’s sins committed against others except Christ. If someone has debts against me, then I can forgive that person’s debts, but I cannot forgive the guilty person for his debts toward a third person. The third person maybe deceased, unreachable, or other unforeseen difficulties may prevent the personal forgiveness of debts. Thus, we need Christ in person to declare forgiveness and personally communicate the magnificent healing to the repentant. We are just as the sorrowful adulteress who met Christ and who could not possibly go and ask forgiveness in person to every spouse whose husband she shared, to every family she ruined, to every man she enticed, and to every boy she lured and manipulated.

 

Sorrowful sinners certainly can ask God privately for forgiveness and can seek forgiveness from those they sinned against. Such rights of repentance between the repentant and the unseen and unheard God were available two thousand years ago; yet sinners went personally to Christ even though they were exhausted from the trip and the burden of their sins. Sinners of today, similar to sinners two thousand years ago, seek forgiveness in a humanistic visual way from Christ. In fact, the validly ordained priest authorized by the authority that passed from the Apostles and the authority of Peter can declare to us in the persona of Christ, “Your sins are forgiven” exactly as though Christ is talking to me. Those words of absolution are the words of Christ and in the Persona of Christ those are words of joy and love into my heart and ears every time a valid priest declares them to me. Yes, I pray, feel, and read these exact words of Christ, but I need to hear them from the Priest who is in the person of Christ every time I fall short of the mark. This authority and power of the unity of Christ in his priests assures me the “Be Holy” Be Perfect and “Remain in me, as I also remain in you.” (John 15:4) is so real and represents the everlasting life. The opposite is likewise true. If I cannot believe that Christ unites in his valid priests regardless of the sins of that priest, then I the sinner cannot have any hope in uniting with invisible Christ who is God.

 

It is not by reading Christ’s words that mere bread and wine become consecrated into the True Body and Blood of Christ to nourish my baptismal marital union with Christ. The life giving words of “Let there be” do not act and give life just because somebody reads them, but because of the authority of Christ working in the validly authorized priest. Likewise, it is not by reading God’s words, “and the two of them become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24) and “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) that any person becomes transformed into a valid permanent union with another person. Examples of situations in which reading a marriage vow does not make one married include: a person is already committed to a valid union with another person; a person refuses to consummate the intended union; or a person jokingly recites the marital vow to anyone passing by at a market. The point is that the life-giving words that unite the Creator with a human must be spoken by the Creator or someone validly acting with authority in the persona of Christ. This fact gives me complete assurance that anyone during any century could enter validly into a baptismal union with the Creator. Anyone so united with the Creator can provide the divine baptismal marital union that provides ongoing divine nourishment of the true Flesh and Blood of Christ in the validly consecrated Eucharist.

 

This leads us to the logical fact that all valid unions with Christ become one with Christ and as such become one with everyone validly Baptized in the past, present, and future and on earth and in heaven. There is only one source of Life and as Christ described it, One Grapevine, and we the validly Baptized are its branches. Therefore, there is only one universal Church in union with Christ and in union with all the particles who are in union with Christ. Likewise the valid marital union between a man and a woman with God must be unique. The union with God is not based on human merits, wishes, readings, recitation, laws or documents, but is based on a gift and grace of God designing the union with Man. Likewise the union of a valid marriage is not based on human words or documents, but is based on the power of the divine to gift and nourish our valid union between human and the Creator.

 

Thus, the Catholic Church is not a human authority that seeks to control others. Instead it is Christ’s free gift of love and grace to us sinners. The rules the Church appears to impose are not rules to chain us. The rules are gifts to assure us of a valid union with the Creator, to provide us with valid divine nourishment, to validly rebirth us into a new union and to validly assure the repentant of Christ’s gift of forgiveness. The gift and grace of the Creator to us is eternal life. The authorized Church representatives who act in Christ’s persona are needed to alert us against the possibility of receiving the divine nourishment while in a state of unworthiness. Such a state could lead to rejection by the Creator just as the Creator rejected Cane’s offering of sacrificial fruits (See Genesis Chapter 4). I could make the mistake of offering unworthy sacrifices just as Cane did, and I may not know my mistake until late on my judgment day. I am thankful to Christ's care for my salvation to assign me helpers who are authorized to act in the persona of Christ now while I have a chance to make amends. Otherwise, if we do not seek ongoing divine nourishment of our divine baptismal union with the Creator, we risk becoming one of the unhealthy plants that choked and died as Christ explained in Luke 8: 4-15.