FOR Catholics mainly: With the start of Advent and the new Liturgical year, as well as the recent experience of the Mumbai massacre, it might be good to review the basics of our faith. There is only one God Who in His love created man to bring him to heaven in union with him in happiness forever. The second truth is that He is a God who will reward whatever good we do and will punish the evil we do. The third is that in His love He took the form of a man in Jesus Christ to redeem us from our own weaknesses. He is very interested in bringing us to happiness even more than we may be. And the fourth is that when Jesus left us to ascend to the Father, He left us the Church or the Mystical Body to guide us in our sojourn here on earth. From our Baptism we became part of this Mystical Body. The Holy Spirit remains in this Mystical Body and therefore in each of us as long as we do not deliberately cut ourselves off from that Body by sin. 

As helps for our earthly journey we have the Bible to teach us the truth, the Sacraments to strengthen us, and the Church or His Mystical Body of which we are a part to guide us. The Protestants put us to shame in their love and use of the Bible to lead them in this life to the Truth. Through the Scriptures God speaks to all of us but at the same time gives personal messages to each one in particular. We should therefore read the Bible and meditate on its messages for all but especially for the messages for us (me) in particular. In every Mass we read two passages of the Bible, so that in three year cycle, we read through the whole of the Scriptures. It is this contact with the Word of God that is essential in leading us to the truth and to what pleases the Father for us to do. The first part of the Mass is the instruction up to the sermon.

The second part of the Mass is the sacrament of the Eucharist and starts with the Offertory. Although all the sacraments give us grace or Divine Life, it is especially in the Eucharist that we are nourished for the needs of our daily life. It is this Divine Life that links us with God and by which we are transformed to be able, even as a creature like us, to be united to the Creator. This is through God’s mercy. On our part we thank the Lord for this promise of salvation.

We then believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God given to enlighten us; that the Sacraments are provided to increase our love of God; and the Mystical Body is the source of our sharing Divine Life or Grace. By the Bible we are given the good news of our salvation and the promise of peace and happiness. It seems a paradox that our symbol is the Cross yet we call it Good News. The Lord does not promise happiness here on earth but only peace of heart. If we experience 30 percent to 40 percent happiness here on earth, we can consider ourselves fortunate. But in the next life we must attain perfect happiness for otherwise we can not be happy. Man will hanker for any good that it can imagine and since we can imagine the limitless and perfect happiness we would suffer if we only had 99 percent happiness. This in fact is the main suffering of hell. It is not fire or torture but the remorse. The punishment is the regret that we could have obtained perfect happiness in union with God but through our own fault we lost it.

Each human being is destined to be united in perfect happiness with the Creator. So we cannot look down on anybody who has such a destiny. However miserable and wretched he may appear, he possesses the spark of the Divine in him which unless he deliberately throws it away, entitles him to union with God and perfect happiness in heaven. emeterio_barcelon@yahoo.com.