I Believe – Life Is a Race for Souls; a Testing Ground…

I believe that this life is nothing but a testing-ground, a race for souls.

That is what is really taking place beneath all the noise, business, entertainment, money, possessions, ambitions, and distractions of this world. We are here for a very very short time. This life is a testing ground – a walk – and Almighty God sees every step that we take.

There is a battle for souls going on. Christ calls us to Himself, while the devil wants our souls and seeks to draw souls away from Christ. And the devil does not always come crashing through the front door announcing what he is doing. He works subtly. A little compromise here. A little compromise there, a little change here. One word altered. One prayer shortened. One doctrine blurred. One convenience introduced. The road is widened almost imperceptibly until people no longer realize how far they have wandered.

That is why I believe words matter.

Language is precise. Words have meaning, and in matters of faith they should have pinpoint accuracy. Take, for example, the traditional English expression “Holy Ghost.” There is only one Holy Ghost, while there are many spirits. I therefore believe that replacing “Holy Ghost” with the more general word “spirit” loses a precision that should have been guarded rather than casually discarded.

To some people, that may seem insignificant.

I do not believe it is insignificant.

I believe this is representative of the subtle changes that entered Catholic life – changes so small individually that people could be persuaded that nothing important was happening. Yet when enough little things are changed, eventually something much larger has changed.

I see the same thing when I compare older Catholic prayer books with later editions. The Key of Heaven is a perfect example. To me, the old Key of Heaven (1882) is a little spiritual treasure – a piece of gold. Its prayers teach a person how to begin the day, end the day, examine himself, pray, and keep his mind upon Almighty God.

In the older editions I have examined, the morning prayers are substantial. They take time. You do not simply race through them and get on with the hustle and bustle of the world.

And that, to me, is precisely the point.

God comes first.

In later editions I have seen, those morning prayers were considerably reduced. What happens when religious life is gradually made more convenient for the modern world? Get up. Say a few prayers. Hurry along. Get to work. Make money. Attend to business. Watch television. Keep up with the world and the grey clouds swoop-in.

I believe that turns the proper order upside down.

The real business of this life is the salvation of the soul.

Yet I do not mean that the Catholic Faith is some miserable burden that makes life unbearable. Quite the contrary. Our Lord teaches that His yoke is sweet and His burden light.

I compare it to a runner.

Take somebody who has never run before and put him into a race. His lungs are burning, his legs hurt, and he is shaking his head asking, “What is this all about?” He has not yet experienced what the seasoned runner knows. He may quit almost immediately.

But the runner who digs in his heels and continues eventually passes that barrier. His body adapts. Running becomes something entirely different to him.

I believe there is a spiritual parallel. Dig your heels into the Faith. Pray. Obey. Persevere. Seek God sincerely. As Almighty God sees a soul responding to His grace, He gives that soul more grace. With more grace comes greater strength, understanding, and love of God. What once appeared difficult becomes sweet.

The yoke becomes sweet. The burden becomes light.

This is also why I take the question of Baptism so seriously. I believe the teaching concerning “baptism of desire” and “baptism of blood” has been presented in ways that make them appear to replace water Baptism, and I do not accept that interpretation as the teaching handed down from the Chair of Saint Peter. Baptism has form and matter.

At the same time, a person cannot simply pour water upon somebody for the sake of doing it and imagine that the person’s will is irrelevant. There must be the desire to come to Christ – to believe, to know, love and serve Him, to embrace the Gospel and the Most Holy Trinity. Desire belongs to the person’s turning toward Baptism; it should not be transformed into a substitute for the sacrament itself.

These distinctions matter to me because eternity matters.

People are sleeping on the road to hell in a kind of false peace.

They look around at the world and all its frills and baubles and behave as though there will always be another tomorrow. Nobody particularly likes to associate death with himself.

Go to a funeral and watch what happens.

A person looks into the coffin at someone who has died from an illness and says, “Well, he was sick.” Or, “She was old.” There is almost an instinct to find some difference between the person lying there dead and ourselves. No one likes to relate death with themselves.

We walk out of the funeral home and immediately return to the world.

But death comes for all of us.

There will be a year.

And in that year, that month.

And in that month, that day.

And in that day, that hour.

And in that hour, that minute.

And in that minute, that second.

And bang – your life is over.

You are pronounced dead.

Death comes like a thief in the night, when you least expect it. And once you are out of time, you are out of time!  You enter eternity. There is no putting another coin into the machine and purchasing another life. There is no coming back tomorrow to correct what you deliberately refused to correct today.

Then comes eternity.

And what is eternity?

Take every grain of sand upon the entire earth. Imagine that it were possible to count them, one grain at a time. Eventually suppose you finished counting every last grain.

You would not have put a dent in eternity.

Now take every leaf from every tree upon the entire earth at the peak of the season. Count every single leaf.

When you finally finished, you still would not have put a dent in eternity.

Then consider all the drops of water in the oceans.

Imagine a little bird coming from somewhere in outer space. Once every year, that bird arrives at the earth, takes one tiny sip from the ocean, and flies away. A year later it returns and takes another sip. Imagine this continuing until that impossible little bird had emptied the oceans.

When it had finally finished its task, that still would not begin to even put a dent in eternity.

Eternity is forever and ever and ever and ever, without end.

As long as God is God.

That is why the possibility of hell cannot simply be brushed aside because it makes modern people uncomfortable. I believe hell is eternal, and the poor souls who are lost suffer the consequences of that loss for eternity.

Look at Noah’s Ark.

Out of the human race around Noah, how many entered the Ark and were spared?

Eight.

The rest mocked, laughed, carried on with their lives and did not believe the warning until the time for warning was finished.

That should tell us something chilling.

I also believe Almighty God has house rules for us here on earth, and that those house rules are the same as the house rules in Heaven!

People sometimes ask, “How could a merciful God condemn anybody?” But consider a good father running a good household. His children are loved, but the house has rules. Suppose one child continually rebels, brings corruption into the home, rejects the father’s authority and finally separates himself from everything the household stands for.

Deep inside, that person knows when he has done wrong because God has given man a moral conscience.

Pride can bury it.

A person can become callous. He can harden himself. He can become angry at the father and eventually convince himself that the father was the problem all along. But beneath all that pride, the truth remains.

I believe the same principle operates spiritually. God’s mercy is immense, but mercy does not mean that Almighty God has no law, no commandments, no order and no consequences.

And at the Judgment, I will not be able to turn my head toward Michael, Thomas, Johnny, my neighbor, a priest, a politician, or anybody else.

It will be my soul before Almighty God.

My time.

My choices.

My deeds.

My response to the graces I was given.

That is why I believe the seemingly little things within the Church matter so much. A word matters. A prayer matters. A sacrament matters. Doctrine matters. The Key of Heaven matters. “Holy Ghost” matters. What was removed matters. What was added matters. What was shortened matters.

Because if this life truly is a race for souls, then the devil does not have to convince everybody that God does not exist.

Sometimes he needs only to get a person to sleep.

Sleep comfortably.

Sleep in false peace.

Sleep while the road gradually becomes broader.

Sleep while eternity gets closer by the second.

So my message is simple:

Wake up before your out of time, and hit the ground.

You have one life, one chance, and one soul.

Run the race. Hold fast to Christ. Dig your heels into the Faith. Ask Almighty God for grace and then cooperate with that grace. The farther you travel with Him, the sweeter His yoke becomes.

Because eventually your year will come.

Then your month.

Then your day.

Then your hour.

Then your minute.

Then your second.

And when that second is gone, you are out of time.

Eternity has begun. Your eternity is fix forever.

By: AJB