By The Grace of God

Awhile back, I read a blog entry from a Catholic man, who was not happy with converts to Catholicism. He felt that we are overzealous, far too eager to discuss our faith, and even far too eager to share it. He more or less said that he did not need any convert to tell him how to be Catholic and that we need to realize that we don't know everything about Catholicism.

Being a convert myself, I was, to be honest, somewhat hurt, and yes, offended that this man felt that the best thing any convert can do, is to just shut our mouths and not speak unless spoken to. I began to wonder why this man felt this way, and I wondered if maybe he was right and that we all go overboard in our discussing and sharing our faith.

Maybe this man felt he knows everything he needs or wants to know about Catholicism and he does not want or need some neophyte telling him about it. Then again, he could possibly be intimidated if a convert has spoken of something that he did not know.

I became very aware of my own discussions and sharing of the faith and found that many times my discussions were occurring more often with non-Catholics as opposed to “cradle Catholics”. I was avoiding discussing the faith with other Catholics unless like me, they were also converts. To be honest, I found more openness and receptivity among the neophytes like myself, and yes, even among the non-Catholics with whom I spoke and shared the faith. Many (not a majority though) of the life long Catholics did not want to discuss the faith, did not know anything about a particular subject, or said they only discuss the faith with their priest or spiritual adviser.

Now, I will be the first one to tell you that I do not know everything about the Catholic faith nor have I ever claimed to. I try to have these discussions, and this sharing with other Catholics so that I may learn, and so that I may grow in the faith. Sometimes, many times in fact, some of those “cradle Catholics” have gone away having learned something themselves.

The truth is, no matter if we are converts or “cradle Catholics”, we all have something to learn. God gives us reason and understanding through the Power of the Holy Spirit, as we are able to grasp it. No matter whom we are, no matter what our station in life, if we think or imagine that we have learned all that there is to know about Jesus Christ and His one true Church, then we are mistaken. There is always something new to learn, always something new revealed to us by the Grace of God. If we begin to think, if we become so arrogant to think we know all there is to know, and that we can learn no more, then we shortchange our selves, and we have rejected the Power of Christ through the Holy Spirit.

So please try to be patient with those of us who are converts to the faith, who are learning, who love what we are learning, and love Christ and His Church. Think of how Christ Himself said:

MATTHEW 18:2-5: And Jesus calling unto him a little child, set him in the midst of them, and said: Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, he is the greater in the kingdom of heaven. And he that shall receive one such little child in my name, receives me.

Yes, we are like little children. Those of you who have little children, those who remember when your own children were little, or when you see your own little grandchildren now, think of those times and their excitement when they have discovered, or will discover something new. Think of those times when something or someone they loved or love now excites them. That is what we converts are today. We are like little children, who have found something new, that we love and that excites us. We are like little children who just have to share something new. That excitement, that love, is the love we have for Christ and His Church. Do not belittle us for it; do not think that we are overzealous, or overbearing. That is not what we mean to convey. Understand that we are striving to learn, we are striving to grow, and like little children, we need you to help us, and enrich our growth.

When you look at the history of the Church, from the time of its founding until the present day, many, many illustrious converts helped to build up and grow the Church. I don't know about you, but I think we converts are in some good company. I came into the Church five years ago, and I still have that hunger to know all that I can, and that excitement that still urges me to share. I only pray that what we do here, helps the building up.

Copyright © 2009 Steve Smith. All Rights Reserved.

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World's Oldest Bible Now Online

A 1,600 year old manuscript of the Bible has for at least the last 150 years, been in four separate locations around the world. It is known as “The Codex Sinaiticus”, named after the Monastery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai, Egypt. The name 'Codex Sinaiticus' means 'the Sinai Book'. Leaves and fragments of the Codex were taken on three occasions, in 1844, in 1853 and in 1859, so that they could be published. The largest surviving portion of the Codex, comprised of 347 leaves, was purchased from the Soviet government in 1933, and is now held by the British Library. An additional 43 leaves are held at the University Library in Leipzig, Germany, and parts of six leaves are held at the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg. Twelve leaves and forty fragments remain at Saint Catherine’s Monastery, where they were recovered by monks in 1975.

The Codex Sinaiticus was hand-written in Greek by three (possibly four) scribes in the mid-fourth century, around the time of Constantine the Great. The Codex was originally around 1,400 pages long, is now a collection of 800 pages and fragments. The text, written on vellum (high quality parchment made from calfskin, kidskin, or lambskin) and the pages that have survived include the entire New Testament and the earliest surviving copy of the Gospels, written after Christ’s death by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Half of a copy of the Old Testament is also among the pages that remain. The rest has been lost over time.

The Greek Septuagint in the Codex includes books not found in the Hebrew Bible and regarded by Protestants as apocryphal, such as 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Wisdom and Sirach. The two other early Christian texts are an Epistle by an unknown writer claiming to be the Apostle Barnabas, and 'The Shepherd', written by the early second-century Roman writer, Hermas. The number of the books in the New Testament is the same as that in modern Bibles in the West, but the order is different. The Letter to the Hebrews is placed after Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians, and the Acts of the Apostles between the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles.

Only one other manuscript of the Christian Bible, the Codex Vaticanus (kept in the Vatican Library in Rome) is of a similarly early date.

In March of 2005, the British Library, the University Library in Leipzig, Germany, the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg, and the Holy Monastery of Sinai signed a Partnership Agreement “for the conservation, photography, transcription and publication of all surviving pages and fragments of Codex Sinaiticus”.

The organizations from Great Britain, Germany, Russia and Egypt who each owned parts of the 1,600-year-old manuscript, have worked together to publish research into the history of the Codex. During a four-year period, they have transcribed over 650,000 words.

To see this manuscript yourself, and read about the work being done for this great project, go to:

http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/





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The Right to Free Speech

It’s Not Free Anymore

Many of our readers may be familiar with the faith-based website, Catholic Answers. Catholic Answers provides a plethora of information regarding the Catholic faith to both Catholics and non-Catholics alike. During the 2004 election, Mr. Karl Keating, President of Catholic Answers in one of his E-Letters stated that because of Senator John Kerry’s unchanging position on the issue of abortion, he should be denied Holy Communion. The Internal Revenue Service says he should not have said it.

Continued on "Church Under Attack" section.



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PRESCRIPTION HELP

As many of you may or may not know, I had a heart attack in May of 2006. One of the things that I have had to deal with is the high cost of my medications. A friend of mine who lives in Texas told me about a website called Your Rx Card. She told me that she had used it and saved a good deal of money on her prescription costs.

So, here is how it works. Go to their website at : http://www.yourrxcard.com ,
and there you will see a box where you type in your first name, your last name, and your email address (don't worry, no junk email or emails from this site come to you at all), and then click on Get Card Now. When your card appears, print it out, and then take it to your pharmacy and ask them to add the card to your file.

Questions about the card can be answered by going here: http://www.yourrxcard.com/questions.php

If you have several household members who need medications, you will need to make a card for each of them as well. You can use the same email address for each family member, just type in their first and last names , click Get Card Now, and print it out.

Also, be sure to put in your zip code in the Pharmacy Locator box and the site will give you the names of pharmacies in your area that accept this card. If you live in a small town like I do, you might want to select a distance of at least 20 miles. You will be surprised (as I was) to find this card is accepted at many national chains as well as locally owned pharmacies.

You will want to click on the Medication Pricing Box as well. There you can type in the name of a medication you or a family member is taking, and they will show you the prices being charged at your area pharmacies.

Hope this helps some of you out there!

Little Dash

“All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.”--Gandalf from Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

How do we decide what to do with the time given to us? Far too often, we take the time given us for granted and behave as though we have all the time in the world to do the things we should do, and what we hope to do. Many times we are dealt a hand that leads us on a path we never thought we would take, or maybe even more correctly, a path we never wanted to take. So, the things we hoped for in life, dreamed of in life never happen, or sometimes begin and are ended for reasons we can not understand, and often find difficult to accept and live with. When our dreams are shattered, when the carpet is pulled out from under us we far too often have a hard time letting go and moving on. So, what do we do, and how do we cope?

We can take one of two paths when we are faced with obstacles in our life path. First, we can weep, and moan and groan, and throw ourselves one big pity party. We can sit and dwell on the past, feel sorry for ourselves, and convince ourselves to quit and give up, for if we have failed, what is the point of trying? I don’t recall who said it now, but, it is a great quote, “failure is not falling down. Failure is falling down and not trying to get up again”. When we fail, there is usually one reason we do fail, and that is our relying on ourselves and totally leaving God out of the picture. We begin to think of ourselves more and more, and rely on ourselves more and more, and too often, we forget that it is not we who are responsible for what we have and have become, but, it is God. We become responsible for who we are and what we have become when we leave God out altogether. That doesn’t mean we should just give God the credit when we have time or when we think of it, but, it means we should thank God each and every day, and even several times a day.

You say you are too busy? You don’t have the time? Why do you not have the time for God, when He has time for you every day, all day? When we don’t take time for God, then what we are saying is, that we and our self centeredness are more important than God is. We have forgotten the formula for a happy, complete, and total life. That formula is to always place God first, others second, and ourselves last. When we place ourselves first, before God and before our brothers and sisters, then we are not making wise use of the time given to us. We are throwing away the time and the life that God has given us, and we are wasting our time and our life by worshipping at the altar of self and self indulgence. When we place ourselves first, when we become more important than God, when we become more important than our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors and our friends, then in essence, we have made ourselves god.

I am reminded of a true story related to me by a man who frequents the neighborhood store where I once worked. He was telling me how his church was cleaning up around the church cemetery, and he and his three sons were helping in the project. His youngest son is nine years old, and he was amazed at some of the dates on the various headstones and monuments. His father was explaining to him that the church had been there a long time, so there would be a lot of dates from long ago. The boy stood there looking at one of the old headstones, and said to his taken aback father, “but, you know dad, the important part is not when someone is born or when they died. The important part is that little dash in between”.

So, what are we…you and I…going to do with “that little dash in between”? Do we work for God and for others, or do we wallow in self-pity, selfishness, and indifference? I think I want my “little dash” to have meant something. How about you?

© Copyright 2008 Steve Smith. All rights reserved.

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Welcome!

Welcome to our blog, Faith of the Fathers. This is a multiblog site, as each of our topics as you see listed to the right on the “Links” sections, has it's own unique page. You may click on any topic to read the articles written there. The topics are on Apologetics, Our Lady, Saints of the Faith, Prayer Requests, and more. The Church Under Attack category is a collection of articles of our opinions on a variety of subjects. The Saint Quote of the Day, is a collection of different quotes from the various Saints of the Church. New effective September 5, 2005, we have permission from Vatican Information Services to include their news releases on our blog. This will be on the Pope Benedict XVI page. This Holy See Press Office bulletin covers a synthesis of the Holy Father speeches and activities, Holy See Press Office press releases, activities of the Curia Romana, audiences, etc.


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