Saturday, March 29, 2014

The Few Who Are Saved?

The notion that most people are going to be saved and go to heaven because they are simply good people, is a false one. As we know, man must have supernatural grace in order to be saved, which comes through Jesus Christ, and His Church. Those who do not have this supernatural grace will not be saved. There are many ways to go to hell, the gate to it is wide, and the gate to heaven is narrow and few find it. Many Catholics today lead people to believe that there may not be any people in hell, and that we can reasonably hope that every man will be saved. In fact, the modernist theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar championed this idea which definitively contradicts Sacred Scripture, and the testimony of the Saints. Christ answers the question clearly when He is asked, ‘Lord, are they few that are saved? But he said to them: Strive to enter by the narrow gate; for many, I say to you, shall seek to enter, and shall not be able.’ (Luke 13:23-24) 
 
Other modernists such as Fr. Robert Barron continue to promote this false idea that few are in hell.  Notice in the video how he casually insults St. Augustine’s and St. Thomas Aquinas’ view of hell, and champions von Balthasar’s, who by the way got his false ideas from a Protestant heretic Karl Barth. It is amazing that Fr. Barron holds himself and Balthasar’s theological conclusions over the great Doctors of the Church! Can we as Catholics reasonably hope that all people will be saved? The answer is clearly no. We know absolutely from Sacred Scripture and the testimony of the Church and her Saints, that not all people will be saved. That is a fact, so to hope for an opposite outcome from that which Jesus and His Saints have told us is simply insane. Fr. Barron says that we do not know if humans are in hell, when in fact we do know they are there, just not whois there. There is a big difference between the two! There are many reasons why the Church has failed to evangelize in our modern age and one of them is that Catholics simply do not believe anyone will go to hell. Read below what Jesus and His Saints have to say about the matter and compare it to the modernists in the Church today. Who are you going to believe?
 
‘Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, Nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God.’ 
Saint Paul (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)
 ‘Behold how many there are who are called, and how few who are chosen! And behold, if you have no care for yourself, your perdition is more certain than your amendment, especially since the way that leads to eternal life is so narrow.’  
St. John of the Cross
 ‘The saved are few, but we must live with the few if we would be saved with the few. O God, too few indeed they are: yet amongst those few I wish to be!’ 
St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori
 
‘The more the wicked abound, so much the more must we suffer with them in patience; for on the threshing floor few are the grains carried into the barns, but high are the piles of chaff burned with fire.’ 
Pope St. Gregory the Great
 
‘Not all, nor even a majority, are saved. . . They are indeed many, if regarded by themselves, but they are few in comparison with the far larger number of those who shall be punished with the devil.’ …’Beyond a doubt the elect are few.’
St. Augustine
 
‘The number of the elect is so small – so small – that were we to know how small it is, we should faint away with grief. The number of the elect is so small that were God to assemble them together, He would cry to them, as He did of old, by the mouth of His prophet, “Gather yourselves together, one by one” – one from this province, one from that kingdom.’ 
St. Louis Marie de Montfort
 
‘That those who walk in the way of salvation are the smaller number is due to the vice and depraved habits imbibed in youth and nourished in childhood. By these means Lucifer has hurled into Hell so great a number of souls, and continues thus to hurl them into Hell every day, casting so many nations from abyss to abyss of darkness and errors, such as are contained in the heresies and false sects of the infidels.’ 
Venerable Mary of Agreda
 
‘What do you think? How many of the inhabitants of this city may perhaps be saved? What I am about to tell you is very terrible, yet I will not conceal it from you. Out of this thickly populated city with its thousands of inhabitants not one hundred people will be saved. I even doubt whether there will be as many as that!’ …’I do not speak rashly, but as I feel and think. I do not think that many bishops are saved, but that those who perish are far more numerous.’ 
St. John Chrysostom, Doctor and Father of the Church
 
‘Shall we all be saved? Shall we go to Heaven? Alas, my children, we do not know at all! But I tremble when I see so many souls lost these days. See, they fall into Hell as leaves fall from the trees at the approach of winter.’ 
St. Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney, the Cure of Ars
 
‘Ah, how many souls lose Heaven and are cast into Hell!’ 
St. Francis Xavier
 
‘So many people are going to die, and almost all of them are going to Hell! So many people falling into hell!’ 
Blessed Jacinta of Fatima
 
‘Since their eternal happiness, consisting in the vision of God, exceeds the common state of nature, and especially in so far as this is deprived of grace through the corruption of original sin, those who are saved are in the minority. In this especially, however, appears the mercy of God, that He has chosen some for that salvation, from which very many in accordance with the common course and tendency of nature fall short.’ 
St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church
 
 ‘Get out of the filth of the horrible torrent of this world, the torrent of thorns that is whirling you into the abyss of eternal perdition. . . This torrent is the world, which resembles an impetuous torrent, full of garbage and evil odours, making a lot of noise but flowing swiftly passed, dragging the majority of men into the pit of perdition.’ 
St. John Eudes

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Lent, but not as we know it

LINEN ON THE HEDGEROW: Lent, but not as we know it: Forty days and forty nights - a Christ like diet One hundred years ago my parents were in their teens. Both in the same class at sch...