Augustine on the Good Samaritan

Augustine on today's Gospel:

"With this Psalm we have exhorted you to practice mercy, for that is how you will ascend, and you know that it those who sing the song of steps who ascend. Remember this: do not choose to go down and not to go up; think rather about going up. The one who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho fell among robbers. If he hadn’t gone down, he wouldn’t have fallen among them. Adam went down and fell among thieves, for we all are Adam. A priest went by and ignored him; a Levite went by and ignored him: the Law could not heal him. A certain Samaritan went by, that is, Our Lord Jesus Christ. It was said to him, “Are we not right to say that you are a Samaritan and have a devil?” He did not say, “I am not a Samaritan,” but rather “I do not have a devil” (John 8:48-49). “Samaritan” means “Guardian,” and if he had said, “I am not a Samaritan,” he would have been saying, “I am not a guardian.” And who else would guard us? “A Samaritan went by and took pity on him,” as you know. He was lying wounded in the road because he had gone down. The Samaritan going by did not ignore us: he took care of us; he lifted us up onto his beast, in our flesh; he brought us to an inn, that is, to the Church; he entrusted us to the innkeeper, the Apostle; he gave him two denarii for our care, the love of God and the love of neighbor, for on these two commandments the entire Law and the prophets depend” (Mt 22:37-40)…. If we have gone down and been wounded, let us now go up and make progress so that we may finally arrive. (Augustine, Enar. in Ps 125,15)"

The inn is the Church. It’s an inn now because as long as we live we are on the way; it will be a house from which we will never move when we have been healed and reach the Kingdom of heaven. Meanwhile, let us gladly be healed in the inn; let us not boast of being healed while we are still ill. (Sermon 131, 6)

Who is so distant and yet so near except the one who by his mercy became a neighbor to us? … The man who went down was an Israelite…. The priest who passed by was a neighbor by birth or race, but he left the man lying there. The Levite who went by was also a neighbor by birth or race, but he too ignored the man lying there. A Samaritan came by, distant by birth, but a neighbor by mercy, and did what you know from the parable. … The Lord is near, because he became a neighbor to us (Sermon 171, 1-2)


Augustine was a colorful, poingnant writer. But he may have missed the point. Augustine butchered many passages from scripture and this may be one of his worst. The poor and the downtrodden were far from many of the bishops in the church turned empire in too many places. Augustine not only walked past the wounded person (Donatists), he called for soldiers to arrest him. The problem was they were not under Augustine's control, in his church. "Urge intrare", that is, beat the wounded man more until he conforms.

Countless people in the church, following Augustine , believed in beating and killing those outside "control" of the church when they should have been ministering to them. Augustine missed the point completely. One of the greatest Samaritans of our times, Oscar Romero, was the target of Vatican persecution because he stopped to heal the poor and downtrodden.

http://taiw.org/default.aspx
http://nydmvapproveddefensivedriving.com/
http://newyorkdefensivedrivingdmv.com/default.aspx

Benedict's theology and Actions.

Benedict continues to pontificate about theology while continuing to coverup the pedophilia scandal. How does one reconcile the theology of Ratzinger/Benedict with the continuous irresponsibility of that theologian with the still growing revelations of the Vatican coverup?

“Irish Catholics are increasingly asking these questions as are Catholics in the US, and throughout the world wherever the abuse scandal has been revealed. They are coming to an inescapable conclusion: their church’s system of government subverts its mission and makes a mockery of the rigid code of sexual morality to which it seeks to hold the laity and pretends to hold the clergy. It is a formula for endless scandal and disgrace.
If this papacy is to rise to this challenge it must stop behaving as though there were no systemic weakness paralyzing its mission everywhere. Unaccountable bishops misbehave precisely because they are unaccountable. Rome needs to demonstrate that it has finally gotten the message that the people of Boston sent it in 2002.

How? First, by sacking and secluding Bernard Law and then by undertaking a comprehensive overhaul of the present clerical governance structure of the Catholic Church.”

http://votf.org/vineyard/Jan28_2010/ireland.html

http://www.best-quality-for-you.com/kindle.html

Health care Reform and Matthew 25.

Ironic that the actions of those who do not need health care, banks and brokers, were the reason health care will not make it this time. Unfortunately, job creation and financial reform is the right move because, even tho health care is right, legislation cannot be passed without credibility. Certainly we have to give Catholic bishops another zero here. They blocked it while they have had little to do with job creation. Perhaps as the country rebuilds we can get the climate right to help these forty million people whose lives will remain terrible because of the lack of health care. Perhaps we need to paraphrase Matthew 25 and state: “I needed health care and you did not provide it.”

http://www.best-quality-for-you.com/kindle.html

Cult of the Saints due to lack of faith.

Now with the Vatican again sporting popes of questionable lives we should remind ourselves that the cult of the sainst does not have a solid foundation. The cult of the saints is basically a fourth century creation and centered on martyrs. This cult multiplied principally because people who were now called Christians were for the most part opportunists. Bishops who theretofore were willing to die for their faith succumbed to an emperor and let him call and manage the Council of bishops. Veneration of saints multiplied, as did their bodies, (every town had the body of the same saint) because since the religion now became politically expedient it was necessary to visit the past in order to visit those who practiced Christianity. Robert Marcus called this “The Age of Hypocrisy, as well it was. Here are Marcus’ comments:

“As saints became ubiquitous, they also changed their functions. In the
early Christian community the living faithful prayed to God for their dead;
now the dead saint is asked to pray for the living: a whole new liturgy came
into being. As the martyr is , literally, detached from the place of his
martyrdom and made present wherever his relics have become the center of a
cult, so relics began to be seen in a new way…..relics soon became
themselves, the seats of holy power, God’s preferred channels for miraculous
action. A new nexus of social relationships centered around their shrines;
their cult provided ways of securing social cohesion in the locality, and
one of the means on which bishops depended to consolidate their authority.”
The Oxford History of Christianity.pg90.

More or less what much of the churches still have today. A lot of superstition lacking in the values of the gospel.