July 27, 2023
Darkness is the absence of light; where there is no light, there is darkness. Darkness – also known as evil/the devil/Satan – is not a powerful force fighting against God; it is the absence of God. The devil does not try to impose a dark power of evil on us as much as he seeks to snuff out the presence of God in our lives like how a candle snuffer extinguishes the flame of a candle. By getting us to reject God through our words, thoughts, and actions, the evil one leaves us in spiritual darkness.
Dispelling the darkness, and thus overcoming Satan, is as straightforward as inviting the Light of Christ into our lives and not allowing fear or sin to turn us from the Light. You need to believe – and you need to get your children to believe – that the battle is easily won if you invite Christ the Light into your life, let His presence fill you, and thus replace any darkness within.
We and our children are all targets of the evil one, all the time. Satan never sleeps. He uses worldly things to distract us from God, tempting us to adore material things and sensual things rather than to adore God. Satan lures us into a sense of false security to believe we can build our own little kingdom here and now without any need of God. He did this with Eve, and with us he can fill our minds with doubts, as he is considered the father of lies. Satan distorts the truth and provides all the rationalizations why something is right, even though God and the Church teach it as wrong.
In this battle for one’s soul, perhaps it’s Satan who makes someone believe that Jesus loves him or her just the way he or she is. This false belief is the justification that is used by many who are involved in immoral acts such as having sex outside of marriage, regularly overindulging in alcohol, or being a consumer of pornography. Their mistaken justification allows them to continue living in sin while not worrying about changing their ways because they do not fear any negative, eternal consequences such as ending up in hell.
Because it is being given paramount importance these days from the secular culture, the most noticeable example of Satan getting people to reject God through their words, thoughts, and actions is seen in those who endorse the so-called *LGBTQIA2S+ agenda and gay pride.
*Note: LGBTQIA2S+ is the latest politically correct acronym – as of the writing of this post - used by the culture to describe people who don’t follow the original manner of sexuality as intended by God and who want to be categorized according to their sexual appetites. Between the time I wrote this and the time you read it, I'll bet another letter of the alphabet gets added to their confusing, exasperating, and reprobate terminology. I use this elongated and incessant acronym purely to magnify its ridiculousness.
The rationalization from those who engage in homosexual acts and even from heterosexuals who don’t engage but do explicitly endorse others who live a so-called LGBTQIA2S+ lifestyle often goes like this, “It’s fine to live a [gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/queer/etc.] lifestyle because Jesus loves you just the way you are.” That is wrong! Jesus loves you despite who you are!
Yes, Jesus loves same-sex attracted people, but He does not love them “just the way they are.” He loves them so much that He wants them to stop their sinful choices and change their lifestyles, and that means not succumbing to the homosexual agenda’s belief system and not performing immoral acts. The same appeal for one to turn away from darkness and turn toward the light is made for a heterosexual who commits adultery, an alcoholic, or a person who watches porn.
Our Lord does not love us just as we are;l as much as He pities us because of the way we are. Jesus said, “I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners” (Luke 5:31), and “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). Jesus is called the Savior because He “gave Himself for our sins that He might rescue us from the present evil age in accord with the will of our God and Father” (Galatians 1:4).
Jesus came to earth to save sinners and rescue all who believe in Him from imminent danger of offending God, for those who do not repent from their offenses and do not amend their lives will be thrown – in Jesus’s own words – “into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth” (Matthew 13:41-42).
The lie that is repeated all too often these days by both deceiving and ignorant Christians is that our Savior is happy with us and loves us “just the way we are.” He isn’t and He doesn’t. Yes, He loves us, but He shows us pity, and then mercy, and then the way forward. If we do not change after finding or encountering Jesus, we will not have eternal life.
Jesus loves us, and this is the type of love that speaks the truth about how we are hurting ourselves when we sin, just as He told the woman caught in adultery, “Go, and from now on do not sin any more”(John 8:11). Our Lord doesn’t want us to settle for becoming only so-so in how we choose to live our lives. In fact, He orders us to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). We were made in the image and likeness of God, so that obliges us to strive for perfection, to be more like who God created us to be. The saying “nobody’s perfect” is indeed true, but that shouldn’t prevent us from setting up a high standard for which to strive.
As a teacher, when I got my sixth graders ready for their weekly spelling test, I didn’t motivate them to learn the new spelling words by saying, “Don’t worry about learning how to spell these new words. You are a good enough student just the way you are.” No, I expected each student to strive to spell 100% of the words correctly on the test – to strive to be perfect. I knew that 100% on a spelling test would be a miracle for some to achieve, and those students knew it too, but had I encouraged them with, “Strive to spell 50% of the words correctly on the test,” I don’t imagine there would have been any studying of the spelling list at home the night prior.
Scripture clearly tells us that the road to heaven is narrow, while the road to hell is wide. However, too many Christians believe today’s lie that most people, if not all, will get to heaven. They believe that Jesus loves them just the way they are, and that includes their belief that if Jesus walked the earth today He would bless so-called gay marriages, and He would agree with the left’s mantra “love is love.” These are lies that Satan is all too delighted to spread.
I can just picture the evil one from the pits of hell wringing his hands in delight that people don’t believe he exists while likewise believing their all-loving God would never send people to hell. Satan finds glee in realizing these erroneous views will end up causing many to have no worries about making frequent immoral decisions because they fear no negative consequences.
At funerals, priests sometimes mistakenly say in their homilies – as their way to comfort the family – that the deceased is in heaven looking down on his or her loved ones gathered in church. The truth is we don’t know that. We would like to assume it’s the case, but we also know that heaven has a narrow entryway. We hold a funeral Mass for our deceased loved one because we believe our prays will assist him or her in the process of purification – i.e., in purgatory – as our hope is that he or she will eventually be in heaven.
I once attended a funeral Mass where the family asked that the Frank Sinatra song I Did It My Way be played at the recessional as a way to lightheartedly illustrate the deceased’s pretentious temperament. Regrettably, the priest okayed this. Unfortunately, those who “did it my way” and not “God’s way” are very likely not going to make it into heaven.
Regarding the hope we have for our children’s future in maturing into moral, faithful Christians, we want them to strive to be perfect in the decisions they make and the life they choose in all areas – their education, career, faith life, married or single vocation, and sexuality. A parent’s job, along with teaching their kids to show the Lord they love Him through living a righteous life, is to also teach them to hate evil. Parents must be upfront with their children about the existence of evil in the world, led by Satan, and that we all must work hard to strive to be perfect and to resist the temptations of the world, including the culture’s number one focus these days of promoting the so-called LGBTQIA2S+ lifestyle.
Too many of today’s generation believe hell isn’t real, Satan doesn’t exist, and getting to heaven can be assumed. Don’t let your children fall for this falsity.
A PRINCIPAL'S PRINCIPLES FOR PARENTING 