LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION: Satan's strategy in the life of St. Teresa of Avila

by Susan Fox
"No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you." (John 15:15)

(This review of the temptations of  St. Teresa of Avila is based on the saint's autobiography. From her temptations, she discovered God's plan for her life -- to be a FRIEND OF THE LORD)

She enjoyed gossip, respected wealth, read trashy novels of chivalry, and took great trouble with her hair and nails.

Worldly honor was important to her and she bestowed her friendship in an ill-advised manner, believing mistakenly that it is a great virtue to be grateful to those who like you.

But once Jesus chose to be her friend, Teresa of Avila changed to become one of the great spiritual mystics of all times.

She single-handedly reformed the Carmelite order against fierce opposition, returning the nuns to the practice of the strict rule of its foundation. She founded 16 reformed convents, and lived to see her discalced reform recognized by Pope Gregory XIII only two years before her death at age 67.

She died Oct. 14, 1582, calling herself a "child of the Church" because she had come to mistrust herself so completely she acted only under obedience to her confessors. She was canonized in 1622, and enjoyed the distinction of being the first woman declared a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church. The honor was bestowed on her by Pope Paul VI in 1970.

But all of that was at the end of a long and bitter struggle with self, the world and Satan, a struggle that characterized Teresa's life, and the lives of all who seek the "narrow gate."

St Teresa of Avila 

The story of this struggle is contained in St. Teresa's autobiography, and it's worth reviewing her temptations because even today over 400 years after her death, Teresa's struggles are frighteningly familiar to those seeking the narrow and sometimes obscure road to glory.

For as the new Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: "discernment is required to unmask the lie of temptation, whose object often appears to be good." As Eve found in the garden of Eden, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was a "delight to the eye" and desirable. But in reality, the eating of this fruit led to death.

Teresa was born on March 28, 1515 at Avila, Castile, Spain to Alonso Sanchez de Cepeda and his second wife, Beatrice.

Teresa admired her mother, who was beautiful, chaste, without vanity and very devoted to the Blessed Virgin. When Teresa was 12, her mother died. And in her grief she turned to the Mother of Jesus, and asked her to be her Mother also. In later years, she felt this one act of consecration to Mary gave her a special protection during her entire life.

As a young girl, she developed a habit of reading trashy novels of chivalry, and found she wasn't happy unless she had a good book. Later she understood this was a great waste of time, and found her treasure in God's friendship.

The simple words of the Our Father, "and lead us not into temptation" implies a decision of the heart, according to the new Catholic Catechism. Unless we wholeheartedly desire to do God's will, we will never know it. "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. . . . No one can serve two masters." (Matt. 6:21,24)

Throughout her life Teresa was plagued with the temptation to care what others thought of her. She learned to enjoy gossip at a young age. And even as a young novice in the Carmelite convent, she engaged in frivolous conversations with visitors. This was strictly speaking against the rules of her order, but was a widely accepted practice. The visits also had the advantage of enhancing her reputation from a worldly point of view.

But God sent her many signals about the danger of bad companionship and the value of good companionship. As a child of 12, she was sent to an Augustinian convent after her mother's death where the friendship of a good nun turned her back from a lifestyle of vanity and worldly honor, which she had been about to embrace.

As a young novice Christ appeared to her in her mind's eye - that is interiorly - and with great sternness warned her about wasting time with visitors. Satan, however, convinced her that unless a vision is in bodily form, it doesn't count. So she

continued to receive visitors in the convent, but one day was frightened when a big ugly toad hopped toward her and a visitor. She eventually learned interior visions or locutions are far more valuable than exterior visions because Satan cannot interfere with these.

Teresa was tempted by false loyalties. She befriended a priest, who had an affectionate relationship with a woman in the convent for several years. She said that he'd lost all honor, but no one had reproved him. Teresa liked him very much, and felt sorry for him. At this time, she felt it was a virtue to be loyal to anyone who liked her.

"I had a very serious fault which led me into great trouble. If I realized that a person liked me, and I liked them, I would grow so fond of them that I would think of them constantly without any intention of offending God. This was such a harmful thing, it was ruining my soul."

God solved this problem by giving her a vision of Himself: "Once I had seen the great beauty of the Lord, I saw no one who by comparison with Him seemed acceptable to me or on whom my thoughts wished to dwell. For if I merely turn the eyes of my mind to the image of Him which I have within my soul I find I have such freedom that from that time forward everything I see appears nauseating to me by comparison."

Teresa's final temptation to misplaced loyalty was severed when a spiritual director told her to abandon certain friendships that were not actually causing her to offend God. Believing this would be an act of ingratitude, she asked him why. He told her to ask God that question and then recite the hymn "Veni Creator." While she was doing so, she was put into rapture, and heard these words: "I will have you converse now, not with men, but with angels."

After that she said she was unable to be friends with anyone except those who loved God and were trying to serve Him. She reported that this gave her such freedom - something she had been unable to achieve for herself despite doing violence to herself to the point where it affected her health.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus also faces the great tempter before beginning his public ministry. After fasting 40 days in the desert to prepare Himself for His ministry, Satan appears to Him, and offers Him something good - bread. But He turns it into a test of Jesus' identity: "If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread."

Then the devil offers Christ His own Father's protection, but wants Him again to prove who He is by jumping off a building. Finally, Satan offers Jesus the homage of all the kingdoms of the world. The catch is that Jesus must first fall down and worship Satan.

Each temptation appeared on the surface to be a good thing - bread, the Father's protection, the world's homage. But each would take Jesus away from God's plan for His Life. There was to be no short cuts for the Son of God. He was to go the way of the cross. Jesus rejects each temptation, never revealing to Satan who He really is. The third temptation - leading to blatant idolatry - was the last straw.

Jesus said, "Begone Satan: for it is written, "The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and him only shalt thou serve." And Satan left Him.

Teresa similarly sent Satan away once and for all when she abandoned all other forms of friendship except her friendship in prayer with her Lord, when she abandoned all other loyalties except her loyalty to God, and when worldly honor ceased to matter. In short, she ceased to serve "two masters" and put her heartfelt trust into God alone.

Each of us, too, must find our way to obedience to this one basic commandment: "I am the Lord your God, and I will have no other gods before me."

The means by which God weaned Teresa from her false loyalty was by drawing her into intimate friendship with Himself through prayer. Teresa reports that her virtue increased as she spent more time with the Lord in prayer. 

As a beginner, Teresa endured great aridities in prayer and was distracted by evil thoughts. She said at this stage it's important to persevere in prayer solely to please God. She endured these trials for many years with great courage.

But the Lord gives these "tortures" and many other temptations to test "His lovers" to see if they are willing to drink of the same cup He drank and to carry the same cross He bore for our transgressions. Once they persevere through these trials, then He can begin to trust them with His great treasures.

Teresa was given all this, and more. In fact, Teresa often says that the Lord trusted her with "His secrets" of prayer, giving her infused knowledge that allowed her to explain the prayer life to the simple and the learned. "Although He is my Lord, I can talk to Him as my friend," she wrote. And the fruits of her life show that Our Lord could talk to her in the same fashion.

However, Satan recognized this "intimate friendship of prayer" was disturbing his plans for Teresa.

After she was no longer a beginner in prayer, Teresa was tempted by false humility to abandon her friendship with Christ. Seeing her sins, she resolved to stop praying until she had achieved virtue. She went on this way for more than a year, and the result, she says, was she almost lost her soul.

"I do not believe I have ever passed through so grave a peril as when the devil put

this idea into my head under the guise of humility," she wrote.

This was the same principle on which the devil tempted Judas, also identified as a "Friend of the Lord" in Sacred Scripture. Teresa wrote that Satan would have gradually brought her to the same fate of betrayal, suicide and despair. "The worst life I ever led was when I abandoned prayer," she said.

Returning to prayer, Teresa found she still suffered terrible bouts of false humility between her raptures in prayer. She felt evil, and felt like all the evils of the world were caused by her sins. This disquiet and unrest plunged her soul into a state where she had no disposition to prayer or good works. This state of desolation is caused by Satan and leads a soul to despair. Over the centuries, her books have taught many others to ignore desolation and consolation, to simply persevere in prayer regardless of what is taking place in the soul.

Teresa learned the value of trusting in the goodness of God, which is greater than any evil we can do. Because she persevered in prayer, Her own love for God finally overcame her fear and self-loathing.

Teresa also was tempted by what might seem to be prudent concern for her own health. Fears for her health held her back from undertaking penance and impeded her prayer life. She finally overcame the temptation, and her health improved. When Satan would suggest something would ruin her health, she'd respond, "Even if I die, it is of little consequence." She found that silence was a wonderful mortification, and never ruined one's health.

Another temptation Teresa had to face was the desire to do good for others. When she began to experience the benefits of prayer, she desired that everyone live a very spiritual life. It's not wrong to desire this, but it must be done with discretion. For Teresa was preaching the benefits of prayer when she was still poverty stricken in virtue and this taught others that some sins are okay because Teresa did it, and she prayed.

Another way this temptation played out was that she became distressed by the sins and failings of others when she should have kept her focus on Christ and her own faults. This caused her to stop praying and become anxious. It also leads to meddling. Safety lies in not being anxious about anything or anyone. This experience taught Teresa humility: she found her happiness in considering all others greater than herself.

Word of Teresa's great favors in prayer eventually got out through a mistake made by one of her spiritual directors. She was judged and persecuted. But this experience also taught her humility. And best of all, Teresa no longer cared what other people thought of her. Only God's opinion mattered.

"No testing has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, so that you may be able to endure it." (1Cor 10:13)

"It is by his prayer (lead us not into temptation) that Jesus vanquishes the tempter, both at the outset of his public mission and in the ultimate struggle of his agony," the new Catholic Cathechism states.

"In this petition to our heavenly Father, Christ unites us to his battle and his agony. He urges us to vigilance of the heart in communion with his own." Jesus prayed for us to the Father: "Keep them in your name." 

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This story is the fruit of my participation in Disciples of Jesus and Mary (DJM), a Catholic formation program in Prayer, Discernment and Discipleship. We find the pattern of our own relationship with God by studying the lives of the saints and reading Scripture. Teresa self-identified as a Friend of the Lord. Mary identified herself as God's Servant when she said, "I am the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to your word." We all have a unique plan of life, and each plan emphasizes some aspect of the Life of Christ: Suffering Servant, Beloved Son, Child of God, etc. When God the Father will look down upon His saints in heaven, He will see the Face of His Son Jesus. 

Disciples of Jesus and Mary can be found online at http://www.disciplesofjesusandmary.org. They have a contact button. They are in many cities, some in Europe, but if they are not near you they have a satellite program, which can be done online. My husband and I always said we were Daily Mass going Catholics on the road to hell until we joined DJM in 1991. Then we had a complete turn around. Now we are on the road to heaven at last! When I was 13 years old, I read St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. I closed both books and said, "I can't do that." I couldn't really. I didn't have spiritual direction, but then when I was 39, I joined DJM and lo, I now understand both saints, and the Diary of St. Faustina too! It's funny when I joined the Eucharistic Apostles of the Divine Mercy, they put me in charge of the local group in Apache Junction, AZ because they could see I understood the Diary even though I had never read it before. God bless you. Keep pursuing holiness. It's the pearl of great price. Susan Fox

THE BON VIVANT: How to Live the Good Life in a Bad Economy

Or Grace Under Fire: The Role of the Handmaid of the Lord

by Susan Fox

I recently moved to Colorado, and everyone here is concerned that you are working.

“What do you do for a living?” they ask me. I am only 59. Certainly I couldn’t have already retired. But I did retire from a 12-year career as a newspaper reporter in 1991 so I could become a full-time mother, then a home-schooling mother, then a volunteer at Church, and now back to writing.

But it is very tedious to tell people I am a homemaker especially as things work in my home, I rarely do the cleaning. My husband does (and he has the job and is enrolled part time in graduate school.) And the child is grown, and sometimes helps me with the cooking.

So I decided to tell people that I am a “Bon Vivant.” It is French for living “the good life.” Technically, a person who enjoys superb food and drink. That describes me, too, except the drink I drink is Pellegrino and Iced Tea. 

I have degrees in French and Journalism plus two masters in Economics and International Trade and Finance, so I can use my education to describe myself as a “Bon Vivant.” Many people in Colorado struggle to pronounce it like I do. So there must be some advantage to being a “Bon Vivant.” Right?

Well, I thought to myself what really does a Bon Vivant do?

We are in the process of buying a house, and my realtor asked me to go into the back yard and see if the sprinklers were running. Glory be to God. Yes! I’ll run into the back yard to do that -- for that is exactly what a Bon Vivant does!

And the other day I was waiting in line to buy snow tires. Waiting in line for tires is very boring. I said,  “Lord, I’d much rather talk to people.”  So I saw a young man also waiting in line, looking bored. He wore a T-shirt that said, “Beer Security.” I said, “I like your T-shirt, what does it mean?” His eyes lighted up.  He turned into this absolutely gorgeous soul. He was so pleased I noticed him.  That must have been the purpose of my question as the young man didn’t know what “beer security” meant. But that I asked the question produced joy in his heart. It reminded me of the occasion when I yelled a question at President Ronald Reagan in the early years of his Administration when he was surrounded by cheering crowds, and he joyously yelled back, “I can’t hear you!” I did get to interview President Reagan, right? Never mind the question wasn’t exactly answered.

But as to the young man in the tire store, his joy convinced me we’ll be best buddies in heaven, I have added him to my prayer list. That is something a Bon Vivant does. She prays for other people.

So what else does a Bon Vivant do? Well, a Bon Vivant goes to the doctor a lot and fills out a lot of forms describing her numerous illnesses and lists her job as … you guessed it, “Bon Vivant.”

So there is an element of suffering in Bon Vivant’s life as it is very tedious to go to the doctor, arrive on time, find a parking space, sit in the waiting room, and again explain my ailments. But my doctors do not want me to see a psychiatrist because I always tell them I am not depressed. I don’t mind chronic minor pain, and that is all God has given me. I spend my life laughing at my son and husband’s jokes.

A Bon Vivant also spends time enjoying nature. As a full time mother, I raised kittens, baby hamsters and gold fish. I had a medicine cabinet full of fish antibiotics, some of which I ended up taking myself in later years when doctors prescribed it. I really knew how to raise happy hamsters, cats and gold fish. I used to sing, “Bubble Nose, Frisky and Christmas!” And three fat gold fish would come to the top of the tank to touch their nose to the Bon Vivant’s finger.

They were 25-cent gold fish, but they cost me a $1,000 in new tanks and medicine until we sold them some years later for $25 each. It was a big profit, n’est-ce pas? Last summer I took over 500 photographs of baby swallows nesting on our patio ledge. I grew quite attached to the three little buggers, and made a movie from the photos (see it at www.youtube.com, Channel TestisFidelis). But this was really living the good life, as they were wild birds. All I had to do was photograph them. I didn’t clean their cages, didn’t give them $1,000 worth of medicine, and my son cleaned up their doo doo. Plus the movie I made became a living image of Psalm 84. So the Bon Vivant also praises God, and admires his handiwork in nature.

The Bon Vivant also spends money. That is her job. Grocery shopping, taxes, home buying, getting the yard work done, cars maintained and writing the check every Sunday to put in the basket, these are my jobs. But my husband is assigned the task to actually putting the check in the Sunday basket. It is his money after all. He earned it.

Now as a Bon Vivant, I have many weaknesses. I do occasionally complain. I have tried, but never succeeded in becoming the perfect wife or mother. Sometimes I hesitate on the amount when I sign the checks for the Church. I really need a model I can imitate to become a better Bon Vivant. I need someone who didn’t hesitate to love the Lord her God with her whole heart, mind and soul, even with her whole body.

So let me see, whom could I find as the true Bon Vivant in God’s Kingdom? What great saint lived the life of a Bon Vivant?  It has to be somebody who suffered and didn’t complain about it. I want a joyous homemaker, someone who tried to lovingly raise a son. She has to be a person who praises God, gives Him all the credit for what He does in her life. She prays for people, intercedes when they need something, like oh say … wine at a wedding. I want someone who will get excited and do God’s will immediately it is asked of her. She wouldn’t hesitate to run into the backyard and see if the sprinkler is running. Heck, she’d even agree to become the Mother of God if it was His will.

Ah, you guessed it. Mary, Mother of Jesus, was the perfect Bon Vivant.

How does Mary define herself? She didn’t use the words “Bon Vivant.” She said, “I am the handmaid of the Lord.” It means, “I am his serving girl.” She sees herself as God’s servant ready to do His will at a moment’s notice.

It isn’t the realtor who walks up to Mary and asks her to see if the sprinkler is running in the backyard. It is in fact an angel, who addresses her, “Hail, Full of Grace, the Lord is with you!”

Instead of preening at the praise leveled at her by an angelic being, she is troubled, and wonders what sort of greeting this is. Now I don’t know about you, but most people in the Bible greeted by angels or visited by God (like Moses and the burning bush) are afraid. Mary is not. She is a true Bon Vivant. Bon Vivants are courageous. But unlike me, the reason she is not afraid is because she is sinless. Most of us don’t qualify, so we get to be scared when an angelic being approaches us for any reason whatsoever.

The angel doesn’t ask her anything simple like, oh I don’t know, “check the sprinklers in the back yard.” He tells her she will conceive a son in her womb and call Him Jesus. You have to remember this request is coming from God the Father because we learn in the Bible, “God so loved the world, He sent His only Son.” So Mary is being approached by a Divine Person, God the Father, First Person of the Blessed Trinity. This is very important moment, because if she says, “No,” we don’t get Jesus. We don’t get saved. Bad stuff happens.

The angel explains who Jesus is – He is Son of the Most High (code word for Son of God the Father). I’m whispering now.

And her only question is, “How can this be, I have no husband.” So he explains the Holy Spirit will come upon her, and the power of the Most High will overshadow her. Voila!  The child will be called holy, the Son of God. Then he gives her a little bit of gossip to help her understand, nothing is impossible with God. In fact, he says, her cousin Elizabeth, who was thought barren, has also conceived a son in her old age.

God so loved the world He gave His only Son. And Mary’s response is astounding! “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word!” That girl knows who she is. She is a servant, a Bon Vivant ready to do anything God asks of her. “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us!”

So we see Jesus is conceived from a relationship of love between a Divine Person, the Father, and a human person, Mary. The fruit of Mary’s relationship with God is so perfect that it begets by the power of the Holy Spirit the Son of God, Jesus Christ (Hint: the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.)

Well that doesn’t often happen in my garden, but I can see this is the perfect relationship for every person to have with God, a relationship of love that begets a willingness to say, “Yes,” even if that only means running into the back yard and checking the sprinklers.

Mary is my model for the Bon Vivant because she praises God and gives him all the credit. Again, Mary is full of charity. She doesn’t lie around and worry because she is pregnant with no human father in a culture where women are stoned to death for that exact circumstance. Instead, she rises and leaves in haste for the hill country to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Now Elizabeth was not hoity toity (pretentious, comes from the French haut toit, or high roof from which the pretentious look down on the “lower” classes). Filled with the Holy Spirit, she greets Mary, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb! Why is it granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”

Hmmm, I am going to have to consider St. Elizabeth, as another model for the Bon Vivant because that is how any self-respecting Bon Vivant should feel when visited by the Mother of God.  

But now Mary gives praise to God for what He has done for her: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior  … for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” She admits that all generations will call her blessed, but it is all God’s doing. She is just his lowly Bon Vivant. She doesn’t have a degree, work 40 hours a week, earn a wage, support her husband, invent new technology, practice medicine, make gourmet meals every night … she simply lives in God’s love and does what He asks.

Now when it comes time to buy the tires in the tire store, whoops I mean attend a wedding in Cana, Mary is very concerned about the needs of the newly wedded couple. She goes in trust to her Son Jesus, and she says, “They have no wine.”  Those are the actions of a great Bon Vivant. Bon

Vivants notice when people need things and always refer the need to Jesus. They intercede for others.

And then they take Mary's advice, "Do whatever He tells you."

Mary follows her own advice right up to the cross where in suffering she remains steadfast, loving her dying Son.

Letter to a Seeker

By Susan Fox

(I was recently identified online as a superstitious fool for putting blessed salt over my doors, and the practice was compared to that of a Navajo Shaman. I don't mind the attack, but I thought you would enjoy my response.) 

To Jesuitical graduate of Boston College

It seems from your comments you really don't accept the validity of the four Gospels. So let's play science fiction. I ask you to imagine a world in which there is one true living God, who is pure love. And he creates a world out of love. He creates spiritual beings, some fall, some remain faithful to him, and he creates a human race. The first parents of the human race sin and lose their status as friends of this God. 

Now this God forms a people -- let's call them Israelites or Jews  -- they are just a little tribe wandering in the desert, but he decides he wants to work with this tribe exclusively because this God delights to work with nothing. We call them the chosen people. Throughout hundreds of years of history he works with this tribe, performs incredible miracles, sends them prophets, teaches them right from wrong, gives them a huge land to settle against incredible odds. He promises their ancestor -- let's call him Abraham -- that he will make his descendants as numerous as the stars! While all the other peoples of the time disappear from the face of the earth the Jews are still a cohesive race thousands of years later. In fact, this God made the Jews as numerous as the stars in the sky -- just like he promised. The other peoples of the time had their own gods, but we do not remember the names of those gods, nothing about them or their peoples unless they show up in a movie or a comic book. 

But the God of the Jews is still worshipped several thousand years after His first self-revelation to Abraham wandering in the desert. This is a clue that this God actually exists and affects events in this world. I mean what are the odds that some nobody in the desert thousands of years ago would predict his God would make his descendants as numerous as the stars and then have it come true! 

Dropping out of the fictional script for a minute, I get chills when I see the Jews in my neighborhood walking to Synagogue on Saturday. Same people, same beliefs, a living witness that The God who spoke to the man Abraham exists. He’s not a figment of Abraham’s imagination, nor a figment of my imagination. But  I haven’t seen any ancient Macedonians going to Church. Nope. No Babylonians building towers either. Never met a guy from Media, Parthia. The Hittites as a cohesive group disappeared from the face of the earth in 8^th Century BC. Haven’t met any of them. Wouldn’t recall them at all except they are mentioned in the Bible. But Jews, another ancient people, I have met in the dentist’s office.

And the Jews kept a record of their dealings with God. Now if you thought God was talking to you, wouldn’t you keep good records, faithful records, records that so often are confirmed by archaeological evidence?

The Jews watched God work with them and they concluded nothing happens accidentally, everything is gifted providentially. So the events of their lives told them what their God was like, what He liked to do. And God’s viewpoint was so different than man’s. We really have a hard time grasping it. “Love your enemies?” (hinted at the in Old Testament and made manifest in the New.) Come on who could invent that stuff. They must have been smoking something.  The Jews' record of history told them their God cared for them, and if they trusted in Him, they would prosper. When they forgot him and worshipped other gods, they did not prosper. It is a factual historical record that they were carried off by the barbarians numerous times because they failed to be faithful to the One True God.

Finally, God showed why he picked the Jews in the first place. It wasn’t because they were better than the rest of the human race. No, he planned to send His only Son to become one of them, to be born a Jew. The Jews were prepared over thousands of years by God Himself to receive Jesus as their Messiah, to recognize him when he arrived. That little Jewish virgin in Nazareth would not have known what to say or do when an angel appeared to her. When he told her she would be the mother of God, she would have had no context in which to respond -- if her own people had not kept a faithful record of God’s dealings with them. And that record included a prophecy – one that was completely fulfilled: “The Virgin shall be with Child.”

It was foretold again that God’s Son would suffer and die so that mankind might be reconciled to God. Scripture is God’s self-revelation. It is a record of how God slowly revealed himself to man and then sent his only Son to speak for Him.

Well the rest of the story is the Son dies for all mankind, not just Jews, and as a result we can share a restored friendship with this God, who truthfully told Abraham his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. This Son, who had all the power of God Himself because as He explained, He and the Father are One, this Son took a group of fishermen and tax collectors --- very low on the totem pole at the time of Christ – and made them his disciples. He taught them right from wrong. He worked miracles. He forgave sins. (Some Jews crucified him for it because they knew only God can forgive sins.) But this Son was God, so he did not act wrongly. Jesus chose these low-caste men as his disciples because like his Father in heaven, He delighted to work with nothing.  This is a historical record. Nothing contradicts this happened.

Now Mohammed never healed anybody. Buddha wasn’t resurrected from the dead because we have his teeth. Hindus don’t respect low-caste people. They regard them as lower than cattle. The evil gods of the Aztecs who killed hundreds of thousands of people in one week  -- they never performed one true miracle. Maybe parlor tricks like the magicians of the ancient Pharaoh whom Moses confronted.   But there is no record of even that!

Jesus went on to make his apostles into priests. “Whoever’s sins you forgive shall be forgiven.” This is a real divine power. Only God can forgive sins!

“You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.” Christ was so literal that Peter’s bones are under the altar where the Pope says Mass in Rome. But Christ also gave Peter the keys to the kingdom.

 And as revealed in the Book of Acts, all this power given to the apostles was handed down to the next generation and the next because Jesus, who was God, said He would be with the Church until the end of time. So every Catholic priest today was ordained by a bishop who was ordained by a bishop who was ordained by one of the 12 apostles. Christ’s power is handed down to the priests in each succeeding generation. Now when Jesus Christ, true God and true man, took mud and rubbed it on the blind man’s eyes, he wasn’t superstitious. He had the power to heal and He chose to do it through humble things like dirt, spit and water. We need physical signs. Jesus could have made lightening come out of his hands and healed the blind man that way, but he chose to work with dirt, spit and water. 

He is no way to be compared to an Indian shaman and Kachina dolls! The Catholic priest is another Christ. He has the power to expel demons. He can heal with God’s own power in the Sacrament of the Sick; he can forgive sins, a power given to him by Jesus Christ Himself. He can explain God’s Word, God’s own self revelation to mankind. He can change lowly bread and lowly wine into the Body Blood Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. When this ordinary man with supernatural powers, blesses salt, Christ Himself blesses the salt. The power in the lowly salt is not my superstitious belief. The power in the lowly blessed salt is God’s power. God didn’t give this power to the Church because he thought we were all so special. He gave it to us because He delights to work with nothing. Now if I didn’t understand this, and I thought the salt itself had power, I would be a superstitious fool.

Navajo healing ceremonies have no self-revelation by God that is clearly and historically recognized by a large portion of humanity. There are no Navajo prophesies going back thousands of years that any fool could see came true.  In fact if you examine every other major religion in the world, you do not find any recognizable signs of the religion’s validity. You find man’s fertile imagination at work or worse a demon’s involvement.

Since you were Jesuit educated you probably know that a Gnostic rejects God’s revealed truth in the Scripture and the oral Tradition of the Church. The Gnostic instead looks for secret knowledge. They do hunger for Truth, but truth on their terms. And the punishment God has given to the Gnostic is they never find the Truth -- unless they stop searching and turn to God Himself.

 Jesus said, “I AM THE TRUTH.” There is no substitute.