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The Sacred: Catholic Liturgy, Chant, Prayers / Re: Newly Baptised and Struggling
« Last post by Ladislaus on Today at 06:16:12 AM »
That would not be love and mercy at all if the Chair of St Peter is redundant now, and letting the laity float around lost in confusion, while having to deal with their own afflictions in their daily lives. This whole thing opened a whole new can of worms, so yes something is definitely not right here, unfortunately.
Many people who have been in the Church much longer than you have lost the faith due to deciding what would and what would not be "love and mercy at all." They experience some tragedy in life and decide that it's not "love and mercy", and then proceed to reject God and their faith. Everything with God is love and mercy, even if in our pea brains we don't realize it. Suffering allows for growth, and offers opportunity to grow in the faith. You need to have faith that everything that God does is perfectly compatible with the utmost love and mercy, even if we don't understand it now. I've had many things happen in my life where, at the time, it didn't make any sense, but then 10, 15, 20 years later it dawned on me, "NOW I see why this happened and why it was good." Whether we know the why or the how right now doesn't change the fact that we know that everything God does is always perfectly loving and merciful.
If a young child, say 3 or 4 years old, is told by his parents not to play in the street, and perhaps is even disciplined or punished as a deterrent against playing in the street, from their perspective his parents are mean, and always out to spoil their fun. They don't realize the dangers of playing in the street and that the parents are trying to keep him from getting hurt or killed. Or if a parent will not allow a child to eat cake and candy all day. He thinks, again, "my parents seem to have a mission in life just to ruin my fun". That's precisely where we stand vis-a-vis God, and the gap between us and God is infinitely greater than between these young children and their adult guardians. With our pea brains we sometimes can't comprehend why God allows something, but we have absolute faith that, whatever the reasons are, that we haven't figured out yet, they're good reasons and God is allowing everything to happen for our good.
Sacred Scripture is replete with descriptions about how gold is tested and purified in fire, explaining that sufferings are intended to strengthen and to purify. Unfortunately, the Novus Ordo instills in people an absurd false notion of "love and mercy" where everything needs to be all roses all the time ... and that is a completely false and absurdly shallow view of "love and mercy". If I see someone eating a piece of cake that has been poisoned, what is the more loving and merciful thing to do, to say, "I'll let him keep eating the cake because I don't want to deprive him of the pleasure of consuming that delicious cake." or I run over there and violently / abruptly slap it out of his hand before he can take a bite? This shallow Novus Ordo view of "love and mercy" is tantamount to holding that the first response, to let him eat the cake, is the "loving and merciful" one.