Natural Order

Natural Order

Submitted by Thomas Stidl

         The term “Natural Order” brings back memories of an old Baltimore Catechism question.  “Can we know by natural reason that there is a God?”  The answer is a resounding “Yes, because natural reason tells us that the world we see about us could only have been made by a self-existing Being, All-wise and Almighty”.  You must be thinking that I have a great memory.  This is the one question that I did not study or memorize the night before the oral quiz.  After that next day I never forgot the question, answer or the deserved punishment I received.  This happened about 61 years ago.  The dream of that memory occurred on the morning of November 26, 2023.  At times we hear of a phenomena called the illumination of conscience.  My dream world exists of many illuminations of conscience.

         Getting back to my narrative, just look around you.  The trees grow leaves in the Spring and shed them in the Fall with a dazzling array of colors.  All the animals mate and bring forth their newborn.  The process begins with opposite sex attraction.  This is the natural order that God has intended for all his animal creation.  Same sex attraction is not natural order.  It goes against the will of Almighty God to be fertile and multiply our beings to subdue the face of the earth.  How does one control and release that type of bondage?

         The apostles had a similar dilemma with evil and unclean spirits.  Given the power over evil and unclean spirits by Jesus while Jesus was walking the face of the earth with them, some of the people they tried to cure came back with the same malady.  Jesus was able to remove the evil.  He told his disciples that various types of evil needed great prayer and fasting in order to be removed from a human being.

         Some of us may not be able to fast due to our physical condition, but we can pray to God for the Actual Grace for this purpose.  We can also abstain from meat on all Fridays during the year not just during Lent.  Friday’s were the Catholic’s day for that.  It was a small offering to Jesus for his great sacrifice on the cross.  By the way Cannon Law still requires abstinence from meat on Friday.  If you do not abstain from meat, you must substitute another penance in its place.  How many Catholics actually do that these days?!

         With fasting or abstinence from meat, deep prayer, the will to change our habits, enjoying the company of the opposite sex, and with great faith and hope in the mercy and power of God, we can curtail and certainly lessen the occurrence of same sex attraction.  We will have then preserved the natural order that God intended for the entire cosmos.

         Until next time, Laus Tibi, Christe.  Deo Gratias.  Gloria Tibi Domini.  Praise be to God.  See you in Paradise. Amen.