Today we enter a new awakening of life; Tomorrow what shall we encounter without Christ?

A question we all might ask but the answer will not be the same for everyone. As Catholics we have the Sacramental Church as our hope while so many only have what they teach without belief in the Apostolic Succession of Holy Mother Church.

This may put some Christian sects at a further distance from what we teach. I have seen the obvious confrontation in attitudes of some ministers who denounce the words of Jesus, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

These perhaps are the words that place a wall between Catholicism and the rest of Christianity. Add to these the Transubstantiation of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of our Holy Eucharist that they try to emulate via grape juice and crackers and just a small prayer has left a lot to be desired as what their parishioners are actually consuming in their communion services?

It is true we do not want to build walls around the truth that Christ offered to all humanity on the Cross at Calvary. However, within a theological premise it is the teaching that Jesus taught to his disciples where the actual truth places real belief. Most if not all Christians adhere to the reason of the Incarnation of Christ where he assumed our humanity to suffer and die in order to forgive our sins. But it doesn’t stop there. The deep and comprehensive truth lies somewhere between the Nativity and the Resurrection of Christ. Included in the three years of Jesus teaching all about his Father and our redemption are the actual steps we should follow as we journey to our eternal home. If the real presence of Christ was a misnomer then how can

anyone disprove the different incidents of a host bleeding, being tested as real flesh - part of a human heart, and never diminishing the actual living flesh of a man; Jesus Christ in his human nature with his divine nature; 2,000 years after his Crucifixion?

Our recent season of Advent, Christmas and Baptism of Christ will end and we shall all enter Ordinary time in the Church. We cannot allow the end of a season to include the meaning of what our Catholic calendar gives to our worship of God’s eternal love for all of us every day. Each moment of every day should hold our desire to worship Christ without a break according to a calendar’s dates. He is before his Incarnation, is while he assumes a human nature and once he suffered died, and rose from the dead. This is Christ; Son of God and is God himself. What he has taught us is from the realm of heaven where he is the creator of all that we are and shall be with him, eternally.

Ralph B. Hathaway