Yesterday I posted a Facebook meme with a quote from a saint. Today, I read a meme that means well, but is skewed and wrong. I'm not addressing, of course, the protection of innocent life. We may never murder an innocent baby. But the rest of the meme is head-shakingly wrong.
You think you have "full control" of your body? Think again the next time you have a headache.
Actually, none of us has "full control" over our bodies. Would we get cancer if we did? Would we even get the common cold? We imagine that we have lots of control over lots of things, but mostly we don't. And mostly, we don't by choice. Many times we choose to be out of control. Many people have emotions out of control, thoughts out of control. Eating and other desires out of control.
Let's be real here. The big problem is we refuse to let the one who has "full control" have any control at all in our lives. Or we give him limited control assuring Him we can handle certain things and He can just stay out of it.
But the fact is that God is the one in control, and He loves each of us as if there were only one of us. Let Him take control and you'd be surprised how fast things in your life will improve.
Do you have problems? Of course you do. Everyone lives in a soap opera! Surrender those problems to God, obey His laws, pray and do penance for your own sins before you point the finger at others. "Be kind, be kind, be kind," as Mr. Rogers advised. And, take control over your body in every way you can. Control your bad habits. Control your bad decisions. Control your tongue. Control your rash judgments. Control your social media. Control your TV watching. Control your urges toward sin. Don't succumb to the attempts of others to control you in ways that lead to sin. But never live under the illusion that you have "full control" over anything.
"Love God and do what you will," St. Augustine said. It's easy to make that a slogan for the modernists, "I'll do whatever I please." But that is certainly not what Augustine meant.
“Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God.” Why? “For God is love” [Love is God]. What more could be said, brethren? If nothing were said in praise of love throughout the pages of this epistle, if nothing whatever throughout the other pages of the Scriptures, and this one only thing were all we were told by the voice of the Spirit of God, “For Love is God;” nothing more ought we to require.
So let us love one another from conception to natural death. When we do that, we will be exercising a very difficult control, but one that makes saints out of sinners. It means treating all we meet with charity. It means treating those who slander and persecute us with charity. It means doing the duties of our state in life with charity which is more than resignation.
It's a hard call and almost impossible to do alone. Ask the one in "full control" for help. And remember, He gave you a full time helper, your guardian angel. Begging for God's help is a prayer He will always answer in the affirmative.
May Jesus Christ be praise!
You have "full control" of your body in the sense of you have free will and freedom of choice of actions. Don't want to become pregnant? Don't do things that lead to pregnancy. In that sense, you have "full control" over your body.
ReplyDeleteThat was my take, too.
DeleteThe meme screams "birth control."
ReplyDelete"multiple ways to control" *does* sound like contraception. But the truth is, abstinence is in fact, "full control" with one exception: rape, where control is taken away by force.
ReplyDeleteWith rape, though, we have the DNA technology to positively id and garnish the father for life to pay for the mother and child. Which, with abolition of abortion, would have the deterrent effect to massively decrease the amount of rape (or even fornication) .
So perhaps that is what could be meant by multiple ways to control. Abolish (what is actually a man's right to) abortion!