Sunday Meditation: To Whom Are You Listening?

Remember the old Disney cartoons showing Pluto with an angel whispering in one ear and a devil in the other. That's not too far off. Our guardian angel is always with us trying to give us good advice. But do we listen? Or are we so enamored by the noise of the world that we can't hear his voice, especially when the devil is booming in our other ear.

But it's not only our guardian angel who's trying to communicate with us. Good and holy shepherds also compete with the world, the flesh, and the devil for our attention. C.S. Lewis offered a masterful description of the devil's tactics in his Screwtape Letters. It's wise to know the enemy and how he works on you. One of his most powerful weapons is discouragement. You know, that little nagging maggot that runs an endless loop of negative messages:

Give me a Warrior Angel, Not a New Age Wimp!

Angel with the Flaming Sword by Edwin Blashfield (1893)

I'm very fond of angels, especially my personal guardian angel. But, please, I want a real guardian not a wimpy angel like the ones portrayed by new agers who like girly imitations. They love a nicy-nice vision of a Pillsbury Doughboy God surrounded by wraith-like dancing angels more fit for Islam's "heaven" than for the real thing. They finger their crystals and listen to new age music from lotus positions dreaming of a heaven where all are welcome, unrepentant sins and all, where they can continue to mock God for all eternity. Silly angels and a marshmallow God! What an insult to truth! And what a shocking revelation they're in for on Judgment Day! Pray for them!

Give me a strong, young, masculine angel any day -- one with a big flaming sword!

The Death of the Catholic

The third man lived and died here

Continued from yesterday's post: God and the Deaths of Three Men - One Protestant, One Atheist, One Catholic

THE CATHOLIC

The third man to die was the Catholic who led a Catholic life, but not without pain and suffering. 

He was born in Dublin, Ireland to a middle class Irish couple, the first of three sons whose father always made certain the family went to Mass every Sunday. All three sons grew up to be handsome men with turquoise blue Irish eyes, each one possessing a pleasing temperament and a graciousness not seen today in many people. Even their mother would marvel at the beauty of her sons. 

As a child, the oldest brother contracted polio and as a result one leg never grew as long as the other and he limped all his life. His mother, once, in sincere anguish literally clutching her chest, told me that it “tore her heart” when she would see him as a child and then teenager limping down the street. She would stand at the door and could see her three sons walking home from school, one of them limping along.