IT MAKES no sense at all. One moment we declare faith in God and even declare full trust in His mercy so great as to surely spare us from hell. The next moment we are into vanities of assorted varieties, idling through daily life over gambling or inebriation, or busying ourselves to possess more material things than we need at the expense of others, indulging in degrees of sexuality as excusable diversion, talking ill of others for a hidden want to uplift our castes, etc.
We all have the tendency to rationalize God. When good things happen to us, we say “God is good.” When we do things for others, it’s always that overused clause “It makes me feel good” that has to answer the query why do good at all. But what if things bad happen to us? What if doing others good ends up with us being forlorn instead? What has happened to the way of the cross?
What has happened to the examples of saints who embraced material poverty and carried heavy crosses to their deaths?
Even among us Catholics, there is the tendency to rationalize God by making Him subservient to our carnal reasoning. It’s really like inventing our own gods whose commandments fit perfectly our desires. It’s idolatry.
In effect, our attitudes have also assumed the character of rationalism, or pushing reason (really, our convenient reasons) as the supreme authority in matters of opinion, belief, and conduct. It’s really our own vain reasoning that we posit God; it’s subjecting God to human reason, if not personal predilections.
In the writings of mystic Maria Valtorta, Jesus Christ had something to say about this. In the following, Our Lord also referred to priests who throw cold shoulder on recent supernatural interventions, also because of rationalism.
Jesus said as follows:
“There are few things that I condemn as severely as this rationalism which rapes and desecrates and kills Faith — I say Faith with a capital, in order to say true Faith, absolute, regal Faith. I condemn it as My assassin. It is this very rationalism which kills Me in hearts and which prepares and has prepared very sad times for the Church and the world.
“I have cursed other things. But none will I curse as this. It has been the seed from which have come other poisonous doctrines, and others, and still others. It has been the treachery which opens the door to the enemy. It has in fact opened the doors to Satan who has never reigned as much as now, since rationalism reigns…
“Truly I say to you that I will clasp to My Heart the unfortunate man who has committed a human crime and repented of it, provided he has always admitted that I can do all. But I will turn the face of a Judge to those who, on the basis of a doctrinaire human science, deny the supernatural in the manifestations which the Father might want Me to give…
“One of the greatest sorrows I have is that of seeing how rationalism has infiltrated into hearts, even into hearts that are said to be Mine…
“Less science and more charity. Less books and more Gospel. It is light in souls, because I am Light. Disencumber all to make room for the Light…
“The others equivocate, debate, criticize, deny. And why? Because they live from their heaviness and not from their spirit. They are anchored to the things they have found and do not consider that these are things that came from Me and which have not always been seen correctly. And even if they have been seen and written correctly, they have been written for their times and have been badly understood of the future. These others do not think that I can have something else to say, suited to the needs of the times, and that I am the Ruler of how to say it and to whomever I please, since I am God and the eternal Word Who never ceases being the Speech of the Father.
“I attempt the last trials in order to inflame the souls that are no longer living souls, but automatons endowed with movement, and not with intelligence and charity. My work — from the beginning of this century, the last of the second millennium — is a miracle of charity to attempt the second salvation of the human race, especially of priestly souls without which the salvation of many is impossible. I substitute Myself for the empty pulpits, or the pulpits blaring words without true life. But few are those who are worthy of comprehending Me. Few even among My ministers…”
