Secular Folk: Humanity First Stepped On The Moon In 1969

Secular Folk: Humanity first stepped on the moon in 1969

Me, a Catholic: Oh no, who's gonna tell them?

Intercessions, MP 3rd Saturday of Easter

Christ is the bread of life; he will raise up on the last day all who share the table of his word & his body. In our joy let us pray: Lord, give us peace & joy.

Son of God, you were raised from the dead to lead us into life, bless & sanctify all the children of your Father. Lord, give us peace & joy.

You give peace & joy to all who believe in you, grant that we may walk as children of the light, rejoicing in your victory. Lord, give us peace & joy.

Build up the faith of your pilgrim Church on earth, that it may bear witness to your resurrection before the whole world. Lord, give us peace & joy.

You suffered and so entered into the glory of the Father, change the tears of the sorrowful into joy. Lord, give us peace & joy.

"What most characterizes [St. Thomas's] love of truth is his attitude toward his opponents. Indeed, he seems hardly to have opponents, so well does he work with them.

St. Paul says, "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good." To do this, we must first be able to recognize the good when we see it, and that implies sympathy. St. Thomas loved the truth that others possessed, because, as he says, "Truth does not change with the diversity of persons, and whoever maintains it is thereby invincible."

He dealt with his opponents not out of any vindictive desire to refute them, but rather to judge them fairly and meet them halfway. He accepts what is true in them, and rejects what is false, showing where it goes wrong."

-A. G. Sertillanges, OP, Thomas Aquinas - Scholar, Poet, Mystic, Saint

(I hope it's okay to reblog & add my thoughts, let me know if not!) On the point about the creation of Woman - I think there are good arguments to be made for Woman being the capstone of Creation. At the end of most of the days of Creation, God sees that his work is "good," but on the 6th day with the creation of Man & Woman, "God saw everything that he he had made, and behold, it was VERY good." I think this perspective is most fully realized in the person of the Blessed Virgin Mary who is the most perfect of all God's creatures (and probably the most perfect of all of God's creating things period). On the devil depicted as serpent - not an answer so much as jumping ahead to future imagery. In Exodus, there is an event where the Israelites are bitten by asps & falling ill, and God commands Moses to make a graven image of a snake, to put it on a pole, and to show it to everyone, and they are cured of their snakebites. This incident gets referenced by Jesus in John 3:14-15 "And as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." In other words, Jesus asserts himself to be the cure to the "snakebite" of sin we first suffered in Eden. Revelation 12 also has imagery of the devil as a dragon or serpent making war with Mary, Jesus, and his followers, which I must imagine was a conscious allusion to Genesis.

On prayer - one of the primary benefits of prayer (even when it feels dry), is turning your mind toward God. It's practice for listening & talking to him, especially in your moments of need. Knowing a couple verses of the Psalms to say a couple time throughout the day is especially good for difficult moments. Prayer in "dry" periods is good for building up the virtues of obedience & perseverance (when it is hard to pray, as opposed to when it is easy). Longer prayers like the Rosary or Divine Mercy Chaplet give us good practice for dedicating decent chunks of our time & attention to God instead of more trivial & "shiny" things. I suspect the majority of most peoples' prayer life is fairly uninspiring & unremarkable (maybe I am just projecting lol), at least when it comes to vocal prayer. Meditative & contemplative prayer "feel" more "prayerful" when I've tried them, so you may have better a experience with that. Praying the psalms is one of the more fulfilling vocal prayers for me than some of the other vocal prayers - my favorites are Ps27, Ps42, Ps63, and especially Ps148. Either way, daily prayer is fundamental to growing in faith, so keep at it!

Day One: Genesis 1-3

4/22/24

I was gonna read through chapter 4 but this post was getting pretty long already so I decided to stop here. I did say I was prone to rambling...

Definitely not going to go this in-depth every single time 😅 my 12th grade Sacred Scripture class just happened to spend a lot of time on the Creation narrative so I have a lot of previous knowledge I want to share.

Genesis 1

Looking through my 12th grade theology notes on the creation narrative, I have a table there that looks like this:

Realm | Ruler Time | Sun, moon, stars Space | Birds Life | Land animals Sabbath | Man

I wish I had taken more in-depth notes. I feel like there should be much more to say on this but I can't elaborate. I think I understand what that means but not enough to explain it. Although, thinking of the sun, moon and stars as being created to "rule" light makes the idea of light being created before the sun make a little more sense to me.

"God said, 'let the earth produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and fruit trees, each bearing fruit of its own kind within it." Gen 1:11

Okay, maybe slightly off-topic, but I've always wondered if there were any foods that Jesus didn't like. Because I mean, he's God, so he created them, but he's also human, so I would assume that maybe that means he had the human experience of having certain foods he didn't care for. Did he ever eat a vegetable as a kid and then go "why did I make this"?

"God said, 'let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild animals and all the creatures that creep along the earth.' Gen 1:26

Let US make man in OUR own image, in the likeness of OURSELVES. I never noticed that before. I thought it might just be this translation but I went and checked RSV and NAB and they both say that as well. Is God referring to himself as the trinity? All the way back in Genesis chapter 1? Or...am I just...thinking too hard about it?

This is one of the scenarios where I wish I could understand Hebrew because I want to go and read this passage in the original Hebrew. I'm marking this verse to come back to later.

Also, my favorite explanation of the Trinity and the one that makes the most sense to me is this: if human beings are made of a body, soul, and a will, and they are made in God's image, then God is also made of a body, soul, and a will—with Jesus as the body, the Father as the soul, and the Holy Spirit as the will.

Genesis 2

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat; for the day you eat of that you shall die." Gen 2:17

From the footnotes: Eating from this tree means usurping the divine privilege of deciding what is good and what is evil; the temptation is to proud independence, questioning God's judgement of good and evil.

This is indeed the way the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was explained to me in 12th grade, which I am thankful for because it used to be so confusing to me when I was younger. I thought it meant that eating from the tree would grant the ability to tell the difference between good and evil, and I could never understand how that would be a bad thing.

It also makes perfect sense because it seems the root of practically all problems in society is that everyone has their own ideas about what constitutes moral goodness. Even as a bad Catholic who struggles to wrap her head around her own faith I cringe every time I hear the "you have your truth, I have mine" line.

"The LORD God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone. I shall make him a helper as a partner.'" Gen 2:18

My mom quotes this verse whenever my dad does something dumb.

"Then the LORD God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he was asleep, he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. The LORD God built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man." Gen 2:21-22

According to my theology teacher, the ancient Hebrews believed the soul was contained in the chest/lungs and that the rib protected the soul; so Even being formed from a rib means women are built to be protectors of the soul..? Or...something like that. Again, I wish I'd taken more thorough notes.

There was also this thing I heard from somewhere else about how calling women inferior to men because Eve was created from a piece of Adam is dumb, because the pattern of creation is that each new thing God created was better than the last, and Eve was the last thing he created. But that sounds like a point a radical feminist would make so I'm sure that wasn't the whole explanation haha because I'm fairly certain the speaker was a conservative Catholic man.

Genesis 3

"Now, the snake was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the LORD God had made. It asked the woman, 'Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?'" Gen 3:1

I have always wondered why the devil is portrayed this way and that's still something I don't quite understand.

From the footnotes: In Hebr., 'snake' and 'dragon' are the same word; the dragon will lose its proud stance and become wormlike.

If we're imagining the serpent in the garden as not a tiny talking snake, but a giant monstrous serpent, it's sort of weird that Adam just...lets it chat with his wife. Because he was standing right there—

"She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it." Gen 3:6

Another thing my theology teacher said: "Every covenant failure begins with a man failing to stand up for his bride."

"Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together to make themselves loincloths." Gen 3:7

I have a few things to say about this verse. The first is just that I've heard the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is believed to be a fig tree, both because it mentions Adam and Eve sew together fig leaves here and also because of that one passage in the New Testament where Jesus curses a fig tree.

Also, I noticed that the very first thing that happened after committing original sin was that Adam and Eve felt shame and immediately began to hide themselves from God.

I think there has to be some significance to their being ashamed of their naked bodies, something that relates to how throughout history human sexuality has been perverted, but it's not something I can put into words right now.

"He said, 'Who told you that you were naked? Have you been eating from the tree from which I forbade you to eat?' The man replied, 'The woman you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate it.'" Gen 3:11

This was something else I heard: obviously God already knew that they ate from the tree; what he is doing here is giving them the chance to confess. Like, as in the sacrament of reconciliation, I think.

Also, Adam immediately pointing fingers at his wife like a kid trying to get out of a punishment. Very classy of him. Eve also tries to blame the serpent but I feel like it's a little worse that Adam tries to blame her, since they are supposed to be partners who love and protect each other.

"'I shall put enmity / between you and the woman, / and between your offspring and hers; / he will bruise your head / and you will strike his heel.'" Gen 3:15

First of all, does anyone know why verses 14-19 are written in this format that's reminiscent of books like Psalms and Isaiah?

Secondly—although, this is probably common knowledge so I probably don't need to say this here—

The woman's offspring = Jesus

He will bruise your head = Jesus will triumph over sin

You will strike his heel = At the same time, he will suffer and die

Okay! So, that was Genesis chapters 1 through 3. This turned out a lot longer than I thought it would be. Again, please do not expect this level of detail from me through this whole series. 😅

The thing is, I find this stuff fascinating and I can talk about it like this but when it comes to actually believing it I have such a hard time wrapping my head around it. Even with everything I learned in that class there's still so much I don't understand.

I suppose there will always be things I don't understand, because there are things that we don't even have definite answers to. And those are the gaps that faith is supposed to fill.

Here's one of the stupid questions I have that I mentioned in my first post: does reciting prayers make a difference?

Right now I especially struggle with prayer and reciting prayers such as the Our Father is the only way I feel I'm capable of praying right now. But it doesn't feel like anything. It just feels like me saying words, even if I try to reflect on what they mean. Should I still say them anyway? What value does it have if I don't feel like I'm actually connecting with God?

Thank you to anyone who actually took the time to read this whole thing (if anyone did, that is...) and especially thank you to the support I have already received. I feel welcomed :)

"A glance at the index to the Summa Theologica will show that everything, not only in [St. Thomas Aquinas's] theology, but his philosophy too, is centered in God. Spinoza's philosophy has a similar orientation, and so must every complete system of doctrine, for in God is to be found the ultimate explanation of the whole of knowledge.

All our ideas begin & end with God. All explanation is by universal principles, and ultimately by the First Principle. He who does not see as far as God is shortsighted, however far he may see, and he who does not view things from as far away as God is too near to see them fully.

To refer things to God is the only way to put them in true perspective and thereby to understand t hem aright. We cannot determine the essence, limits, or proportions of anything without this reference to the Supreme Being."

-A. G. Sertillanges, OP, Thomas Aquinas - Scholar, Poet, Mystic, Saint