Every man needs to strive for perfection. The world needs great men. Enough with the mediocre. That is the essence of Christianity. Christ is the perfect man. Perfect God was needed to make perfect man! Christ is both, perfect God and perfect man. Because of Him men can be perfect, by His mercy.
"If good men were better there would be less bad [men]". Saint John Chrysostom
To make the world a better place and to make men better the only real way is to change yourself. Convert!
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart.
"During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.
"Socrates taught us: Know thyself!
"Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: [let him who is without sin be the one to throw the first stone at her the Lord says to those about to stone to death the woman caught in adultery] it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't."
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 168.
His holiness Pope Benedict XVI takes up this same theme in his encyclical on hope, Spe salvi, when he speaks of divine judgment after death.
"With death, our life-choice becomes definitive--our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell. (Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1033-1032) On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbors--people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are. (Cf. ibid., 1023-1029)
"Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people--we may suppose--there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil--much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul...the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love." The purification of that type of soul which is good and not perfect at death is Purgatory.
Spe salve, 46-47
"You therefore are to be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Mt. 5:48)
"If good men were better there would be less bad [men]". Saint John Chrysostom
To make the world a better place and to make men better the only real way is to change yourself. Convert!
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart.
"During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.
"Socrates taught us: Know thyself!
"Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: [let him who is without sin be the one to throw the first stone at her the Lord says to those about to stone to death the woman caught in adultery] it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't."
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 168.
His holiness Pope Benedict XVI takes up this same theme in his encyclical on hope, Spe salvi, when he speaks of divine judgment after death.
"With death, our life-choice becomes definitive--our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell. (Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1033-1032) On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbors--people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are. (Cf. ibid., 1023-1029)
"Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people--we may suppose--there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil--much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul...the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love." The purification of that type of soul which is good and not perfect at death is Purgatory.
Spe salve, 46-47
"You therefore are to be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Mt. 5:48)
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