(c) Mateo Ivankovic 2017
J.M.J.
January 31, 2017
St. John Bosco
Dear Family of Mary!
"Dear children! Today I am calling you to pray for peace: peace in human hearts, peace in the families and peace in the world. Satan is strong and wants to turn all of you against God, and to return you to everything that is human, and to destroy in the heart all feelings towards God and the things of God. You, little children, pray and fight against materialism, modernism and egoism, which the world offers to you. Little children, you decide for holiness and I, with my Son Jesus, intercede for you. Thank you for having responded to my call." (January 25, 2017)
We
just scratched the surface about Modernism. But next we have
Materialism. We all can imagine Materialism to be the love of stuff, the
stuff we own and use, collect and hoard. Material things can make us
happy, feel safe, feed our egos, but not for long. And living for such
things is not really part of the road to holiness. Our Lady wants us to
have simple and humble lives so as to be free to love God. Living for
the material is not worthy of the human spirit.
But
there is also a philosophical understanding of Materialism that goes
much deeper. The philosophy of Materialism is actually atheism. The
Materialist does not believe in the supernatural, in God, in our souls
or in any moral truth. The Materialist believes that only matter exists
and that all life, including human life, is a product of the motion of
matter. Darwinism assumed this philosophy, saying that living things
only act to insure the survival of the species, there is no eternal
purpose, just survival of the next generation, because of the impulse or
movement of living matter.
Materialism as a philosophy is a very sad reality. Here are some short explanations of Materialism that might help:
The
theory that all reality is only matter, or a function of matter, or
ultimately derived from matter. There is no real distinction between
matter and spirit; even man's soul is essentially material and not
uniquely created by God. In ethical philosophy, materialism holds that
material goods and interests, the pleasures of the body and emotional
experience, are the only or at least the main reason for human
existence. In social philosophy, the view that economics and
this-worldly interests are the main functions of society. https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=34790
[about
Karl Marx] The first of his two key ideas is that of atheistic
historical materialism. Like Hobbes, Marx believed that there was no
creating God, no plan, design or providence that worked in the universe
and as a result there was no metaphysics that could posit knowable,
immaterial principles by which and through which the universe existed.
For Marx there was only the unstoppable progress of history through the
process of matter.
Materialism
is the philosophy that reality consists only in the physical and
tangible. Materialists seek their ultimate happiness in physical
pleasures and possessions. They don't believe in spiritual goods and
they don't really value human nature. People who embrace materialism
often teeter between living life to the fullest and falling into the pit
of despair.
The materialist assumption is that the tangible world is all that
exists. Nothing exists if it cannot be proven true by science. The
assumption is that any claim to truth without scientific evidence is
nothing more than opinion. This means that what would be considered true
through philosophy or faith is considered mere personal preference by a
materialist, including many religious and moral truths. Of course, this
view of reality in general has a great effect on a materialist's view
of human nature and human life in particular. http://www.fromtheabbey.com/library/materialism/
We can see this philosophy in action in most of our cultures
today. It is a hopeless way of thinking, because ultimately nothing
really matters but your fleeting pleasures. There is no afterlife, there
is no heaven or God. There is only this life.
How
many times Our Lady has tried to help us look to the eternal, to heaven
as our future. She came to tell us the God exists. And she constantly
directs our eyes to the supernatural, to the life of our souls, to the
reality of the afterlife, and our future destiny with God. She does not
want us to fall into the Materialist funk, living as if there is no life
after death.
So that is Materialism. Yes, it is being
distracted by stuff, but even more it is being lied to about our
immortal souls and our eternal life with God.
As Our Lady tells us, we must fight this way of thinking!!
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2017
"Medjugorje is the spiritual center of the world."
Saint John Paul II
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