ARE WE TRULY CHRISTAINS?

Do we really appreciate the fact that we are Christains,that we know, through Christ’s revelation, that the God of heaven, the infinite Creator of the universe, has designed to call himself our Father, and gives us the right to call him Father? Through that same Christian revelation we also know that he is infinitely merciful and cares for each single one of us more than any human father can care for his child. That he not only put us into this world and provides for us here, but that when our days here come to an end, he has prepared an everlasting abode for us, in his kingdom of peace and happiness.
Think for a moment what our world, or the people in it, were like before Christ came on earth. Ninety-seven percent of those then on earth. Adored false gods and offered sacrifices to idols made of wood or stone. Idolatry often made life on earth unbearable and gave no hope whatsoever of any-life. The remaining three percent was made up of the Chosen People who had a very limited knowledge of the true God. He had shown mercy and kindness towards them, but they feared him rather than loved him. With rare and notable exceptions, they served him out of self-interest, to get from him temporal gifts, rather than out of real gratitude and love. Their relationship to him was more like that of slaves towards their masters than that of children towards a kind and loving Father. Their life was earth entered and their ambitions were worldly. He had revealed little or nothing to them about a life after death. The prophets spoke of a great, happy and prosperous age which was to come, when God would send his Messiah, but the most they could hope for in the way of a future life or immortality, was to live on in their descendants, so that, to be childless was one of their greatest disasters.
Ours is a world which is in an all-out search for new idols. It is world which has left the path marked out by Christ, and forgotten or tried to forget, that man’s life does not end with death. To be a Christian and to have the light of faith to guide our steps in this neo-pagan darkness is surely a gift, and a blessing from God, for which we can never thank him enough. Than you, God, for this gift. Please give us the grace and the courage to live up to it and to die in the certainty that we shall hear, as we shut our eyes on the light of this light, the consoling words “come you blessed of my father, posses the kingdom prepared for you.