It is important to make yourself a dwelling place for God. How you do this is quite simple: through prayer. You extend hospitality to God, like Lydia, extended it to Paul and his companion, by daily inviting God in.
When praying, you need to spend at least as much time in silence and you spend talking, if not more. Silence is God’s first language. As in any conversation, how can you listen if you’re constantly talking? Especially for people in advanced societies today, silence is difficult and uncomfortable. But like any spiritual practice, you have to stick with it until it becomes easier and more comfortable. Persistence is the path of fruitfulness.
Not only is the Holy Spirit the mode of God’s communication with us but because “we do not know how to pray as we ought,” Paul notes in his Letter to the Romans, the Spirit “intercedes [for us] with inexpressible groanings.”1
Only those who make themselves a dwelling place for God can convincingly testify to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who strengthens us when the inevitable trials start so “that you may not fall away.”2 Then as now, falling away is a real danger.
I am convinced that one of the biggest dangers for Christians today is not the usually facile “new atheism" or simply going from belief to unbelief in single bound. Because it is not certain knowledge, faith implies, or least easily accommodates, doubt. A great danger is getting caught up in bad religion, then realizing it for what it is, projecting that onto everything else, rejecting it, and walking away.
What do I mean by “bad religion”? I am referring specifically referring to the phenomenon of “internet Catholicism.” This phenomenon presents not only a false magisterium but many false teachers, whose sole claim to authority, be they priests or lay people, is their internet audience. They operate on the premise, even if unspoken (though many are increasingly bold), that their authority supersedes that of bishops and even the Pope. This is what Saint John Henry Newman called “the Protestant principle.”3 Oddly, many Protestants today show more respect for and receptivity to Catholic (catholic) teaching than the purveyors of "internet Catholicism." Being sectarians, these purveyors are the antithesis of what it means to be Catholic.
St Paul Meeting Lydia of Thyatira, by Edward Irvine Halliday
These self-anointed authorities presume to teach universally on all matters of faith and morals. They set themselves up as alternatives to authentic teaching authority in the Church, not just that of the Pope, but of bishops and duly appointed pastors. They expatiate on everything from the proper way to receive Holy Communion to whether bishops in this time of pandemic can and should restrict participation in Mass for the safety of their flocks. The activities of such people are analogous to those of the Judaizers with whom Paul was frequently forced to contend.
If you’re following the teaching of someone on the internet that is at odds with the teaching of your bishop, who is a Successor of the Apostles, a member of the College of Bishops in communion with the Pope, then you can be quite sure you’ve wandered from the path. In doing so, you are putting yourself at the mercy of wolves.
One thing that seems to unite these self-appointed pontiffs is their dislike of Pope Francis, especially his determination to tackle Pharisaical legalism within the Church. Rather than liberate, such legalism seeks to enslave and labors under the delusion that a person saves himself by his own righteous deeds. Eventually, many people who labor under these heavy burdens come to think “God is asking too much of me. I just can’t do it.” Here’s good news: Jesus did what God expects! Only he is capable of doing it. Jesus is our Savior.
After being burned by the flames of misplaced zealotry, a lot of people find it difficult to believe and continue practicing the faith. Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”4 Given the nearly overwhelming noise to signal ratio in our and age, it takes prayer and discernment to hear and follow the Master’s voice. It's safe to say, that the voice of authentic shepherds is gentler, less severe, not as dictatorial as those who seek to usurp authority.
If through prayer, you make yourself a dwelling place for God, it becomes easier to discern the voice of the Good Shepherd, which resonates in the voices of those duly appointed to guide his flock safely along the pilgrim path of this life.
The inspired author of Acts does not tell us what Lydia and the other women were doing on the banks of the river when Paul and his companion, who left the city of Philippi to find a place to pray on the Sabbath, encountered them. It is noted that Lydia was “a worshiper of God.”5 This likely means she was a Jewish proselyte, meaning one who was in the process of converting to Judaism, or perhaps a God-fearer, meaning a Gentile who, while not seeking to convert, recognized the God of Israel as the one true God and worshiped accordingly.
Therefore, it is probable that Lydia could receive the good news of Jesus Christ because she understood his Jewish context and recognized him, through Paul’s preaching, as the anticipated Messiah. This can be nothing other than the work of the Holy Spirit.
1 Romans 8:26.↩
2 John 16:1.↩
3 Mark E. Powell, Papal Infallibility: A Protestant Evaluation of an Ecumenical Issue, 87.↩
4 John 10:27.↩
5 Acts 16:14.↩
Good point, Deacon. There are many self-appointed religious teachers on the Internet.
ReplyDeleteGod bless.