I've stuck my neck out and offered a specific interpretation of the prediction for Pope Francis, and I have specified a future tragedy in that regard. If that unlikely event should (God forbid) take place, then we have to accept that as a confirmation of Wion's prophecy.
Matthew 6:34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Today’s list of troubles includes a pandemic and frightened neighbours. Can I make a plea for investigations/scholarship/whatever that tries to help with today’s very real problems, rather than trying to divert attention and anxiety onto some future event.
Even if we are living through “end times” we are still told to focus on the immediate problems which are within our reach.
I realise that this will never be sufficiently “global” or “international” for your taste. After all, deep down, everyone wants to be proved right about the big picture stuff - lives of millions- fate of nations etc.
But Jesus went around solving everyday problems: an illness here, a death in the family there. When he comes back, He’s going to ask each of us what we have done on a similarly domestic scale (Matthew 10:42, John 5:39-40, James 1:22)
I guarantee He will not ask: “Hands up anyone who got the one about the popes?”
Rmembering our discussion some time ago about Pope Pius XII appearing in films I came across recently such an event.
The Prague born Austrian writer,Franz Werfel, wrote a beautiful story about the life of a cook, set in the 1930s. It is a story which would only appeal to those who believe that Heaven is worth striving for.
The cook ,Teta Linek,places all her life's hope on entering Heaven one day To help her there she finances the studies of her nephew on the understanding that he will become a priest and pray for her. For various reasons she never sees her nephew but regularly over a period of 30 years sends him money to help him in his clerical career. She discovers painfully that the nephew never became a priest and had just taken her money,writing,however, every week,beautiful letters detailing his apostolic work.
Instead of blaming him she blames herself and decides to go on a pilgrimage to Rome to ask for forgiveness. There she meets pope Pius XI and is so overcome that she suffers a thrombosis and dies shortly afterwards,being told that the pope himself is praying for her and that she does deserve the Heaven which she has worked for all her life'
There are many themes which come into the story which is called 'der veruntreute Himmel' (Embezzled Heaven in the English translation) There is a German film of the story made in the 1950s which ends with the papal audience in the time of Pius XII ,instead of 1937 with Pius XI, and links an actual audience with Pius XII and the characters of the film. I understand that Pius XII thought it was a very special story and gave permission for the scenes concerning the papal audience to feature himself.(So he was a film star).The short extract featuring Pius XII can be viewed on Utube separately form the main film.
The Papacy may have made various claims as to it's authority and historical primacy but never, as I understand it to it's prophetic skills. The interpretation of the Roman Catholic Church own teachings is surely a matter to be settled by the senior clerics and theologians of the Church after due deliberation at the Councils of the Church.
It is one of the traditional teachings of christianity that God has made us for Himself and that we should be happy,after physical death to this world,in the new life of Heaven. Certainly most of those who call themselves Christians are more interested in the affairs of this world,even sometimes in the achievement of justice and peace in this world,which is a most laudable thing and something which the Church teaches us will lead us to the eternity of Heaven.
In beautiful language the author recounts the story of a humble cook who set her sights principally on achieving Heaven. Throughout the story the author show us the reactions of those who realise early on that the cook is probably being duped by her nephew,but who nevertheless see and admire in her a person of rare character who takes the teachings of christianity about our ultimate destiny au pied de la lettre and is determined to do all she can to obtain the bliss of Heaven.
It is one of the traditional teachings of Christianity that God has made us for Himself and that we should be happy, after physical death to this world, in the new life of Heaven.
Also that God alone exists of Himself.
Everything else proceeds from God, both good and evil.
It is one of the traditional teachings of christianity that God has made us for Himself and that we should be happy,after physical death to this world,in the new life of Heaven.
I took @Dave W to be asking what is “beautiful” about a woman who seems to have spent her life worrying whether she’d done enough to “deserve” heaven, and who blames herself for her nephew’s duplicity.
. . . our ultimate destiny au pied de la lettre . . . .
As I retain fragments of my ‘O’ level French from 45 years ago, I have an idea what ‘au pied de la lettre’ might mean. But, @Forthview, I don’t think it is a phrase which has sufficient currency in English to pass without a translation being provided, please.
It is one of the traditional teachings of Christianity that God has made us for Himself and that we should be happy, after physical death to this world, in the new life of Heaven.
Also that God alone exists of Himself.
Everything else proceeds from God, both good and evil.
Au pied de la lettre (literal translation in English is 'at the foot of the letter' and it means 'to take things literally.Sorry for thinking that it would be fairly common currency.
sorry again to N.T. in saying that she takes the story of our ultimate destiny 'au pied de la lettre'
when I should have said that she believes literally in the promises of Christ to reward those who follow His way with eternal life - by which she understands 'Heaven'.
The simple woman is neither a saint nor is she a theologian but she makes it her aim in this life to prepare herself for eternity. She is shown in the story to be less than perfect in attempts at loving others,though she does try her very best,as she sees it,to love God.
She is not an intellectual ( but neither in the grand scheme of things are all that many of us . When she is confronted with the faithlessness and duplicity of her nephew she does not blame him but takes the guilt upon herself and believes that through her guilt she has lost that Heaven which she had so assiduously striven for.Her trip to Rome is undertaken as a penance. As on Chaucer's Canterbury tales she meets a variety of fellow travellers/pilgrims one of whom is a real priest who is what she long imagined her nephew to be and who is able to assure her that she has not lived in vain but can count on being welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven
It is worth knowing that Franz Werfel was not,as far as I know,a Christian. He was Jewish but greatly influenced by his childhood nursemaid who took him regularly to Catholic services and introduced him to all sorts of Christian ideas and ideals of simple people. The story is set at a time when Werfel himself had left Austria to escape from the Nazis. Later on he found himself taking refuge in the French town of Lourdes and vowed to tell,should he escape to safety,in his words the story of the seer of that town -das Lied der Bernadette/the Song of Bernadette which in turn became a popular film.
And I would describe it as very sad to have spent one’s life in fear that one hadn’t done enough to deserve heaven. But not having seen the film, perhaps the ending of story—
As on Chaucer's Canterbury tales she meets a variety of fellow travellers/pilgrims one of whom is a real priest who is what she long imagined her nephew to be and who is able to assure her that she has not lived in vain but can count on being welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven.
—conveys that she needn’t ever have carried such fear.
Yes, the whole way it is presented makes my well-hidden evangelical antennae flash turquoise and bleep "LUTHER WAS COMPLETELY RIGHT ABOUT THESE GUYS ALL THE TIME!"... salvation by works - check! pay to spring souls from purgatory - check! sub-contracting your spiritual life to priests - check!
Then I calm down again and think that @Nick Tamen's take on it is much more charitable and eirenic than mine...
That Christianity is all about "going to heaven" might well be a traditional teaching, but there's also a solid argument that it's a thoroughly unbiblical one.
My object in recounting a little bit of the story of 'Embezzled Heaven' was to explain why Pius XII had given permission for scenes of an important papal audience might be included in the film. I was not expecting people to react so violently against the story itself set in a time and place which most of us will not remember .
The film changed the end of the story in order to fit in with the scenes of the papal audience with Pius XII instead of a more private audience with Pius XI in 1937. in the original.
Teta Linek has worked for several years with noble families in Austria. She has convinced herself that the goal of achieving Heaven will be her life's work. At the request of her widowed sister in law she agrees in 1907 to support her nephew in his studies on the understanding that he will become a priest.After school he enters a religious order and then becomes a secular/diocesan priest. She continues to support him and receives regular letters from him detailing his apostolic labours and letting her feel that she herself,while immured in the kitchen,is vicariously taking part in all his good works.
In 1937 she reaches the age of 70 and reaches pensionable age.Her employer generously provides a ten year pensionable sum.Her doctor has told her that her heart should last out till 1940.
Teta was not one of those people whose life was punctuated by the political events of the day. Her years were composed of Advent,Christmas,Lent,Easter and Pentecost.
At Easter 1937 she sets out to find her nephew and the awful truth becomes clear to her.
She feels herself responsible and with the money she has at her disposal she undertakes a pilgrimage to Rome,where,as we know, she dies,finally confident that she will achieve her goal of eternity in Heaven .The Roman Episode takes place at Pentecost 1937.
To say that the story is sad is understandable. To say that it is grotesque is grotesque in itself and shows a lack of understanding and sensitivity for the religious beliefs of simple people.
Faith and Works disagreement has long been settled between at least the Lutheran and Catholic Churches,both sides agreeing that there were major misunderstandings on both sides at the time.
Subcontracting spiritual life to priests and 'paying for praying' is not unique to the Catholic Church. Most,but certainly not all Christian religious communities ,pay their clergy to provide spiritual services -teaching,prayers and sacraments for them.
If we say that Christian life is 'unbiblically ?' all about going to Heaven we are only partly right for an important part of that is to prepare here and now for that eternal bliss.
Whatever was in fact 'true' in the story,the Jewish author Franz Werfel tell us that he felt that this old and pious virgin was a very special person who made him feel small and insignificant.In the years between 1937 and 1939 he has heard so many stories of the collapse of what he sees as good in his own country , people fleeing in their thousands and finding nowhere to give them rest - these refugees were looking for temporary repose.
Teta Linek spent her whole life hoping for eternal repose,even although she may only had some sort of primitive understanding of what that might mean.
I think that's an inspiring story, and I'm glad you shared it @Forthview . If I may, it suggests another point to me - that all our efforts to do the right thing are partial, and of mixed motives, including a kind of latent utilitarianism (at least on my own, supposedly Christian, part) where I flatter my own vanity by thinking that the stuff I try to do 'for the good' will have some kind of impact, on someone, somewhere.
As I get older I am increasingly aware that largely, for me, these ideas of 'impact' have been delusional. To make a piece of art which explores that realisation by taking a case to an extreme, and what that means in the face of a retained belief in the Goodness which one has recently realised one has failed to live out - as opposed to a vain flounce into nihilism as a face-saver, which is a temptation but which would perhaps make a much more boring film - seems to me a really worthwhile project. I'll try to look the film out.
@Forthview I apologise. This story obviously means something to you and I have no intention of "trashing" it. I probably shouldn't have written anything but perhaps it illustrates how art that "gets through" to one person may ring completely different and unhelpful bells for another. I like what @mark_in_manchester says.
I thank you most sincerely,Turquoise Tastic,for your apology.I understand completely that things can ring different bells with different people.
On the Ship there are so many people with so many varying perspectives and ways of looking at life and at Christianity,ways which I would never have thought about and in ways which I would have not considered as being Christian.
Over the years I have grown to appreciate these different points of view and understandings,whether or not I have agreed with them.
They are important to those who express them.
We see,here on earth, 'through a glass darkly, as we move towards the eternal light and full understanding.
Comments
Matthew 6:34
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Today’s list of troubles includes a pandemic and frightened neighbours. Can I make a plea for investigations/scholarship/whatever that tries to help with today’s very real problems, rather than trying to divert attention and anxiety onto some future event.
Even if we are living through “end times” we are still told to focus on the immediate problems which are within our reach.
I realise that this will never be sufficiently “global” or “international” for your taste. After all, deep down, everyone wants to be proved right about the big picture stuff - lives of millions- fate of nations etc.
But Jesus went around solving everyday problems: an illness here, a death in the family there. When he comes back, He’s going to ask each of us what we have done on a similarly domestic scale (Matthew 10:42, John 5:39-40, James 1:22)
I guarantee He will not ask: “Hands up anyone who got the one about the popes?”
Unless he and the popes have a betting pool going on.
Give me $5 in square 14.
{Attaches mt's bet to fishing line, hanging down from...somewhere, and tugs on the line to send it up to St. Peter.}
And I'll add my own bet to one of Pope Joan's chosen squares.
The Prague born Austrian writer,Franz Werfel, wrote a beautiful story about the life of a cook, set in the 1930s. It is a story which would only appeal to those who believe that Heaven is worth striving for.
The cook ,Teta Linek,places all her life's hope on entering Heaven one day To help her there she finances the studies of her nephew on the understanding that he will become a priest and pray for her. For various reasons she never sees her nephew but regularly over a period of 30 years sends him money to help him in his clerical career. She discovers painfully that the nephew never became a priest and had just taken her money,writing,however, every week,beautiful letters detailing his apostolic work.
Instead of blaming him she blames herself and decides to go on a pilgrimage to Rome to ask for forgiveness. There she meets pope Pius XI and is so overcome that she suffers a thrombosis and dies shortly afterwards,being told that the pope himself is praying for her and that she does deserve the Heaven which she has worked for all her life'
There are many themes which come into the story which is called 'der veruntreute Himmel' (Embezzled Heaven in the English translation) There is a German film of the story made in the 1950s which ends with the papal audience in the time of Pius XII ,instead of 1937 with Pius XI, and links an actual audience with Pius XII and the characters of the film. I understand that Pius XII thought it was a very special story and gave permission for the scenes concerning the papal audience to feature himself.(So he was a film star).The short extract featuring Pius XII can be viewed on Utube separately form the main film.
In beautiful language the author recounts the story of a humble cook who set her sights principally on achieving Heaven. Throughout the story the author show us the reactions of those who realise early on that the cook is probably being duped by her nephew,but who nevertheless see and admire in her a person of rare character who takes the teachings of christianity about our ultimate destiny au pied de la lettre and is determined to do all she can to obtain the bliss of Heaven.
It is one of the traditional teachings of Christianity that God has made us for Himself and that we should be happy, after physical death to this world, in the new life of Heaven.
Also that God alone exists of Himself.
Everything else proceeds from God, both good and evil.
?
BroJames, Purgatory Host
Evil proceeds from God?
How so?
when I should have said that she believes literally in the promises of Christ to reward those who follow His way with eternal life - by which she understands 'Heaven'.
The simple woman is neither a saint nor is she a theologian but she makes it her aim in this life to prepare herself for eternity. She is shown in the story to be less than perfect in attempts at loving others,though she does try her very best,as she sees it,to love God.
She is not an intellectual ( but neither in the grand scheme of things are all that many of us . When she is confronted with the faithlessness and duplicity of her nephew she does not blame him but takes the guilt upon herself and believes that through her guilt she has lost that Heaven which she had so assiduously striven for.Her trip to Rome is undertaken as a penance. As on Chaucer's Canterbury tales she meets a variety of fellow travellers/pilgrims one of whom is a real priest who is what she long imagined her nephew to be and who is able to assure her that she has not lived in vain but can count on being welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven
It is worth knowing that Franz Werfel was not,as far as I know,a Christian. He was Jewish but greatly influenced by his childhood nursemaid who took him regularly to Catholic services and introduced him to all sorts of Christian ideas and ideals of simple people. The story is set at a time when Werfel himself had left Austria to escape from the Nazis. Later on he found himself taking refuge in the French town of Lourdes and vowed to tell,should he escape to safety,in his words the story of the seer of that town -das Lied der Bernadette/the Song of Bernadette which in turn became a popular film.
(Prayola!)
Then I calm down again and think that @Nick Tamen's take on it is much more charitable and eirenic than mine...
The film changed the end of the story in order to fit in with the scenes of the papal audience with Pius XII instead of a more private audience with Pius XI in 1937. in the original.
Teta Linek has worked for several years with noble families in Austria. She has convinced herself that the goal of achieving Heaven will be her life's work. At the request of her widowed sister in law she agrees in 1907 to support her nephew in his studies on the understanding that he will become a priest.After school he enters a religious order and then becomes a secular/diocesan priest. She continues to support him and receives regular letters from him detailing his apostolic labours and letting her feel that she herself,while immured in the kitchen,is vicariously taking part in all his good works.
In 1937 she reaches the age of 70 and reaches pensionable age.Her employer generously provides a ten year pensionable sum.Her doctor has told her that her heart should last out till 1940.
Teta was not one of those people whose life was punctuated by the political events of the day. Her years were composed of Advent,Christmas,Lent,Easter and Pentecost.
At Easter 1937 she sets out to find her nephew and the awful truth becomes clear to her.
She feels herself responsible and with the money she has at her disposal she undertakes a pilgrimage to Rome,where,as we know, she dies,finally confident that she will achieve her goal of eternity in Heaven .The Roman Episode takes place at Pentecost 1937.
To say that the story is sad is understandable. To say that it is grotesque is grotesque in itself and shows a lack of understanding and sensitivity for the religious beliefs of simple people.
Faith and Works disagreement has long been settled between at least the Lutheran and Catholic Churches,both sides agreeing that there were major misunderstandings on both sides at the time.
Subcontracting spiritual life to priests and 'paying for praying' is not unique to the Catholic Church. Most,but certainly not all Christian religious communities ,pay their clergy to provide spiritual services -teaching,prayers and sacraments for them.
If we say that Christian life is 'unbiblically ?' all about going to Heaven we are only partly right for an important part of that is to prepare here and now for that eternal bliss.
Whatever was in fact 'true' in the story,the Jewish author Franz Werfel tell us that he felt that this old and pious virgin was a very special person who made him feel small and insignificant.In the years between 1937 and 1939 he has heard so many stories of the collapse of what he sees as good in his own country , people fleeing in their thousands and finding nowhere to give them rest - these refugees were looking for temporary repose.
Teta Linek spent her whole life hoping for eternal repose,even although she may only had some sort of primitive understanding of what that might mean.
As I get older I am increasingly aware that largely, for me, these ideas of 'impact' have been delusional. To make a piece of art which explores that realisation by taking a case to an extreme, and what that means in the face of a retained belief in the Goodness which one has recently realised one has failed to live out - as opposed to a vain flounce into nihilism as a face-saver, which is a temptation but which would perhaps make a much more boring film - seems to me a really worthwhile project. I'll try to look the film out.
On the Ship there are so many people with so many varying perspectives and ways of looking at life and at Christianity,ways which I would never have thought about and in ways which I would have not considered as being Christian.
Over the years I have grown to appreciate these different points of view and understandings,whether or not I have agreed with them.
They are important to those who express them.
We see,here on earth, 'through a glass darkly, as we move towards the eternal light and full understanding.