“As the Father has sent me, so now I send you”. Jesus told His apostles in John 20:19. You must ask yourself, “How did God the Father send Jesus?” Only then we can know how Jesus sent His apostles. Simply put, God sent Jesus to be the Annointed one….The Messiah. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus was sent to reveal the truth and to lead us to heaven. He was sent to forgive our sins and unlock the gates of heaven. You must agree that Jesus’ purpose was to get us to heaven. Right?
Well, then…we must also agree that Jesus sent out His apostles in the same way. Jesus knew He was not ”of this world” and He wasn’t going to be “in this world” for very long. He commissioned a group of dedicated men to help carry on His message. He commissioned them to do what He had been doing for the last 3 or so years of His life.
He breathed on them and told them to receive the Holy Spirit….as John continues. The amazing thing is that He then told them if they forgive sins of any, then they are forgiven. And if they retain sins of any, they are retained.
Do you understand the power in Jesus’ words?
Do you see that Jesus was giving His friends, who would carry on His church teachings, the power to forgive sins and to open the gates of heaven to people?
And in turn, Jesus wanted them to empower other men who would cary on the church teachings after them. This is how He knew that the Gates of hell would not prevail…because He gave His apostles “Power”. But how would the apostles forgive sins? Why, in those early days, would someone confess their sins to Peter or John or Bartholomew? Because of the grace of the Holy Spirit Jesus breathed on them. Jesus knew that people had to repent of their sins and be baptised. But He also knew that in order to repent, those people must tell their sins to the Presbyters who, in this early time of the church, were the apostles.
In todays world, through apostolic succession, we have priests and bishops who have a continous connection dating back to those early apostles, those first priests who preached and heard confessions of ancient Christians and forgave them their sins. So many people today do not go to confession and I cannot understand why. Some say that they can go directly to God, “why do I need a priest?” I say “sure you can go directly to God, but if you read your bible, Jesus said tell your sins to a priest. And as fas as I’m concerned, Jesus is God….and God makes the rules, not you. Get yourself to confession if you haven’t been there in a while. Be contrite, be humble, but be glad that Jesus has given His gift of forgiveness to our priests so that they may pass along Gods grace to us. God Bless You.
Sister Campbell, you say the US Catholic Bishops say the Ryan budget failed a basic moral test and apparently it failed your test too. Well well ok let’s change the budget let’s address your legitimate complaints let’s get it right. But I don’t understand how that means tossing the whole Republican party under the bus by switching parties and going with the Democratic Party, the party that gives the sacred right of marriage over to homosexuality thereby defiling, degrading and debasing that most sacred of institutions. The Democratic Party that supports abortion on demand and supports planned parenthood which are mainly responsible for the 50 million infants now dead and whose blood screams out from the grave. The world that know the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob know that the act of a man putting his penis in another mans butt for sexual pleasure is wrong at least according to my Catholic bible and according to the doctrine of the Catholic faith–that would be the one headquartered over in Italy in Rome, where they use to throw those same people to lions and kill them for sport. Homosexuality is fine with Obama he said so and it is fine with his political party they support it and so does Rachel Maddow a huge leader in gay rights cause, her and her girl friend her mate and a great deal of the main stream media and TV, etc. That political party supports that the infant, the fetus, be ripped out of the womb and put into the trash. The important thing for them is that a women has a right to control her own body and do with it whatever she pleases including killing her own child. That right is held strict by the Democratic party. With his Health Care Plan Obama has stabbed religious liberty through the heart. And with your speech at the DNC you just gave your support of all of these things.