2C Arguments for the existence of God

9A

Is there such a thing as right and wrong?

Isaw an old film by the Coen brothers recently called No Country for Old Men. There is a gunfight in the desert when a drug deal goes wrong. The next day, a local guy played by Josh Brolin is out hunting, and he finds two million dollars in a suitcase at the scene. He thinks hard, then puts it in the back of his truck, and takes it home. He spends the rest of the film running from hit man played by Javier Bardem, one of the most terrifying characters ever to grace the screens. So Brolin finds the very thing he has been searching for all his life: a tonne of cash. But in the process (spoiler alert) he loses everything else that has been important to him: his home, his work, his wife, his freedom, and eventually his very life. The film is a classic morality tale. It raises all the big questions: What are you searching for? What would you do to get it? Is it really worth it? Are there any moral boundaries? If you speak about morality today, you get a fascinating mix of views. On the one hand, we don’t like to judge or interfere. We value diversity. In Britain there is a great emphasis on the virtue of tolerance. Live and let live. We want to respect people’s freedom.

CHAPTER 15

THE HOLY EUCHARIST

15A

The meaning of the Mass

When I was sixteen, some Catholic friends invited me to go to Mass with them one Sunday evening. Now I wasn’t used to going to church, and I felt a bit out of place, and confused by what was happening. People were standing and sitting and kneeling at random times. The prayers didn’t mean anything to me. And no one seemed very interested in me being there! But there was a moment in the middle of the service when I saw the priest hold up a small white disc above the altar. And I noticed that everyone else was completely focussed on what was taking place. I could almost feel their faith. There was an unusual stillness in the church. I knew that something important was happening, even though I didn’t understand what it really meant. The celebration of the Eucharist is the centre of Christian worship. Catholics in the Western tradition often refer to it as “the Mass”, and the Eastern Churches speak about it as “the Divine Liturgy”. People come together as a Christian family at their local church. There is something very simple and natural about this. We belong to each other. No one can live their faith alone.

CHAPTER 20

THE HOPE OF HEAVEN

20B

Holiness, the saints, and our hope for heaven

There’s a church in Lourdes in the south of France called the Underground Basilica. Hanging from the pillars, there are dozens and dozens of huge images, pictures of the saints. Some of them are reproductions of famous paintings, some of them authentic photographs. When I stand in the centre of the building, I’m overwhelmed by a sense of the family of the Church: that we are not alone, that we belong to this great family of faith that stretches back to Jesus Christ and up to heaven. In the Bible a “vocation” is a calling, a purpose. The fundamental human vocation is to live a life of holiness, to be a saint. Not just to be a saint in heaven, but also to become a saint on this earth.

Jesus Christ gave his life for us in order to save us and to sanctify the Church. He gives us the Holy Spirit so that we can become holy as he is holy. The saints are not just heroic people who live in history books. They are ordinary Christians who tried to live their faith without holding anything back, to love God with their whole hearts, to love those around them without counting the cost,