Jeremiah 3:15-16

"‘And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding. And when you have multiplied and been fruitful in the land, in those days, declares the Lord, they shall no more say, "The ark of the covenant of the Lord." It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed; it shall not be made again."

God is our Father, Abba and Adonai [Lord]. And he sees mankind, and especially those whom he has called his people. He sees them as a rebellious people who are polluting the land. They've made the land unclean in their disobedience, and disregard for the Law. They've played the harlot with many unclean lovers. Yet in his great mercy and love, he longs for them to return to him.

God's prophet describes the depths of their sin. He draws a picture of a lawless people who are acting like whores. But worse than that they are polluting the whole land with their garbage spiritualized with pagan energy. And there is no place that is not touched by their religion.

"Lift up your eyes to the desolate heights and see:"

"Where have you not lain with men?"

"By the road you have sat for them. Like an Arabian in the wilderness"

Look up to see in the high places where their altars to pagan gods were often built. It's there that they built their temples of harlotry, where they committed spiritual adultery with pagan gods. They worship Baal and Asherah like whores being ravished by obscene sexual violence. They've been looking for freedom in their spirituality but have been raped by these false gods. Sin wasn’t searching for them; they were searching for it.

And we see this today. Most of them tell themselves that they are not forsaking the LORD, they're only adding the worship of these other gods to enhance their love for the LORD. They add many ism-gods, virtue signaling their cultured love for the gods of abortion, liberation theology, feminism, multiculturalism, socialism, pluralism, and relativism. And all these things of course are not gods at all, but only expressions of human nature. With a dead conscience their lack of shame is profound. Instead of crying out to the Lord and coming with humble repentance they continue in their evil, hoping to get away with as much as they can. Their humanism will not be denied. Their harlotry is casual, and the repentance they offer is not from the whole heart, it's only a pretense.

True repentance, true confession, is a harrowing and humiliating experience. It's a vulnerable thing. And that's why too many resist it. Most often it's only a pretense, and they should know that God knows when repentance is insincere and something that people do for show. So imagine the penitent person who is setting up standards for perfection, missing those marks daily, and confessing their failures daily. They call upon the name of the gods they've arranged for themselves to forgive them. And their gods assign to them adorations and genuflections to appease their anger. It's a very convenient arrangement, but it's costly. They are spiritually raped daily by their angry gods.

And so, to appease these gods and goddesses, they create demigods of ritualistic cannibalism that mirrors the Indo-Iranian spirit of Mithraism. They create feasts and festivals patterned after the natural cycles of the earth and its moon. They honor demigods of fertility, in customs involving feasting, drinking, and carnal behavior. They wear ashes and fast for a fashion attire. They rebrand the ancient pagan goddesses with their Mother of God. Artemis, Brigid, Demeter, Diana, Hera, Isis, and Venus are all rebranded in her. They eat the body, they drink the blood, and bow their heads in orgies to feminine idols. Still celebrating the natural cycles of the planets and the stars on their Liturgical Calendars. They still meet on the barren hills like harlots. Still chasing their many lovers.

I agree with the sentiment of this one priest:

"The Church is no longer, as she once was, a Church composed of pagans who have become Christians, but a Church of pagans, who still call themselves Christians, but actually have become pagans." - Father Joseph Ratzinger

Paganism within the Church, the, “desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be” (Mark 13:14), is not just some futuristic prophecy waiting to be fulfilled, it exists even today. The Church shaped to their own world view, more or less, a secular philosophy based upon rational considerations and practical self-righteousness. Their sacraments are given on the basis of social convention, on a thoughtless tradition, only empty rituals. They marry who they will, baptize who they will, confirm who they will, it's no difficulty because all are the same, indifferent to the law of God. Their priests are activists, lawyers, politicians. They claim that all the people have a right to the Sacraments if they come and pay homage to the Church which they assume is Holy. They're like voters voting for the politician who offers them what they want. They vote and move on. Their faith is not a factor in their daily life because their faith is placed in the Church, in the "Party". So, they practice their faith, never doing it. They have replaced true repentance and true confession with an attitude of faith. They "identify" with their church, cheapening their beliefs with their many gods. Cheap grace, cheap mercy, cheap faith built upon a foregone conclusion and ratified by a certificate of merit and moralism. It's all an illusion to draw in the pagans. It's the secularization of the Christian faith. Easy sacramentalism.

The prophet Jeremiah describes a day when all these things will be forgotten. They shall no more say, "The ark of the covenant of the Lord." No more ritualistic shadows of the glory of God. No more organized religion.

But right now, we can only imagine that beautiful glory. And unfortunately, too many imagine too much. Too much confusion and delusion. Too much arcana, too much rule, too much inner essence. Too much imagination. Too much activity that is a form of self-deception, and the deception of others. Where the duty of the bride of Christ was the proclamation of the Gospel, we now find ourselves trapped in tribalism and Sacraments without faith. Sacraments devoid of the gospel. It's an impressionist's faith, and a dispensary of the means of grace in paganistic practices.

Like pill call at the prison dispensary. The gospel is the pill call broadcast over the prison sound systems. The Bible evangelists are the shouts of the prison guards calling them to pill call. And the Sacraments are the prescribed antidepressants dispensed to treat their spirits. This sectarian seclusion is the prison of their faith. Each person is incarcerated and saved by that incarceration. Whether they've been on good behavior or not, for the pill saves all. The pill is their morality. Their moralism is a loveless prison cell.

Here's the truth:

Salvation always remains a free grace, even apart from the reality of sin. No moralism can change that. No person can honestly deny that even the best of our moral decisions are infected with a certain amount of self-seeking. Even the highest morality is still that of a sinner. We are all unworthy of salvation. Condemnation belongs to all men. Salvation belongs to Christ alone. And yet, Christ flips that script and takes our unworthiness upon himself. He makes the place of salvation free for all of us. He doesn't whore it out to many demigods, he takes the sins of the people upon himself.

“Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14).

Who are the many?

Who are the chosen?

That is the dynamic that drives the people into paganism. They strive to make the choice for God. They call themselves and choose themselves. They justify themselves and elect themselves. And while they've been so preoccupied by this self-righteousness, they've missed the great banquet.

Luke 14:16-24

Jesus said to him, "A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’"

The gravity of the situation remains. There is always a group of those who will be rejected. The many are the pagan Christians who are trying to work out their own path. The banquet isn't for them because they've already received their rewards. They received their banquet. Christ called them along with the rest, his call was his love. He compelled them with love, but they loved the world of their imagination more than Him. They received the identity of what they loved into themselves and swallowed it willingly. Their love was misplaced, they missed the banquet because they fed on the easy sacramentalism.

In Jeremiah chapter three were given a glimpse into the future and the present. ‘And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.'

This is for the future and the present. It's not sacramentalism that God promised, it's food that feeds the soul with knowledge and understanding. Gospel food and inspiration from the Holy Spirit. Spirit and Truth. Freedom from the pagan prison of easy sacramentalism and it's many demigods.

Amen and amen.