!catholics !christians Happy Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity!
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First Reading
Moses said to the people:
"Ask now of the days of old, before your time,
ever since God created man upon the earth;
ask from one end of the sky to the other:
Did anything so great ever happen before?
Was it ever heard of?
Did a people ever hear the voice of God
speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?
Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself
from the midst of another nation,
by testings, by signs and wonders, by war,
with strong hand and outstretched arm, and by great terrors,
all of which the LORD, your God,
did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?
This is why you must now know,
and fix in your heart, that the LORD is God
in the heavens above and on earth below,
and that there is no other.
You must keep his statutes and commandments that I enjoin on you today,
that you and your children after you may prosper,
and that you may have long life on the land
which the LORD, your God, is giving you forever."
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Responsorial Psalm
R. (12b) Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
Upright is the word of the LORD,
and all his works are trustworthy.
He loves justice and right;
of the kindness of the Lord the earth is full.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
By the word of the LORD the heavens were made;
by the breath of his mouth all their host.
For he spoke, and it was made;
he commanded, and it stood forth.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
See, the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him,
upon those who hope for his kindness,
To deliver them from death
and preserve them in spite of famine.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
Our soul waits for the LORD,
who is our help and our shield.
May your kindness, O LORD, be upon us
who have put our hope in you.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
-Psalms 33:4-5, 6, 9, 18-18, 20, 22
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Second Reading
Brothers and sisters:
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you received a Spirit of adoption,
through whom we cry, "Abba, Father!"
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit
that we are children of God,
and if children, then heirs,
heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,
if only we suffer with him
so that we may also be glorified with him.
Romans 8:14-17
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Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit;
to God who is, who was, and who is to come.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
-Revelations 1:8
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Gospel
The eleven disciples went to Galilee,
to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them.
When they all saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.
Then Jesus approached and said to them,
"All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age."
-Matthew 28:16-20
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Something I find interesting is that the Trinity is hinted at within the Old Testament as well. As early as the Book of Genesis, God refers to himself with "we."
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!christians
What's your stance on missions to other countries? My church was talking about funding a mission to a remote country and I'm always curious if it economically disadvantages them to have Enlightened White People come and make sidewalks for them.
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It's a super complicated subject. Short term missions (<2 yrs) are often more beneficial to the sending church than the receiving one, though that doesn't mean they're bad. Economically supposedly it's better for the receiving country to get the money and pay local workers than for a Western work team to come in. Supposedly biggest help in missions comes from people who are able to teach and train locals, though cultural differences can cause major problems.
All that said, a lot of criticism of missions is itself coming from the wrong place.
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Maybe !neolibs also have an opinion.
How do you solve poverty?
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If you just keep importing more and more people then GDP go up and poverty will solve itself.
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How is that true if many overpopulated places have small GDPs?
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They're poor because they have shity institutions, culture and people. You can't fix any of them from with aid programs or charity. They either get their shit together on their own like the asian tigers or they don't.
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That seems a bit “just so” doesn't it? “They have shitty economies because they're shitty”.
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It's a vicious cycle that needs to be broken - shity culture leads to shity environment, leads to shity culture, etc etc. One way that can break it is for missionaries to come in, demonstrate an alternative way of living (not giving bribes, turning the other cheek, etc), and raise up local leaders who emulate them an demonstrate a more successful life. It doesn't always work, it can be heck on the missionaries and early converts, and they need an environment where they can create something with trading (crops, natural resources, etc, and freedom from debilitating diseases etc).
This sort of happened across Europe over the course of a millennium or more - Christianity spread demonstrating it was possible to cooperate and unite en masses - certainly there were awful wars and setbacks along the way, but eventually ideas like universal rights and dignity sprang forth from Christian theology, combined with productivity-multiplying technologies from the industrial revolution, made it much easier and more profitable to cooperate and trade than to wage war and plunder.
Developing countries in the modern world can jump-start this by importing some of
those modern technologies and getting immediate productivity boosts - but they need a people who want it and are willing to cooperate with each other.
Christianity isn't the only framework that can accomplish this - there are a number of successful eastern countries that didn't have much Christian influence, but it certainly has proven track record for creating most of the world's most prosperous countries.
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I guess it can fall on deaf ears whenever the missionaries come from America and how in-Christian modern America is.
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You had a chance to not be completely worthless, but it looks like you threw it away. At least you're consistent.
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Capitalism has the best global track record for solving poverty.
Getting there can be hard though, especially if NGOs interfere.
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It seems like a lot of these places have corruption issues that prevent fair competition from springing up.
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Yeah, absolutely. To expand on my glib answer, there are sometimes obstacles in the way of capitalism: medical issues, grinding poverty, lack of education/hope/trust, corruption. All make fertile grounds for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Do you think that was an essential stepping stone for America?
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Yes, sort of - most Europeans came to America with those values (or the seeds of them) already. Christenson, if you will
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It seemed like a lot of the early communities had unique Christian traditions at that, like the Quakers or Congregationalists.
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Kill all the poor people
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A potential rule of thumb: if the mission has people on the ground, with intent to stay 5+ years, and a humbleness and willing to learn from the receiving church, it's probably on net a good thing.
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The place we're partnering with has an entire school in the area that 20 years old and has success stories.
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Those are positive signs that they're doing good. The other sign I would look for at 20+ years is do they have locals (who trained through them or who they sent away for training) on their staff? If so, they are probably doing great work, if not that may be a sign of concern, though it may also just mean that the locals are employed through a different org they work very closely with.
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They have community members employed but a lot of them graduating the school go off to make small businesses and such.
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I think it depends on what you're doing. Badly planned, you do something like send teenagers to build poorly made structures for free and undercut local labor, helping nobody. But, at best, you send functional volunteers to do shit work with the poor nobody else has the time/will to do and make life a bit less crap for some needy people (ideally in union with an existing local endeavor run by people who know what's actually needed).
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Hmm, the mission they are working with seemed to have grown out something like the former but has reformed to the latter now. They were very positive about being "community directed" and trying to give people cowtools to succeed (like micro loans for businesses).
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It was our priest's last mass before retiring. He gave a heartfelt homily and a thoughtful goodbye speech. Gonna miss the guy
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I have noticed in a couple of neighbouring parishes that the priests are moving to a different church or retiring. I guess its usually after Holy week when the diocese want to move the priests
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Our diocese usually does it around June but it varies.
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My mass didn't change yet, still at 22 BMI. I'm trying to bulk up.
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Psalms 33:4-5
Romans 8:14-17
Revelation 1:8
Matthew 28:16-20
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!slots500 says they win
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