When your son asks you in time to come, “What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?” then you shall say to your son, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes. And He brought us out from there, that He might bring us in and give us the land that He swore to give to our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as we are this day.”—Dt. 6:20-24.
As I am re-reading the Bible this year using Dr. Taylor Marshall’s NTSI program, I recently noticed in the above passage how the greatest event for the Hebrews was when God released them from slavery at the hands of the Egyptians. This liberation was done as God worked numerous colossal miracles, starting with the plagues, moving to the Passover and finally executing the parting of the Red Sea. At that first Passover, God rescued His own people from physical slavery, but He expected the Hebrews to follow His commandments. They went from freedom under Joseph to slavery under Pharaoh to then freedom again via “signs and wonders” under Moses to finally entrance into the Promised Land under Joshua and Caleb.
The New Testament Pascha (Passover and Easter) entails liberation not from physical enemies, but from spiritual enemies. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ said, I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.—Jn 8:34-36. Another translation reads: Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. This is the slavery from which we are freed by the Passion and Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is no wonder the first Paschal mystery took place during the week of Passover.
The summit and source of our freedom gained by the sacraments is the Holy Mass, established during that very first Holy Week. From that flows the graces of all the other sacraments. As the Holy Spirit said through St. Peter: Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.—1 Pt 3:21. The sacrament of Penance also flows from the Holy Mass and the pierced heart of Jesus Christ on Good Friday. The Apostle John wrote: If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us.—1 Jn 1:9-10.
Notice again that last line: If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us. Remember what Our Lord said above: Everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Put these two sentences together, and it becomes obvious that if we deny traditional moral Catholic theology, we remain slaves of sin, slaves of the devil. As the First Pascha was to free the Hebrews from physical slavery, so also the Final Pascha is to free Catholics from spiritual slavery. But freedom is ours only if we keep the commandments (cf. Mt 19:17.)
Christ frees us from an objective slavery to demons, not a subjective slavery to our feelings. But how can we be freed from objective slavery to the devil if we play so many subjective games in moral theology? You might remember my article titled The Most Destructive Line in the New Catechism. In that, I showed that according to the errors of the new CCC, one can allegedly commit the sin self-abuse without imputation of mortal sin, provided that sin be a frequent habit. Such a train-wreck of moral theology is found in the new CCC. If you doubt me, open the above link. Furthermore, if you want to understand why so many women remain enslaved to the devil through immodesty, hear as I read the booklet Objective Standards for Modesty.
All of these are reasons why I constantly hammer home the truth of Apostolic Catholicism—also called traditional Catholicism or real Catholicism—because you can’t actually be freed from the objective slavery of the devil if your subjective excuses keep you away from real Catholicism. That is, if a modernist priest tells you that a grave sin is not a mortal sin because you had a hard life, then he does you no favors. Such a priest keeps you in slavery to the devil. Why? Again, because everyone who sins is a slave to sin and If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us. Nobody can change God’s law—not a priest, not a bishop, not a Pope.
But is it really appropriate to blog about the difference between traditional Catholicism and modernist “Catholicism” during the Sacred Triduum? Yes. This is because I want all my readers and their families truly freed from the slavery to the devil which is sin. That is why Christ came to die to save us from our sins by His Most Precious Blood. As the Preface to the Mass says, “It is in dying that He destroyed our death. It is in rising that He restored our Life.” But we forfeit all of those graces if we do not know which sins Christ has come to free us from. For that, you truly need the traditional Magisterium of the Catholic Church. That is, the only Magisterium of the Catholic Church. You can’t be freed from sin if you’re not freed from sinning.
Such an assertion is not rigorism or Jansenism. Just try out the truth of Apostolic Catholicism and you will find it’s freedom from the devil. And that is why we celebrate the Last Supper tonight, then the Triumph of the Life-Giving Cross tomorrow and finally the Glorious Resurrection on Sunday. Upon the Pascha, if we are in grace, we will partly rise with the fully-risen Christ. This requires that in these last few days before Easter, we die to own arrogance, modernism and physical sins this Lent by accepting first of all what the Catholic Church has always taught.
Then, if you stay faithful to Christ and His teaching, that Glorious Pascha where Christ has fully risen will one day at your death incorporate you into fully into His Glorious Resurrection.
When you want to move from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (the CCC) to the infallible Roman Catechism of Trent (RCT) or the Catechism of Pope St. Pius X (CPX) check out my free online learning resources at CPX and RCT. Thanks to all who have chosen To Donate.