03/14/2024 – Ch 13 – “Salvation” excerpt // The “summum bonum” – the supreme good! // Part 1 of 2 // “…In other words, don’t get all A’s but flunk life.”
Just a short power-packed excerpt once again from this pocket sized 141 page book. (*):
:”Jesus did not come to be a philosopher or a doctor. If he did that, he failed. He didn’t solve most of the philosophers’ problems. He healed some people, but left most of the world just as sick as before. He healed some bodies to show that he could heal all souls.
Not only is salvation the reason for the Church’s existence, it is also the ultimate reason for your existence: your end, goal, point, purpose, hope, final cause, summum bonum, meaning. The difference between success and failure at life’s task — becoming who you were meant to be — is not the difference between riches and poverty, fame and obscurity, health and sickness, pleasure and pain, or niceness and nastiness, but between salvation and damnation. Leon Bloy wrote, ‘There is only one tragedy: not to have been a saint.’ Jesus said, ‘What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?’ No one in history ever asked a more practical question than that one. In other words, don’t get all A’s but flunk life.”
(*): I would not recommend trying to read this entire little book in a few day, or even a few weeks, but just read a page or two before retiring for the night.
I will follow up with a part 2 of 2 from this chapter by the eod, St. Patrick’s Day, this coming Sunday.
Soli Deo Gloria!