WONDER IF… There was no historical Jesus.

The ramifications of wonder dictate that I probe “What If” questions, if for no other reason than to use my reason and intelligence to bolster my Faith. I did and it has.

Here are some preliminary observations about a world in which there is no Catholic Church.

• You can’t fool all of the people all of the time. No Jesus means all those myriad of people got it wrong.
• Bernie Madoff would be seen as a Saint compared to the fraud of believing all these years that what was told us about Jesus not having the resurrection or being a real person. I wonder what those odds would be?
• No Jesus means no resurrection, no eternal life, and no morality based on the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes.
• The Jewish religion would be the only one with a heritage of note and they tend to be introverted and exclusive rather than catholic and inclusive.
• There is no Son of God coming down to earth, if there is no Jesus (Philippians 2:5) St. Paul was just believing in his own press since he got zapped by that lightning bolt.
• There is no Faith, no Lord, no Baptism, no Lord of all, no Holy Spirit, no God in the Trinity, no healing or miracles, and no way to combat the inevitable effect of Original Sin.
• There is no Baptism, no Confirmation with the Spirit of Truth, no absolute truth, only subjective rationalism (unless you are Jewish), no Sacraments of Eucharist and Reconciliation, no Viaticum, no Holy Orders or priesthood of believers, no reason to hope for a future that is not there.
• No power to lift up humanity to the next level of their evolution and fulfill their destiny.
• No reason to do penance for the forgiveness of sins.
• No Creed.
• No Catholic Church.
• No morality other than what fickle society imposes with the tyranny of the minority.
• No North on the compass of humanity.

You get the point! The reality is, if atheists and the historical Jesus movement are correct, you still can’t take away the combined biblical and apostolic heritage of the accumulation of how to love fiercely, how to act as a high-functioning human and not an animal, and a source of power outside of oneself, accessed only by humility and converting your will to what is the will of God. Many don’t care about it. Some do care, but get it wrong. All we have is the gift of reason and free will to discover the purpose of life.

Like St. Paul says, if there is no resurrection we are the most pitiable of creatures. Think about it, while you sit on a park bench in the middle of winter, waiting to hear the heartbeat of Christ next to you.

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