Friday, March 14, 2008

A Recommitment ..

8:05 a.m. .. Mount St. Mary's Cemetary in Kansas City, MO .. 3.9.08

I drove by once again after having spent an hour or so there trying to help make it possible to fulfill my mom's final wishes concerning this place speaking to various people who oversee it. She wants to be buried there, in this old cemetary in the middle of Kansas City, next to her beloved abuelo, my great grandfather Mattias Adriano. He was the only father figure she ever really knew in her childhood and she lost him when she was 12 years old. There's so much sad history and painful narrative I could fill this with, but I fully understand why she wants to do this. So, as Joy, myself and fellow countercult minister Lora Burton were leaving town after the EMNR convention we'd been at that weekend, I simply could not drive past it without a final look at the place my mom wants to be left behind at as she awaits a better resurrection.

Death lost it's grip and my fear of it years ago when I embraced Christ as my Savior. In fact, I often find myself longing to be absent from the Body to be with Him. But the earthy finality of a literal burial place is ground zero for the reality that I'm not there yet and that there is work to be done to help people realize that such a place can be a beginning for them .. or the entrance into the most horrible of dead ends. As we drove around this old Catholic cemetary, in the silence, the cold and the ever lightening dawn of the new day, musing over the eternal tensions of my assurance of eternal life with that of the harsh reality that millions die daily and face eternal death, the grave stones seemed to become witnesses to me of a dire need I simply have to address ..

I need to see, as my mom so passionately cries about in her prayers, "souls saved." I need to be about the Father's business in defending and proclaiming the Faith that saves souls. From here on out, I'm going to be a lot more vocal here on this blog then ever before as I try to document what it means to seek and save that which is lost. And cultists are very lost people .. Mormons are lost. Jehovah's Witnesses are lost. Moonies are lost. The disciples of self-proclaimed religious avatars, mystics, and prophets are lost. And it is the power of the Gospel that will save them.

Pray for us. We want to be on target, on mission .. speaking the truth in love and taking heed that no man deceive any one into missing out on the Way, the Truth and the Life.

agape

rafael