Transcendence After America Project

The title is not meant to be scary or politically subversive. It is a promise and a reminder of God’s providence. Creation has a vocation in Christ (Eph 1:4-5). America’s motto is written as “In God We Trust” on the walls of our institutions. God is the foundation of goodness and wisdom. Nations are developed from that goodness and wisdom. They can only be renewed by the same goodness and wisdom.

In order to live in reality and abide in humility for our renewal, we must grasp our true human condition and the purpose for which we were called into existence. In the words of God the Father to Saint Catherine of Siena in The Dialogue, we must remember: God is “He Who Is” and humans are “she who is not.” The saying means that the reality upon which our freedom and human lives depend are a matter of God’s gracious and loving will which seeks only our good. “Apart from me, you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).

[The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Siena, by Giovanni di Paolo (Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia) (Italian, Siena 1398–1482 Siena), Public Domain.]

Only God has existence in Himself and creatures have nothing without God who preserves and upholds all freedoms. Humans are dependent in every way and should show piety to “I Am” (Exodus 3:14; John 8:58). God seeks only our development in wisdom and love as he preserves all freedoms for this purpose. All glory goes to God, all benefit goes to us. Only God is without beginning and end. Only God is eternal by nature. He wishes only to make us “sons in his only-begotten Son” (cf. CCC #52; Eph 1:5).

God has a plan for the development of the human race and that plan is his only-begotten Son, the Logos who became flesh, Jesus Christ. In that plan, every single human is precious in the eyes of God; so precious that God sacrificed his blood for us before we even knew or loved him. No one with faith in God suffers or dies alone. God is with us and in us.

In the mystery of Jesus Christ’s divine identity (fully God and fully man), the Logos entered into the tragic human condition of all the misuses of human freedom and brought the fullness of God’s plan (cf. Eph 1:10). At the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, “& the Logos became flesh” (Jn 1:14), God joined divinity to humanity so that humanity could be made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4) and sharers in the “eternal life” (cf. 1 Jn 1:1-3). Through this mystery of Jesus Christ, humanity overcomes sin and death, is made new through renewal in love, and death has no more power over those who receive Jesus and live in him.

The Logos is the Wisdom of God that brings humans into true wisdom, a knowledge that is inseparable from authentic love. “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). Love is eternal because God is the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. Creatures can enter this love and wisdom and take-on eternal life by taking on the mind of Jesus Christ (cf. Phil 2:5-11) who is the “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). Abiding in Wisdom helps us see the world rightly. God raises individuals and nations to enter into that plan of human development revealed in Jesus Christ.

The plan still continues on earth in the mystery of the “New Jerusalem” that comes down out of heaven (cf. Rev 21:2) and is already participated eschatologically [partially but not yet in fulness of glory] in the Divine Liturgy, also called “Mass” (cf. CCC #1404). In the Divine Liturgy is preserved the memory of Jesus Christ, all that he taught, participation in his one-time sacrifice for us, and the on-going communication of the Holy Spirit. In the liturgy takes place our on-going renewal and regeneration into eternal life as “partakers of the Holy Spirit” (Heb 6:4).

Nations which resist the Divine Liturgy and the fruits God wants to produce do not continue in renewal and healing. Without wisdom we become self-destructive and invite destruction; without light, our minds are darkened. The Lamb of God makes the “New Jerusalem” (cf. Rev 21:2,22) and we must seek and receive the Lamb in the mystery of the Divine Liturgy which he instituted to prepare us for our “falling asleep” in the Lord and before he returns in fulness of glory at the Second Coming. The Church on earth, despite the sins of its members, preserves and dispenses the mysteries of life in Christ.

The Church on earth is always in need of renewal by the Holy Spirit and only by this renewal will the nations be healed (Rev 21:24). Renewal comes by making present the mysteries of Christ, drawing life from them, and doing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy which they inspire. “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). Christians must give the world Jesus Christ, not ideologies.

[I’m considering for the next article on August 5 giving a personal testimony on why I started publishing the Transcendence After America Project Christmas Eve 2021. It’s related to the article released the Vigil of the Transfiguration in 2019, “Second Peter: The Transfiguration Is the Interpretive Key of the Second Coming.” We should all be reading the signs of the times and praying the Rosary daily for peace and the salvation of souls. The “Project” was launched with the signs of the times two months before Russia invaded Ukraine. Part of those signs were the Synod on Synodality that began at the same time as Russia’s build-up on Ukraine’s border in October of 2021. This Substack’s first article launched the Transcendence after America Project to restore a synthesis of eternal law, divine law, natural law, and civil law in America’s public squares where it once existed in the upholding of Christian marriage as between only one man and one woman. It seeks America’s renewal in Christianity in hearts so that institutions are reformed in goodness.]