The Bible says that we have to "Holy" to get to Heaven, to be with God for all eternity. [Hebrews 12:14]

I prefer the RASV & the NAB versions because of the word "strive" for peace… strive for Holiness. The word "follow" in the King James and the Douay Rhiems seems to imply that, at least in the modern mind, that holiness is an easy thing to accomplish.

However the word "strive" or even the word "pursue" from the NASB would lead the reader to understand that getting into Heaven is not an easy thing because they must "strive" for their entrance into the "Promised Land".

What exactly does the word "strive" mean?

"To exert much effort or energy" from WordWeb

Then one would wonder, "How does someone become "Holy"?"

The Bible says that God is, "Holy, Holy, Holy". [Is. 6:3; Rev. 4:8]. The bible also says that; "God is love". [1 Jn. 4:8, 16]

So, a simple explanation of, "How does someone become Holy?", would be; to grow in the Virtue of Love.

"only the love of charity, agape, makes the Christian perfect" [ "Mary Our Perfect Mother", by Fr. Bartholomew Ansu, CMC, p. 26]

Let me put this altogether.

"Strive" for the Virtue of Love, "without which no one will see the Lord".

What is Love?

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican on Tuesday issued a “Ten Commandments” for motorists to keep them on the road to salvation, warning drivers against the sins of road rage, abuse of alcohol or even simple rudeness.   http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070619/ap_on_re_eu/vatican_road_rage

I had a discussion with a friend of mine on the preceding article.

When I read the article I sent him a, little known, teaching from the Catechism of The Catholic Church (CCC), that speeding can be a mortal sin. http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a5.htm#II

2290 The virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco, or medicine. Those incur grave guilt who, by drunkenness or a love of speed, endanger their own and others’ safety on the road, at sea, or in the air.

Here is what he sent me, in reply.

“BUT to drive recklessly is a mortal sin???   that is sick!   all my life i thought a mortal sin was an XTRTEMELY serious infraction like nothing short of murder. u know something that only the worst of the worst could ever possibly commit. But thanks to your quoting of the catlic chrch “rules” i feel “mortal” sins have been cheapened to the point of making them meaningless.  i mean to put murder, & rape in the same category as reckless driving and adultry is to me just ridiculous and further degrades the chrches credibility in my book.
sorry but i had to say it after u said it was a mortal sin…… all i asked was if ya think the popes driver always obeys the limit and not speaking of emergencies,”

This is what I have to say to anyone who may think as my friend does. When mankind holds the lives, health and welfare of other humans in contempt that is a “grave” – “mortal” (as the Bible puts it, 1 John 5:16-17; James 1:15), sin. If I through my own lack of respect for another person’s dignity and welfare, use that person’s body in a sinful contemptuous way then it is a Mortal Sin. If some one has a contemptuous attitude for those around him and drives recklessly so as to endanger their lives needlessly, then it is a Mortal Sin.

To take human life or to use human life with contempt is a “grave” offense against God!

To quote my friend again: “all my life i thought a mortal sin was an XTRTEMELY serious infraction like nothing short of murder”

Treating those around you as though they were nothing more then a rag to sop up the dirt on your garage floor, is an “extremely serious infraction”!

Here are some other statements from the CCC that may help to clarify God’s teaching.

2269 The fifth commandment forbids doing anything with the intention of indirectly bringing about a person’s death. The moral law prohibits exposing someone to mortal danger without grave reason, as well as refusing assistance to a person in danger.

Unintentional killing is not morally imputable. But one is not exonerated from grave offense if, without proportionate reasons, he has acted in a way that brings about someone’s death, even without the intention to do so.

For more on this subject: Highway to Heaven, DAVID GIBSON

The Light from The Son, hurt’s the eyes of those who wish to remain in Darkness!

The fact that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) never sleeps should be a cause of our peace of mind, but people concerned for their health know differently.

It seems that they are at it again to make our food supply more dangerous. They want to change the labeling of certain foods that have been “irradiated” to “pasteurized”. Read more in an article by Erin Rosas, “Pasteurized ?  Preposterous!“, local Organic Grocers in Ocala, Florida.

“Grass fed beef can’t contain the specific kinds of E-coli that make humans sick, we protested!”

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For more information on this important subject read here…  an article from The New York Times “Power Steer” By MICHAEL POLLAN

Here are some excerpts that may be of interest.

“We have come to think of ”cornfed” as some kind of old-fashioned virtue; we
shouldn’t. Granted, a cornfed cow develops well-marbled flesh, giving it a taste
and texture American consumers have learned to like. Yet this meat is
demonstrably less healthy to eat, since it contains more saturated fat. A recent
study in The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that the meat of
grass-fed livestock not only had substantially less fat than grain-fed meat but that
the type of fats found in grass-fed meat were much healthier. (Grass-fed meat
has more omega 3 fatty acids and fewer omega 6, which is believed to promote
heart disease; it also contains betacarotine and CLA, another ”good” fat.) A
growing body of research suggests that many of the health problems associated
with eating beef are really problems with cornfed beef. In the same way
ruminants have not evolved to eat grain, humans may not be well adapted to
eating grain-fed animals. Yet the U.S.D.A.’s grading system continues to reward
marbling — that is, intermuscular fat — and thus the feeding of corn to cows.”
[...]

“I thought about the deep pile of manure that No. 534 and I were standing in. We
don’t know much about the hormones in it — where they will end up or what
they might do once they get there — but we do know something about the
bacteria. One particularly lethal bug most probably resided in the manure
beneath my feet. Escherichia coli 0157 is a relatively new strain of a common
intestinal bacteria (it was first isolated in the 1980′s) that is common in feedlot
cattle, more than half of whom carry it in their guts. Ingesting as few as 10 of
these microbes can cause a fatal infection.”

“Most of the microbes that reside in the gut of a cow and find their way into our
food get killed off by the acids in our stomachs, since they originally adapted to
live in a neutral-pH environment. But the digestive tract of the modern feedlot
cow is closer in acidity to our own, and in this new, manmade environment acidresistant
strains of E. coli have developed that can survive our stomach acids –
and go on to kill us. By acidifying a cow’s gut with corn, we have broken down
one of our food chain’s barriers to infection. Yet this process can be reversed:
James Russell, a U.S.D.A. microbiologist, has discovered that switching a cow’s
diet from corn to hay in the final days before slaughter reduces the population of
E. coli 0157 in its manure by as much as 70 percent. Such a change, however, is
considered wildly impractical by the cattle industry.”

I hope that the information that I share is helpful for your healthy lifestyle.

I share information on my blog that should be a help to a healthy lifestyle both spiritually and physically.

Cartoon by Mike Adams – for more information check out NewsTarget.com