by Dina Mcnulty

Created on: June 09, 2009   Last Updated: June 11, 2009

I remember a night over thirty years ago when I was a 17 year old inside of a Protestant church watching a movie titled, "A Thief in the Night". I watched the movie in horror as those movie characters bearing the mark of '666' realized that their loved ones had vanished without a trace and left them to endure unimaginable trials on earth.. What was most horrifying to me as I watched this movie was not the doom and gloom of the impending tribulation of those left behind. It was the fact that throughout this entire movie I could discern no true and heartfelt message about loving Christ or His love for us.

During high-school, I was told by my fundamentalist friends that because I was Catholic I believed I needed to earn my way into Heaven, and therefore, did not truly appreciate the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I said I loved Christ, but they could not accept me as a Christian. According to them, as long as I refused to deny my Catholic identity I would be left behind to bear the mark.

Catholics are accused of working toward salvation instead of accepting Christ through faith, and yet it is our faith which allows us to receive what our eyes cannot see and our minds cannot fully grasp, the true presence of Christ; Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Despite the fact that we have yet to experience the Kingdom in all of its glory, Catholics participate in the Sacraments of the Holy Catholic Church, believing through faith, that Christ is present to us through such Sacraments and that we are living members of the Kingdom. What the Protestants see as a work in our attendance at the Holy Mass, the Catholic sees as his seat at the Heavenly Banquet of the Lord. These are mysteries we accept through faith, and which the accusing Protestant refuses the faith to accept.

Not only do Catholics accept the perfect sacrifice of Christ, as members of the Kingdom they participate in this one and only Perfect Sacrifice at every Holy Mass, and what is seen as empty works by some is really our active share in Christ's divine sonship as true sons and daughters of God the Father. The Sacrifice of Christ is not repeated at every Mass, rather we are able, through the mystery of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, to bring the past into the present and participate in the one and only perpetual sacrifice of Christ.

Many believe that Christians will be raptured before the tribulation and spared the suffering of any who do not accept Christ as

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