Keep
your eyes open!...
October 28, 2022
THE TRIB TIMES WILL RETURN IN ABOUT TWO WEEKS , GOD WILLING (James 4:15).
(Hab 2:4) Behold, he that is unbelieving, his soul shall not be right in himself: but the just shall live in his faith.
YOUTUBE: Father Celsus: Faith says God exists
YOUTUBE: Father Celsus: Exercise Faith
CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT: “Faith does not quench desire, but inflames it.”
FATHER BROOM BLOG ARCHIVES: Faithfulness Until the End!
Faith is a theological virtue
freely given in the moment of Baptism. Faith is believing in God even
though you do not see Him. Faith must be defended, cultivated and
shared with others if faith is to persevere in our lives.
Do you still have faith? Jesus
said: “When the Son of man comes many will lose faith and charity will
grow cold in many hearts.” If you still do have faith be exceedingly
thankful for this precious and gratuitous gift. Maybe it would be a
good spiritual exercise to simply wind back the clock and see many that
maybe when you were younger practiced the faith with you—maybe many of
your relatives. Now, for some reason, many of these do not have faith,
but you do!
Why is this the case that you might
be among the paltry few that have faith; whereas, the huge majority
have lost faith? Is it because there is something innately good about
you and me, or due to our keen intelligence, our wit and charm or maybe
due to our good looks that we have faith and others do not? Just why?
Indeed this is a mystery of God’s infinite goodness.
Before tooting our horn or patting
ourselves on the back we should be keenly aware of the hard truth that
any of us who at present have faith in God, in the Lord Jesus, and in
the Church, that we could also be among those who in the future could
lose our faith? What then should we do so as to maintain our faith,
sustain or faith, grow in our faith and if you like be faithful till
the end? What might be the course that we can undertake to be faithful
to the end? Remember that the race is not over until the finish line
has been crossed!
The following suggestions can help
us to guard that precious gem that was given to many of us—faith in
God, faith in Jesus the Lord, faith in His mystical Body that we call
the Church.
A DYNAMIC, VIBRANT AND GROWNG PRAYER LIFE.
The late Father John Hardon, S.J. made this observation: “Those who
lost their faith often were those who abandoned the practice of
prayer.” This stands to reason! Why? For this simple reason: to pray is
an act of faith. When we pray we do not see the God to whom we are
addressing our words. Our God is a mysterious and a hidden God; our God
is invisible to the physical eyes that perceive all the physical
reality that bombards the senses. For this reason Jesus gently rebuked
Thomas the doubter: “Thomas you believe because you see. Blessed are
those who believe without seeing.” May the doubt of Saint Thomas the
Apostle strengthen our weak and faltering faith! Every day of our life
we should strive to pray a little bit more and better. This indeed will
be a safeguard for us to avoid losing our faith.
BEGGARS BEFORE THE LORD.
Why not pray this short but powerful prayer: “Lord I believe but
strengthen my belief.” Jesus told us: “Ask and you will receive; seek
and you will find; knock and the door will be opened.”(Mt. 7:7) We
should never be afraid to become a beggar before the Lord and implore
Him to give us a robust and dynamic faith!
STUDY.
Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen once commented that very few
people have ever left the faith for what the Church really teaches but
rather for what they think the Church teaches. In other words, many
leave the Church and lose their faith for erroneous concepts of what
the Church teaches. In other words, due to an all-pervasive ignorance
and lack of knowledge of the divine, and a poor catechesis many abandon
the practice of the faith. If you want to grow in your faith and avoid
losing it then you must study your faith. One suggestion: read, study
and learn the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Beyond a shadow of a
doubt this text is one of the most important and influential spiritual
masterpieces published in the past fifty years under the guidance and
pontificate of Pope Saint John Paul II. You cannot fall in love with
what you do not know. Reading, studying and living the Catechism of the
Catholic Church can be a wellspring of knowledge and grace for
maintaining a dynamic and flourishing faith.
PRACTICE YOUR FAITH.
There is a modern proverb used by many young people today applicable to
this concept: “If you do not use it than you will lose it.” Musical
talents, athletic prowess, literary expressions, linguistic perfection,
culinary skills—all of these demand a constant effort to keep them up
to the mark of approval! Likewise, with the growth of our faith; we
must practice it! Ways that we can practice our faith are many: a) the
habit if personal, common, liturgical prayer—all of this bolsters
faith; b) The sign of the cross. By making the sign of the cross we are
professing in a corporal manner our belief in the greatest mystery of
our Catholic faith—the Blessed Trinity; c) the genuflection—by
performing a reverential and pious genuflection you are manifesting
your belief and adoration for Jesus who is truly present in the most
Blessed Sacrament, in His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity; d) The Most
Holy Eucharist in Holy Communion—By receiving Jesus in Holy Communion,
this is the greatest act of faith we can make by receiving in faith the
Real and true Presence of Jesus in Holy Communion; e) AMEN—By saying
the word AMEN we are professing our belief in what we say, that the
Lord Jesus is truly the Bread of Life, the Bread of the angels that
came to give us life and life in abundance.
SHARE YOUR FAITH WITH OTHERS.
In the material realm when we give something to others then we become
impoverished. I give you 20$ then I am 20$ poorer. In the spiritual
realm this is not the case. Rather, if I teach catechism, preach a
homily, preach a mission, explain to somebody how to pray, explain in
detail the ten commandments to somebody who has a poorly formed
conscience—in all of these cases, as the person that receives
enrichment from this sharing, I also am being enriched by sharing my
spiritual treasures. One of the greatest gifts we can give to another
is to share our faith; this is one of the highest forms of charity.
Indeed there is more joy in giving that in receiving and this can be
applied to the sharing of the faith. Therefore, let us humbly thank God
for the gift of faith the He has so generously given to us, but let us
defend our faith, cultivate our faith and share our faith and pray that
we will be faithful until the end!
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS: “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Compunction
5. When Archbishop
Theophilus of holy memory was dying, he said, 'Arsenius, you are
blessed of God, because you have always kept this moment before your
eyes.'
October 26, 2022
(2Pe 3:17-18) You therefore,
brethren, knowing these things before, take heed, lest being led aside
by the error of the unwise, you fall from your own steadfastness. But
grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. To him be glory both now and unto the day of eternity, Amen.
CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT: “Do this in remembrance of Me”: Memory, Culture, Sacrament
CATHOLIC CULTURE: God, I thank thee that I am not like devout Catholics
CNA: Archbishop Chaput: ‘Biden is not in communion with the Catholic faith’
Archbishop Charles Chaput said on
Saturday that Joe Biden “is not in communion with the Catholic faith”
and that “any priest who now provides Communion to the president
participates in his hypocrisy.”
Speaking at a Eucharistic Symposium at the Diocese of Arlington on Oct.
22, the 78-year-old prelate also accused the second Catholic president
in the history of the United States of “apostasy on the abortion
issue.”
In his address, titled “Do this in Remembrance of Me: Memory, Culture,
Sacrament,” the archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia spoke about
“American Catholics and our 200-year struggle to fit into mainstream
American culture.” “We succeeded. But in the process, we’ve been
digested and bleached out by the culture, rather than leavening it in a
fertile way with a distinctive Catholic witness,” Chaput said.
The archbishop continued: “Mr.
Biden’s apostasy on the abortion issue is only the most repugnant
example. He’s not alone. But in a sane world, his unique public
leadership would make — or should make — public consequences
unavoidable.” “When you freely break communion with the Church of Jesus
Christ and her teachings, you can’t pretend to be in communion when
it’s convenient,” Chaput said. “That’s a form of lying. Mr. Biden is
not in communion with the Catholic faith. And any priest who now
provides Communion to the president participates in his hypocrisy.”
Biden supports abortion, despite the Catholic Church’s teaching that
abortion is a grave evil and that human life is sacred from the moment
of conception.
Last week, the president vowed again that he would codify Roe v. Wade
into law should Democrats win the midterm elections in November. As
previously reported by CNA, he made it clear he would sign the Women’s
Health Protection Act (WHPA), a radical piece of abortion legislation
that would forbid any abortion restrictions before and after fetal
viability.
In his address, Chaput said many
Catholics, “even many who regularly attend Sunday Mass, no longer
believe in the Real Sacrifice or the Real Presence.”
“We’ve forgotten who we are as a believing people. This is both a cause
and a symptom of today’s lukewarm Catholic spirit, in our nation’s
culture and within the Church herself,” he said. “But that can change,
and it needs to change, starting with each of us here.”
BISHOP J. STRICKLAND:
Tragic but absolutely spot on. “Biden sees abortion as the key to
retain power”. To call him Catholic is a great travesty. The weak voice
of the Church fails to call this man to either renounce his Catholic
faith or lead according to the truth of Jesus Christ. Tragic.
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Compunction
4. Elias said, 'I
fear three things: the first, the time before my soul leaves my body:
the second, the time before I meet God face to face: the third, the
time before He pronounces His sentence upon me.'
October 24, 2022
(1Ti 6:11-12)
But thou, O man of God, fly these things: and pursue justice,
godliness, faith, charity, patience, mildness. Fight the good fight of
faith. Lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art called and be it
confessed a good confession before many witnesses.
FR. MARK GORING, CC: Persevering Through the Mud
DENVER CATHOLIC: The Eucharist: Food for the cultural desert
CATHOLIC DAILY REFLECTIONS: Interpreting Our Present Time
Do you know how to interpret the present time? It is important for us,
as followers of Christ, to be able to look honestly at our cultures,
societies and world as a whole and interpret it honestly and
accurately. We need to be able to discern the goodness and the presence
of God in our world and we need to also be able to identify and
interpret the workings of the evil one in our present time. How well do
you do that?
One of the tactics of the evil one is the use of manipulation and lies.
The evil one seeks to confuse us in countless ways. These lies may come
through the media, through our political leaders and, at times, even
through some religious leaders. The evil one loves it when there is
division and disorder of every kind.
So what do we do if we want to be able to “interpret the present time?”
We must wholeheartedly commit ourselves to the Truth. We must seek
Jesus above all things through prayer and allow His presence in our
lives to help us sort out what is from Him and what is not.
Our societies present us with countless moral choices, so we may find
ourselves being drawn here and there. We can find that our minds are
challenged and, at times, find that even the most basic truths of
humanity are attacked and distorted. Take, for example, abortion,
euthanasia and traditional marriage. These moral teachings of our faith
are continually under attack within the various cultures of our world.
The very dignity of the human person and the dignity of the family as
God designed it are called into question and directly challenged.
Another example of confusion within our world today is the love of
money. So many people are caught up in the desire for material wealth
and have been drawn into the lie that this is the way to happiness.
Interpreting the present time means we see through any and every
confusion of our day and age. It means we see the cultural and moral
errors for what they are.
STARTING SEVEN: Pontifical Academy for Life?
On Oct. 15, the Vatican announced
new appointments to the Pontifical Academy for Life, founded by Pope
John Paul II in 1994 with “the specific task of studying, informing and
offering formation about the main problems of biomedicine and law
related to the promotion and defense of life.”
Since the nomination of Italian Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia as its
president in 2016, the pontifical academy has become one of the
Vatican’s most controversial bodies. One source of contention is the
background of the institution’s members, who are appointed for
five-year terms.
In 2017, Paglia was forced to
defend the selection of British Anglican theologian Nigel Biggar, who
appeared to support abortion up to 18 weeks.
What’s happened now? Among the new
members announced on Saturday is the Italian economist Mariana
Mazzucato, who Pope Francis cited approvingly in his book “Let Us
Dream.” Critics deplored the choice, pointing out that she described
herself as an atheist on social media and lamented the U.S. Supreme
Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
Another controversial appointee is
Msgr. Philippe Bordeyne, head of the John Paul II Pontifical
Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences in Rome, who was
named a member of the pontifical academy’s governing council. The
French theologian has been accused of seeking to undermine the
encyclical Humanae vitae, but insists his writings have been
misunderstood.
Spanish doctor José María Simón Castellví, a former president of the
International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations (FIAMC),
suggested that appointments since the pontifical academy’s 2016
overhaul marked a departure from John Paul II’s vision. In an article
headlined “Academy for Life: I can’t remain silent anymore,” he said
that “pro-abortion academics, defenders of euthanasia to some degree,
or detractors of Humanae vitae were and continue to be appointed, just
the opposite of what John Paul II desired and what is reasonable for
the good of the pilgrim Church on this earth. And valuable scientists,
defenders of Life, were left aside.”
Princeton professor Robert P. George expressed concern at Mazzucato’s appointment. He
told CNA: “The Pontifical Academy for Life exists to advance the
Church’s mission to foster respect for the profound, inherent, and
equal dignity of each and every member of the human family, beginning
with the precious child in the womb. Either one believes in this
mission or one does not. If one does not, then why would one wish to be
part of the Pontifical Academy?”
What’s the pontifical academy saying? The institution defended its
vetting procedures in a statement sent to Vatican journalists on
Wednesday, CNA reported.
“All Academicians are chosen from
among scientists and experts of absolute importance, as Pope Francis
reiterated in the letter Humana Communitas of 2019 to the Pontifical
Academy for Life. The nominations of the Ordinary Academicians are made
by the pope,” it said. “Therefore, before being nominated, the names
proposed or reported go through a procedure that foresees the
consultation of the apostolic nuncio and the episcopal conference of
the countries where the Academicians live and work. It also happened in
this case and there were no problems.”
The pontifical academy highlighted a statement signed by the
77-year-old Archbishop Paglia welcoming the new appointments, in which
he said “it is important that the Pontifical Academy for Life include
women and men with expertise in various disciplines and from different
backgrounds, for a constant and fruitful interdisciplinary,
intercultural and interreligious dialogue.”
CNA: Another Pontifical Academy for Life member criticizes overturning Roe v. Wade
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Quiet
14. Matrona said,
'Many solitaries living in the desert have been lost because they lived
like people in the world. It is better to live in a crowd and want to
live a solitary life than to live in solitude and be longing all the
time for company.'
October 21, 2022
(Mat 28:19-20)
Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold I am
with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.
ACIAFRICA: Catholic Charity Rallying for Support of Priest’s Mission in Zimbabwe’s Isolated Villages
ALETEIA: The power of connection: Augustine Institute Mission Circle unites Catholics to evangelize the world
ICN: World Mission Sunday
THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT: ‘You are witnesses of these things’
Actions
do speak louder than words. People inspire me and teach me more by how
they live than by what they say. Actions also give meaning to the words
we speak. I think this is especially true in giving witness to Christ.
I remember a quote often attributed
to St. Francis of Assisi that says, “Preach the Gospel at all times and
if necessary, use words.” There is a power to witnessing faith that
speaks beyond words. It is the witness of seeing, hearing and loving.
The Church was born to be a witness
to Christ. At the time of his ascension, Jesus commissioned the
disciples to remember all they had seen in following him in life, death
and resurrection: “You are witnesses of these things” (Lk 24:28). The
early Church father Tertullian remarked on how often he would hear from
non-Christians, “See how they love one another.” Beyond any teaching or
preaching, it was the way that Christians loved that inspired
generations of faith. Many of the earliest saints were martyrs —
witnesses — who died for their faith. Christians built their churches
on the graves of these martyrs to draw strength and inspiration from
their lives. It came to be said that the blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the Church’s growth. People believe witnesses more than words!
Two hundred years ago in France, a
young woman named Pauline Jaricot was inspired by the stories of
missionaries witnessing to Christ in Asia and the Americas. She decided
to respond by reaching out in prayer and support of God’s mission
happening in foreign lands. She wanted to amplify what she had seen and
heard from missionaries. She began to gather with groups of women who
shared letters of mission stories, to pray for the missions and to
offer what they could to support missionaries living in difficult and
poor circumstances. Her witness of prayer, sharing faith and offering
support to foreign missions gave birth to a worldwide movement that
continues to our day called the Society for the Propagation of the
Faith. Joining in support of God’s mission abroad in this way also
motivated her own witness and ministry at home. Pauline Jaricot was
beatified in May of this year.
On World Mission Sunday, we renew
our most basic vocation as Christians to be witnesses of Christ’s love.
We join with Catholics around the world on this day to pray, to share
faith and offer financial support for the Church’s universal mission.
Speaking of the Church and the witness of the Christians in it, Pope
St. Paul VI said, “It is therefore primarily by her conduct and by her
life that the Church will evangelize the world, in other words, by her
living witness of fidelity to the Lord Jesus — the witness of poverty
and detachment, of freedom in the face of the powers of this world, in
short, the witness of sanctity” (“Evangelii Nuntiandi,” No. 41). The
Christian call to witness is the same as the call to holiness.
Faith grows when we share it. We
are part of a great story of God’s love. God is choosing us to take our
place in the story by what we say and what we do. We are among a great
cloud of witnesses who continue to bring the good news of Christ to the
world. We also come alive in faith as we give witness to what we have
seen and heard. Let us join with St. John who wrote, “What we have seen
and heard we proclaim now to you, so that you may have fellowship with
us; for our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus
Christ. We are writing this so that our joy may be complete” (I Jn
1:3-4). Witnessing faith helps it to grow in us.
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Quiet
11. Nilus said, 'The
arrows of the enemy cannot touch someone who loves quiet. But those who
wander about crowds will often be wounded by them.'
October 19, 2022
(Rev 11:19) And the temple of God was opened in heaven: and the ark of
his testament was seen in his temple. And there were lightnings and
voices and an earthquake and great hail.
(Rev
12:1) And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the
sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve
stars.
DAILY COMPASS: The power of the Hail Mary explained by the saints
FR. JERRY POKORSKY: How Mary crushes the head of Satan
FATHER JEFFREY F. KIRBY: Scapular is singular among the church’s spiritual gifts
Traditionally, the Brown Scapular has been seen as a sign of our
baptismal consecration. It represents the garment we received at
baptism, which itself symbolized our new life in Jesus Christ.
When worn attentively, therefore, the scapular has the ability of
reminding believers of their belief in Jesus Christ, their dedication
to him, and their decision to follow his way of life. When the
struggles of faith, or the demands of discipleship, appear
overwhelming, the scapular can be a small help in knowing of God’s
presence, providence, and power among us. In a secular culture, such
reminders are rare or obscured, and so any help along the way – even
two small pieces of cloth – can be a consolation and encouragement to
believers today.
The name of the scapular comes from the mountain range in the northern
part of the Holy Land. The series of small mountains was known for its
biblical prominence, especially in the infamous battle between the
Prophet Elijah and the priests of Baal. In the encounter, God worked a
strong miracle manifesting his majesty and strength.
Due to this biblical association, early Christian hermits were
attracted to Mount Carmel to pray and seek the voice of God. In time,
the eremitical group came to be called Carmelites. Eventually, they
gave the Blessed Virgin Mary the title of the mount because of their
prayers to her and her spiritual solidarity with them.
In time, the needs of the Church led the hermits to become mendicant
friars, along with the Franciscans and Dominicans. With this expansion,
the Brown Scapular grew in popularity, especially in its modified
smaller form for believers who were not friars. In the course of time,
the simple pieces of cloth came to be revered as one of the Church’s
favored devotional practices.
When the scapular is worn with faith, it is meant to express and serve
the interior faith of believers and their commitment to Jesus Christ.
It is not jewelry or a good luck charm. It is not merely an heirloom of
previous times.
The scapular is a symbol of faith, and no scapular, or medal or other
devotional item, however blessed and favored by the Church, can make up
for a lack of faith. The religious object itself has no power, other
than what our faith and the working of God’s grace gives to it. But
there must be faith and an openness to God’s work among us.
A MOMENT WITH MARY: “No prayer is more pleasing to God”
By the Rosary, you can obtain everything. To use a graceful comparison,
it is like a long chain linking Heaven to the earth. One of the ends is
in our hands, the other is in the hands of the Blessed Virgin. As long
as people pray the Rosary, God cannot abandon the world, because this
prayer moves his heart powerfully. It is like yeast that can regenerate
the earth. The sweet Queen of Heaven cannot forget her children who
constantly sing her praises. No prayer is more pleasing to God than the
Rosary. So the Church invites us to go and recite it every evening, in
this month of October, before Jesus, really present and exposed on the
altar.
"The month of October has come; with it the Church calls her children
to recite the beautiful prayers of the Rosary with others. Who could
tire of repeating how charming this month is for every Christian soul?
At this time when tired nature is about to fall asleep, hearts seem to
take on a new energy to celebrate the praises of the Queen of Heaven."
St. Therese of Lisieux - 1887
CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT: Weaving Rose Garlands for Mary: The mystery and history of the Rosary
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Quiet
8. Evagarius said,
'Cut the desire for many things out of your heart and so prevent your
mind being dispersed and your stillness lost.'
October 16, 2022
(Luk 18:1-8) And he spoke also a parable to them, that we ought always
to pray and not to faint, Saying: There was a judge in a certain city,
who feared not God nor regarded man. And there was a certain widow in
that city; and she came to him, saying: Avenge me of my adversary. And
he would not for a long time. But afterwards he said within himself:
Although I fear not God nor regard man, Yet because this widow is
troublesome to me, I will avenge her, lest continually coming she weary
me. And the Lord said: Hear what the unjust judge saith. And will not
God revenge his elect who cry to him day and night? And will he have
patience in their regard? I say to you that he will quickly revenge
them. But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you,
faith on earth?
PRAYER GROUP: The Holy Innocence Prayerline
Prayer request? Send an email to: [email protected]
CATHOLIC STAND: The Most Powerful Prayer of All
THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT: Persistence in prayer
Why this stress and focus on persistent prayer? Because God knows how easily we become weary from praying.
We pray for many things big and
small, personal and global, and we often pray for the same thing every
day without seeing much change. Because of this, we are tempted to stop
praying. We may throw up our hands or, more accurately, throw down our
hands thinking, “What’s the use? God isn’t listening!” But this is a
temptation from the Enemy of our souls.
The Catechism of the Catholic
Church speaks of the battle of prayer. “The great figures of prayer of
the Old Covenant before Christ, as well as the Mother of God, the
saints, and he himself, all teach us this: prayer is a battle. Against
whom? Against ourselves and against the wiles of the tempter who does
all he can to turn man away from prayer, away from union with God.”
(CCC 2725).
Nowhere is this clearer than in
those who have persisted in prayer for an end to abortion. I admire
those heroic souls who persisted in prayer to overturn the Supreme
Court decision Roe v. Wade. It may have seemed like it would never
happen, and many probably gave up years ago. But, after almost 50 years
of persistence this prayer was answered.
However, these prayers have been
answered from the first moment they were uttered. We need only think of
the countless conversions that have happened over the years. Other
answers to prayers have been the many pro-life organizations that have
arisen to help women make a true choice for life. God has been and
continues to answer our prayers. We just need to be persistent, never
growing weary, trusting that our prayers are being answered.
EXCERPT NCR: Fatima’s Miracle of the Sun and the Warnings of Akita
Hope Still Abounds
Mary has promised us her Immaculate Heart will triumph, which can
happen peacefully if we respond to her requests. Keep that in mind.
If enough people respond to Mary’s message at the two interlocked
appearances, Akita and Fatima, the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart can
and will be hastened, and a chastisement might be averted or greatly
lessened by her intercession.
Fatima and Akita give us the simple instructions we need to follow:
“Pray very much the prayers of the Rosary,” Our Lady instructed at
Akita. “Each day recite the prayers of the Rosary. With the Rosary,
pray for the Pope, the bishops, and priests.”
Our Lady said at Fatima: “If you do what I tell you, many souls will be saved, and there will be peace.”
And remember her final hope-filled words at Akita: “Pray very much the
prayers of the Rosary. I alone am able still to save you from the
calamities which approach. Those who place their confidence in me will
be saved.”
Now to do our part in great numbers.
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Quiet
2. Antony said, 'He
who sits alone and is quiet has escaped from three wars: hearing,
speaking, seeing: but there is one thing against which he must
continually fight: that is, his own heart.'
October 14, 2022
(Rev 6:8) And behold a pale horse:
and he that sat upon him, his name was Death. And hell followed him.
And power was given to him over the four parts of the earth, to kill
with sword, with famine and with death and with the beasts of the earth.
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AID TO THE CHURCH IN NEED: Haiti: chaos reigns as churches come under attack
“THE CHURCH HAS BECOME A VICTIM OF
THE VIOLENCE,” says Sister Marcela Catozza, a missionary in Haiti. The
Italian nun claims that the situation has taken a turn for the worse
since June, with churches and institutions coming under attack.
The small Caribbean state of Haiti
is going through a period of terrible violence. With the office of
President vacant since the murder of Jovenal Moïse in July 2021, and no
date set for new elections, the struggle for power and the lack of
effective leadership have led to protests, chaos, and extreme violence
in the streets, in a country already beset by poverty and natural
disasters.
“It is horrible, and it is the people who suffer most. The city is in
the hands of gangs. The people are hungry, schools are closed. There is
no work, hospitals are closed because they have no fuel for their
generators. It is impossible to live in these circumstances,” Sister
Marcela told Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).
What is more difficult to accept,
however, says the nun who has been in Haiti since 2006, is that the
world doesn’t seem to take notice. “The worst is that nobody speaks
about us. Nobody knows what is happening, they don’t care about our
suffering in this country.” “
The Church is also being attacked,” says the missionary. On June 25,
2022, Sister Luisa del Orto, another Italian nun who had been living in
Haiti for 20 years, was gunned down. “We were very, very close. The
news brought me to my knees, it was such a terrible loss,” she recalls.
“We don’t know why she was killed. At first, we were told that it was
an attempted robbery, but I am convinced that somebody paid to have her
killed in the street. It was truly awful,” she says, her composure in
contrast to the situation she is describing.
Only two weeks later the cathedral
in the capital of Haiti was also attacked. “They set fire to the
cathedral and tried to kill the firefighters who arrived to put out the
flames. Afterwards they tried to destroy the walls of the cathedral
with a truck,” says the nun, who belongs to the Franciscan Missionary
Fraternity, during her conversation with ACN.
The attacks on religious buildings
and organizations have not been limited to the capital, Port-au-Prince.
“In Port-de-Paix and Les Cayes, and in other cities, they attacked
Caritas buildings, taking everything, including all the humanitarian
aid, and destroying the staff’s offices,” she says.
Since August she has been in Italy,
and the great increase in attacks has kept her from returning to Haiti,
a fact that fills her with sorrow. “I was told I better wait a bit
before returning. Partly because they killed Sister Luísa two months
ago, and they don’t want another martyr nun in the country. So, I have
been waiting. It is very difficult for a missionary to be away from
their mission, it is very hard. But I am sure that this is what God is
asking of me now.”
According to the sister, the situation is indescribable, gets worse by
the day, and has also affected her mission, an orphanage in one of the
most dangerous slums in the world. “Around a month ago they set fire to
our chapel. Everything was burned. The altar, the pews… There is
nothing left. The Blessed Sacrament was saved because I always take it
somewhere safe when I leave.”
Fondazione Via Lattea The conditions in which she lives when in Haiti
are incredibly difficult. The slum began to be built 20 years ago on
the site of the capital’s rubbish dump, and it is now home to over
100,000 people who live in zinc-covered huts with no running water or
electricity. Sister Marcela was the only nun in the mission now, as the
other sister who started it with her had to return to Italy following
the severe shock she suffered during the 2010 earthquake, when they
lost everything.
“For the past year I have been
unable to leave to go to Mass in the morning, because the gangs close
the slum, and nobody is allowed in or out. This is very difficult for
me, very difficult,” she explains.
“It seems like nobody in the world
is interested in what Haiti is going through. Of course, there are
plenty of other problems in the world, especially in Europe, which is
focused on what is going on in Ukraine and Russia and gripped with
fear. But you should not forget the other places in the world, like the
people of Haiti, who have been enduring conflicts not just for some
years, but all their lives.”
Sister Marcela ends her conversation with an appeal to ACN benefactors.
“Please pray for Haiti. Let us ask the Lord to watch over all the
Haitians, and to give peace to his people. Pray for my children, all
150 of them. The smallest is two months old, and the oldest is 18. The
way Haiti is now, there is no future for these children. Let us pray to
God that the good he has planned for them may come to fruition, and
that the wishes they have in their hearts might come true,” she pleads.
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Quiet
1. Antony said, 'Fish die if they stay on dry
land, and in the same way monks who stay outside their cell or remain
with secular people fall away from their vow of quiet. As a fish must
return to the sea, so must we to our cell, in case by staying outside,
we forget to watch inside.'
October 12, 2022
(Mar 10:13-14) And they brought to
him young children, that he might touch them. And the disciples rebuked
them that brought them. Whom when Jesus saw, he was much displeased and
saith to them: Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid
them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.
VICTIMS OF ABORTION: Broken Branches Newsletter Issue 151, Oct/Nov 2022
FIRST THINGS: Next Steps for the Pro-Life Movement
ALL: National Catholic Prayer Movement to End Abortion Gathers October 12 at DC Planned Parenthood
CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT: On the Power of the Powerless by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, OFM Cap.
My focus tonight
is baptism, but I want to approach it in a roundabout way. So I hope
you’ll bear with me for a few moments. I’ll get there; I promise.
I’ve always been a movie fan. When
I was very young I wanted to be a stunt man, or a director, or both.
Obviously that didn’t work out. But I’ve watched hundreds of films over
my lifetime, and some have left a deep mark on my memory. I saw the
1972 film Cabaret many years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it. Cabaret
was inspired by Christopher Isherwood’s 1945 book, Berlin Stories. It’s
a portrait of the cultural and sexual anarchy in Weimar Germany, just
before the Nazi takeover. It’s not a family film. And it’s definitely
not a “Christian” film. But the director, Bob Fosse, was a man of real
genius. So watching it – especially through the lens of historical
hindsight – is a compelling experience.
It's also instructive. And here’s why.
Sometime in the next week, I want
you to search the words “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” on YouTube. Open the
videoclip from the Cabaret movie. Then watch the film’s biergarten
scene, and listen to that song -- “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” And do it
several times. The lyrics are important. But it’s the editing of the
faces, and the orchestration of the song, that are truly brilliant. The
tune begins as a gentle ode to nature, sung by a young man’s angelic
voice. But the young man belongs to the Hitler Youth. And the song,
joined by a few of the customers, and then more and more of the
customers, builds into a chorus of mass fanaticism. The scene is a
perfect portrait of man’s oldest and most persistent sin: idolatry. In
Germany’s case, it was worship of the Fatherland; the delusion of a
master race. But if the human story teaches us anything, it’s that
idolatry has an infinite wardrobe of disguises, and an endless number
of victims.
The Third Reich euthanized some
300,000 mentally and physically disabled persons. Then it killed
another 6 million Jews, Gypsies, social outcasts, and political
prisoners in the name of Aryan racial purity. The political heirs of
Karl Marx -- Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others -- murdered 25
million people in the Soviet bloc; 40 million in China; 2 million in a
nation of just 7 million in Cambodia; and millions more elsewhere – all
to create a new world and restart history from “Year Zero,” cleansed of
any memory of the past, on the model of man as his own master; humanity
as the real and only god.
The body count from the last
hundred years is both well documented and painful to revisit. We’ve
learned -- or at least we think we’ve learned -- an important lesson.
And the lesson is this: Any political party or ideology that claims to
create a new kind of man, a self-sustaining, self-redemptive humanity,
is a fraud. It’s just the latest installment in a very old gnostic
fairy tale. Gnosticism grew up alongside Christianity, sometimes
intertwining with it; and the modern gnostic zealot – whether he calls
himself a fascist, a Nazi, a Marxist, or even a certain brand of
progressive – is never really irreligious. And he’s certainly not an
“unbeliever,” even when he says he is. He’s a particular kind of
believer; a man convinced he has the secret knowledge, the gnosis, that
unlocks the power to fix a broken world. And he clings to that sacred
knowledge just as religiously as any 14th century monk clung to his
Bible.
The difference, of course, is that
the God of the monk was true. The god of the gnostic isn’t. Each new
version of the gnostic zealot dresses up his little godling in new
language with new tools of coercion. But underneath, it’s always the
same idolatrous lie. Man is not a god, and there’s no secret knowledge
that can make him so. He didn’t create, and he doesn’t command,
reality. And his lies always exact a premium in suffering, especially
among the weak. The idols that man makes with his own hands – whether
they’re golden calves or political theories – always betray their
worshipers. They’re vampires that live off humanity’s hopes and fears.
But if that’s so, why would anyone
believe in a regime of lies? Why would people swallow toxic nonsense
like Marxist economics or Nazi racism? The answer is that most people,
being reasonably intelligent, don’t believe in a system based on
deceit. But that doesn’t stop them from complying with it. They’re
weak, or intimidated, or despairing, or just too lazy to speak the
truth until it’s too late to make a difference. Many people – probably
most people – will try to live as normally as they can, for as long as
they can, no matter what the nature of their political and cultural
environment. Most Russians weren’t Bolsheviks. Most Germans weren’t
Nazis. But they went along, to get along. They did what they needed to
do in order to survive, while the world went dark around them.
The trouble with “going along to
get along” is that it tends to poison both the brain and the soul. A
life of avoidance and non-resistance in a regime of big lies and real
wickedness sooner or later becomes just a pile of smaller lies under a
thin dusting of alibis. And here’s another fact. Most people – a great
many people – simply yearn to give themselves away. That may sound
strange, but we humans are social creatures. Loneliness is a curse. No
one wants to be an outsider. We yearn to belong to something bigger and
more meaningful than ourselves. If that “something” isn’t God, then it
will be something else; even something that’s a bitter enemy of God . .
. which accounts for why otherwise decent men and women lose themselves
in homicidal illusions and mass fanaticisms.
Every unconverted human heart has a
secret crevice in its flesh. And hidden in that crevice is the
laboratory where we perfect the flavor of our resentments; resentments
that we then project outward onto others whom we demonize -- kulaks,
Jews, ethnic and racial minorities; anybody will do; the nature of the
victims really doesn’t matter. An unredeemed appetite for enemies --
their humiliation and their destruction – is a primordial human
addiction. Augustine called it our libido dominandi; the will to power,
our hunger to dominate. Hatred is poisonous. But it’s also, in a
terrible and fatal way, exhilarating. The reason is simple. Hatred
isn’t the opposite of love; it’s love’s deformed mirror-image, which is
why it has such power.
The good news is that our country
was created to be a different and better place. It was designed to be –
and always has been -- an experiment in ordered liberty, a mix of
biblical realism and Enlightenment hopes. It’s never been perfect.
Nothing human ever is. But in so many ways, it actually works. And it’s
worth fighting for. We have the kind of laws and freedoms, the public
institutions and civil consciousness, which ensure that things like the
murderous obsessions that ruined the last century can never happen here.
Or at least, that’s what we think.
The not-so-good news is that we can lose everything we have. As
Solzhenitsyn once said, “prosperity breeds idiots.” The proof is in our
current political terrain, and especially in the leaders who now shape
it. Nothing makes us immune to stupidity, or idolatry, or fracturing as
a culture. The United States is a country with a reservoir of great
goodness and great people. But no nation is permanent, and that
includes our own.
Exactly 14 years ago, in the months
leading up to the 2008 election, I published a book titled Render Unto
Caesar. I wrote it for a young friend, a husband and father, who asked
me to do it. Chris was a Catholic prolife Democrat who had previously
run for state office, and almost won, in a Republican district. He
wanted advice. He wanted to know the proper role of religious faith in
public life. And he specifically asked for counsel about how a Catholic
political leader should integrate his Christian beliefs with his
political service.
I browsed through that old book as
I was getting ready for today. It turns out I was a lot smarter back
then. What I said in those pages is pretty simple. The Christian faith
is about much more than politics. And politics, as we’ve already seen,
can very easily become an obsession; a form of idolatry. But to get to
the City of God, we need to pass through the City of Man. And in the
City of Man, politics is a necessary part of life. Politics involves
getting and using power -- for good or for evil. Thus, power has an
unavoidably moral dimension. Which means that Christians do have a duty
to be involved in public discourse and political life in order to help
build a better society.
Two of the quotations I used in
that book from so long ago have stayed with me over the years. The
first is from the writer Charles Peguy: “Freedom is a system based on
courage.” The second is from the philosopher Henri Bergson: “The motive
power of democracy is love.” I still believe in those words. It’s true
that real freedom can be degraded by license, and democracy, absent a
commitment to love, can be corrupted by envy and bitterness. But
there’s not much in my book I would change.
What’s changed is the nation I
wrote it in. We’re not the same country, and increasingly not the same
people, we were as recently as 2008. Fourteen years ago there was no
Obergefell decision, no national mandate for gay marriage, no 1619
Project, no – or at least much less – Big Tech political censorship, no
library drag shows for kids, and no smearing of public school parents
as possible domestic terrorists. Critical race theory, woke-ism, and
transgender rights were, all of them, obscure obsessions of the elite.
These changes are not accidents of
history. They’re not just ill-advised and unhealthy. They’re
intentional. They’re vindictive. In some ways, they’re truly wicked.
They quite consciously target the biblical moral universe that has
informed our country since its birth. And this is why Eric Voegelin,
the great political philosopher who fled Nazi Germany for the United
States, had such a deep distrust for modern progressive politics. He
saw, in self-described “progressive” thought, not just an exercise in
moral preening, but the same destructive instincts -- more muted, but
just as real -- that he found in fascism and Marxist thought.
So what’s the result?
A friend of mine likes to say that
our current political reality boils down to “narcolepsy for the
masses;” narcolepsy as policy; narcolepsy by design; in other words, a
populace permanently half asleep and thus easily molded and led. That
may sound odd. But it’s really just a variant on what the media scholar
Neil Postman wrote in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, and what
the social historian Christopher Lasch said in his book, The Revolt of
the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. Neither Postman nor Lasch, by
the way, came from the political right. Both men were very rational
voices on the democratic left. And both men saw that so much of our
current culture is actually based on weakening rather than
strengthening the individual; creating dependence rather than real
autonomy.
Modern American life is dominated
by science and technology, to the exclusion of what we once called “the
humanities,” and to the erosion of people’s interior life. The social
sciences, in particular, have a very ambiguous view of what a human
being actually is. Society, through the lens of these tools, becomes
less a living community of free and independent persons, and more a
tangle of managerial problems that need to be solved; a complex machine
that needs constant fine-tuning and guidance by experts. And that has
consequences.
Real human persons are messy and
fractious. They’re stubborn. They have unhelpful ideas. They don’t
really understand what’s best for them. So they need the kind of bread
and circuses that allows the serious business of governance to proceed.
In the end, we get a stupefied populace of narcoleptics addicted to
trash media, materialist junk, fast food, and the internet. In other
words, people unable to think, people who need to be ruled -- and
surveilled, for everyone’s safety -- by really smart other people . . .
which is the exact opposite of what our public life was designed by the
Founders to require. It’s also uncomfortably close to the world C.S.
Lewis worried about in The Abolition of Man. That’s where we are now.
So what do we do about it?
Some of you might recall that this
talk is supposed to be about baptism. So to baptism I’ll now turn. And
the best place to start, oddly enough, is a couple of Czech dissidents.
The title I chose for my comments
tonight is “On the Power of the Powerless.” And I borrowed it from one
of the great essays of the last century. Václav Havel, the playwright
and political dissident, wrote “The Power of the Powerless” in 1978 at
the height of communist repression in his native Czechoslovakia. The
content is brilliant, but Havel’s main point is very simple. Even in a
world of persecution and state control, the individual is never really
powerless. He or she always has the power to say no; to refuse to
believe lies; and to search out other people who share a love for truth
and are willing to suffer for it.
Havel was never religious. But his
friend and fellow dissident, Václav Benda, was. And Benda’s the man,
Václav Benda, whose example I want us to remember as we leave here
tonight.
A husband and father of six, Benda
-- when he was pressed in the 1970s to join the Communist Party for
professional reasons -- declined to do so. It killed his career. He was
hounded out of academia. He was forced from one menial job after
another. He was harassed for his peaceful resistance activities, which
were technically legal under Czechoslovak law. He was a prominent
leader in the Charter 77 human rights movement and a cofounder of VONS,
the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted. He was
arrested and jailed for four years. But none of it deterred him. He and
his family had a profound Catholic faith, and they lived it intensely.
At Easter in 1985, in the midst of all his political problems and
government hassling, Benda wrote an extraordinary defense of Catholic
teaching on divorce, contraception, and abortion – this, despite
knowing that part of the Czech Church was collaborating with the
regime, and some of her leaders were both corrupt and cowards.
Benda’s collected essays, published
in English as The Long Night of the Watchman, are deeply moving, and
they’re animated throughout by the light of Christian courage. And
through it all, he never lost his gratitude for the beauty of his
family, the gift of his faith, or a sense of humor about his own
sufferings. He wrote that “I consider it extremely unreasonable, once
you’ve shown some eccentric willingness to throw yourself to the lions,
to complain that their teeth are not very clean.” So here’s the point
of our time together tonight. All of this man’s energy, creativity, and
courage flowed out of one source: his identity and fidelity as a
believing Catholic layman – the vocation which began at his baptism and
shaped his whole life. As Péguy said, Freedom is a system based on
courage, which is why even in his prison cell, Václav Benda was a free
man; free in a way his persecutors could never be.
Most of us in this room know that
baptism is the foundation of every other sacrament and every Christian
vocation. The Eucharist is the source and summit of Catholic life. But
it stands on the cornerstone of baptism. And we know that baptism does
three things: It washes away Original Sin; it incorporates us into the
living community of God’s people, the Church; and it gives us a share
in the life of the Holy Trinity. In other words, it makes us a new
creation, with the possibility to think and act in a godly way, through
the teaching of Jesus Christ. Baptism gives us the energy of Christ’s
resurrection for our lives here and now, and not just in eternity. And
all of this is not of our own doing; it’s a free gift and matter of
grace. This is why true Christians, believing Christians, are always a
threat to the powers of this world.
For us American Catholics, these
truths about baptism, and all the articles of our faith, have been easy
to learn, easy to affirm, and too often easy to forget, for the last
six decades. The Church in our country has enjoyed a fairly free and
comfortable life for a long time. And a great deal of good has been
done. It’s still being done by good people in every American diocese
and parish. We should be grateful and proud for all that God has made
possible, and our place in it. But if the hatred unleashed by the
recent Dobbs decision teaches us anything, it’s that our comfortable
times – the go along and get along times – are over. We need to think
and act accordingly. We need to recover the spine and the missionary
nature of our baptism.
There’s a curious irony in our
culture’s use of words like “enlightenment” and “woke-ism.” Both words
suggest a waking up from the past to a future of reason and light when,
in practice, they often create just the opposite – a surplus of
conflict and darkness, here and now. No technology, no “ism,” and no
special knowledge can ever replace man’s need for God. Idolatry,
whatever form or name it takes, always betrays us. Only God is God, and
Jesus Christ is his Son and our Redeemer. We need to remember Romans
8:31. We need to burn that Scripture verse into our brains and carry it
in our hearts: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” A life lived
in fear, a life spent seeking some kind of concordat with ideas and
behaviors that are truly wicked and celebrated now in so much of our
culture, is never the path for a Christian. It’s always a destructive
lie.
If Václav Benda, and others like
him, could speak and work for the truth, with far fewer resources and
in circumstances infinitely harder than our own . . . then surely we
can do at least as much, no matter how difficult our own world becomes.
So this isn’t a bad time to be a Christian. It’s exactly the best time,
because it’s our time to prove that we really do believe what we claim
to believe, by preaching it with the witness of our lives.
Jesus said, “I am the light of the
world.” He’s the only true light of the world. So we are not powerless;
we’re neverpowerless; because we’ve been baptized into the cross of the
God who loves us.
And if God is with us, who can be against us?
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Progress in Perfection
21. Some of the hermits used to say, 'Whatever
you hate for yourself, do not do it to someone else. If you hate being
spoken evil of, do not speak evil of another. If you hate being slandered,
do not slander another. If you hate him who tries to make you despised,
or wrongs you, or takes away what is yours, or anything like that, do not
do such things to others. To keep this is enough for salvation.'
October 10, 2022
(Mat 16:18) And I say to thee: That
thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the
gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
HEADLINES
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Q.
You were head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith. What must you think as you watch a system being created, where
all of that doctrine seems to be up for grabs?
A.
The basis of the Church is the word of God as a revelation ... not our
strange reflections. ... This [agenda] is a system of self-revelation.
This occupation of the Catholic Church is a hostile takeover of the
Church of Jesus Christ. ... And if you look at only one page, or read
one page of the Gospel, you'll see that it has nothing to do with Jesus
Christ ... and [in this agenda] they think that doctrine is only like a
program of a political party, who can change it according to their
votes.
Q.
Your Eminence, Cardinal Mario Grech, who is the secretary-general of
the Synod of Bishops, spoke to 200 U.S. Catholic leaders last month in
Rome. He talked of “complicated issues” — that’s what he called them,
such as divorced-and-remarried people receiving Communion, blessing
same-sex couples — and he said the following: “These are not to be
understood simply in terms of doctrine, but in terms of God’s ongoing
encounter with human beings. What has the Church to fear if these two
groups within the faithful are given the opportunity to express their
intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience? Might this
be an opportunity for the Church, to listen to the Holy Spirit,
speaking through them also.” Your thoughts, when you hear that? Setting
up doctrine against God’s ongoing experience with mankind.
A.
That is a hermeneutic of the old cultural Protestantism; and observe
modernism: That is the individual experience, as the same level as
objective revelation of God. And God is only a wall to you, which you
can project your proper ideas, and to make certain populism in the
Church; and surely everybody outside of the Church who want to destroy
the Catholic Church, and the fundaments, they are very glad about these
declarations. But it is obvious that is absolutely against the Catholic
doctrine. We have Revelation of God in Jesus Christ. And it is
definitely closed and finished in Jesus Christ. ... This is absolutely
clear: that Jesus has spoken about the indissolubility of matrimony.
And how is it possible that Cardinal Grech is more intelligent than
Jesus Christ, where he takes his authority to relativize, to subvert of
God?
Q.
I have to say, I am, I am shaken when I hear you say, and you were just
at a consistory, which we'll talk about in a moment, that you believe
the synodal process is ... shaping up into a hostile takeover of the
Church, of an attempt to destroy the Church. Is that what you see here?
A.
If they succeed, it will be the end of the Catholic Church. And we must
resist it like the old heretics of the Arianism. When Arias thought,
according to his ideas, what can God do and what can God not do? And it
is irrationalism: human, the intellect to decide what is true and what
is wrong.
Q.
All these national reports are being synthesized into a working
document, known in Rome, as the instrumentum laborious. This document
continues to be refined, but, ultimately, it will guide all these
discussions for the synod in Rome. This is being drafted by the synod
leadership and advisory committee and a group of approximately 20
so-called experts. These are laypeople, religious sisters, Catholic
priests, an archbishop. Who are the these people, and why have they
been chosen to put this working document together? Why not a group of
cardinals to do this?
A.
They are dreaming of another church that has nothing to do with the
Catholic faith ... and they want to abuse this process, for shifting
the Catholic Church — and not only in other direction, but in the
destruction of the Catholic Church. ... Nobody can make an absolute
shift and substitute the revealed doctrine of the Church, but they have
these strange ideas, as doctrine as only a theory of some theologians.
The doctrine of the apostles is a reflection and manifestation of the
Revelation of the word of God. We have to listen to the word of God in
the authority of the Holy Bible, of apostolic tradition, and of the
magisterium. And all the Council said before: that it is not possible
to substitute Revelation, given once and forever in Jesus Christ, by
another revelation.
ERIC SAMMONS,
Editor-in-Chief of Crisis Magazine: The more I see of the Synod
on Synodality process, the more obvious it becomes that it’s not just a
colossal waste of time, it’s also actually moving Catholics away from
the Gospel. The whole concept is fatally flawed and should be resisted
by Catholics. We do not look to our fellow Catholics to re-shape the
Church in our image, we look to Christ to re-shape us into His image by
the help of the Church.
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Progress in Perfection
19. A brother said to a hermit, 'How does the fear
of God come into the soul? He said, 'If there is humility and poverty,
and no judgement of others, the fear of God will be present there.'
October 7, 2022
(Luk
2:16-19) And they came with haste: and they found Mary and Joseph, and
the infant lying in the manger. And seeing, they understood of the word
that had been spoken to them concerning this child. And all that heard
wondered: and at those things that were told them by the shepherds. But
Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.
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While St. Faustina was accustomed
to praying the Rosary on a regular basis, she resolved to pray the
Rosary in a special way on Saturdays.
Saturdays are traditionally days
devoted to the Virgin Mary, as they recall the time Mary spent on Holy
Saturday, mourning over the loss of her son, Jesus.
St. Faustina explains in her Diary
that she received permission “on Saturdays, to say five decades of the
Rosary with outstretched arms” (246).
This she listed as a “small mortification,” in comparison to the suffering that Jesus suffered on the cross.
She would often turn to the Rosary
and did so when confronted with demonic spirits. After she prayed the
Rosary, the spirits went away.
The Rosary was an important part of
St. Faustina’s life, and her funeral was even on October 7, the Feast
of Our Lady of the Rosary.
We can learn from her devotion to the Rosary and discern how we can incorporate it into our spiritual lives.
ACTION CHALLENGE:
Turn to God with humility and ask for help to overcome the struggle you
face. Do not try to overcome this weakness with your own resources.
Turn to the Holy Rosary and ask Mary to help you.
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Progress in Perfection
14. Poeman said, 'If a monk hates two things, he
can be free of this world.' A brother inquired, 'What are they?' He said,
'Bodily comfort and conceit.'
October 5, 2022
(Act 2:17-18) And it shall come to
pass, in the last days, (saith the Lord), I will pour out of my Spirit
upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy: and
your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.
And upon my servants indeed and upon my handmaids will I pour out in
those days of my spirit: and they shall prophesy.
CNA NEWSLINK: Catholics in Poland and around the world pray Divine Mercy Chaplet to end war
FREE FILM STREAM: Love and Mercy: Faustina
Love and Mercy: Faustina recounts
the devotion to the Divine Mercy that began with the visions of Jesus
experienced by St. Faustina in the 1930s in her native Poland and how
her early death (at age 33) left her confessor and spiritual director
Blessed Fr. Michael Sopocko to work on her behalf to fulfil Jesus’
request, including the establishment of Divine Mercy for the universal
Church. It combines re-enactments with interviews and narration to
explain the influence of the Divine Mercy devotion, which had a strong
promoter in the papacy of St. John Paul II.
VATICAN.VA: Decree
of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the
Sacraments on the inscription of the celebration of Saint Faustina
Kowalska, virgin, in the General Roman Calendar, 18.05.2020
UNIVERSALIS: Saint Faustina Kowalska (1905 - 1938)
Helena Kowalska was born on 25 August 1905 in Glogowiec, near Lódz in
Poland, the third of ten children of a poor and religious family. From
an early age she had a religious vocation, and she showed great
determination in pursuing it despite the opposition of her parents and
rejection by the first few convents to which she applied. Through
persistence and hard work she was accepted by the Congregation of the
Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, which she entered on 1 August 1925,
taking the name Sister Mary Faustina. She lived in the Congregation for
the rest of her short life. Her work as cook, gardener and porter
revealed nothing of her rich mystical interior life.
The mystery of the Mercy of God which forms the centre of St Faustina’s
spirituality was revealed to her by Jesus in visions and conversations
from early 1931. In choosing an obscure and uneducated young girl as
the apostle of devotion to the Divine Mercy, he followed the pattern so
often used by God: that his strength is manifested in weakness, and the
weak and humble have the power to change the world. “Today I am sending
you with my mercy to the people of the whole world. I do not want to
punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to my
merciful heart.”
With the help of the nuns’ confessor, Father Michael Sopocko (who
prudently started by having Sister Faustina psychiatrically examined to
confirm the veracity of the visions), the devotion to the Divine Mercy
began. An image of the Divine mercy was painted at Sister Faustina’s
instruction (since she could not paint herself); she wrote instructions
for a Novena of the Divine Mercy, which was published in the final year
of her life. Sister Faustina died (probably of tuberculosis) on 5
October 1938.
The devotion to the Divine Mercy spread widely and fast, especially
during the Second World War. In 1956 Pope Pius XII blessed an image of
the Divine Mercy, but the theorists were harder to convince, and
although the process of Faustina’s canonization began in 1965, it was
not until 1978 that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
reversed its previous ban on the circulation of her writings: “…there
no longer exists, on the part of this Sacred Congregation, any
impediment to the spreading of the devotion to The Divine Mercy”.
Indeed, on the official Vatican web site some of Faustina’s actual
conversations with Jesus are quoted in her biography, and there have
been moves to have her declared a Doctor of the Church.
Faustina Kowalska was beatified on 18 April 1993 and canonized on 30
April 2000. At the same time the second Sunday of Easter was officially
designated as the Sunday of the Divine Mercy.
RELATED
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Progress in Perfection
13. A brother asked him, 'How ought we to live?'
Poemen replied, 'We have seen the example of Daniel. They accused him of
nothing except that he served his God.'
October 3, 2022
(Rev 6:3-8) And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second
living creature saying: Come and see. And there went out another horse
that was red. And to him that sat thereon, it was given that he should
take peace from the earth: and that they should kill one another. And a
great sword was given to him. And when he had opened the third seal, I
heard the third living creature saying: Come and see. And behold a
black horse. And he that sat on him had a pair of scales in his hand.
And I heard, as it were a voice in the midst of the four living
creatures, saying: Two pounds of wheat for a penny, and thrice two
pounds of barley for a penny: and see thou hurt not the wine and the
oil. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the
fourth living creature saying: Come and see. And behold a pale horse:
and he that sat upon him, his name was Death. And hell followed him.
And power was given to him over the four parts of the earth, to kill
with sword, with famine and with death and with the beasts of the earth.
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VATICAN NEWS: Pope appeals to Putin to stop war and Zelensky to be open to serious peace offers
The course of the war in Ukraine has become so serious, devastating and
threatening, as to cause great concern. Therefore, today I would like
to devote the entire reflection before the Angelus to this. Indeed,
this terrible and inconceivable wound to humanity, instead of healing,
continues to shed even more blood, risking to spread further.
I am saddened by the rivers of blood and tears spilled in these months.
I am saddened by the thousands of victims, especially children, and the
destruction which has left many people and families homeless and
threaten vast territories with cold and hunger. Certain actions can
never be justified, never! It is disturbing that the world is learning
the geography of Ukraine through names such as Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol,
Izium, Zaparizhzhia and other areas, which have become places of
indescribable suffering and fear. And what about the fact that humanity
is once again faced with the atomic threat? It is absurd.
What is to happen next? How much blood must still flow for us to
realize that war is never a solution, only destruction? In the name of
God and in the name of the sense of humanity that dwells in every
heart, I renew my call for an immediate ceasefire. Let there be a halt
to arms, and let us seek the conditions for negotiations that will lead
to solutions that are not imposed by force, but consensual, just and
stable. And they will be so if they are based on respect for the
sacrosanct value of human life, as well as the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of each country, and the rights of minorities and
legitimate concerns.
I deeply deplore the grave situation that has arisen in recent days,
with further actions contrary to the principles of international law.
It increases the risk of nuclear escalation, giving rise to fears of
uncontrollable and catastrophic consequences worldwide.
My appeal is addressed first and foremost to the President of the
Russian Federation, imploring him to stop this spiral of violence and
death, also for the sake of his own people. On the other hand, saddened
at the immense suffering of the Ukrainian people as a result of the
aggression they have suffered, I address an equally confident appeal to
the President of Ukraine to be open to serious proposals for peace. I
urge all the protagonists of international life and the political
leaders of nations to do everything possible to bring an end to the
war, without allowing themselves to be drawn into dangerous
escalations, and to promote and support initiatives for dialogue.
Please let the younger generations breathe the salutary air of peace,
not the polluted air of war, which is madness!
After seven months of hostilities, let us use all diplomatic means,
even those that may not have been used so far, to bring an end to this
terrible tragedy. War in itself is an error and a horror!
Let us trust in the mercy of God, who can change hearts, and in the
maternal intercession of the Queen of Peace, as we raise our
Supplication to Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompei, spiritually united
with the faithful gathered at her Shrine and in so many parts of the
world.
MORE: ICMC grateful for Pope's appeals and prayers for peace in Ukraine
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Progress in Perfection
12. Poemen said, "To be on guard, to meditate within,
to judge with discernment: these are the three works of the soul."
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