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Monday, September 29, 2014

Satan Seduces

On Monday’s feast of the archangels Pope Francis spoke of the ongoing battle between the devil and mankind, encouraging attendees to pray to the angels, who have been charged to defend us.

“He presents things as if they were good, but his intention is destruction. And the angels defend us.”



Noting how these are strong images portraying “the great dragon, the ancient serpent” who “seduces all of inhabited earth,” the Pope also drew attention to Jesus’ words to the prophet Nathanael in the day’s Gospel from John when he tells him “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”

All of these readings, he said, speak of “the struggle between God and the devil” which “takes place after Satan tries to destroy the woman who is about to give birth to a son.”

“Satan always tries to destroy man: the man that Daniel saw there, in glory, and whom Jesus told Nathaniel would come in glory,” the pontiff observed, explaining that “From the beginning the Bible speaks to us of this: Satan's (use of) seduction to destroy.”



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Archangels

Saturday, September 27, 2014

A Truly Interior Man

If you do not know how to meditate on heavenly things, direct your thoughts to Christ's passion and willingly behold His sacred wounds. If you turn devoutly to the wounds and precious stigmata of Christ, you will find great comfort in suffering, you will mind but little the scorn of men, and you will easily bear their slanderous talk.


When Christ was in the world, He was despised by men; in the hour of need He was forsaken by acquaintances and left by friends to the depths of scorn. He was willing to suffer and to be despised; do you dare to complain of anything? He had enemies and defamers; do you want everyone to be your friend, your benefactor? How can your patience be rewarded if no adversity test it? How can you be a friend of Christ if you are not willing to suffer any hardship? Suffer with Christ and for Christ if you wish to reign with Him.


Had you but once entered into perfect communion with Jesus or tasted a little of His ardent love, you would care nothing at all for your own comfort or discomfort but would rejoice in the reproach you suffer; for love of Him makes a man despise himself.


A man who is a lover of Jesus and of truth, a truly interior man who is free from uncontrolled affections, can turn to God at will and rise above himself to enjoy spiritual peace.

He who tastes life as it really is, not as men say or think it is, is indeed wise with the wisdom of God rather than of men.



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Friday, September 26, 2014

Don't Lose Faith

Faith is essential when enduring suffering.  Christian martyrs are a testament to this.


One must not lose faith.  The following is a list of warnings.  One can lose faith:


1. By going to schools forbidden by the Church;
2. by the neglect of their religious duties;
3. by the reading of bad books; 
4. by worldliness and a wicked life;
5. by intercourse with scoffers at religion; 
6. by mixed marriages; 
7. by becoming members of secret societies;
8. by pride and subtle reasoning on the mysteries of religion.


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Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Crusades

Spiritual battle is simply a part of the Christian life.  One must engage in it to overcome sin, self and the devil.  A "crusading" spirit has always been a part of Christianity.


The Crusades of the past need to be put in perspective.  They have often been historically misinterpreted. 




Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity—and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion—has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.


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Friday, September 19, 2014

Suffering As A Nation

The following is a list of 50 reasons we suffer as a country.  The solution is faith in Christ.


#1 According to a survey that was just conducted, only 36 percent of all Americans can name the three branches of government.
#2 Only 25 percent of all Americans know how long U.S. Senators are elected for (6 years), and only 20 percent of all Americans know how many U.S. senators there are.
#3 Even if you include same-sex couples in the numbers, the marriage rate in the United States is at a 93 year low.
#4 For the first time ever, single Americans make up more than half the U.S. population.
#5 31.1 percent of American young adults in the 18 to 34-year-old age bracket are currently living with their parents.
#6 One out of every ten teen girls in America engages in “self-harm”.  Cutting and burning are the most common forms that this “self-harm” takes.
#7 One survey found that 85 percent of all young men in America and almost half of all young women in America watch porn at least once a month.
#8 A different survey discovered that 64 percent of American men of all ages view pornography at least once per month.
#9 The Internet can be used for great good, but it can also be used for great evil.  It is being reported that 83 percent of U.S. boys and 57 percent of U.S. girls have been exposed to group sex while on the Internet.
#10 One survey discovered that 25 percent of all employees that have Internet access in the United States visit sex websites while they are at work.
#11 There is an epidemic of porn watching among federal employees.  For example, one Treasury Department worker said that he viewed 13,000 pornographic images within the span of six weeks because he did “not have enough work to do“.
#12 An astounding 30 percent of all Internet traffic now goes to adult websites.
#13 Right now, 30 million Americans are on antidepressants.
#14 Americans account for about five percent of the global population, but we buy more than 50 percent of the pharmaceutical drugs.
#15 Americans consume a whopping 80 percent of all prescription painkillers.
#16 According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, nearly 70 percent of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.
#17 Approximately 60 million Americans have a problem with alcohol addiction.
#18 Heroin traffic in New York City is at a 20 year high.
#19 Of all the major industrialized nations, America is the most obese.  Mexico is #2.
#20 Back in 1962, only 13 percent of all Americans were obese, but it is being projected that 42 percent of all Americans could be obese by the year 2030.


Read rest

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

No Escape

We cannot deny who we are.  When we do we suffer.  We must follow God to the end, there will be a reckoning.


When a man leaves behind the company of other men, and walks toward the seat of divine judgment, there to gaze upon the face of the living God, all pretense and falsehood are stripped away. There is no room for maneuver, no way to disguise the weight of what one has done or become. Then the true worth of a man’s deeds, whether empty straw or sold metal, will be shown in an absolutely piercing light, which is God himself.


Life, the poet Keats tells us, is a vale of soul making. A lovely image, it reminds us of the impossibility of escape. That we are here to make our souls pleasing to God. And death, of course, is the final scene we are all destined to play. Whether to say to God, “Thy will be done,” and thus to fall blissfully into his arms. Or God to say to us, “Thy will be done,” and thus to sink into an everlasting misery.


A wise and holy priest once told me that the essence of hell is when we tell God: “I don’t want to love. I don’t want to be loved. I want to be left alone.” And on the strength of that Great Refusal, we take ourselves to hell, where all the doors are locked on the inside. The souls of the damned do not wish to leave the prison of their own solitude, that infernal self-inflicted isolation they have chosen forever.


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Friday, September 12, 2014

Becomming Christian

To be a Christian is to become a child of God.  Christians call God "daddy" (Abba).  We go to daddy with our problems.  Our dad will take care of us.


Islam on the other hand refer to God as a Master (and we are slaves).  The following is a testimony from a convert from Islam.  (Islam is a Gnostic derivation of Christianity that spread throughout the Arab world in the 7th century).


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Sunday, September 7, 2014

Battle for Souls

Our life is very short and the stakes are very high: salvation or condemnation! It is for eternity—forever and ever and ever!  We will either be with God the angels and saints and Mary the Queen of the angels and saints in heaven forever! Or we will be lost forever in hell with the devil and his minions in the fire that is never extinguished,  and the worm never dies.


These are eternal truths that we should meditate upon day and night so as to attain the crown of eternal life in heaven.
Our Lady of Fatima made the sad but all too true comment that most souls are lost for all eternity in the fire of hell due to the sins of the flesh or the sins against the virtue of purity.  Our Lady appeared to the three shepherd children—Jacinta, Francisco and Lucia in 1917.
Since then the world has descended into an almost endless swamp of immorality and impurity.  Young people cohabiting, the legalization and promotion of homosexuality, adultery spreading like the wildfires of California, movies almost always portraying indecent scenes, immodest dress that provokes to no limits, addictions to pornography and masturbation, the sins against the sixth and ninth Commandments go on and on almost like an endless abyss. St. Teresa of Avila, woman Doctor of the Church made this wry comment: “Those who live in sin, we should not be surprised what they do but surprised what they do not do.”  In other words this saint asserts that the ability to sin and its malicious creativity has no limits—like the infinite abyss!
However, in the midst of the world inundated by materialism, sensuality, hedonism and worse yet—moral relativism, which really means nothing is really wrong, but all is permissible—we should always have hope. Why?   By nature we are the epitome of fragility and weakness. However, God is a strong, immovable Rock!  The Archangel Gabriel said to Mary in the account of the Annunciation—“All is possible for God!”

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Walk Cheerfully

"Walk cheerfully!" Practical advice from St. Padre Pio.

Almost everyone knows that "pray, hope, and don't worry" is attributed to St. Pio, but some of his other spiritual gems are not so well known: 

Duty before everything else, even something holy.

Whenever necessary you must look without seeing, and see without thinking about it.

If Jesus reveals Himself, thank Him; if He hides Himself thank Him also.  All is a pleasantry of His love.

Always do a little work.  Work, therefore, and though you keep on advancing slowly, you will nevertheless go a long way.

When there is not time for both, meditation is to be preferred to vocal prayer, because it is more fruitful.

Despise your temptations and do not dwell on them.

Ahead! Courage!  In the spiritual life he who does not advance goes backward. 

Don't draw back, and worse still, don't stop going up the Calvary of life.  Jesus will extend His hand to steady you.

Walk in the way of the Lord with simplicity and do not torment your spirit.

Only one thing is necessary: to lift up your spirit and love God.

The time best spent is that which is spent for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Often kiss Jesus with affection and you will recompense Him for the sacrilegious kiss of the unfaithful Apostle, Judas.

The devil is like a rabid dog tied to a chain; beyond the length of the chain he cannot seize anyone.  And you, keep at a distance. 


Read Rest

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Salvation Within

Prisoners can (if open to God's forgiving grace) experience salvation within their cells.


Prisoners are test cases of how Christians deal with sinners in extremis. I don’t just mean that compassion for the imprisoned can serve as a corroboration of Christian charity, although that is surely true. I mean that the whole experience of imprisonment is absolutely central to the coherence and credibility of the Gospel message. How can captivity, a great biblical theme, have any meaning today if we treat incarceration as nothing more than “serving time”? How can salvation be proclaimed as the ultimate joy even in this life if we live in a society that continues punishing prisoners long after they have been released?