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Saturday, June 27, 2015

Old Rite

A priest is ordained to serve the people of God and comfort them in their struggles.  Like a shepherd, he leads and protects the sheep.  Christians seek the solace of Christ through the priest and the Sacraments,

Any man preparing to celebrating the Old Rite first of all has to learn a different way of being a priest, he has to learn to be a servant, like the Centurion's servant "to come here, and go there". The Old Rite is very prescriptive about how the priest moves, where moves, how he uses his body, where he looks and even where he directs his eyes. The control over his body and movements results in a control over his mind and thoughts. The thing is that the rubrics are freely available to any ten year old who can read Latin, or the like, this is important in as much as it democratises the liturgy and leaves the priest open to accountability and able to be judged on his obedience to the demands of the Church. In fact the heart of the spirituality of the Old Rite is one of being under obedience, the obliteration of the individual, to the point where in a large Church, with a number of priests one is often uncertain which priest is celebrating Mass, it is often just hair colour, or body shape that enables one to distinguish who is the celebrant.
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Monday, June 22, 2015

Manhood

Twenty-four million children in America — one out of three — live in a home without a father present. That is beyond critical. It points to the pending collapse of a civilization. Certainly it is not the only sign of what is coming — but it's a pretty clear one.
About half those children are boys — 12 million boys with no father. Where and how precisely are these young innocent boys supposed to learn how to grow into strong men? Fatherless children are four times more likely to be poor than children with fathers. Multiple studies show that fatherless children are considerably more aggressive than those with fathers. Fatherless children are much more likely to get involved in crimes, drug use and end up in jail. Fatherless children tend to be much more sexually active.
  • 80 percent of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes.
  • 90 percent of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes.
  • 63 percent of youth suicides are from fatherless homes.
  • 85 percent of children who exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes.
  • 90 percent of adolescent repeat arsonists live with only their mother.
  • 71 percent of high school drop-outs come from fatherless homes.
  • 75 percent of adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers have no father
  • 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions have no father. 
  • 85 percent of youths in prisons have no father.
The role and presence of a father is so critical that, in their absence, the entire society crumbles.
And this is to say very little of the spiritual dimension. There is no way to poll or accurately survey the even bigger crisis of absent spiritual fatherhood. The psyches of these young boys and girls are destroyed to such a degree that many of them will find it very difficult ever blending back into so-called "normal society."
As an aside: When these kinds of numbers are becoming the rule, we may soon need to readjust what we consider "normal." This is the new normal.
Adolescents coming to full adulthood who are angry, raging sometimes, who turn to crime, drugs, sex, violence, are much more prone to walk around with deep psychological wounds, angry at themselves, angry at the world, angry at God.
Now, not all of them obviously turn to the outward behaviors that society frowns on. But large numbers suffer from deep resentments that manifest themselves in relationships with other males, authority figures, their ability to interact in a healthy manner with women, etc. The depth of resentment at being denied what is theirs by right — the loving embrace and firm guidance of a father — might be hard for some to imagine. To grow up believing the world owes you something — which on one level it can be argued it does — and be denied that is almost guaranteed to spawn a host of spiritually destructive behaviors — many more, in fact, than the socially destructive ones. After all, you might get caught and jailed for being a thief, but you won't get jailed for having given up on faith or rejecting God.
All this has happened because many men rejected the basic foundational truth of manhood: that your life is to be spent at the service of others, even to the point of dying for those you love to protect them. Until sufficient numbers of men understand that and make it their own again, society will be lost and spiral even more out of control.
If you are a man who is married and with a family, and you are messing around sexually, if you are man with children and they are not the center of your life, consider the destruction you are raining down on your children, on your boys.
If you are an unmarried man but biologically producing children, you need to stop. Your son or sons are going to grow up resenting you, the world, taking their anger out on their single mothers, ignoring God, and be so damaged that they might never be able to enjoy a nice life with their own family.
You also don't get to be a careerist and rationalize your time spent making money and serving your own ego, as doing it "for them." End your extramarital affair, do an immediate course correction, eat whatever humble pie you need to to admit to your son that you haven't been as good a father as you needed to be to this point. Stop pouring more energy into something other than teaching your son to be a man — a true man, a Godly man, a holy man.
You need to do a gut check of the most supreme kind you can. You can start over. Do it.
You need to look at your son and search his soul. All he wants is your love, your guidance, your strong arm to lift him out of the rage and anger that he has cleverly disguised even from himself. And for this to truly happen, you need to turn to your Father in Heaven and confess your failing in being the model of God the Father to your son and ask your Father to help you.
The goal of every father this Father's Day shouldn't be to pretend you like that ugly tie or to spend an afternoon with your boy thinking you've met your time quota this year; it is to be worthy of your son looking at you and saying, "I love you, Dad."
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Friday, June 12, 2015

20 Tips from Padre Pio

20 Tips from Padre Pio for Those Who Are Suffering:


1. "If you can talk with the Lord in prayer, talk to him, offer him your praise; if, due to great weariness, you cannot speak, do not find displeasure in the ways of the Lord. Stay in the room like servants of the court do, and make a gesture of reverence. He will see you, and your presence will be pleasing to him. He will bless your silence and at another time you will find consolation when he takes you by the hand."

2. "The more bitterness you experience, the more love you will receive."

3. "Jesus wants to fill your whole Heart."

4. "God wants his omnipotence to reside in your powerlessness."

5. "Faith is the torch that guides the steps of the spiritually desolate."

6. "In the uproar of the passions and of reverses of fortune, we are upheld by the comforting hope of God's inexhaustible mercy."

7. "Put all your trust only in God."

8. "The best consolation is that which comes from prayer."

9. "Fear nothing. On the contrary, consider yourself very fortunate to have been made worthy to participate in the sufferings of the Man-God."

10. "God leaves you in that darkness for his glory; here is a great opportunity for your spiritual progress."

11. "The darkness that sometimes clouds the sky of your souls is light: by means of it, when it arrives, you believe you are in darkness and you have the impression that you are in the midst of a burning briar patch. It's true that, when brambles burn, it gets smoky all around and the disoriented spirit is afraid of not seeing or understanding anything anymore. But then God speaks and makes himself present to the soul, that glimpses, understands, loves and trembles."

12. "My Jesus, love is what sustains me."

13. "Happiness is only found in heaven."

14. "When you feel despised, imitate the kingfisher, who builds its nest on the masts of ships. That is to say, raise yourself up above the earth, elevate yourselves with your mind and heart to God, who is the only one who can console you and give you strength to withstand the trial in a holy way."

15. "Be certain that the more the attacks of the devil increase, that much closer is God to your soul."

16. "Bless the Lord for your suffering and accept to drink the chalice of Gethsemane."

17. "Be capable of bearing bitter sufferings during your whole life so you can participate in the sufferings of Christ."

18. "Suffering born in a Christian way is the condition that God, the author of all grace and of all the gifts that lead to salvation, has established for granting us glory."

19. "Remember that we cannot triumph in battle if not through prayer; the choice is yours."

20. "Prayer is the best weapon we have; it is a key that opens God's heart."
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Sunday, June 7, 2015

Emangelization

Men reduce suffering through their protective nature.  They can "make it all better".  In oder to recapture their true essence, men need to be re-evangelized. 


Matthew James Christoff is, in some ways, like a modern-day St. John the Baptist, an urgent voice crying out in the wilderness. Christoff wants the world to know the Catholic Church has a man problem. Actually, not just a problem, but a crisis. The Catholic convert from Minnesota’s Twin Cities founded an apostolate called the New Emangelization Project to help men learn and fully live their faith. Nothing less than the future of the Catholic Church is at stake, he says.
 
The father of four’s journey into the Catholic men’s movement began with a cancer diagnosis and a “very long search for God.” A spark lit in him during and after his illness that led him to an encounter with Jesus Christ. He entered the Catholic Church in 2006. He soon discovered what he calls the “man crisis”: millions of American men have left the faith or drifted into a mediocre spiritual life. Catholic World Report spoke with Christoff about his research and his plans to combat the crisis.
For more on the emerging Catholic men’s movement, see CWR’s feature on the subject, “Created for Greatness.” 


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Monday, June 1, 2015

The Goal of Life

The goal of the Christian life if holiness. Yet what is holiness? What does it meant to be holy? We understand that we are called to be loving, forgiving, etc. But what does it mean to be "holy"? Is holiness a mere sum of all other natural and supernatural virtues? And what about God? God is love, power, forgiveness, justice and so on. But what does it mean when the angels cry that God is "holy, holy, holy?"

The fundamental definition of holiness is separation. The Latin word for holiness is sanctitas, from whence sanctity. Holiness denotes separation or consecration unto God. When the angels cry "holy, holy, holy" it is because God is so far separate and distinct from all created things that awe is the only appropriate response in his presence. "Between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them", the Fourth Lateran Council taught (cap. 3, "On Heretics"). St. Thomas defines holiness as a firm separation of created things which are translated from profane use to use in the service of God (STh II-II Q. 81 art. 8). This is why Holy Water, Holy Cards, Holy Candles, Holy Oil, etc. have the adjective "holy" - once they are consecrated, they are "set apart" for divine worship exclusively. To use Holy Oil for cooking for Holy Water for common washing would be sacrilegious. Their consecration is what makes them "holy", and hence set apart for divine use exclusively.

Of course, a person is holy in a different sense than an object, but the fundamental reality that holiness means separation remains. 
A man with Holy Orders is set apart for the service of God. A holy person is one whose life is separated from worldly concerns and activities and who already lives, even in the flesh, in contemplation of heavenly things. Holiness is separation; separation from worldly uses and a setting apart unto God, "who is above all, through all, and in all" (Eph. 4:6).