My Blog List

Thursday, November 26, 2015

True Self

In a new one, Imagine Heaven, by Christian researcher John Burke, the important point is made that when we die, we meet many people we knew during our time on earth, especially deceased loved ones. Some say we meet ancestors going back to the beginning of time. But the first person we meet, besides the Lord, is our true selves.
Says a woman named Crystal, who "coded" due to complications from pancreatitis and "left her body" for nine minutes:
"Unlike earth, where I was plagued by doubts and fears, in Heaven there was nothing but absolute certainty about who I was. This was a far more complete representation of my spirit and my heart and my being than was ever possible on earth, a far deeper self-awareness than the collection of hopes and fears and dreams and scars that defined me during my life. I was flooded with self-knowledge, and all the junk that cluttered my identity on earth instantly fell away, revealing, for the first time ever, the real me. 'Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,' God says in Jeremiah  1:5. And now I knew myself. Imagine that -- the first person we meet in Heaven is ourselves."
Link

Sunday, November 22, 2015

True Freedom

Personal suffering is often a result of the choices we make.  As Fr. Gabriel stated in the movie The Mission, " God gave us the burden of free will".
Freedom is not simply the capacity to choose between alternatives; it is a sign of the ontological dignity of the human person who is created in love and called to live in communion with the truth. One of the great achievements of the Declaration is to develop an understanding of human dignity and human freedom that is grounded in the human person’s constitutive relation to God. In the words of John Paul II, “the freedom of the individual finds its basis in man’s transcendent dignity: a dignity given to him by God the Creator and Father, in whose image and likeness he was created.” There is no freedom without truth, and no truth without freedom.
In the face of new challenges and new threats to religious freedom, it is important to rediscover the Council’s authentic teaching on the right to religious freedom as grounded in the obligation to seek the truth about God. As Gaudium et spes teaches, once God is forgotten, the creature is lost sight of as well. Especially in our time, it is necessary to uphold the transcendent and relational dignity of the human person, who is created by God and destined to share in the “glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom 8:21).
Link

Monday, November 9, 2015

Priests Lose Their Lives

In the Gospel of Mark, there is a funny story about Peter that speaks to the paradox of losing one’s life only to find it more abundantly:
Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Mark 10:27-31).
Every priest knows well the paradox of these verses. Each of us gave up being a father (of children) and yet thousands call us “Father.” We gave up the bride of our dreams and yet have the most beautiful and perfect bride: the Church. She is beautiful indeed, but has a long “honey do” list! And as for buildings and land? We do not have our own home out in the suburbs on a quarter acre of land. Instead, we oversee multimillion dollar buildings, quite often occupying an entire city block or a country acre. Talk about receiving a hundredfold! Every priest knows the richness of his life in terms of buildings and land, but above all in people, in family.
And such is the paradox of losing one’s life only to find it even more richly.
Read rest

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Purity of Soul

Reception of Holy Communion helps one endure suffering.
For Catholics to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in Holy Communion while in the state of mortal sin (having committed a mortal or grave sin which has not been confessed and forgiven in Sacramental Confession) is itself a mortal sin — a mortal sin of sacrilege.
What is there to say about the great purity of soul with which the saints approached to receive the bread of Angels? We know that they had a great delicacy of conscience which was truly angelic. Aware of their own misery, they tried to present themselves to Jesus “holy and immaculate,” (Eph. 1:4) repeating with the Publican , “O God, be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13), and having recourse with great care to the cleansing of Confession.
When St. Jerome was brought Holy Viaticum at the end of his life, the Saint prostrated himself on the ground in adoration and he was heard to repeat with profound humility the words of St. Elizabeth and those of St. Peter, “How is this, that my Lord should come to me?” “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). And how many times was the angelic and seraphic St. Gemma tempted to not receive Holy Communion, holding herself to be nothing else than a vile dunghill!”
Padre Pio of Pietrelcina used to repeat with trepidation to his brethren, “God sees blights even in the angels. What must He see in me!” For this reason he was very diligent in making his sacramental Confessions.
“Oh, if we could only understand Who is that God Whom we receive in Holy Communion, then what purity of heart we would bring to Him!” exclaimed St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi.
For this reason St. Hugh, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis de Sales, St. Ignatius, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Francis Borgia, St. Louis Bertrand, St. Joseph Cupertino, St. Leonard of Port Maurice and many other saints went to Confession every day before celebrating Holy Mass.
St. Camillus de Lellis never celebrated Holy Mass without first going to Confession, because he wanted at least “to dust off” his soul. Once, at sundown in a public square in Livorno, before taking leave of a priest of the same religious order, foreseeing that he would not have a priest to confess to on the following morning before his Mass, paused, took off his hat, made the sign of the Cross and went to Confession right there in the square to his confrere.
Also St. Alphonsus, St. Joseph Cafasso, St. John Bosco, St. Pius X, and Padre Pio of Pietrelcina went to Confession very often. And why did St. Pius X wish to lower the age for First Holy Communion to seven years, if not to allow Jesus to enter into the innocent hearts of children, which are so similar to angels. And why was Padre Pio so delighted when they brought him children five years old who were prepared for First Holy Communion?
The saints applied to perfection the directive of the Holy Spirit, “Let everyone first examine himself, and then eat of that Bread and drink of that Chalice; because he who eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks unto his own condemnation” (1Cor. 11:28-29).
To examine themselves, to repent, to accuse themselves in Confession and to ask pardon of God, and in this way even every day profit from the Sacrament of Confession, was something natural for the saints. How fortunate they were to be capable of so much! The fruits of sanctification were constant and abundant because the purity of soul with which each saint welcomed into himself Jesus, “the Wheat of the elect,” (Zach. 9:17) was like the good ground “… which brings forth fruit in patience” (Luke 8:15).
St. Anthony Mary Claret illustrates this fact very well: “When we go to Holy Communion, all of us receive the same Lord Jesus, but not all receive the same grace nor are the same effects produced in all. This comes from our greater or lesser disposition. To explain this fact, I will take an example from nature. Consider the process of grafting, the more similar the one plant is to the other, the better the graft will succeed. Likewise, the more resemblance there is between the one that goes to Communion and Jesus, so much the better will the fruits of Holy Communion be.” The Sacrament of Confession is in fact the excellent means whereby the similarity between the soul and Jesus is restored.
For this reason St. Francis de Sales taught his spiritual children “Go to Confession with humility and devotion … if it is possible, every time that you go to Holy Communion, even though you do not feel in your conscience any remorse of mortal sin.”
Read rest