What Should We Do When We Have Sinned?

from Searching for and Maintaining Peace by Fr. Jacques Philippe

From all that we have just said, there flows a rule of conduct that is very important to keep in mind when we should happen to commit a fault. We certainly must feel sorry for having sinned, ask God for pardon, humbly beg Him to accord us the grace not to offend Him again in this way, and resolve to go to confession at an opportune moment.

Without making ourselves sad or discouraged, we should recover our peace as quickly as possible thanks to graces from on high, and resume our normal spiritual life as if nothing had happened. The more quickly we recover our peace, the better it will be! We make much more progress in this way than by becoming irritated with ourselves!

A very important, concrete example is the following: When we commit some fault or other, under the assault of a trial that seizes us, we are often tempted to grow slack in our prayer life, to not spend, for example, our usual time in silent meditation. And we manage to find good justification for this: “How can I who have just fallen into sin, who have offended the Lord, how can I present myself before Him in this state?”

And we need sometimes several days before we can resume our normal habits of prayer. But this is a grave error; this is nothing but false humility inspired by the devil. We must above all not change our habits of prayer.

Quite the contrary. Where will we find healing for our faults if not close to Jesus? Our sins are a very poor pretext for distancing ourselves from Him, because the more we sin, the more we have a right precisely to approach Him who says: The healthy are not in need of a doctor – the sick are…Indeed I came not to call the righteous, but sinners (Matthew 9:12-13).

If we wait until we are saints to have a regular life of prayer, we could wait a long time. On the contrary, it is in accepting to appear before the Lord in our state of sin that we will receive healing and will be transformed, little by little, into saints.

There is an important illusion that must be exposed: we would like to present ourselves before the Lord only when we art presentable, well-groomed and content with ourselves! In effect, we would like to bypass the need for mercy. But what is the nature of this pseudo-sanctity to which we sometimes aspire unconsciously and which would result in our thinking that we no longer have need of God?

True sanctity is, on the contrary, to increasingly recognize how much we absolutely depend upon His mercy!

To conclude, let us cite a last passage from The Spiritual Combat that recaptures everything we have said and indicates to us the path we should take when we have committed some kind of fault. It is entitled, “What one must do when one receives a wound in spiritual battle!”

When you feel wounded, that is to say, when you feel that you have committed some fault, whether it be from pure weakness or with reflection and malice, do not distress yourself too much over that; do not allow yourself to become chagrined and irritated; but address yourself immediately to God and tell Him, with humble confidence: “It is now, oh, my God, that I can see what I am. For what can one expect from a weak and blind creature like me but wrongdoing and failure?” Stop yourself there and imagine a sharp pain because of your fault.

Then, without becoming troubled, turn all of your anger against the passions that dominate you, principally against those that were the cause of your sin.

Lord, you will say, I could have committed a much worse crime if by your infinite goodness you had not saved me.

Afterwards, render a thousand thanks to the Father of Mercies; love Him more than ever, seeing that, far from resenting the hurt you just caused Him, He still extends His hand to you, for fear that you will fall again into a similar mess.

Finally, full of confidence, tell Him: “Show me, oh, my God, that which you are; help a humiliated sinner to feel your divine mercy; forgive me all my offenses; do not permit me to separate or distance myself from You, however little; fortify me with Your grace, so that I may never offend You again.”

After that, don’t try to determine whether God has pardoned you or not. That would be to upset yourself uselessly. It is a waste of time. It stems from pride and the illusions of the devil who, by disquieting your spirit, seeks to harm and torment you.

Rather, abandon yourself to His divine mercy and continue your exercises with your usual tranquility as if you had hardly committed any fault. Even should you have offended God several times in a single day, never lose confidence in Him, practice what I tell you, the second, the third and the last time as the first….

This way of combating the devil is the one that he fears the most because he knows that it pleases God very much and it always throws him into a great confusion, seeing himself overcome by the very person he was able to conquer so easily in other encounters.

So, if a fault that you may unfortunately have committed causes you to be troubled and discouraged, the first thing that you should do is to try to recover your peace of soul and your confidence in God…

To finish this point, we would like to add a remark: It is true that it is dangerous to do wrong and we must do everything we can to avoid doing wrong. But let us recognize that, given the way we are made, it would be dangerous for us to do only good!

In effect, marked by original sin, we have a deeply rooted tendency toward pride that makes it difficult for us, and even impossible, to do good without appropriating a little of it for ourselves, without attributing it, at least in part, to our abilities, our merits or our sanctity! If the Lord did not permit us, from time to time, to do wrong, to acquire some imperfection, we would be in great danger!

We would quickly fall into presumptuousness and contempt of others. We would forget that everything comes freely from God.

And nothing precludes true love more than this pride. In order to protect us from this great evil, the Lord sometimes allows a lesser evil which consists in committing some kind of fault, and we should thank Him for that, because without this safety net we would be in great danger of being lost!

 

Thank God for those people in your life that He has given you. Make time for them. Life passes quickly and we need to show our loved ones that they are our priority. -Finer Femininity www.finerfem.com

Are you Catholic? Have an altar boy? You are going to want to grab this beautiful set!

Based on the beautiful prayer poem by Saint John Berchmans here is a 26 page set with copy work in both print and cursive as well as notebooking pages, coloring pages, and color bookmarks. Designed for grades 3-8. 26 pages total…

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Our Difficulty in Believing in Providence

I know you are feeling it….we all are. Remember….

Searching for and Maintaining Peace by Father Jacques Phillipe

The first obstacle is that, as long as we have not experienced concretely the fidelity of Divine Providence to provide for our essential needs, we have difficulty believing in it and we abandon it.

We have hard heads, the words of Jesus do not suffice for us, we want to see at least a little in order to believe!

Well, we do not see it operating around us in a clear manner. How, then, are we to experience it?
It is important to know one thing: we cannot experience this support from God unless we leave him the necessary space in which he can express himself. I would like to make a comparison.

As long as a person who must jump with a parachute does not jump out into the void, he cannot feel that the cords of the parachute will support him, because the parachute has not yet had the chance to open.

One must first jump and it is only later that one feels carried. And so it is in the spiritual life: “God gives in the measure that we expect of Him,” says St. John of the Cross.

And St. Francis De Sales says: “The measure of Divine Providence acting on us is the degree of confidence that we have in it.”

This is where the problem lies.
Many do not believe in Providence because they’ve never experienced it, but they’ve never experienced it because they’ve never jumped into the void and taken the leap of faith.

They never give it the possibility to intervene.
They calculate everything, anticipate everything, they seek to resolve everything by counting on themselves, instead of counting on God.

The founders of religious orders proceed with the audacity of this spirit of faith. They buy houses without having a penny, they receive the poor although they have nothing with which to feed them. Then, God performs miracles for them. The checks arrive and the granaries are filled.

But, too often, generations later, everything is planned, calculated. One doesn’t incur an expense without being sure in advance to have enough to cover it. How can Providence manifest itself?

And the same is true in the spiritual life.

If a priest drafts all his sermons and his talks, down to the least comma, in order to be sure that he does not find himself wanting before his audience, and never has the audacity to begin preaching with a prayer and confidence in God as his only preparation, how can he have this beautiful experience of the Holy Spirit, who speaks through his mouth?

Does the gospel not say,… Do not worry about how to speak or what you should say; for what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes; because it will not be you who will be speaking, but the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you (Matthew 10:19)?

Let us be very clear. Obviously we do not want to say that it is a bad thing to be able to anticipate things, to develop a budget or prepare ones homilies. Our natural abilities are also instruments in the hands of Providence!

But everything depends on the spirit in which we do things.

We must clearly understand that there is an enormous difference in attitude of heart between one, who in fear of finding himself wanting because he does not believe in the intervention of God on behalf of those who lean on Him, programs everything in advance to the smallest detail and does not undertake anything except in the exact measure of its actual possibilities, and one who certainly undertakes legitimate things, but who abandons himself with confidence in God to provide all that is asked of him and who thus surpasses his own possibilities.

And that which God demands of us always goes beyond our natural human possibilities!

“We must live in the present moment. This is the only moment within our hands, the only one that can make us happy. The past exists no more; let us leave it to the Divine Mercy. And, though it does not yet exist, let us entrust the future to God’s loving Providence and live happily in the present.” -Fr. Narciso Irala, S.J., Achieving Peace of Heart http://amzn.to/2soEBXz (afflink) Painting by Thomas Danthony

The past three days Rosie and I spent some days of recollection at the Benedictines of Mary at Gower, Missouri….Praying for our nation especially. It was a beautiful time.

The nuns are well aware of what is going on in our country and lifting everything up in prayer through their holy, sacrificial lives.

Mother Abbess has a message for us all…Please share.

Dear Friends,

Many have asked our prayers during these days, and many propose earthly solutions. There is one that was given from heaven centuries ago: the Most Holy Rosary. Our Lady came to remind us of this at Fatima, and asked for the Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart. In the last century, anticipating the fulfillment of this request, the Bishops and families of Portugal consecrated themselves and their nation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. They were thus spared from both the Spanish Civil War and World War II.

Many Consecrations have been neglected in the past, and freedom has consequently suffered.

On this First Saturday, or as soon as possible, let all heads of households Consecrate themselves and our Nation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary; all others present need only say the ejaculation “Jesus, Mary, I trust in you,” and then follow the Solemn act with the recitation of the Rosary.

As the Angel of Peace told the children at Fatima, “The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are attentive to the voice of your supplication.” May their Hearts grant us peace, and bless and strengthen each one of us.

In the Heart of Mary,
Mother Cecilia, Abbess

 

 

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Be Indulgent, Be of Good Cheer! – My Prayer Book, Fr. Lasance

Two very important lessons to heed in these tidbits from Father Lasance:

Painting by Alfredo Rodriguez

From My Prayer Book

There is a word which can not be said too often to every Christian whom God has destined to live, converse, and labor in the society of his fellow-creatures: Be indulgent. Yes, be indulgent; it is necessary for others, and it is necessary for your own sake.

Forget the little troubles that others may cause you;  keep up no resentment for the inconsiderate or unfavorable words that may have been said about you; excuse the mistakes and awkward blunders of which you are the victim; always make out good intentions for those who have done you any wrong by imprudent acts of speeches; in a word, smile at everything, show a pleasant face on all occasions, maintain an inexhaustible fund of goodness, patience, and gentleness.

Thus you will be at peace with all your brethren; your love for them will suffer no alteration, and their love for you will increase day by day. But above all, you will practice in an excellent manner Christian charity, which is impossible without this toleration and indulgence at every instant. -Russell, The Art of Being Happy

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Let us take heed of the habits, tastes, and even the little hobbies of those around us, in order not to cross them in anything, especially our superiors and our kinsfolk.

There are a thousand minute details of manner and conduct, insignificant in themselves no doubt, but to which some, especially old people and nervous people, attach so much importance that a slight negligence with regard to one of these little points puts them in bad humor for a whole day.

There is question, for instance, of shutting a door, of making a little too much noise going upstairs, of being punctual to some appointment, of playing one game rather than another, of listening to a story that we have heard a hundred times before.

A thoughtless or overbearing person will despise such petty matters as mere trifles, and, in despising them, will spoil all the comfort of some one perhaps to whom he owes gratitude and respect.

A more pliant and more amiable Christian will, for virtue’s sake, submit to what is required of him, his fellow-creatures; and he will himself enjoy that sweet satisfaction which charity secures for us when it is joined to humility.

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Be of Good Cheer!

“Be of good cheer!” “Be of good heart!” “Have confidence!” “Fear ye not!” So said Our Lord on various occasions.

And the Apostle admonishes us not to be anxious about our affairs, but to trust in the loving kindness of God, “Casting all your care upon Him; for He hath care of you” (1 Peter v.7).

Don’t brood over what is past; forget it!

Be not too eager and anxious in the present.

Do your best; leave the rest to God, your good Father in heaven; keep your peace.

Don’t worry about the future. What is the use of doing so? When you see trouble, blessing may really be in store for you. Hope for the best. Accept what happens philosophically. Always act with a pure intention and with deliberation.

The author of “The Art of Being Happy” says:

“A great secret for preserving peace of heart is to do nothing with over eagerness, but to act always calmly without trouble or disquiet. We are not asked to do much, but to do well.

At the Last Day God will not examine if we have performed a multitude of works, but if we have sanctified our souls in doing them. Now the means of sanctifying ourselves is to do everything for God and to do perfectly whatever we have to do.

The works that have as their motive vanity or selfishness make us neither better nor happier, and we shall receive no reward for them.”

Cultivate a cheerful temper. Says the Wise Man in the Book Proverbs: “A joyful mind maketh age flourish: a sorrowful spirit drieth up the bones” (Prov. xvii.22).

Look at the bright side of things.

“Two men looked out through their prison bars;

The one saw mud, and the other stars.” – Stevenson

“A poet,” writes Father Russell, “was gazing one day at a beautiful rose-tree, ‘What a pity’, said he, ‘that these roses have thorns!’

A man who was passing by said to him: ‘Let us rather thank our good God for having allowed these thorns to have roses.’

Ah! how ought we also to thank Him for so many joys that He grants to us in spite of our sins, instead of complaining about the slight troubles that He sends us!”

“The soul of one who loves God always swims in joy, always keeps holiday, and is always in a mood for singing.”
-St. John of the Cross

As Sr. Lucia of Fatima said this is a time of diabolical disorientation. We find an amazing type or image of this in the life of St. John of the Cross. To conquer this inversion, as St. John did, we must remain firm and steadfast in our faith and employ the power of the Most Holy Trinity in casting the devil out of our lives. This is always done through the making of the Sign of the Cross.

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My Little Story About the Rosary….

A repost for the month of the Holy Rosary:

Here is my little story of the Rosary…..

I’m a slow learner.

Sometimes it just takes me a long time to “get” some things.

At the tender age of twenty, the Rosary and the Consecration to Our Lady (St. Louis de Montfort style) was what set my feet on solid ground in a world that spun around me with all sorts of “answers” to life’s problems. And I wanted answers.

My friends were leaving the Catholic Church that was rocked by liberalism and they were going to greener pastures. It was all beckoning to me. The Catholic Church I attended didn’t seem to hold out any answers. I had attended a Catholic School and went to Mass every Sunday all my growing up years. I was involved in youth groups and church choirs. And yet I didn’t know about the True Presence until I was almost 20 years old! There was an emptiness…. but I didn’t know what the problem was.

Then something happened. I went to a few classes on St. Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion to Mary. I didn’t like them but I stepped out in faith and began by saying a decade of the rosary each day (while my thoughts traveled to those naysayers saying  “repetition of words are useless…dumb”….they also said…”IDOLATRY…you can’t pray to Mary”) but I persevered…..And then I consecrated myself to Our Lady…(once again, the horrible doubts and misgivings…) I did it anyway. It was not very comfortable.

I met hubby. We began our courtship and our marriage with the rosary…daily. It was a commitment. It wasn’t wonderful…or beautiful…. It was a commitment.

We had children. Many children. We said the rosary. So often, it seemed fruitless. Life was so distracted, so wrought with the everyday little crosses and duties…but it was a commitment and we stuck to it.

I knew it was a good thing. I knew Our Lady asked for the Family Rosary at Fatima:“I am the Lady of the Rosary. Continue to always pray the Rosary every day.” I believed. I was committed. Hubby was always committed. 🙂

I see now the fruits. I look around at a very crazy world and thank God through tears for what He has given to us…through no merit of our own.

I know that we could have really messed up. We were two people coming from very different backgrounds….both very strong-willed. We made our mistakes…..but we had the Rosary. And we stuck with it, day in and day out, year after year.

A family that prays together, stays together. I know that is not everything. If we have an open heart, the Rosary gives us the graces to make the necessary changes as we need them.

The Daily Family Rosary. Steady, Constant. Amid the crosses of daily life with many children, the misunderstandings between husband and wife, the financial burdens…we had the rosary.

When the kids got hurt or sick, when I was very ill, when hubby was in the hospital and we had no money to pay, through tragedies, accidents and fires, when I didn’t understand why God was letting things happen to us…. we were saying the Rosary.

Steady and constant, we prayed it every day, amid slouching kids, tired husband, cranky, pregnant wife.

Thank God for that Rosary. I know my life is not done yet. We still have children at home, children who can….and will….make a lot of mistakes. But for the record, they all (married ones, too) put their Faith first, amid their own struggles. They say the daily Rosary and it will be what holds them together through thick and thin.

If you have troubles, say the Rosary. If, amid your noisy and boisterous family, you are suffering loneliness, say the Rosary. Do you have fears and worries? Say the Rosary. Are your rosaries dry and distracted?…Keep saying it.

Truly, who knows better than Our Lady, Our Mother, our humanness, our failings, how small we are, how distracted we are. She will help. Persevere. Don’t give up.

It is just now that I am beginning more to understand the beauty, the mystery, the  deep, interior, spiritual growth that can take place through the Rosary. Like I said, I am a slow learner.

I am glad that God is very, very patient.

He has given us a very special gift. Don’t take it for granted and don’t go a day without saying it!

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The Annunciation “Hail, Full of Grace”

Another day had begun in the little home of Nazareth – a quiet, cool March day. Mary would spend it as she had spent countless others, quietly working about the house.

An ordinary girl, Mary, as the world judges; ordinary like the rest of the villagers, like Joseph…

Suddenly an angel was by her side: “Hail, full of grace!“

An ordinary person would be rather disturbed by such a visitor, and by such a greeting. And Mary was! “She was troubled at his word.“

The angel had implied that Mary loved God with all her heart, soul, mind, strength; that she loved God enough to become His Mother.
Loving God wholeheartedly – like Mary, I was created to do just that – and being “ordinary“ puts no barriers in my way!

“It is difficult for a child to be better than his home environment or for a nation to be superior to the level of its home life. In fulfilling its double purpose – the generation and formation of children – the home becomes a little world in itself, self-sufficient even in its youngest years. It is vital that you, as a mother or father, make of your home a training ground in character-building for your children, who will inherit the world’s problems. Home is a place in which the young grow in harmony with all that is good and noble, where hardship, happiness, and work are shared.” – Father Lawrence G. Lovasik

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Advent Package Special! The Catholic Mother’s Traditional Advent Journal & Celine’s Advent

 Available here.

Available individually here.

Details

The Catholic Mother’s Traditional Advent Journal:
Advent is such a special season! And you are about to make it more meaningful than you ever have!
This Advent journal is for busy moms who need a little help making this season special within the home. It will help you stay on track and be consistent with the customs you have decided to incorporate within your four walls.
I have broken it down into bite-sized tidbits that, when laid out for you, will be easy to accomplish. As you check each item off you will get a sense of fulfillment knowing you are getting done what is truly important in this expectant season! The other things will get done….but first things first!
At midnight, on Christmas Eve, when Baby Jesus arrives, you and your family will look back upon your Advent and sigh with satisfaction, knowing you truly have celebrated with the Church, that you have put your best foot forward in making this a spiritual, enchanting, holy time for all!
The first few pages of this book will have a run-down of the special Advent customs and activities that will be on your checklist each day. They are simple, they are doable.
I hope this Advent is more special than ever as we walk hand-in-hand making the Liturgy come alive in our homes!

Celine’s Advent:
Take a walk through Advent as Celine and her family prepare for the coming of the Baby Jesus at Christmas! You will enjoy celebrating the beauty of the season with Celine as she helps her mom with the special traditions and activities that make the liturgy come alive in their home! Her “peanut gallery” consists of a mouse named Percy and some charming and delightful Christmas Angels! They are sure to capture your heart!

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Women historically have been denigrated as lower than men or viewed as privileged. Dr. Alice von Hildebrand characterizes the difference between such views as based on whether man’s vision is secularistic or steeped in the supernatural. She shows that feminism’s attempts to gain equality with men by imitation of men is unnatural, foolish, destructive, and self-defeating. The Blessed Mother’s role in the Incarnation points to the true privilege of being a woman. Both virginity and maternity meet in Mary who exhibits the feminine gifts of purity, receptivity to God’s word, and life-giving nurturance at their highest.

You’ll learn how to grow in wisdom and in love as you encounter the unglamorous, everyday problems that threaten all marriages. As the author says: If someone were to give me many short bits of wool, most likely I would throw them away. A carpet weaver thinks differently. He knows the marvels we can achieve by using small things artfully and lovingly. Like the carpet weaver, the good wife must be an artist of love. She must remember her mission and never waste the little deeds that fill her day the precious bits of wool she s been given to weave the majestic tapestry of married love.

This remarkable book will show you how to start weaving love into the tapestry of your marriage today, as it leads you more deeply into the joys of love.

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“Despite My Littleness…” – St. Therese, the Little Flower

Happy Feast of St. Therese of Lisieux!

by Father Jacques Philippe, The Way of Trust and Love – A Retreat Guided by St. Therese of Lisieux

Thérèse wanted to be a saint not out of ambition or vainglory, but in order to love God as much as he can be loved. That is completely in accordance with the Gospel.

She also very much wanted to be useful to the Church, and she felt that the only way she could do that was by aiming for holiness with all her strength.

But … alas, I have always realized, when I compared myself to the saints, that there is between them and me the same difference as exists between a mountain whose summit is lost in the heavens, and the obscure grain of sand trodden underfoot by passers-by.

Thérèse very soon realized that what she wanted was impossible. Despite all her good will and her ardent desires, she was quickly brought face-to-face with her limitations and had the feeling that her desire for holiness was inaccessible, unrealizable. She felt as though there were the same distance between that ideal of holiness and what she could actually do as between a high mountain and a grain of sand.

It should be said that at the time she lived, at the end of the nineteenth century, people still tended to identify the idea of sainthood with the kind of exceptional perfection that involved heroic enterprises, extraordinary graces, etc.

Thérèse felt an insuperable distance between that model and what she was in her everyday life. Her words should be taken very seriously. She was faced with a real difficulty and unquestionably went through a real inner crisis. The temptation in that kind of situation is discouragement: I’ll never get there!

How did Thérèse react? She goes on:

Instead of getting discouraged, I said to myself: “God could not inspire us with desires that were unrealizable, so despite my littleness I can aspire to holiness.”

Here is a very beautiful aspect of Thérèse’s spiritual personality: her great simplicity, her trust in God. If God has put this desire in me—and I’ve had it for years, that’s why I entered Carmel—then it must be realizable. The desire has always been with me. It can’t be an illusion, because God is just in all his ways.

We are looking at one of the paradoxes of Thérèse’s life: on the one hand, great psychological weaknesses and great sufferings; but despite this, on the other hand, always great desires.

Lest we idealize Thérèse, recall what she was like at almost fourteen, before the healing grace that came to her at Christmas 1886.

She was a very intelligent little girl, but she had not followed a normal school life because she could not adapt to the school run by Benedictine sisters to which she had been sent. She was hypersensitive, very dependent on others, and had an enormous need for gratitude.

When she had done some little act of service, such as watering the flowers, and no one thanked her, it was a full-scale drama for her. If by chance she had hurt someone she loved, she cried about it, and then, as she says, “cried for having cried.” “I was so oversensitive that I was unbearable.”

She was “enclosed in a narrow circle that she could not get out of.”

Yet at the same time she had a very deep life of prayer and a true desire for holiness. It took the grace of Christmas 1886 to sort out this tangle, so to speak. I shall say a little about it here, and invite you to read the passage where she describes it.

Briefly, then, after Communion at Midnight Mass, our Lord inspired Thérèse to make an act of courage to overcome her hypersensitivity. The youngest of the Martin girls, she was still treated rather like a child: at Christmas, there were gifts left for her by the fireplace, and so on.

Their father, Mr. Martin, despite his affection for his youngest child, was beginning to be a little tired of all this. The comment escaped him, “This is the last time, luckily!”

Thérèse heard this and it hurt her terribly; she was tempted, as usual, to cry like a child, which would have spoilt the whole family’s Christmas.

She tells how she received a grace at that moment which can be understood as follows. It was as if God made her understand, “That’s it, finished.”

She received a sort of intuition, like a call from the Holy Spirit: “No, Thérèse, that childishness is over, you can’t let yourself go and spoil Christmas for the others!” That is not exactly what the text says, but I think that’s what it means.

So she made an act of courage: she acted as though nothing had happened, looked as joyful and happy as she could, unwrapped her presents with laughter and thanks, and, astonishingly, was cured from that moment on.

She herself says she recovered the strength of mind she had lost at the age of four when her mother died, an event that traumatized her and lay at the root of all her emotional fragility.

After that, she was able to enter Carmel and embark on her wonderful, courageous way of life, undertaking a “giant’s race,” as she puts it.

I am telling you this to help you understand something:

It may happen that God works a deep cure in us through totally insignificant events. Sometimes we are called by God to come out of ourselves, to take several steps forward, to become more adult and free.

We turn round and round inside ourselves, enclosed in our immaturity, complaints, lamentations, and dependencies, until suddenly a day of grace arrives, a gift from God, who nevertheless also calls upon our freedom.

We have a choice to make, for it is at the same time a cure and a conversion: our freedom has to opt for an act of courage.

Making an act of courage even over some very small thing, which is what God is asking of us, can open the gate to in-depth cures, to a new freedom granted us by God.

We all need cures in order to become more adult in the faith, to be courageous in waging the battle that we must wage in the Church today. To be a Christian in this day and age is not easy.

We will receive the courage and strength it requires if we can say yes to what God asks of us.

So let’s put this question to God: “What is the ‘yes’ you are asking me for today? The little act of courage and trust you’re calling me to make today?” What is the little conversion, the door that opens to let in the Holy Spirit? For if we make it, God’s grace will visit us and touch us in the depths of our being.

I am convinced that many of us will receive new strength from God. The door through which this strength enters us is the “yes” we say to our Lord to something he asks of us—something perhaps very small, perhaps rather more important, according as he gives us to understand.

“At a certain moment when going to confession to a Capuchin father, St. Therese came to understand that it was just the opposite: her “defects did not displease God” and her littleness attracted God’s love, just as a father is moved by the weakness of his children and loves them still more as soon as he sees their good will and sincere love.” -Fr. Jacques Philippe,The Way of Trust and Love, http://amzn.to/2fpXVzl Painting by Millie Childers

Happy Feast of St. Therese of Lisieux! Dear Little Flower, pray for us!

Follow this link for instructions on how to make the Sacrifice Beads, invented by St. Therese!

A coloring page for your little people….

A conference by Bishop Fulton Sheen:

Miracles of the Little Flower:

A little reminder of the devotion of Divine Mercy along with the teaching of the little flower on having trust in Our Lord.

Saints Louis & Zelie/ St. Therese Graceful Religious Items at Meadows of Grace.

• Warm up with this delicious assortment of autumn inspired teas
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• Part of Harney and Sons Historic Royal Palace line
• Each tin contains 30 sachets
• A sweet and spicy black tea

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Our Best Friends, The Angels – Maria Von Trapp, Fr. Paul O’Sullivan

 Happy Feast of the Guardian Angels! The spiritual world is very alive, very real!! Let’s not forget these angels and the role they have in our lives!

From Around the Year With the Trapp Family by Maria Von Trapp

THE ANGELS

Long before our little children learn to know Peter Rabbit, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and Winnie the Pooh, they must be made familiar with their most faithful companion–their best friend, their guardian angel.

The beauty of telling stories to little ones lies in their ready acceptance.

They believe that their guardian angel is around all the time, day and night, and they will talk to him, greeting him in the morning, discussing things with him during the day, thanking him in the evening.

When children grow up with a strong sense of a spiritual power at their service, instituted by God for the very special and sole purpose of being their very own helper and protector, such children need never be afraid, need never suffer from the modern ailment of insecurity.

It is up to us mothers to bring about this early and very personal friendship with their guardian angel. The feast of the Holy Guardian Angel on October 2nd should be a big event in our nurseries.

Once children are familiar with the world of the angels they will eagerly listen to other “angel stories” such as the one about the great hero Michael (whose feast day is September 29th) and his battle with his brother-angel Lucifer, who refused to serve God and had to be thrown out of heaven into the abyss where there is “weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

A beautiful story is the one about the Archangel Raphael (feast day, October 24th), who was the friend and companion of young Tobias. Johannes Brahms set a lovely song about St. Raphael to music; we always sing it on that day.

And as we tell the children about the good angels, we shall also have to mention the bad ones who turned into devils. If the highest of them,

Satan himself, dared to tempt Our Lord, who are we to think that it “can’t happen to us” or that such stories belong to the Middle Ages and do not apply to modern times?

What St. Peter says to all of us we must tell to the little ones as well “Watch and pray, for the devil goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.”

From An Easy Way to Become a Saint, Fr. Paul O’Sullivan

OUR ANGEL GUARDIAN

One of the most marvelous dispensations of God’s Providence is the fact that He has given to each one of us a special Angel to watch over us.

At the moment of our birth God calls one of His glorious Princes, one of His mighty Angels, and bids this Angel guard and guide, defend and protect us. From that moment, this mighty Angel gives us all his loving care. He never leaves us, night or day. His duty after loving God is to love us. He devotes all his intelligence, all his strength, all his care to shield us from hurt and harm.

We can form no idea of the evils and dangers he saves us from, the countless great favors he has done us and is doing us every day. Not content to use all his own power to help us, he is constantly praying for us to God.

Reading the story of St. Raphael in the Sacred Scriptures, we marvel at the infinite goodness of God in sending this great Angel to accompany the young Tobias on his long journey. The Angel proved to be a trusty friend.

He not only accompanied him on his journey, protecting him from every danger, but he also obtained for him a most happy marriage and abundant wealth. He brought him home safely, to the delight of his parents, who were anxiously awaiting his return.

As a final gift, he cured Tobias’s old father, who had been blind. Before leaving the now happy family, he revealed himself to them as one of the seven great Angels who stand before the throne of God and bade them bless and thank the Good God who had sent him to them.

This is certainly one of the most consoling and wonderful stories in the Bible, revealing to us the infinite sweetness and goodness of God. Yet each one of us has a glorious Prince of Heaven with us, not for weeks or months but for all the long years of our lives, loving us most affectionately, defending us from countless evils and snatching us from dangers that we do not even see.

This dear Angel came to us at the moment of our birth and has been with us ever since. He will console us in Purgatory if we go there and will then accompany us to Heaven, where he will be with us forever and forever.

We marvel when reading this story of Raphael, but it is a much greater marvel that we have a glorious Angel ever at our sides and yet know and love him so little. Have we ever even thanked God for this astounding proof of His goodness?

The culpable neglect of our dear Angel is one of the most lamentable and shameful faults of our life.

From All About the Angels by Fr. Paul O’Sullivan

WHY IGNORE OUR BEST FRIENDS?

“Make friends with the Angels” is the advice which the great Pope, St. Leo, gives every Christian and it is advice that everyone should follow.

If we make friends with the Angels —and nothing is easier— we shall receive innumerable and great favors which otherwise we shall never obtain.

Our Angel friends, too, will shield and protect us from countless dangers, evils, sickness and accidents which, without their help, we could not possibly avoid.

In a word, these all-powerful and loving protectors will secure for us a degree of happiness that, without their assistance, we could not hope for in this vale of tears! Another reason we should make friends with the Angels is that they are our dearest and best friends. A good friend, a friend who is able and always ready to help us, a friend to whom we can have recourse in all our troubles and sorrows, is one of the greatest blessings God can give us.

Our human hearts thirst for love and sympathy. Among men we rarely or never find such a friend, but this is not so with the Angels. They are most desirous to be our friends and they love us with all the intensity of their angelic natures.

Since they are all-powerful and generous, we can have the fullest confidence in their help and friendship.

The one friendship on this Earth that gives us any idea of the love of the Angels is the affection of a mother. This is the purest, the most generous, the strongest of all human loves.

The mother loves her children with unbounded affection. God has placed in the mother’s heart an instinct of love so great that it almost borders on the supernatural. She forgets herself and thinks only of her children. She works for them, sacrifices herself for them, and gives them her all.

If one of them should fall sick or be plunged into some great sorrow, to that one she devotes a more special gentleness and a more loving care.

We sometimes see a frail woman watch by the bedside of her sick child— eating little, resting little, consumed with a poignant anxiety —for ten, twenty or even thirty days, never complaining, and never faltering. When these days of anguish and bitterness are past, this almost superhuman effort, these long, weary vigils,’ seem to have cost her nothing. The mother’s love sustained her.

Yet, strong men who lose their sleep for two or three consecutive nights complain that they find it hard to work the following day.

If a poor frail mother— she may be young or old, rich or poor, full of weaknesses and imperfections— can rise to such a height of love and abnegation as this, what may we not expect from God’s Angels, who have no defects, no imperfections and who love us with all the mighty power of their glorious angelic natures?

The teaching of the Church about the Angels is most beautiful and consoling, but unfortunately many Christians have scant knowledge of the great world of the Angels. They know little about these blessed Spirits, love them little and seldom pray to them. Worst of all, they do not realize their presence.

They show no confidence in them, and they do not call on them for help when dangers and difficulties press around.

As a result they forfeit a thousand blessings that they might easily enjoy and fall victim to a thousand accidents that they might easily have avoided.

HOW COMES IT THAT THE ANGELS ARE SO LITTLE KNOWN AND SO LITTLE LOVED?

Simply because many, whose duty it is to teach this most important doctrine are gravely negligent in fulfilling their obligation.

First of all, Christian Mothers should instill deeply into the minds of their children a clear, vivid and abiding sense of the presence of their dear Angels.

It is not sufficient to give them vague, hazy, insufficient notions of these Blessed Spirits, nor is it enough to teach them to say a short prayer at morning and at night to their Angel Guardians.

They should devote much time and much attention to this all-important subject.

Children must be taught constantly from their tenderest years to have a real love and friendship for their Angels, to have boundless confidence in them. They must be accustomed to feel and realize the personal presence of their Angels, to call on them in all their fears and troubles.

How much better this would be than that the children should have their heads filled with foolish fear of ghosts and hobgoblins as so frequently happens.

Mothers who impress on their children this great lesson confer on them inestimable blessings during all the long years of their lives.

On the other hand, if they neglect this duty or make light of it, they do a great wrong to their dear ones for they deprive them of the best and most powerful friends.

Catechists, too, and teachers of the young in schools, colleges and convents are frequently remiss in teaching those in their charge all about the blessed Angels. The minds of their pupils are developing, and the teaching of the mothers in the home, no matter how good it might have been, must be perfected and developed.

Professors of older students, boys and girls, are perhaps greater offenders. They rarely mention the subject of the Angels in their classes.

Why? Do not the Angels exist? Are they not our best friends? Is there not much to be said about them?

Priests of course can do much to remedy the neglect of parents and teachers by preaching at times on the Angels, by wise counsels in the confessional and by exhorting the faithful to read books on the Angels. Priests who do so receive most striking graces.

We need to awaken in our hearts a real love and friendship for the Holy Angels, an abiding confidence in them, and above all to realize and feel vividly the presence of these loving Spirits ever by our sides.

A coloring page for your children:

The Scourging

Christ shrank from pain, but he did not refuse it. Late morning saw him flung against a praetorium pillar, while the hired man of Rome, giant barbarians with a muscle and moral sense of wild beasts, wore themselves out whipping and lashing Jesus near to death.
Every thump of the iron-weighted cords tore fresh fed rents in his flesh. Jesus, who the night before had turned wine to blood, now shed that blood like wine poured out.

His body is the chalice of his spilt-out blood, the cup He no longer asks his Father to remove.

When we ask God to relieve our sufferings, He sometimes answers our prayers with more wisdom by letting them continue. To accept pain as Jesus did, is to sanctify it – and myself.

“God has thus put into the hand of the parents at their own hearthstone, a power greater than that which kings and queens wield, and which must issue in either the weal or the woe of their children. It would surely seem to be worth while to make any sacrifice of personal comfort or pleasure—to transmit a legacy of holy memories which shall be through all the years, like a host of pure angels hovering over those we love, to guard and guide them.” J.R. Miller

Lovely Religious Pendants!

These graceful Vintaj necklaces can be worn every day as a reminder of your devotion. Get it blessed and you can use it also as a sacramental. Available here.

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Now that the weather is cooling, it is a good time to steep some tea, cuddle up to the fire and grab a good book. Visit My Book List for some good reading recommendations….

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Marianne of Molokai

Those who lay down their lives for their fellow men are not forgotten….

By Ward Clarke

The Mariposa was an ordinary little steamer which plied in obscurity between San Francisco and the Hawaiian Islands. She was not much to look at, but she was sturdy and, though no throngs ever greeted her arrival in port, she was satisfied wth her knowledge of work well done.

Yet, unknown as she was, one day she had her triumph, a day of glory such as never came even to those nobler and far more famous ships which shared her anchorages.

It was on the eighth of November in 1881 that she breasted her way with calm assurance into the familiar harbor of Honolulu, proud of her cargo, proud of her mission.

A great assemblage welled from deep in the city right up to the edge of the water. The crowd surged to the very string-piece of the wharf as she touched the landing.

Tumultuous cheering split the bright sky and the balmy air. Church bells rang wildly, and shouts of welcome arose on every side. Four royal carriages stood polished and shining at the dock, waiting for her, the Mariposa.

Slowly she warped her way to the pier, as lines were made clear. Sharp orders were given, as the gangplank was lowered and lashed in place. A sudden hush which had fallen on the expectant multitude broke with a spontaneous outcry of joy and happiness, for seven little Sisters of St. Francis had set foot on Honolulu’s soil and had stepped into the royal coaches.

There was good reason for this wild rejoicing, for to a people confused and crushed by the mysterious march of leprosy, which had claimed so many of their number, there had finally arrived a ray of hope, a sustaining hand for which they had waited so long.

True, for ten long years, they had had the heroic aid of the indomitable Father Damien, but now that valiant warrior himself lay near to death and addressed his pitiable congregation as “Fellow lepers.” Even he, the mighty one, had fallen prey to the terrifying disease, and realized that only the Sisters could carry on the work to which he had given his life.

For he knew, as the president of the Board of Health of Hawaii had said, that the lepers “were afflicted with a disease so peculiarly objectionable in its character and conditions that to cope with it with any possibilities of relief, it was not alone sufficient to be provided with skilled physicians and remedies, but with experienced and devoted nurses—especially women, endowed with that rare devotion to the cause of the sick and suffering that arises solely from the highest inspiration of Christian charity.”

And so had come the call which had brought Marianne and her six Franciscan Sisters to the fabled islands of the Southern Seas.

Marianne brought to Hawaii not the fire and enthusiasm of youth which seeks adventure, but the calm judgment and mature reasoning of her forty-seven years, twenty-one of which she had given to God’s service in the Sisterhood, during which period she had become Superior of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse and later Provincial Superior of her Order.

Thus, she was peculiarly equipped by training for the task which lay before her. The task was a gigantic one, calling for all the strength and patience at her command. But patience and strength had been bred in her bones on the day she was born in the far off little town of Heppenheim in the Province of Hesse-Darmstadt.

For her parents, Peter and Barbara Kopp, were of that hardy Hessian breed which had fought in successive centuries against Gaul, German, Hun, Goth, Vandal, and Saxon.

And when, a few years after the family’s arrival in the United States, her mother died, she was the little mother who cared for the other children of the family.

Her trials during these years did much to mold the character which marked her life. She began her work at once, after a cordial reception by Bishop Koeckemann at the Cathedral, and a royal audience at the palace of Queen Kapiolani and King Kalakaua.

Her first duty was to improve conditions at the Branch Hospital in Honolulu. Things there were in terrible shape. Male and female lepers were grouped together in a manner not permitted in the worst of penal institutions; gambling, opium smoking, and other evils were rampant. Dirt lay thick on every side.

Those in charge of the poor lepers were brutal men who diverted hospital funds to their own purpose. Sanitation was completely ignored, sterile methods were unknown, living quarters were abominable, and an air of absolute despair pervaded the atmosphere.

The afflicted ones were even tending the kitchen. And, in that mild climate, there were many days and nights when the weakened patients were actually blue with cold.

It would hardly have been surprising had the Sisters flinched before the appalling spectacle which confronted them. Had there not been such a great opportunity to exercise real charity and to work for the conversion of these souls to Christ, the tiny expedition might have come to early grief.

But, with a resolution born of her years of service, Mother Marianne took charge, and began to transform the place—physically, mentally, and morally. Clean and scrub, clean and scrub. That was the order of the day for months. Clean and scrub and sterilize.

And slowly, painstakingly, the Sisters worked a change. There was here no sudden martyrdom which the world applauds. There was no startling display of heroics which catches attention and wins the wonder of the on-looker. There was no single stroke of bravery which breaks into headlines in the news.

Here there were only that inner strength and that gift of grace which far surpass all other forms of courage, and that give one the heart to clean and scrub day after day, day after day, so that helpless souls might find relief from all their pain and suffering.

For five years, Marianne and her faithful Sisters labored to improve conditions in the Branch Hospital. And during those five years Marianne found time and strength to open many other hospitals and homes, always insisting that the surroundings must be clean both physically and morally.

And she succeeded so well in every effort that the ancient technique of merely letting the leper live in isolated squalor and helplessness was changed to the present procedure which calls for that constant attention and utmost cleanliness upon which she so strongly insisted.

Her success was so great that she was finally asked to go to Molokai, that gray, forbidding island whose name still strikes terror to those who remember the former state of its leper colony.

Father Damien, who had left Honolulu to take care of these most neglected of all the lepers, was rapidly succumbing to the ravages of the disease, and he pleaded with the Sisters to assume the labor which he knew he must soon relinquish. Molokai was dear to him, and he prayed that they would carry on his work.

And so began Marianne’s thirty years of service on Molokai. For she answered Father Damien’s plea at once, and took up her station on this isle of dread, where the most ravaged of the lepers were held in isolation from their fellow-men.

For thirty years, she ruled with a firm insistence on Godliness and cleanliness. With a faith born of her convictions, she predicted that none of her Sisters would ever contract the malady if proper precautions were taken.

And today, after more than fifty years of service, her Sisters bear witness to her faith, for not one has ever been stricken. Thus Marianne brought peace and hope to a broken and bewildered group of outcasts.

With her deep spirituality, she combated the ancient pagan superstitions and substituted for them the love of Christ. With her remarkable  ability for organizing, she built new churches and homes and hospitals. With her courage, she drove out the inefficient and cruel overseers who had had charge of the lepers.

With her deep insight into the value of beauty, she transformed much of Molokai’s ugly soil into flower beds which charmed the eye. For she was one of the first to recognize the therapeutic power of beautiful surroundings in aiding the mental outlook of the sick.

Finally, after thirty-five years of unremitting work among the lepers, Marianne’s labor in the vineyard came to an end. God took His servant who had worked for more than fifty years in His cause.

And at the foot of a little hill on which is an orange grove which she, herself, had planted, she was laid to rest. For her work was done, and she and Father Damien had won the fight.

For in Damien, Molokai had met its match, but in Marianne—its master.

Today there are many mighty monuments to mark the years of Marianne’s endeavors. Instead of the sloth and dirtiness, cramped quarters and utter neglect, which greeted her arrival, there now face the visitor the vast improvements for which she was mainly responsible.

The sun-baked, grisly plain of the leper colony is broken by flowers, gardens, trees, and wood-lots. Food is now raised where only desolate waste had reigned. Soft vegetation has taken the place of the glaring red-dust roads which met her eye.

Furthermore, in place of the bare rocky crags and windswept spaces of Molokai, there are now well-ordered settlements, cottages for the inhabitants of the island, and separate homes for the men and women lepers.

Hospitals abound, and the newest of scientific methods are practiced by doctors trained in research. The spirit of the lepers has risen from one of complete despair to one of hopeful resignation.

And for all these things the grateful colony reveres the memory of Marianne.

Yet, despite these magnificent achievements, there have been hardly any tributes from the world removed from Molokai. And that is the way that Marianne would want to have it.

But there is one great tribute from one who was not of her Faith, but who recognized her sanctity. It was written and dedicated to her by Robert Louis Stevenson after he visited her on the island.

To see the infinite pity of this place,

The mangled limb, the devastated face,

The innocent sufferers smiling at the rod,

A fool were tempted to deny his God.

He sees, and shrinks; but if he look again,

Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!

He marks the Sisters on the painful shores,

And even a fool is silent and adores.

And who can say that the great Robert Louis Stevenson ever uttered a greater truth in all his travels and in all his tales.

Oh Queen, my Mother, I give you my whole self. And to show my devotion to you, I offer to you my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my heart, my whole being. Wherefore, as I am your own, keep me, defend me, as your property and possession. By holding your hand, you lead me to your Son, and I have the surest and easiest path to heaven.

Excellent sermon! We need to trust God as little children trust their parents….

Do you need some good reading suggestions? Visit…

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Book List for Catholic Men

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In With God in Russia, Ciszek reflects on his daily life as a prisoner, the labor he endured while working in the mines and on construction gangs, his unwavering faith in God, and his firm devotion to his vows and vocation. Enduring brutal conditions, Ciszek risked his life to offer spiritual guidance to fellow prisoners who could easily have exposed him for their own gains. He chronicles these experiences with grace, humility, and candor, from his secret work leading mass and hearing confessions within the prison grounds, to his participation in a major gulag uprising, to his own “resurrection”—his eventual release in a prisoner exchange in October 1963 which astonished all who had feared he was dead.

Powerful and inspirational, With God in Russia captures the heroic patience, endurance, and religious conviction of a man whose life embodied the Christian ideals that sustained him…..

Captured by a Russian army during World War II and convicted of being a “Vatican spy,” Jesuit Father Walter J. Ciszek spent 23 agonizing years in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia. Only through an utter reliance on God’s will did he manage to endure the extreme hardship. He tells of the courage he found in prayer–a courage that eased the loneliness, the pain, the frustration, the anguish, the fears, the despair. For, as Ciszek relates, the solace of spiritual contemplation gave him an inner serenity upon which he was able to draw amidst the “arrogance of evil” that surrounded him. Ciszek learns to accept the inhuman work in the infamous Siberian salt mines as a labor pleasing to God. And through that experience, he was able to turn the adverse forces of circumstance into a source of positive value and a means of drawing closer to the compassionate and never-forsaking Divine Spirit.

He Leadeth Me is a book to inspire all Christians to greater faith and trust in God–even in their darkest hour. As the author asks, “What can ultimately trouble the soul that accepts every moment of every day as a gift from the hands of God and strives always to do his will?”
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Seventh & Eighth Letters Written by Brother Lawrence, Practice of the Presence of God – 17th Century

Seventh Letter (Written by Brother Lawrence)

Live and Die with God

Worship God with Confidence, Love and Humility

I pity and sympathize with you much. It will be of great importance if you can spend the remainder of your life worshiping God, and leave the care of your affairs to Him.

He requires no great things of us: a little remembrance of Him from time to time, a little adoration, sometimes to pray for His grace, sometimes to offer Him your sufferings, and sometimes to give Him thanks for the favors He has given you.

He gives you favors in the midst of your troubles. Console yourself with Him as often as you can. Lift up your heart to Him even at your meals and when you are with others. The least little remembrance will always be acceptable to Him.

You need not cry very loud, for He is nearer to us than we are aware.

It is not necessary to always be at church to be with God. We may make a silent speech with our heart, where we can retire from time to time to converse with Him in meekness, humility and love.

Everyone is capable of such intimate conversation with God, some more, some less. He knows what we can do. Let us begin then.

Perhaps He expects but one generous and charitable resolution from us. Have courage. We have but little time to live. You are nearly 64, and I am almost 80. Let us live and die with God.

Suffering will be sweet and pleasant to us while we are with Him, and the greatest pleasures will be a cruel punishment to us without Him.

May He be praised and blessed. Amen. Worship Him, beg His grace, offer Him your heart from time to time in the midst of all your work–every moment if you can.

Do not always follow certain rules or set forms of devotion, but act with a general confidence in God, with love and humility.

You may be assured of my poor prayers, and that I am their servant, and yours particularly.

Eighth Letter (Written by Brother Lawrence)

Confess Your Sins and Faults, and Humble Yourself

 How to Address Wandering Thoughts 

You are telling me nothing new. You are not the only one who is troubled with wandering thoughts. Our mind naturally roves about. As the will is mistress of all our faculties, she must recall such wandering thoughts and carry them to God as their last end.

The mind is not sufficiently focused when we first engage in devotion and worship. The mind develops certain bad habits of wandering and dissipation which are difficult to overcome, and commonly draw us even against our wills to the things of the earth.

I believe one remedy for this is to confess our sins and faults, and humble ourselves before God.

I do not advise you to use many words in prayer. Many words and long discourses are often the times when wandering thoughts occur. Use few words and be willing to be silent and still in prayer and devotion before God, like a mute or paralytic beggar at a rich man’s gate.

Let it be your business to keep your mind within the presence of the Lord.

If your mind sometimes wanders and withdraws itself from Him, do not become anxious. Trouble, anxiety and rumination tend to distract the mind, rather than allowing one to gather oneself and refocus.

Our wills must bring our minds back into tranquility. If you persevere in this manner, God will have pity on you.

One way to refocus the mind easily in the time of prayer and preserve it in tranquility is to prevent it from wandering too far at other times. Keep your mind strictly in the presence of God, and be accustomed to think of Him often. You will then find it easy to keep your mind calm in the time of prayer, or at least to refocus it from its wanderings.

I have told you already in detail within my former letters of the advantages we may draw from this practice of the presence of God. Let us pursue this practice seriously and pray for one another.

Foster Joy and Optimism….Insist upon joy and optimism as opposed to the sadness and discouragement which sometimes seem so natural. Do this by briefly changing your occupation and busying yourself with thoughts, readings and conversations which make the mind happy and elevate it. -Fr. Irala, Achieving Peace of Heart https://amzn.to/39e9tvq (afflink)

Painting by Albert Lynche, 1860

In the words of this humble seventeenth-century lay Carmelite, “We must trust God once and for all and abandon ourselves to Him alone.” This difficult task necessarily requires perseverance and continual conversation with God in all activities great and small: “speaking humbly and talking lovingly with Him at all times, at every moment, without rule or system…” In reading these conversations, letters, and spiritual maxims, we learn the key to endless joy.

In short, this little spiritual classic — in its fresh, contemporary English translation — renders the simple wisdom of Brother Lawrence accessible to every Christian who yearns for the fullness of life….
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Love is the Best Counselor – The Royal Way of Love

From Searching for and Maintaining Peace, Fr. Jacques Philippe

All things considered, this manner of going forward, based on peace, liberty, confident abandonment to God, quiet acceptance of our shortcomings and even of our failures, why is this the way to counsel? Why is it more correct than seeking the will of God, which is done with preoccupation, scruples and a tense and restless desire for perfection?

Because the only true perfection is that of love and, in the first way of proceeding, there is more true love of God than in the second. Saint Faustina said: “When I do not know what to do, I question love, for love is the best counselor!”

The Lord calls us to perfection: Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. But still, according to the Bible, the one who is most perfect is not the one who behaves in an irreproachable manner, but the one who loves most.

The behavior that is most perfect is not that which corresponds to the image that we sometimes form for ourselves of perfection, such as a comportment that is impeccable, infallible and spotless.

Rather, it is one where there is the most disinterested love of God and the least prideful pursuit of oneself.

One who accepts to be weak, small and who fails often, who accepts to be nothing in his own eyes or in the eyes of others, but who, without being excessively preoccupied with his situation, because he is animated by a great confidence in God and knows that his love is infinitely more important and counts ever so much more than his own imperfection and faults, this person loves more than one who pushes the preoccupation of his own perfection to the point of anxiety.

Happy are the poor in spirit for the Kingdom of God is theirs. Happy are they, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, who have learned to no longer make a drama of their poverty, but who accept it joyously because they put all their hope, not in themselves, but in God.

God Himself will be their wealth, He will be their perfection, their sanctity, their virtues. Happy are those who know how to love their poverty, because it is a marvelous opportunity for God to manifest the immensity of His Love and His Mercy. We will be saints the day when our inabilities and our nothingness will no longer be for us a subject of sadness and anxiety, but a subject of peace and joy.

This road of poverty, which is also the way of love, is the most efficacious for making us grow, for making us progressively acquire all of the virtues, for purifying us of our faults. Love alone is the source of growth, it alone is fruitful, and love alone purifies sin in depth: “The fire of love purifies more than the fires of purgatory,” Saint Therese of Lisieux tells us.

This approach, based on the joyous acceptance of one’s poverty is in no way equivalent to a resignation to mediocrity or an abdication of aspiring to perfection. Rather, it is the quickest and surest road to perfection because it puts us in the position of smallness, confidence and abandonment by which we are placed entirely in the hands of God Who can act in us by His grace and carry us Himself by pure mercy to the perfection that we, in no way, could achieve by our own strength.

“How beautiful it would be if, during their evening prayer together, there could be a pause such as the one for the examination of conscience during which time a husband and wife would pray silently for the other, recommending to God all the other’s intentions sensed, guessed, and known as well as those that only God the Master of consciences could know. Even more beautiful would it be if they would receive Holy Communion together frequently so that each of them could speak more intimately to Our Lord about the needs of the other, begging not only temporal but spiritual favors for this cherished soul. ” – Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J., Christ in the Home

The Valiant Woman

by Monseigneur Landriot, Archbishop of Rheims,
Translated from the French by Helena Lyons

“Long out of print, this rare jewel is destined to become the favored spiritual guide for Catholic wives and mothers. Msgr. Landriot gave these conferences over 100 years ago, but they are as relevant to us today as the Gospels. This book is a guide for women who want to achieve sanctity in the home. Reading this book is the best thing you could do for your husband and children, as well as for yourself. This book was published to help women to raise and keep their families Catholic.” – Loreto Publications

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“Cafeteria Catholics” by Father Kenneth Walker, FSSP, R.I.P.+

Father Walker, FSSP, R.I.P.+

In the mind of God there is a principle that governs all things in the universe. This principle is called the eternal law. All other kinds of law have a part in the eternal law, and among these is natural law. “Natural law is nothing else than the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law.” (ST I-II, Q. 91, A.2, Resp.)

All men are born with reason, so all men are called to participate in the natural law. “The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man, because it is human reason ordaining him to do good and forbidding him to sin.” (CCC 1954)

God does not change, and the fact that eternal law does not change follows from that. Since natural law wholly participates in the eternal law, it is immutable as well. Therefore, natural law, being permanent and immutable, is an objective reality which can decide the morality of an action.

All men have the recognition of the natural law, which is called synderesis. Men may choose to obey the voice of their synderesis, but since man has freewill, he can also act against it. Then how does this apply to people who have their own morals, and what does this have to do with the moral teachings of the Church?

The moral teachings of the Church are based on the Divine Revelation of the moral (or natural) law. “To the Church belongs the right always and everywhere to announce moral principles, including those pertaining to the social order, and to make judgments on any human affairs to the extent that they are required by the fundamental rights of the human person or the salvation of souls.” (CCC 2032)  These moral teachings are fundamentally unchangeable, for they come from the basis of the natural law.

The moral teachings of the Catholic Church cannot be wrong, for the Church’s infallibility “extends to all those elements of doctrine, including morals, without which the saving truths of the faith cannot be preserved, explained or observed” (CCC 2035). Those who are being taught by the Catholic Church must follow these elements of doctrine. They are the means by which Catholics will receive the truth.

There can only be one truth, which Christ testified to, and being that these moral teachings partake of this one truth, only these moral teachings are the correct ones.

Catholics who pick and choose what moral teachings they will follow are not justified in doing so, for, as Catholics, we believe in certain moral teachings laid down by Christ through the Church. If we do not follow these teachings, we stray from the path of heaven.

Yet even those who are partially ignorant of the Church’s teachings may not be held blameless in their actions. It is possible that they could have taken the time to find out more about the Church.

Since the moral teachings of the Church follow from the natural law, all men are taken into consideration. “The natural law, present in the heart of each man and established by reason, is universal in its precepts and its authority extends to all men.” (CCC 1956)

This does not mean that all men are responsible to know the teachings of the Church, for not all know of the Church, but they are responsible for leading a moral life in accordance with the natural law.

It is through the Church, though, that we learn natural law in its correct form. “The precepts of natural law are not perceived by everyone clearly and immediately. In the present situation, sinful man needs grace and revelation so moral and religious truths may be known by everyone with facility, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error.” (CCC 1960)

Therefore, all Catholics are obliged to find out the moral teachings of the Church at the times when they are not sure. They cannot just follow their own standards. It therefore depends a lot on what they know, and what they judge through their conscience.

One of the most difficult things to obtain in the spiritual life is a conscience fully developed in right judgment. When one eventually accomplishes this task, it is much easier to proceed in the moral life. “A good and pure conscience is enlightened by true faith, for charity proceeds at the same time from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith.” (CCC 1794)

For those who have not acquired a right conscience, and instead have an erroneous conscience, they will have a mistaken idea of what is right or wrong on many moral issues.

For example, a person with a right conscience knows that he must obey his superiors in all things as far as their authority reaches. On the other hand, a person with an erroneous conscience may not see a reason for a particular order, and so not obey it.

Most of the time, an erroneous conscience is the effect of selfishness, pride, or some other serious habitual sin. It leads one into a state of the soul that is difficult to overcome. So, keeping in mind these different states of conscience people can have, are Catholics who pick and choose which moral teachings they will follow in good conscience?

Before giving an answer on whether these Catholics are in good conscience or not, it would be good to elaborate on what is meant by “good conscience”.

Being in good conscience does not necessarily imply a right conscience; it simply means that one follows what his conscience tells him.

One must follow his conscience if he does not wish to sin, but this does not mean that his action is always morally good. It is possible for the action to be objectively wrong.

For example, if a father may give food to the poor, but his children go hungry, is he justified in giving away this food? No, but he may have thought that since the poor are hungrier than his children, he was right in doing so.

The fact that he is a father means that he must support his family, and this should be a higher priority to him than feeding the poor, even though this act of charity is still good theoretically.

The point, though, is that Catholics must be on their guard and be able to judge between what is right and wrong in a given situation. So, “good conscience being defined, it must be decided whether a Catholic who chooses his own moral standards is in good conscience or not.

A person judges by what they know, and Catholics are obliged to know their faith. A Catholic who picks and chooses which moral teachings he will follow is either going against his conscience by deliberately ignoring the fact that he must know his faith, or simply does not know that he must know his faith.

A man is able to make some judgments on moral issues by looking at natural law. A Catholic who follows his own moral standards goes against natural law, so he must know deep down in his heart that there is something wrong in the way he is practicing his faith.

Since he is “Catholic”, he must at some time in his life been introduced to some of the moral teachings of the Church. The ones who are least culpable are those who were taught so little about the faith that nothing morally concrete was ever formed in their minds.

Most Catholics, though, are informed enough to get this idea. Therefore, depending on their knowledge, the vast majority of those Catholics who do choose their own moral teachings to follow are not in good conscience.

“Life is too short to spend it doing things that don’t get you where you want to go. For instance, if it’s important to you to read aloud to your kids, but you find yourself rarely doing that, you’ll feel the disconnect and it will discourage you. You’ll feel off track and out of sorts, but might not be able to put your finger on why.
Spend some time thinking about what you DO want in your life. Then make those choices each day. When you live intentionally and with purpose, it will make a tremendous difference in your life and the lives of those you love.” – Charlotte Siems

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