Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

Sometimes, one priest must have the courage to challenge some of his brother priests by writing frankly and truthfully. This is the time. Thank you Father Mark for doing so. You Pass Me By Nothing so grieves my Heart as the coldness and indifference of priests and of consecrated souls to my living presence among them. Had they not the privilege of my abiding sacramental presence close at hand, they might be excused for the hardness of their hearts, but those who have me near, those who dwell close to my tabernacles have no excuse for the estrangement of their souls from the Sacrament of my Love. On the Day of Judgment I will hold them accountable for the neglect and indifference by which they alienated themselves from me, while I, the living God, the God who is love, the God who is all mercy and who sought their friendship and their company waited for them, and waited in vain. Even you, O my priests, my adorers, my chosen friends, consolers of ...

O Lord, have mercy on me a sinner! (Source unknown)

What is your response when you first come into the Presence of Your Lord? Do you adore Him by genuflecting before the tabernacle where He has been eagerly awaiting your arrival? When you get to the pew do you kneel down and talk to Him or do you spend the time before Mass catching up with your neighbors? What should your response be? There are valuable lessons to learn from Elizabeth 's reaction (and that of the child in her womb) to Mary's visitation.  "Who am I," the pregnant octogenarian asked as John the Baptist leaped for joy, "that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" Mary was the first tabernacle. Clearly, Elizabeth and her son recognized in whose Presence they were. When was the last time you leaped for joy (spiritually or physically) as you approached the tabernacle, or gazed upon Our Lord exposed in a Monstrance or when He was placed on your tongue? When you approach the sanctuary to receive the Body, Blood, So...

Respect for human life, from the moment of natural conception until the moment of natural death, is the only foundation for a just and moral society. These words are easy to say, but hard to live. Those who try to do so are often criticized and persecuted. Pray for him. Thanks to LifeNews. com for passing this on. Might you do the same?

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The "Yes" of Even One Soul Another Treasure b y    Father Mark No soul need ever be afraid of meeting my gaze, for in my eyes there is naught but mercy and love. Those who turn away from my gaze, those who fear the encounter with me face-to-face, are those who fall away from my love. I call you to a life of adoration so that you might contemplate my Face and read thereon all the love of my Sacred Heart for poor sinners, and especially for my priests. Whenever a soul seeks my gaze, my Heart is moved to show that soul an immense pity, to lift her out of the sin into which she has fallen, to bind up her wounds, and restore her to the joys of friendship with my Heart. When a priest begins to avoid looking at my Face, he has begun to alienate himself from the merciful love of my Heart. This will he begin, little by little, to lose confidence in my mercy, to consent to sin, and to descend into the darkness of a life from which I have been exiled. Look upon me for ...

If the great event of the Second Vatican Council was a breath of the Spirit that was blown into the world through the windows of the Church, then we need to recognize that a lot of worldliness has also blown in with the Spirit, creating a current and blowing the leaves all over. We’ve seen everything and yet nothing has been lost, but order must be patiently restored. Order is restored above all by strongly affirming the primacy of the Risen Christ, present in the Eucharist. There is a great peaceful battle to be waged which is that of Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration, so that the entire world can become part of a network of prayer, united to the Holy Rosary, in which we reflect on the salvific mysteries of Christ with Mary. This will generate and develop a movement of reparation and penetration.  (Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza) Thanks to Michael Voris for pointing out these recent observations of the good Cardinal.

Some of you are hesitant to participate in Eucharistic Adoration because you are either not sure why you should or what to do while you are there. May you find this , this , and this  helpful. Others are wondering what the specific benefits of Eucharistic Adoration are? The good folks at St. Mark's Church in Huntersville, NC have more than 100 benefits to share with you. O, Come let us Adore Him!

Adoration is not for a handful or a selected few. It is for everyone. It is what our loving Lord asks for, and more importantly, what He deserves. Blessed John Paul II went so far as to urge EVERY parish in the world to have Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration. Let me put one hour of Adoration each week into proper perspective for you by borrowing and adapting a few interesting statistics offered by Father Oscar Lukefahr, CM. [1] [1] If you live to be eighty, you would have spent about three years reading, five years talking, six years riding in a car, seven years eating, eleven years in recreational activities and twenty-seven years sleeping.   If you offered an hour of Adoration each week, you would have given our Lord less than six months of your time. Add attendance at Sunday Mass for an hour every week and praying for five minutes every day to your weekly   hour of Adoration, we are still talking of offering Him less than one year of your life. “How can we ref...

From Father Mark. Go to his blog and be blessed! Christ Waits for His Priests I wait for my priests. I long to see them enter my sanctuary and approach the tabernacle of my abiding presence. I wait for them in the Sacrament that I left for their sakes as the expression of my Divine Friendship for my priests, as their consolation in loneliness, their strength in weakness, their sweetness in life's bitterness. When my priests seek my company I am moved to show them the compassionate love of my Heart. When they draw near to me it is because I have already drawn near to them, set my gaze upon them, given them my Heart's love of predilection, and claimed them for myself and for my Bride, the Church. If they come in search of my Eucharistic Face, it is because the light of my Face has already illumined their darkness. Some see the light of my Face and walk in its radiance. Others see it and turn away, choosing darkness over my light. Even among my pr...

There are two devotions close to my heart and vital for the future of our Church and for the salvation of our souls - The Eucharist and the Rosary. May we rediscover each day a deeper and more abiding reverence and love for the Blessed Sacrament. May we also use this month - one which the Church dedicates each year to the Most Holy Rosary - to experience and/or re-experience the power and efficacy of this most beautiful prayer, for as Blessed John Paul II taught us: "To recite the Rosary is nothing other than to contemplate with Mary the face of Christ." One would be hard pressed to find a better example of the life-changing power of these two devotions than through the following story of one man's love for both. From the inception of the Adoration Chapel in our parish and without interruption for nearly five years until a few days before his death, this gentleman came every Saturday morning.   Initially, he came for two hours each week – from 3 A.M. to 5 A.M....