Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

  O Christian soul, what will be your sentiments at the hour of death with regard to this world and all its perishable goods, vain honors, false riches and cheating pleasures.   Alas! The world must then end in your regard.  It will turn upside down before your eyes, and you will begin to see the nothingness of all those things on which you had here set your heart.  How will you then despise all worldly honors and preferences when you see yourself at the brink of the grave, where the worm will make no distinction between the king and the beggar.  How little account, will you then make of the esteem of men, who then will think no more of you.  How will you undervalue your riches, which now must be left behind you, when six feet of earth and a coffin and a shroud will be all your possession.  How despicable will all worldly pleasures seem to you, which at the best  could never give you any true satisfaction, and now fly from you and dissolve ...

(Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash )   "…the great task of the present life is to make ourselves pure. Nothing unclean shall enter into the kingdom of God’s holiness. That we may see Him and contemplate the splendor of His glory, the eye of our soul must be wholly pure. Though we may have only a speck of dust on our wedding garment, we may not enter into heaven until we have cleansed it in the Blood of the Lamb… One must never cease to purify oneself. Rather than lose the treasure of purity, it would be better to flee into the desert, condemn oneself to a life of privation; it would be better to abandon all one’s activities, however good and praiseworthy they might be. The salvation of all the souls in the world is not so important as your own salvation. What God wants from you first of all, and above all, is that without which all else is nothing: yourself! Oh, if we have not all the sublime and heroic virtues of the saints, let us be pure! And if we have been so unfortunate...

Not A Mere Remembrance On October 13, 1917, more than seventy thousand individuals watched (many in absolute terror) as the sun danced in the sky before plummeting towards frightened onlookers. Many expected to die. Just as suddenly, the sun stopped its deathly spiral and returned to its normal perch, sitting passively in the sky – just a portion of the miracle Our Lady of Fatima had promised her three young seers, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. Although we recently marked the 100 th anniversary of this supernatural event, relatively few people in the world even knew it had occurred and of those who did, not nearly enough of them have heeded our Blessed Mother’s call to prayer, repentance and penance. Tragically, our heavenly Mother’s appearances and pleas have been, for the most part, forgotten or ignored. But not by Jean M. Heimann. This well-respected author wanted to not only memorialize this great miracle but to do something about the world’s amnesia, moral decay and...