Monday Musings - The Great Task of Our Present Life

(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 as to lose our baptismal innocence, let us clothe ourselves with the innocent of penance!

Without purity, there can be no life of love.”

(St. Peter Julian Eymard from Holy Communion)

 

 

Book Review - Fatima- The Apparition That Changed The World by Jean M. Heimann

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 near destruction. In her most recent book, Fatima -The Apparition That Changed the World, Heimann makes Fatima and our Lady’s messages come to life, not only with words but with breathtakingly beautiful photographs. The timeline and bibliography she included in this book are treasure troves of additional resources.