Don't Be Afraid To Share The Truth. You Have A Duty To Do So

You can not claim to love God and remain silent anymore. You must share this Truth, over and over:

 

Eucharistic Reflection - This Is What I Will Do Now

"…I filled Your soul in the Garden of Gethsemani with fear and sorrow even unto death; now I will comfort it and make it rejoice by fervent Holy Communion and loving visits to You in this Sacrament of Your love. I bound Your Body to a pillar and scourged it so unmercifully that Your Sacred Flesh was torn to fragments and Your Precious Blood flowed in streams to the ground; now I will receive that Divine Body devoutly and  often, and  each time  I will  solemnly promise never again to let my passions hurt You in any way…Yes, I condemned You to death. 0 dear Jesus, now I am going to visit You often in Your earthly dwelling place; here I am going to offer my life to You; here, with You and from You, I am going to seek the life of grace and the pledge of life ever- lasting…"

 

(Eucharistic Whisperings - Father Winfrid Herbst, S.D.S.)

 

[This just one of the 250 soul stirring quotations you will discover in Stirring Slumbering Souls - 250 Eucharistic Reflections]

 

Eucharistic Reflection - He Comes To Change You!

"My Sisters, do you truly understand what one Communion is? What! A God who gives Himself absolutely to you, that is, all that He is and all that He has in Himself! He comes in order to draw you to Himself completely, to change you into Himself and make you entirely one with Him. 

Only one Communion would be necessary to make a soul go out of herself and pass into Jesus Christ, because, I repeat, He does not come to you except to draw you into Himself. Yes, my Sisters, Our Lord comes to Jesus to take possession of our hearts and make them pass into His adorable Heart.. Ask Him to attract you to Himself, to hide you in Himself...that you may dwell in Him completely hidden and completely lost, in such a way that you are no longer anything and that He alone is everything. 

Ask Him to rule absolutely in you, to be the source of all your thoughts, your words, your actions - in short, that everything you do be only the fruit of His own Spirit, becoming perfectly united with Him."

(Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament, from The Mystery Of Incomprehensible Love)

Monday Musings - Support Those Who Advocate and Facilitate Abortion and Risk The Loss of Your Soul

 

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The immediate impetus for this post can be found in the writings of St. Gregory the Great (540–604), a Marian apparition, conflicting statements of two Catholic Cardinals, and zeal for the salvation of souls.

Bear with me, please, as I explain.

The second reading in the Office of Readings for this past Sunday were selections from St. Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Guide which you can find here. (I recommend that you read and ponder it in its entirety). Let me, however,emphasize the following excerpts:

“A spiritual guide should be silent when discretion requires and speak when words are of service. Otherwise, he may say what he should not or be silent when he should speak…Indiscreet speech may lead men into error and an imprudent silence may leave in error those who could have been taught…

The name of prophet is sometimes given in the sacred writings to teachers who both declare the present to be fleeting and reveal what is to come. The word of God accuses them of seeing false visions because they are afraid to reproach men for their faults and they lull the evildoer with an empty promise of safety. Because they fear reproach, they keep silent and fail to point out the sinner’s wrongdoing.

The word of reproach is a key that unlocks a door, because reproach reveals a fault of which the evildoer is himself often unaware. That is why Paul says of the bishop: ‘He must be able to encourage men in sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it’.”

Our shepherds are called to teach the Truth, fraternally correct and call us sinners to repentance.  Many have abrogated these duties. We lay folk have similar obligations. But we have frequently avoided those responsibilities as well.

Such failings have consequences as Our Lady of Akita warned Sister Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa on October 17, 1973:

The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals and bishops against other bishops.

Our Lady was correct, as is evident to any Catholic who knows his/her faith and has a properly formed conscience. Tragically, so many Catholics don’t know their faith very well and are therefore unable to recognize the errors propagated by dissident cardinals, bishops and priests.

Recently, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reiterated its long-standing teaching that “the threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority.”

Despite that proclamation, two prominent Catholic Cardinals, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey and Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued conflicting explanations as to how that Truth is to be lived out in real life – the type of conflict our Blessed Mother had predicted would occur between cardinals and bishops.

What did they say?

Cardinal Tobin announced that a Catholic “in good conscience could vote for Joe Biden" - this, I add, despite Biden’s radical and unrestricted support of abortion. His Eminence did not offer the “grave moral reasons that he thought might justify a vote for Biden."

He also said that “a voter should not use a candidate's opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity."

“Catholics,” Tobin also stated, “should vote in favor of the common good, exercise prudence, and avoid reducing an election to how a candidate stands on a single issue, at least within the current panorama of issues.”

Now contrast Cardinal Tobin’s comments with those of Cardinal  Müller:

"You can't compare apples to oranges. The human right to life is so fundamental that it cannot be equated with other political issues. According to Catholic teaching, not all issues have the same weight.

"Therefore, a candidate who does not clearly oppose abortion and euthanasia is unelectable for a person who believes in God, and especially for every Catholic, because abortion is a heinous crime against the life of the person and against God, the creator of every human life.”

The salvation of your soul and those of your family and loved ones (as well as the lives of millions of children yet to be born) depend on your knowing that Cardinal Müller not Tobin, accurately set forth Church teaching. All of us must conform our conduct to that Truth.

The Church’s teaching on this issue has never changed and will never change: There is no compelling proportionate reason anyone can offer to justify the killing and dismemberment of human life, and the selling of aborted body parts! NONE!!!!!!

Voting for anyone who advocates otherwise is to be complicit in their sin and to place your soul at risk of eternal damnation.

In writing this post, I have taken to heart the wisdom of St. Gregory the Great set forth above: "Indiscreet speech may lead men into error and an imprudent silence may leave in error those who could have been taught."

I am just the messenger. Dislike me if you wish. I care too much about the value of human life and the salvation of souls to remain silent anymore.

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - October 1, 2020

Pondering Tidbits of Truth is my simple and inadequate way of providing nuggets of spiritual wisdom for you to chew on from time to time.

 

 

 

Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

“Indeed, only then do we possess a truth completely when we teach it to others, when we make others share our contemplation; only then do we wholly love God when we desire to make Him loved by all. Give money away, or spend it, and it is no longer yours. But give God to others, and you possess Him more fully for yourself. We may go even further and say that, if we desired only one soul to be deprived of Him, if we excluded only one soul – even the soul of one who persecutes and calumniates us – from our own love, then God Himself would be lost to us.”

(From The Three Conversions In The Spiritual Life)

 

Archbishop Louis M. Martinez

“Human life is not a life of isolation; it is a life of association, of companionship. By the will of God, we were born in a family, which is part of a larger society. It is impossible for us to avoid relationships with others, and, at times, these relationships are very difficult.

It is easy and pleasant to have dealings with people who are kind to us and with whom we have some bond of liking. But to deal with everyone, the good and the bad, those who are sympathetic to us and those who repel us, those who wish us well and those who wish us ill, requires a balance very hard for our soul to attain. Our relations with men must conform not only to the rules of reason, but the divine norms left us by Jesus Christ, and we know from experience how hard this can be.

…Our relations with others, then, are both very important and very difficult. It is necessary for the Holy Spirit with His light, His fire, and His action to come and dispose our heart, our soul and our life so that our association with others may be harmonious and holy.”

(From True Devotion to the Holy Spirit)

 

Father Dave Pivonka, TOR

"When we live animated by the Holy Spirit, our lives produce fruit that not only makes our own life more peaceful, patient, and loving but also influences positively those whom we encounter each and every day."

(From The Wild Goose)

 

Monsignor Eugene Yennock Has A Message You Must Hear!

(From St. Daniel's Church)

I urge you to listen to, and then share, the homily of 95 year old Monsignor Eugene Yennock of Syracuse, New York, a link to which appears at the end of this post.

While many lay Catholics, priests and bishops have remained silent during this election cycle, a few courageous souls have stepped forward and taught their family, friends, neighbors and/or flock the Truth - the Truth that binds every living human being. What is that Truth?  - that the most preeminent priority issue of our time is abortion - the willful and sinful killing of human life - made even more heinous by selling their dismembered body parts.

There is no compelling proportionate reason anyone can offer to justify the physical dismemberment and killing of human life and the selling of those body parts! NONE!!!!!! 

There is nothing ambiguous about this Truth. 

It must be proclaimed in every home, city, village, town, and from every pulpit in this nation!

This related Truth must also be proclaimed at the same time: No one can vote for anyone who rejects God's Truth without jeopardizing their eternal soul.

After all, the most important obligation we and our clergy share is to strive to save our own souls and the souls of all those placed under our care or with whom we interact. We do that by teaching the Truth and fraternally correcting those who act contrary to It. 

Individuals lose their souls by the conscious choices they make to ignore God's Truth. But those charged with the parental and/or spiritual duty to correct, instruct and save those souls, Father James Altman of LaCrosse, Wisconsin recently reminded us (here and here), will also be damned eternally if we and they fail to call such sinners to repentance. He referred us to the words of the prophet Ezekiel (3:17-21):

“Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman to the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from My mouth, warn them from Me.“When I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die’; and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. “Yet if you have warned the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered yourself. “Again, when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I place an obstacle before him, he shall die; since you have not warned him, he shall die in his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand. “However, if you have warned the righteous man that the righteous should not sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live because he took warning; and you have delivered yourself.”

As you will soon discover after listening to Monsignor Yennock's outstanding homily, we have a poor track record in following the prophets God has sent among our midst. This sorry pattern of deafness to the will of God must end and it must end now!

Listen to this courageous and crystal clear Monsignor now (his homily begins at 17:36) and then share this post far and wide.