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Third Sunday of Advent - The second week of John the Baptist, he has some
advice for us to practice as we wait for the Lord's coming."
Apr 30, 2009
Philippians 1:29
For to you has been granted, for the sake of Christ, not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him.--- Philippians 1:29
It is not easy to suffer for the sake of Christ, as many a saint and martyr has found out.
We may not suffer as much physically nowadays for our Christian stand, but the spiritual battle is ever draining. Frustrations with the “other side” can bring us to insanity and their spiritual blindness is baffling to us that have seen the light.
I find though, as hard as it is to suffer for the truth of Christ, it is even harder to suffer the daily trials and tribulations of every day living. The daily chores of work life, home life, family life, and finding time to have a prayer life.
Being a new father and entering into family life after 35plus years, it has
been quite the experience…and it isn’t getting any easier.
It seems that one can find the strength to sacrifice for themselves, or sacrifice for the sake of the Gospel, but sacrificing for others does not come natural. There is always that tendency to take care of your own needs first, then, others, when you get a chance to.
I have found that if you live that way with a family who is counting on your love and support, you are going to be sifted and spiritually drained; the Lord will bring back those words you promised in the vows of the marriage rite. Sacrificing for your children, for your wife, giving up all of yourself as Christ did for His people, for His church, for you and me.
Going places and doing things for your family should not seem like a chore, it shouldn’t be as if you were nailed to a cross, suffering, but sometimes we tend to feel like we are poured out spiritually, physically, and mentally. We can lose the joy of family life.
Suffering is never easy, and it comes in many different forms, but if you keep in mind that it can and should be always used for the greater glory of God, He will be there with you, for you, helping you carry your cross. Keep mindful of that fact; in your every day suffering, the suffering that gets forgotten spiritually but can be the greatest sources of despair in your life, you can give Glory to God and suffer for Him.
It is not easy to suffer for the sake of Christ, as many a saint and martyr has found out.
We may not suffer as much physically nowadays for our Christian stand, but the spiritual battle is ever draining. Frustrations with the “other side” can bring us to insanity and their spiritual blindness is baffling to us that have seen the light.
I find though, as hard as it is to suffer for the truth of Christ, it is even harder to suffer the daily trials and tribulations of every day living. The daily chores of work life, home life, family life, and finding time to have a prayer life.
Being a new father and entering into family life after 35plus years, it has
been quite the experience…and it isn’t getting any easier.
It seems that one can find the strength to sacrifice for themselves, or sacrifice for the sake of the Gospel, but sacrificing for others does not come natural. There is always that tendency to take care of your own needs first, then, others, when you get a chance to.
I have found that if you live that way with a family who is counting on your love and support, you are going to be sifted and spiritually drained; the Lord will bring back those words you promised in the vows of the marriage rite. Sacrificing for your children, for your wife, giving up all of yourself as Christ did for His people, for His church, for you and me.
Going places and doing things for your family should not seem like a chore, it shouldn’t be as if you were nailed to a cross, suffering, but sometimes we tend to feel like we are poured out spiritually, physically, and mentally. We can lose the joy of family life.
Suffering is never easy, and it comes in many different forms, but if you keep in mind that it can and should be always used for the greater glory of God, He will be there with you, for you, helping you carry your cross. Keep mindful of that fact; in your every day suffering, the suffering that gets forgotten spiritually but can be the greatest sources of despair in your life, you can give Glory to God and suffer for Him.
Apr 29, 2009
Never too young....
....to participate on Ash Wednesday.
Agnes was definitely the youngest person getting ashes at our parish. My lovely wife had a plethora of extra ashes on her forehead, so she shared with our daughter.
from http://acatholicman.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Congratulations! You Have Just Been Excommincated
Excommunicated Woman Deacon
Michelle Chava-Redonnet, author and hospital Chaplin won the 2006 Women's Ordination Conference Bishop Murphy Scholarship. This past weekend she was ordained a woman priest in the Woman Priests she was promptly reminded of her excommunication by Cardinal Justin Rigali.More links (here) , (here) , (here) and (here)
Some Background According to the Spring 2008 newsletter of the Rochester, NY, Catholic Worker House, a woman named Chava Redonnet is preparing to exercise her ministry at the Rochester Catholic Worker as a “priest” once she is “ordained”. Many of the leaders of this Rochester house who are good people, have unfortunately been led away from the Catholic Church by Fr. James Callan’s breakaway (here) Spiritus Christi Church (here) here in Rochester. It looks like a trend, unfortunately.
Congratulations! You Have Just Been Excommincated
Excommunicated Woman Deacon
Michelle Chava-Redonnet, author and hospital Chaplin won the 2006 Women's Ordination Conference Bishop Murphy Scholarship. This past weekend she was ordained a woman priest in the Woman Priests she was promptly reminded of her excommunication by Cardinal Justin Rigali.More links (here) , (here) , (here) and (here)
Some Background According to the Spring 2008 newsletter of the Rochester, NY, Catholic Worker House, a woman named Chava Redonnet is preparing to exercise her ministry at the Rochester Catholic Worker as a “priest” once she is “ordained”. Many of the leaders of this Rochester house who are good people, have unfortunately been led away from the Catholic Church by Fr. James Callan’s breakaway (here) Spiritus Christi Church (here) here in Rochester. It looks like a trend, unfortunately.
Apr 24, 2009
Obama's stormtroopers
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200904230540/OPINION04/904230303
Here is an interesting article about the future of our country's homeland security.
With friends like this, who needs enemies?
While I understand that we do have some disturbed people in this country who may try to disrupt things, most of the groups that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and
the administration are concerned about are good, hardworking citizens, both morally and spiritually.
She included our country's veterans in this outlandish report, the very people that defended this country!!!.
I have been in pro-life protests on many occasions, and I can assure you, that if our homeland security department is afraid of a bunch of people praying in front of America's abortion mills, then maybe they've never been to one. Maybe they have another agenda. Maybe they know the power of prayer. I'm sure they never seen a woman come out of the abortion mill crying and in despair after what was done to her in that horrible place. Have they ever tried to console her?
If you don't believe me, go and see for yourself. Don't let the media tell you who's good and who's bad in the world. Do the leg work America, think for yourself or else big brother will continue to think for you...and that is the last freedom you may ever have.
Here is an interesting article about the future of our country's homeland security.
With friends like this, who needs enemies?
While I understand that we do have some disturbed people in this country who may try to disrupt things, most of the groups that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and
the administration are concerned about are good, hardworking citizens, both morally and spiritually.
She included our country's veterans in this outlandish report, the very people that defended this country!!!.
I have been in pro-life protests on many occasions, and I can assure you, that if our homeland security department is afraid of a bunch of people praying in front of America's abortion mills, then maybe they've never been to one. Maybe they have another agenda. Maybe they know the power of prayer. I'm sure they never seen a woman come out of the abortion mill crying and in despair after what was done to her in that horrible place. Have they ever tried to console her?
If you don't believe me, go and see for yourself. Don't let the media tell you who's good and who's bad in the world. Do the leg work America, think for yourself or else big brother will continue to think for you...and that is the last freedom you may ever have.
Apr 22, 2009
Apr 21, 2009
Stand beside or step aside
Bishop Finn surveys pro-life battlefield, addresses Catholic dissent
Bishop Robert Finn
Kansas City, Kan., Apr 20, 2009 / 08:16 pm (CNA).- Saying Catholics are “at war” with “the glamour of evil,” Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph Robert W. Finn delivered a keynote address at a pro-life convention on Saturday lamenting “dissension in the ranks” and calling on Catholics to never become used to the “crime against humanity” that is abortion.He also commented on the Notre Dame controversy, saying its head should disinvite President Barack Obama. Greeting the audience at the Gospel of Life Convention in Overland Park, Kansas, Bishop Finn said that alongside encouragements he also wished to tell them, “We are at war!”
“Harsh as this may sound it is true – but it is not new,” he said, adding that “new battles” bring “an intensity and urgency to our efforts.”
According to the Catholic Key, the bishop invoked the tripartite division of the Catholic Church as the Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant. The Church on Earth, Bishop Finn explained, is “the Church Militant.”
“We are engaged in a constant warfare with Satan, with the glamour of evil, and the lure of false truths and empty promises. If we fail to realize how constantly these forces work against us, we are more likely to fall, and even chance forfeiting God’s gift of eternal life.”
The bishop said it is an “important truth” to know that Jesus Christ “has already won the war definitively and once for all.”
“He has conquered sin and death and has won the prize of life on high in heaven forever. We know the final outcome, but the battle for eternal life is now played out in each human heart.”
Emphasizing that the Church Militant’s battle is “ultimately a spiritual battle,” he said that those who stand up for what is right will be opposed.
“The temptation will be to avoid these attacks. But through our responses we must see what kind of soldiers we are,” Bishop Finn said.
Noting that the true enemy is Satan, he referred to St. Paul’s exhortation to “put on the armor of God, in order that you can stand firm against the tactics of the devil.”
“Human beings are not Satan, but certainly they can come under his power, even without their fully realizing it,” he added. “When we, in our sinfulness, put something in the place of God: pleasure and convenience; material success; political power and prestige, we open a door for the principalities and contrary spirits who war against God.”
Bishop Finn referred to those who want to establish a way of life in contravention of God’s law: those who promote abortion, “unnatural substitutes for marriage,” and “all such distortions of true freedom.”
He reminded his audience of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5: “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”
“We cannot hate these human enemies,” Bishop Finn stated, telling his audience that “we must find a way to love them. But we need not show them any sign of agreement. We pray for them,” Bishop Finn commented. “To ignore their destructive errors, particularly those that cost the lives of others, is to shirk our responsibility to attend to their eternal salvation.”
Those who openly attack belief in Christ or the Church’s right to exist are in some ways not the most dangerous opponents, Bishop Finn said, because “they show themselves and their intentions more forthrightly.”
More dangerous are people from all backgrounds, including Catholics, who “in this age of pluralism and political propriety seek ways to convince us of their sincerity and good will.
“With malice or with ignorance, or perhaps with an intention of advancing some other personal goal, they are willing to undermine and push aside the values and the institutions that stand in their way. They may propose ‘tolerance’ and seem to have a ‘live and let live’ approach to all human choices – even if the choice is not to ‘let live,’ but actually to ‘let die,’ or ‘let life be destroyed.’”
“This dissension in our own ranks should not surprise us because we all experience some dissension against God’s law of love within our own heart,” the bishop told the convention, saying those believers who attack the “most fundamental tenets” of the Church are some of the most “discouraging, confusing and dangerous” opponents.
Turning to the issue of the University of Notre Dame’s invitation of President Barack Obama, he said “It doesn’t take another Bishop’s Conference statement to know this is wrong: scandalous, discouraging and confusing to many Catholics.”
Predicting that Notre Dame President Fr. John I. Jenkins will “probably lose his job” as “a scapegoat for this debacle,” Bishop Finn suggested: “at this point perhaps he ought to determine to lose it for doing something right instead of something wrong.” He said Fr. Jenkins should disinvite the president and give the honorary degree to Bishop John D’Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend.
He then spoke about the “battle for human life,” especially on abortion.
“The constant magnitude of this crime against humanity is staggering. We must never get used to it,” Bishop Finn said. “In the United States there are 4,000 abortions every day.”
“If we keep saying this – first of all – some people will get very upset with us. They will want us to stop. They may quote other statistics about the tragedies of poverty and war. We must truly share their horror at these things too. However, in the end the measure of our society is in how we treat the most vulnerable in our midst.”
The bishop said that Catholics are “absolutely” in a war over abortion and said people should not consider this “someone else’s war.”
Turning to human embryo research, he said Missouri had lost “a valiant battle” to outlaw human cloning and human embryonic stem cell research.
“We haven’t given up, but it requires a constant effort. We won many people over through good instruction in the truth.”
Noting the legalization of assisted suicide in Oregon and Washington State, Bishop Finn lamented the “steady decline” in the number of people opposed to assisted suicide.
“Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that people are losing their sense of the moral evil of assisted suicide. But we cannot give up,” he told the convention audience.
Warning that Catholics public officials who support the legal right to abortion “have abandoned their place in the citizenship of the Church,” the bishop said they have become “warriors for death rather than life.”
They endanger their eternal salvation, he warned.
Exhorting Catholics to build an “active culture of life” that is “capable of turning back hell itself,” he said those who are not living in God’s life should avoid the “ultimately supernatural battle.”
“The devil… will turn you inside out,” he cautioned, encouraging people to become “prayer warriors.”
“Prayer defeats the devil. Prayer aligns us with Christ. Pray for the abortionist. Pray for the legislator. Pray for the mother (and father and other family members). Pray for the child in the womb. Pray for yourself and allow God to guide you,” he added.
Bishop Robert Finn
Kansas City, Kan., Apr 20, 2009 / 08:16 pm (CNA).- Saying Catholics are “at war” with “the glamour of evil,” Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph Robert W. Finn delivered a keynote address at a pro-life convention on Saturday lamenting “dissension in the ranks” and calling on Catholics to never become used to the “crime against humanity” that is abortion.He also commented on the Notre Dame controversy, saying its head should disinvite President Barack Obama. Greeting the audience at the Gospel of Life Convention in Overland Park, Kansas, Bishop Finn said that alongside encouragements he also wished to tell them, “We are at war!”
“Harsh as this may sound it is true – but it is not new,” he said, adding that “new battles” bring “an intensity and urgency to our efforts.”
According to the Catholic Key, the bishop invoked the tripartite division of the Catholic Church as the Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant. The Church on Earth, Bishop Finn explained, is “the Church Militant.”
“We are engaged in a constant warfare with Satan, with the glamour of evil, and the lure of false truths and empty promises. If we fail to realize how constantly these forces work against us, we are more likely to fall, and even chance forfeiting God’s gift of eternal life.”
The bishop said it is an “important truth” to know that Jesus Christ “has already won the war definitively and once for all.”
“He has conquered sin and death and has won the prize of life on high in heaven forever. We know the final outcome, but the battle for eternal life is now played out in each human heart.”
Emphasizing that the Church Militant’s battle is “ultimately a spiritual battle,” he said that those who stand up for what is right will be opposed.
“The temptation will be to avoid these attacks. But through our responses we must see what kind of soldiers we are,” Bishop Finn said.
Noting that the true enemy is Satan, he referred to St. Paul’s exhortation to “put on the armor of God, in order that you can stand firm against the tactics of the devil.”
“Human beings are not Satan, but certainly they can come under his power, even without their fully realizing it,” he added. “When we, in our sinfulness, put something in the place of God: pleasure and convenience; material success; political power and prestige, we open a door for the principalities and contrary spirits who war against God.”
Bishop Finn referred to those who want to establish a way of life in contravention of God’s law: those who promote abortion, “unnatural substitutes for marriage,” and “all such distortions of true freedom.”
He reminded his audience of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5: “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”
“We cannot hate these human enemies,” Bishop Finn stated, telling his audience that “we must find a way to love them. But we need not show them any sign of agreement. We pray for them,” Bishop Finn commented. “To ignore their destructive errors, particularly those that cost the lives of others, is to shirk our responsibility to attend to their eternal salvation.”
Those who openly attack belief in Christ or the Church’s right to exist are in some ways not the most dangerous opponents, Bishop Finn said, because “they show themselves and their intentions more forthrightly.”
More dangerous are people from all backgrounds, including Catholics, who “in this age of pluralism and political propriety seek ways to convince us of their sincerity and good will.
“With malice or with ignorance, or perhaps with an intention of advancing some other personal goal, they are willing to undermine and push aside the values and the institutions that stand in their way. They may propose ‘tolerance’ and seem to have a ‘live and let live’ approach to all human choices – even if the choice is not to ‘let live,’ but actually to ‘let die,’ or ‘let life be destroyed.’”
“This dissension in our own ranks should not surprise us because we all experience some dissension against God’s law of love within our own heart,” the bishop told the convention, saying those believers who attack the “most fundamental tenets” of the Church are some of the most “discouraging, confusing and dangerous” opponents.
Turning to the issue of the University of Notre Dame’s invitation of President Barack Obama, he said “It doesn’t take another Bishop’s Conference statement to know this is wrong: scandalous, discouraging and confusing to many Catholics.”
Predicting that Notre Dame President Fr. John I. Jenkins will “probably lose his job” as “a scapegoat for this debacle,” Bishop Finn suggested: “at this point perhaps he ought to determine to lose it for doing something right instead of something wrong.” He said Fr. Jenkins should disinvite the president and give the honorary degree to Bishop John D’Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend.
He then spoke about the “battle for human life,” especially on abortion.
“The constant magnitude of this crime against humanity is staggering. We must never get used to it,” Bishop Finn said. “In the United States there are 4,000 abortions every day.”
“If we keep saying this – first of all – some people will get very upset with us. They will want us to stop. They may quote other statistics about the tragedies of poverty and war. We must truly share their horror at these things too. However, in the end the measure of our society is in how we treat the most vulnerable in our midst.”
The bishop said that Catholics are “absolutely” in a war over abortion and said people should not consider this “someone else’s war.”
Turning to human embryo research, he said Missouri had lost “a valiant battle” to outlaw human cloning and human embryonic stem cell research.
“We haven’t given up, but it requires a constant effort. We won many people over through good instruction in the truth.”
Noting the legalization of assisted suicide in Oregon and Washington State, Bishop Finn lamented the “steady decline” in the number of people opposed to assisted suicide.
“Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that people are losing their sense of the moral evil of assisted suicide. But we cannot give up,” he told the convention audience.
Warning that Catholics public officials who support the legal right to abortion “have abandoned their place in the citizenship of the Church,” the bishop said they have become “warriors for death rather than life.”
They endanger their eternal salvation, he warned.
Exhorting Catholics to build an “active culture of life” that is “capable of turning back hell itself,” he said those who are not living in God’s life should avoid the “ultimately supernatural battle.”
“The devil… will turn you inside out,” he cautioned, encouraging people to become “prayer warriors.”
“Prayer defeats the devil. Prayer aligns us with Christ. Pray for the abortionist. Pray for the legislator. Pray for the mother (and father and other family members). Pray for the child in the womb. Pray for yourself and allow God to guide you,” he added.
Apr 1, 2009
Good choice voters.....
Imagine if, a week before he dispatched John McCain in November, Barack Obama had stood before the American people and told them what he would actually do.
"My fellow Americans, if you elect me president next Tuesday, I propose to grow our government to unprecedented size, increase federal spending to never-imagined levels and double the debt in our country. I will support $1.3 trillion in new taxes even as our recession deepens. I will take advantage of the crisis to expand federal control of health care, the energy industry, banks, Wall Street and the car business, fire GM's CEO and sign a stimulus bill with nearly 9,000 earmarks.
"I will undo much of Bill Clinton's welfare reform by giving 'tax cuts' to non-taxpayers. I will propose a crushing tax on energy, making it more expensive to drive to work or cook dinner. I will choose men who have not paid their taxes as my key economic advisers and will have no one in my Cabinet who can fairly be called a 'businessman.' I will shrivel the deduction charities count on for over 40 percent of their contributions.
"I will propose an omnipotent czar with the power to regulate, sanction and, ultimately, seize any business we judge could threaten the economy of this country. My Treasury Department will enable $165 million in bonuses to failed financial industry executives, and then I will give that industry an additional trillion-dollar bailout, indebting middle-class Americans to buy their toxic assets. All this I will do in my first two months, before April Fools' Day."
If Barack Obama had said this, he would not today be president. Yet this is the record he will run on in 2012.
"My fellow Americans, if you elect me president next Tuesday, I propose to grow our government to unprecedented size, increase federal spending to never-imagined levels and double the debt in our country. I will support $1.3 trillion in new taxes even as our recession deepens. I will take advantage of the crisis to expand federal control of health care, the energy industry, banks, Wall Street and the car business, fire GM's CEO and sign a stimulus bill with nearly 9,000 earmarks.
"I will undo much of Bill Clinton's welfare reform by giving 'tax cuts' to non-taxpayers. I will propose a crushing tax on energy, making it more expensive to drive to work or cook dinner. I will choose men who have not paid their taxes as my key economic advisers and will have no one in my Cabinet who can fairly be called a 'businessman.' I will shrivel the deduction charities count on for over 40 percent of their contributions.
"I will propose an omnipotent czar with the power to regulate, sanction and, ultimately, seize any business we judge could threaten the economy of this country. My Treasury Department will enable $165 million in bonuses to failed financial industry executives, and then I will give that industry an additional trillion-dollar bailout, indebting middle-class Americans to buy their toxic assets. All this I will do in my first two months, before April Fools' Day."
If Barack Obama had said this, he would not today be president. Yet this is the record he will run on in 2012.
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