Friday, November 30, 2018

Saint Joseph, Model of Virtues


"Saint Joseph is thus an example of one of the most necessary virtues of our disturbed times. Chastity means the dominion of man over his own appetites, even the most violent ones, respect for one's dignity and honor, cleanliness and decorum in front of God and in front of men. When this virtue is lost, it brings as a consequence all kinds of terrible punishments; and the modern world knows this perfectly because, due to all the debauchery and impurity, we see how many plagues, disorders and catastrophes follow. As St. Paul says, you are the vessels of the Holy Ghost, you are members of Christ, do not soil your bodies with any kind of impurity."

Fr. Leonardo Castellani

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Prayer by Father Pro to the Virgin Mary Shortly Before His Martyrdom


Let me spend my life by your side, Holy Mother, accompanied by your bitter loneliness and your deep pain!... Let me feel in my soul the sad cry of your eyes and the distress of your heart!

I want in my life the mockery of Calvary; I want the slow agony of your son, the contempt, the ignominy, the infamy of his Cross. I want to be by your side, Most Sorrowful Mother, strengthening my spirit with your tears, consummating my sacrifice with your martyrdom, supporting my heart with your loneliness, loving my God and your God with the immolation of my being.

Monday, November 26, 2018

The Reason for My Hope


"With Mary everything is easy. I place all my confidence in her, despite the snarls of the world and thunders of hell. I say with St. Bernard: ‘In her I have placed unbounded confidence; she is the whole reason for my hope.’ …. Through Mary I will seek and find Jesus; I will crush the serpent’s head and overcome all my enemies as well as myself for the greater glory of God."

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen dixit


Dostoevsky wrote that in a future day men would say there is no crime, there is no sin, there is no guilt, there is only hunger; then men will come crying and fawning at our feet saying to us, "Give us bread." Nothing will matter except the economic.

A spirit of license makes a man refuse to commit himself to any standards. The right time is the way he sets his watch. The yardstick has the number of inches that he wills it to have. Liberty becomes license and unbounded license leads to unbounded tyranny. When society reaches this stage, and there is no standard of right and wrong outside of the individual himself, then the individual is defenseless against the onslaughts of cruder and more violent men who proclaim their own subjective sense of values. Once my idea of morality is just as good as your idea of morality, then the morality that is going to prevail is the morality that is stronger.

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Saturday, November 3, 2018

About the Faithful Departed


"Therefore, the pains of the blessed souls in purgatory are terribly great, and they cannot fend for themselves. Saint Job says these words: Chained and tied with ropes of poverty, they are queens, and they are destined for the eternal kingdom, but they will not be able to take possession of it, and they will have to cry in exile until they are completely purified. Some theologians say that the souls in purgatory can mitigate their torments with their prayers, but in any case they will never be able to find in themselves enough and sufficient resources, so they will have to remain chained until they have paid their debt to Divine Justice, as a Cistercian friar, condemned to purgatory, said to the brother sacristan of his monastery: ‘Help me, he begged him, with your prayers, that I cannot do anything to help myself’, and the same repeats Saint Bonaventure: ‘So poor are those blessed souls, that they cannot pay their debts’.

What is true and an article of faith is that we can help with our suffrages and above all with our prayers to those holy souls. The Church praises these prayers and she herself gives us her example.

If we are not moved by this duty of charity, let us do it for the great pleasure we provide Jesus Christ, when He sees that we strive to break the chains of his beloved wives so that they may enjoy his love in heaven. Let us do it also for the thought of the many merits that by this means we acquire, since we make such an act of charity with those blessed souls; and we can be sure that they, in turn, grateful for the good we have given them, taking them out with our prayers of those pains and anticipating the time of their entrance into heaven, will not stop praying for us when they get to Heaven. Said the Lord, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. For if the kindly rewarder promises mercy to those who have mercy with their neighbors, with greater reason can we hope for our eternal salvation, if we make an effort to help those blessed souls, so afflicted and so beloved of God."

Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori