Monday, January 31, 2022

BAD CHRISTIANS

"Nor will we say anything about those Christians who are such only in name; who practice their duty as Christians in such a miserable way, that that we could die of compassion for them. You see them praying with annoyance, dissipated, without respect. You see them in the church without devotion; the Holy Mass always begins too early for them and ends too late; the priest has not yet come down from the altar, and they are already outside the church. Of the frequency of the sacraments, let us not speak; if they ever approach to receive them, their air of indifference proclaims that they absolutely do not know what they are doing. Everything that concerns the service of God they practice with a dreadful tedium. Good God! Hoy many souls lost for eternity! How little the number of those who enter the Kingdom of Heaven, when so few do what they should to deserve it!" 

 Book "Sermons of Saint John Maria Vianney, the Curé of Ars". 

Monday, January 24, 2022

WE DON’T CONFUSE THE CREATOR WITH THE CREATURE


"But we, Catholics, never confuse the Creator with the creature. Their irrevocable distinction is a dogma of our faith. We know and teach and make available to the humblest learner of the Catechism that the actual cult of adoration, which is called latria, is for God alone; that the cult of the saints and the Virgin Mary is of veneration, and therefore has a different meaning and name. It is an offensive nonsense -repeated with monotonous stubbornness in Protestant propaganda- that we Catholics adore Mary as if she were God. No less offensive is to call us idolaters for the reverence we give to images: because it is an elementary truth that in them we reverence the person they represent, not the stone or the wood or the canvas; as when saluting the flag we do it for our country and not for the piece of cloth; as when kissing the portrait of our mother, we kiss our mother and not the cardboard". 

 ALFONSO JUNCO, historian and poet. 

Saturday, January 22, 2022

WE PREACH CHRIST CRUCIFIED


“Islam cannot be fought in the name of the Enlightment and even less so by relativism. The only thing that can oppose it, is the natural and Divine law, denied radically by both relativism and Islam. For this reason we are raising the Crucifix which secularism and Islamism reject and we are making of it a banner of life and action. St. Paul said ‘We preach Christ Crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling-block and unto the Gentiles foolishness’” (I Cor. 1, v.23). 

 Roberto de Mattei

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

WHY THE GREAT THINKER BECAME CATHOLIC


The difficulty of explaining “why I am a Catholic” is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true. I could fill all my space with separate sentences each beginning with the words, “It is the only thing that…” As, for instance, (1) It is the only thing that really prevents a sin from being a secret. (2) It is the only thing in which the superior cannot be superior; in the sense of supercilious. (3) It is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age. (4) It is the only thing that talks as if it were the truth; as if it were a real messenger refusing to tamper with a real message. 

 The Church does often set herself against the fashion of this world that passes away; and she has experience enough to know how very rapidly it does pass away.

 Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes. The Catholic Church has for one of her chief duties that of preventing people from making those old mistakes; from making them over and over again forever, as people always do if they are left to themselves.

 G. K. Chesterton 1926 essay, "Why I am a Catholic".

Saturday, January 15, 2022

THERE IS ONLY ONE TRUE RELIGION FOUNDED BY CHRIST: THE CATHOLIC


“By opening their arms to anyone whatever may be their form of religion, they thereby teach the great error of this age -that a regard for religion should be held as an indifferent matter, and that all religions are alike. This manner of reasoning is calculated to bring about the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially of the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot, without great injustice, be regarded as merely equal to other religions.” 

 Leo XIII, Humanum genus, No. 6, April 20, 1884.

Thursday, January 13, 2022

WHERE IS YOUR TREASURE?


"A Christian’s treasure is not on earth, it is in heaven. Well then, our thoughts should turn to where our treasure is. Man has a noble task: that of prayer and love. To pray and to love, that is the happiness of man on earth. Prayer is a foretaste of heaven, an overflowing of heaven. It never leaves us without sweetness; it is like honey, it descends into the soul and sweetens everything. In a prayer well made, troubles vanish like snow under the rays of the sun." 

 Saint John Mary Vianney 

Sunday, January 9, 2022

FAITH MUST BE INTEGRAL


"Now it is manifest that he who adheres to the teaching of the Church, as to an infallible rule, assents to whatever the Church teaches; otherwise, if, of the things taught by the Church, he holds what he chooses to hold, and rejects what he chooses to reject, he no longer adheres to the teaching of the Church as to an infallible rule, but to his own will. Hence it is evident that a heretic who obstinately disbelieves one article of faith, is not prepared to follow the teaching of the Church in all things; but if he is not obstinate, he is no longer in heresy but only in error. Therefore it is clear that such a heretic with regard to one article has no faith in the other articles, but only a kind of opinion in accordance with his own will". 

 Saint Thomas Aquinas


Monday, January 3, 2022

THANKSGIVING FOR ANOTHER YEAR


 Our Father who art in heaven, owner of Truth, time and eternity: Yours is today and tomorrow, the past and the future. At the end of the year 2021, on behalf of my family and myself, I want to thank You, for all that we received from You.

 Thank You for the family You gave me, for life and love, air and sun, for joy and pain, for everything that was possible and for what could not be. 

 Thank You for welcoming us into Your true Church. We offer You everything we did this year that is ending. The work we were able to do, the things that passed through our hands, and all the positive things we were able to build with them. 

 Also, Lord, today we want to ask Your forgiveness. 

 Forgiveness for our sins, for the evil we have caused, for all the wasted time, wasted money, for the omissions, for the useless words we said and all the love we wasted. Forgiveness for the empty and negligent work. 

Forgiveness for living without enthusiasm. Also, for the prayers that we postponed until now that we are thanking You for all that You have given us. 

 For all our forgetfulness, carelessness and silences. Again, we ask Your forgiveness, Lord. We will start a new year and we will stop our life before the new calendar still unused. We present to You these 365 days. If we do not get to the end of them... help us to die in Your sanctifying grace, after having gone -sincerely contrite- to the tribunal of Confession. 

 Today we ask You for each one of us: peace and joy, strength and prudence, charity and wisdom, the commitment to be faithful to You and always live in Your Grace, because only in Your Grace we can walk the path safely. Only the fool does not understand this, so we ask You to remove any blindfold that prevents us from seeing our foolishness. 

 Lord, help us to be zealous of Your glory and the glory of your Church, and to live only for You, in You and by You. 

 We want to live each day with optimism and kindness, carrying everywhere a heart full of understanding and peace that always seeks the Truth of your Word. Let nothing tear us away from it, because Your faith is our greatest treasure.

 Close our ears to all slander, to the false doctrines against Your Word. And our lips, to lying, selfish, biting or hurtful words. Instead, open our being to all that is good. 

 May our spirit be filled only with blessings, and may we pour them along our way. Fill us with goodness and joy, so that those who live with us, or those who cross our path, find in our lives a little bit of YOU. 

 Thank you, Lord, for everything, and forgive our debts to You. Guide us all along the narrow path that will allow us one day to enter through the narrow door and be in Your eternal lap to bless You forever and ever. If for this it is necessary that You use Your right hand to shake us, in advance we accept any pain and sorrow no matter how difficult they may be. 

 Give us a happy 2022 and teach us to love You by always living in Your grace, and to follow You with loyalty. Thank you, Lord, for all the blessings of the past year, as well as for those that You will pour out this year that is beginning. 

 Blessed Virgin Mary, I entrust my entire family to your Immaculate Heart. Amen.