Saturday, September 30, 2023

PEACE OF SOUL


"...If a person has true virtue, nothing whatever can change him; he is like a rock in the midst of a tempestuous sea. If anyone scorns you, or calumniates you, if someone mocks at you or calls you a hypocrite or a sanctimonious fraud, none of this will have the least effect upon your peace of soul. You will love him just as much as you loved him when he was saying good things about you. You will not fail to do him a good turn and to help him, even if he speaks badly of your assistance. You will say your prayers, go to Confession, to Holy Communion, you will go to Mass, all according to your general custom."

Saint John Mary Vianney

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows

I grieve for thee, O Mary most sorrowful, in the affliction of thy tender heart at the prophecy of the holy and aged Simeon. Dear Mother, by thy heart so afflicted, obtain for me the virtue of humility and the gift of the holy fear of God. Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, pray for us!

Sunday, September 24, 2023

WHATEVER GOODNESS WE HAVE WE OWE TO GOD, LET'S NOT BE LIKE THOSE WHO SAY THEY ARE "HUMBLE" BUT TAKE UMBRAGE WHEN ANYONE REPROVES THEM


 

Many are humble in word, but not in heart. They say: “I am worse than all: I deserve a thousand hells.” But when anyone reproves them, or says a word that displeases them, they immediately take umbrage. They are like hedgehogs, which put out their bristles as soon as they are touched. But how is it – you say you are worse than all, and yet you cannot bear a word?  “He who is truly humble,” says St. Bernard, “esteems himself good for nothing, and desires to be considered good for nothing by others as well.” 

Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, The Path to Salvation


Tuesday, September 19, 2023

IMPORTANT LETTER FROM BISHOP ATHANASIUS SCHNEIDER TO BISHOP JOSEPH STRICKLAND


Your Excellency, Bishop Strickland, dear and esteemed brother in the episcopate!

It is for me a privilege and a joy to express to you all my gratitude and appreciation for your intrepid dedication to uncompromisingly keep, transmit, and defend the Catholic faith, which the apostles handed over to the Church and with which all the generations of Catholics, especially our ancestors, our fathers and mothers, our priests and religious sisters-catechists, were themselves nurtured. In all truth we can apply to you, dear Bishop Strickland, what St. Basil once stated in his time: 

"The one charge which is now sure to secure severe punishment is the careful keeping of the traditions of the Fathers." (Ep. 243)

Let me share with you the following highly timely words of the same great and saint bishop:

The doctrines of true religion are overthrown. The laws of the Church are in confusion. The ambition of men, who have no fear of God, rushes into high posts in the Church, and exalted office is now publicly known as the prize of impiety. The result is that the worse a man blasphemes, the fitter the people think him to be a bishop. Clerical dignity is a thing of the past. 

There is a complete lack of men shepherding the Lord's flock with knowledge. Churchmen in authority are afraid to speak, for those of them who have reached power by human interest are the slaves of those to whom they owe their advancement. Faith is uncertain; souls are drenched in ignorance because adulterators of the word imitate the truth. The mouths of true believers are dumb, while every blasphemous tongue wags free; holy things are trodden under foot. (Ep. 92)

We are living indeed in such a time, as described by St. Basil with such a striking similarity.

The words of St. Basil in his Letter to Pope St. Damasus, in which he was asking the pope's help and efficacious intervention, are fully applicable to our situation today:

The wisdom of this world wins the highest prizes in the Church and has rejected the glory of the cross. Shepherds are banished, and in their places are introduced grievous wolves hurrying the flock of Christ. Houses of prayer have none to assemble in them; desert places are full of lamenting crowds. The elders lament when they compare the present with the past. The younger are yet more to be compassionated, for they do not know of what they have been deprived. (Ep. 90)

Dear Bishop Strickland, unlike St. Basil who addressed Pope Damasus, you don't have, unfortunately, the real chance to address Pope Francis in order that he may help you to keep zealously the holy traditions of the past. On the contrary, the Holy See put you now under scrutiny and threatens you with intimidations and deprivation of the episcopal care of your flock in Tyler, basically only for the one reason, that you, like St. Basil, St. Athanasius, and many other confessor-bishops in history, are keeping the traditions of the Fathers; only because you are not silencing the truth, only because you are not behaving like not a few of the bishops of our day, who -- using the words of St. Gregory of Nazianzus -- "are serving the times and demands of the masses, leaving their boat to the wind which happens to blow at the moment, and like chameleons, know how to give their word many colors" (De vita sua (Carmina) 2, 11)."

However, dear Bishop Strickland, you have the happiness, that all the popes of the past, all the courageous confessor-bishops of the past, all the Catholic martyrs, who in the words of St. Theresa of Avila, were "resolved to undergo a thousand deaths for any one article of the creed" (The Life of Teresa of Jesus, 25:12), are supporting and encouraging you. Furthermore, the little ones in the Church pray for you and support you; they are an ever growing, yet small, army of lay faithful -- in the United States as well as all over the world -- who were put on the periphery by high ranking churchmen, even in the Vatican, whose main concerns seems to be pleasing the world and promoting their naturalistic agenda and the approval of the sin of homosexual activity under the guise of welcoming and inclusion.

Dear Bishop Strickland, thank you, that you are resolved "to serve the Lord, and not the time," as St. Athanasius once admonished the bishops (Ep. ad Dracontium). I pray that more bishops in our day may, like you, raise their voice in defence of the Catholic Faith, providing thereby the spiritual nourishment and consolation for many Catholics, who feel themselves often abandoned like orphans.

For sure, future popes will thank you for your intrepid fidelity to the Catholic Faith and to its holy traditions, by which you contributed to the honor of the Apostolic See, which was partly darkened and stained by our unfavourable time.

St. Joseph, your patron, the "good and faithful servant," be always on your side and the Blessed Virgin Mary, our sweet heavenly Mother, the destroyer of all heresies, be your strength and refuge.

With deep esteem, united in the holy battle for the Faith and in prayers,

Bishop Athanasius Schneider of St. Mary's in Astana, Kazakhstan, August 2, 2023


Tuesday, September 12, 2023

ANGELUS


 “V. Angelus Domini, nuntiavit Mariae
R/ Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto.
 Ave Maria, gratia plena,
Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.
Sancta Maria, mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.
 V. Ecce ancilla Domini.
R/ Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.
Ave Maria...
 V. Et Verbum caro factum est.
R/ Et habitavit in nobis.
Ave Maria...
 V. Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genetrix.
R/ Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi.”

Sunday, September 3, 2023

IT IS IMPERATIVE NOW


Hopefully parents will never forget that their authority comes from God! And hopefully family life will be founded on this holy base! The whole society creaks and wobbles. Who will save it? The government? Politicians? Political parties? Social policies or reforms? What will save it? Rallies or strikes? Or perhaps speeches? None of this can save it. The remedy is this: strengthen family life, renew it on a Christian basis.

We need a regeneration, but a spiritual regeneration, a moral regeneration. We need families, fathers, mothers, children, to faithfully observe the Decalogue. Families on whose sanctuary is respected the Kingdom of God. Families in which Christ is the law. Families that in the middle of this icy world raise the Cross of Christ and are raised by the Cross of Christ.

Bishop Tihamér Tóth

Friday, September 1, 2023

LET US SET AN EXAMPLE


And for the rest of mankind pray unceasingly-for there is in them hope of repentance, that they may attain unto God. Let them also be instructed by the example of your works. In face of their outbursts of wrath be patient; in face of their arrogant words be humble; meet their revilings with prayers; where they are in error be steadfast in the faith; in face of their violence be gentle. Be not anxious to retaliate on them. Let our forbearance prove us their brethren. Endeavor to imitate the Lord, striving who can suffer the greater wrong, who can be more defrauded, who can be set at naught, that no rank weed of the devil be found in you. In all purity and sobriety abide in Christ Jesus in flesh and in spirit.

Saint Ignatius of Antioch