The Pope Speaks To Religious Sisters in Rome

More powerful words from the Holy Father. Says that consecrated religious are "mothers, not spinsters"!

http://www.news.va/en/news/careerists-and-climbers-doing-great-harm-to-the-ch

Go Out and Reach the Lost....

Another beautiful homily from Pope Francis today-

here's a highlight : "Paul teaches us this journey of evangelization, because Jesus did, because he is well aware that evangelization is not proselytizing: it is because he is sure of Jesus Christ and does not need to justify himself [or] to seek reasons to justify himself. 

When the Church loses this apostolic courage, she becomes a stalled Church, a tidy Church a nice, a Church that is nice to look at, but that is without fertility, because she has lost the courage to go to the outskirts, where there are many people who are victims of idolatry, worldliness of weak thought, [of] so many things. Let us today ask St Paul to give us this apostolic courage, this spiritual fervor, so that we might be confident. 

‘But Father,’ [you might say], ‘we might make mistakes…’ ... ‘[Well, what of it,’ I might respond], ‘Get on with you: if you make a mistake, you get up and go forward: that is the way. Those who do not walk in order not to err, make a the more serious mistake."

Read the full text here 

A Humorous Look At What The Internet Does To Our Brains

This is awesome. Watching the whole video, even though it's only a few minutes long, is an exercise of our brains in this distracted world.. Good stuff!

Live Action's 4th Video- Inhuman

People cannot continue to ignore this nor pretend it doesn't happen across our country. Here is the fourth video released today by Live Action. God help us all.

Pope Francis: Stop Whining!

The homily from Pope Francis today made my day. This guy is amazing!

http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-christian-endurance-and-christs-peace

Giving Up Our Secrets...

This new article by our General Superior, Sr Anne Marie Walsh, is outstanding and so true on every level.

My prayer is that, as you read it, the Holy Spirit will work in you through it.

God bless you-

Giving Up Secrets

People seem to have a lot of secrets these days.  We could almost say we live in an age of secrets.   Governments have become skilled at keeping secrets; businesses are adept at the same thing.  Institutions, whether they be educational, medical or religious, all keep secrets for both good reasons and not so good reasons.   But this reflects people in general.  People tend to keep a lot of secrets.

There is a pressing need to recognize that secrets make a difference.  They can determine the direction of our lives, and the manner in which we pass from this world into the next.  For whatever reason, people today seem to have more secrets than ever.  They have secret activities, secret wounds, secret weaknesses, secret sins, secret fantasies, secret lives.  People have secret thoughts, secret addictions, secret jealousies, secret plans, secret ambitions, family secrets, secret judgments, secret desires…secrets without number, secrets we keep even from ourselves. 

Few of us can admit to being ready for heaven when we consider that in heaven, our insides will show on the outside.  Nothing will be hidden.  Everything will be transparent.  Transparency here would completely change our image.  And because we are often not willing to change, we keep secrets.

At the same time, even though we hide things about ourselves, we  have a certain affinity for, or attraction to the secrets of others.  There is almost nothing people like better than hearing a good secret.  Why?  There are several reasons.  One, it diverts attention away from our own secrets.  But we also love secrets because we love hidden knowledge.  We live in a state of being that is still looking for something that hasn’t been completely revealed to us yet.  We’re searching, whether we know it or not, for the one Word, so to speak, that will answer all of our questions and give sight to the vision, the understanding we seek.

The devil knows this about us.  Would that people understood that the devil has to penetrate the world of knowledge by study and observation too (albeit with a superior intelligence,) and that he perverts what he knows to his own ends.  Those ends are not full of happy consequences for human souls.

He is interested in luring people away from the real light.  He does it with promises of hidden knowledge, just as he did in the Garden of Eden.  (This is one of the most lucrative marketing techniques around.  Money rolls in when you claim to have the secret to long life, to health, to beauty, to success.  This is also one of the reasons professional gossips, psychics and clairvoyants prosper in our culture today.  People want to know those secrets.)

We on the other hand, have the source of all knowledge, the fount of pure Wisdom and Light in God Himself.  And we have been given, in Jesus Christ, and through His Church, a direct line to that source, Who is for us, our true Father (the Father of all lights). The temptations of some dark meddler should never cause us to turn our glance away from our Good Father, as our first parents did in the Garden, and as we so often do in our own lives.

Interestingly enough, Jesus mentions that the Father Himself keeps secrets from the “wise and learned” and reveals things to the “little ones.”  Why is that?  (This might have been a good question for Adam and Eve to have asked as they were being tempted to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.)  We know most certainly that God never does anything without good reason, and a reason that redounds, often in mysterious ways, to our greatest benefit. 

Might it be that God protects the sacred and hides divine treasures for our sake? Anyone who has studied covenant knows that profaning the sacred is dangerous.  We can be destroyed by our profanation.  A simple look at the human wreckage surrounding the modern desecration of the gift and mystery of sexuality confirms this. 

 In other words, could it be that just as Jesus told us not to cast pearls before swine, He follows His own counsel with us?  He puts His treasure in safe places…He is careful with what is precious beyond measure.  And at the same time He is merciful to those of us who would have a terrible accounting to give for squandering a poorly understood gift, if we received it and did not really appreciate or care for it.

Secrets like this can be a good thing; in fact they can be a very good thing if their purpose is to protect a treasure (whether that be jewels or a reputation) from vandalism or theft, misuse or destruction. 

But some secrets should never be kept.  And unfortunately, people usually have more of these kinds of secrets.

We pay a price for many of the secrets we keep.  We can safely say, I think, that many of the sicknesses of our age are determined by the secrets we keep.  This is well known in the world of addiction and co-dependency:  “We are only as sick as our secrets.”  This is actually a psychology that was first explicated in the Sacred Scriptures.  Psalm 32 says:  “I kept it secret and my frame was wasted…” The distress, the groaning, the anxiety, the depression, the disturbance of so many today more often than not comes from holding secrets that should not be kept. 

St. Paul mentions this relationship between spiritual realities and physical consequences.  He says, in 1Corinthians, 11:29:  “For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.  That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.”  With the rising tide of illnesses in our age, we await a physician who will make this connection and diagnose the real cause of so many of the physical and psychological disorders of our day.

 

I know a woman who struggled with terrible depression much of her adult life, watched Mother Angelica faithfully, but would not take the secret of her abortion to the Confessional.  She died recently and my prayer is that before she died she finally released her secret into the loving mercy of God so she could enter her heavenly home with “joy and an upright heart.”  Her secret certainly didn’t keep her in peace or bring happiness into her life.  In fact, it brought her to the verge of a mental breakdown.

So why do we keep the secrets we do?  This is a mystery really, since we only fool ourselves in keeping these kinds of secrets.  God is certainly not fooled. There is nothing He doesn’t know about us.  The story of Ananias and Sapphira,  found in the fifth chapter of Acts, tells us exactly what can happen when we dissemble before God.  They pretended (to the Lord, as St. Peter points out) that they were giving everything to the community of believers, when in fact they retained a portion for themselves which they could have rightfully retained if they had chosen to.  After St. Peter had spoken, Ananias, and later his wife Sapphira (who arrived late and was questioned separately) both died on the spot, apparently for attempting to deceive God.

Keeping secrets from God is impossible, and it can be deadly!  If not immediately, then at our own judgments, when in our encounter with God Who is pure Love and Light and Goodness, all that is hidden will be revealed.  To our own overwhelming confusion we will find ourselves suddenly naked before the Lord, rather than clothed in the garments of grace He so freely and continually offers us, all because fear, or attachment or pride kept us from giving up our secrets.

Does this mean we should blurt out everything to everyone all the time, like they do on the tacky talk shows that seem to pollute the air waves?  No.  There is something inherently debasing about psychologically disrobing in front of millions of people.  There is something degrading about vomiting up things in public that properly belong in a counselor’s office and more often in a Confessional where the justification, relief and redemption that people are really seeking can be given.

This is really how Saints actually begin to become Saints.  They get rid of their secrets. And they don’t lie to themselves about who they really are.  That is why they are such shining examples of humility.  They know themselves in Truth, and it sets them free to soar to the heights! They give their secrets, both their sins and their treasures, over to God.  He takes the sins, and in Confession completely annihilates them, wills to remember them no more.  They are gone, gone, gone, with no more power to determine their life, and will never again reappear in accusation against them, even at the end of time.  Never! 

And then our Father does an even more astounding thing.    He begins giving them "treasures out of the darkness and riches that have been hidden away."   Isaiah 45:3   He takes miserable secrets  and begins to replace them with the secrets He holds.  What an exchange!   The saints are no fools!  They know this bargain is unmatched anywhere in the whole universe.   In the heart of our Redeemer, we are given, by way of His own sacrificial love, infinite riches in exchange for giving to Him our sinfulness, our pride, our imperfections, our self-importance. 

Great Confessors, like St. John Vianney and St. Padre Pio spent themselves in this work of getting people to give up their secrets so that they could begin to know the deep things of God in their lives.   There is a reason the sacrament of Peace and Reconciliation is an Easter Sacrament.  There is a reason that the Holy Spirit, Who comes in Pentecost like a mighty wind to sweep out the secret and dark recesses of our souls and fill them with fire and light, is the culminating gift of the Easter season.

Our Blessed Mother, the most pure creature who ever lived, was without secrets of her own.  She kept only those God gave her.   And because of that, there is none more beautiful, more  radiantly transparent in the living of the Mysteries of the  Most Holy Trinity.  In Her many apparitions in the last centuries, we can hear the cry of our good Mother when she bids us return to the Sacraments and live the Gospel way of life.  One of the things She is saying with great affection and urgency, as if speaking to a little child, is:  “Run!  Run and whisper your secrets to your Father.  All of them!  And be assured that He will give treasures out of the darkness and riches that have been hidden away especially for you!”

Sr. Anne Marie Walsh, SOLT

General Sister Servant

5/6/2013

Lies, Satan and Hell...

Holy cow, check out this blog post from another author about our deepest desires and where Satan attacks us the most. It's incredible.

Read it and pass it on...

http://www.entrecatholic.com/lies-satan-and-hell-a-story-of-casting-out-fear-by-tori-harris/

Third Undercover Video From Live Action...

Below is a third video of undercover footage from pro-life group Live Action exposing America's late term abortion industry. It is sad to see women so thoroughly involved in the killing of other women's children. Why do we do this to ourselves as women? Why do we perpetuate and promote violence against our own gender? We tell ourselves we are "helping" other women attain freedom but we are only killing ourselves and our children.

What will it take to awaken those who sleep?

Confessional Not a Dry Cleaner Nor a Beating Session...

I love this homily given by the Holy Father from this morning's Mass. How beautiful and how needed. There is no sin too big for God to forgive.

More Live Action Undercover Video From Washington DC

Lord, have mercy. Here is the second installment of undercover video taken at an abortion clinic that performs late term abortions. Notice how the doctor fully acknowledges that it is indeed a baby that he is killing.

This is hard to watch but the message MUST get out. Send out the video and www.liveaction.org website link.

Let us implore God, on this feast of St. Catherine of Siena, that we may courageously stand against this genocide of our children. Let us implore and beg for His mercy and graces of conversion for our country.

Today's Homily from Pope Francis

This is a beautiful homily to the young people who were confirmed today at St. Peter's Square.
The Pope's words are full of hope and wisdom. It's awesome.
Here is the text:


(Vatican Radio)
Dear Brothers and Sisters, Dear Confirmands,I would like to offer three short and simple thoughts for your reflection.
1. In the second reading, we listened to the beautiful vision of Saint John: new heavens and a new earth, and then the Holy City coming down from God. All is new, changed into good, beauty and truth; there are no more tears or mourning… This is the work of the Holy Spirit: he brings us the new things of God. He comes to us and makes all things new; he changes us. The Spirit changes us! And Saint John’s vision reminds us that all of us are journeying towards the heavenly Jerusalem, the ultimate newness which awaits us and all reality, the happy day when we will see the Lord’s face – that marvelous face, the most beautiful face of the Lord Jesus - and be with him for ever, in his love.

You see, the new things of God are not like the novelties of this world, all of which are temporary; they come and go, and we keep looking for more. The new things which God gives to our lives are lasting, not only in the future, when we will be with him, but today as well. God is even now making all things new; the Holy Spirit is truly transforming us, and through us he also wants to transform the world in which we live. Let us open the doors to the Spirit, let ourselves be guided by him, and allow God’s constant help to make us new men and women, inspired by the love of God which the Holy Spirit bestows on us! How beautiful it would be if each of you, every evening, could say: Today at school, at home, at work, guided by God, I showed a sign of love towards one of my friends, my parents, an older person! How beautiful!

2. A second thought. In the first reading Paul and Barnabas say that “we must undergo many trials if we are to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). The journey of the Church, and our own personal journeys as Christians, are not always easy; they meet with difficulties and trials. To follow the Lord, to let his Spirit transform the shadowy parts of our lives, our ungodly ways of acting, and cleanse us of our sins, is to set out on a path with many obstacles, both in the world around us but also within us, in the heart. But difficulties and trials are part of the path that leads to God’s glory, just as they were for Jesus, who was glorified on the cross; we will always encounter them in life! Do not be discouraged! We have the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome these trials!

3. And here I come to my last point. It is an invitation which I make to you, young confirmandi, and to all present. Remain steadfast in the journey of faith, with firm hope in the Lord. This is the secret of our journey! He gives us the courage to swim against the tide. Pay attention, my young friends: to go against the current; this is good for the heart, but we need courage to swim against the tide. Jesus gives us this courage! There are no difficulties, trials or misunderstandings to fear, provided we remain united to God as branches to the vine, provided we do not lose our friendship with him, provided we make ever more room for him in our lives.

This is especially so whenever we feel poor, weak and sinful, because God grants strength to our weakness, riches to our poverty, conversion and forgiveness to our sinfulness. The Lord is so rich in mercy: every time, if we go to him, he forgives us. Let us trust in God’s work! With him we can do great things; he will give us the joy of being his disciples, his witnesses. Commit yourselves to great ideals, to the most important things. We Christians were not chosen by the Lord for little things; push onwards toward the highest principles. Stake your lives on noble ideals, my dear young people! The new things of God, the trials of life, remaining steadfast in the Lord. 

Dear friends, let us open wide the door of our lives to the new things of God which the Holy Spirit gives us. May he transform us, confirm us in our trials, strengthen our union with the Lord, our steadfastness in him: this is a true joy! So may it be.

Gosnell Is Only The Beginning...

For those of you who are informed about abortionist Kermit Gosnell's trial, you probably know that the sorrowful revelation of all the children he has killed is only a tip of the iceberg.

Below is brand new under-cover video from LiveAction--the pro-life group started by Lila Rose. Here is startling footage of what really happens during later term abortions. Listen as the assistants describe the process of how they kill children and then the web of lies they spin.

Also, here is a link from LiveAction on President Obama's glowing speech to Planned Parenthood. This is a huge issue, folks. Abortion isn't just one of many issues- it is THE issue. We, as a nation, condone and promote the killing of innocent children. How we can pretend this has no consequences? The dignity and sanctity of life in all it's stages is THE foundational issue for the human race. What will become of us?

May God have mercy on us all. Let us all join in prayers for mercy for the people who work in the abortion industry and the women and men who give them business. It's heartbreaking.

Get this message out. We cannot remain with our heads in the sand any longer. God surely sees and knows all. May He help us see the truth and know what to do about it.

Francis Chan Rocks This Talk

If you have some time, check out this honest and powerful talk by non-denominational pastor, Francis Chan. This talk was given at the Passion 2013 Conference which sold out Falcon Stadium in Atlanta. Yup. Christian conference. Sells out an NFL arena. Mostly young adults in the crowd. People are hungry and they want to be fed. God bless all those who hunger and thirst.