I was reading Fr Z’s excellent blog. He said something in this post on one of the prayers of the liturgy about application of Church teaching being specific. If I can see someone I am to love God right there in that person. If I am to do some task I am to love God right there in that task. We are called to love and desire God’s will in concrete situations, in the details of life, especially when those details are little to our liking. We must love God in this beggar, this annoying creep, thisJesuit, not in beggars, creeps, and … Continue reading
Tag Archives: prayer
Everyone Knows that prayer is essential for spiritual growth. We seek to grow closer to Jesus, to become better conformed to His plan for our lives, and so we incorporate both planned and spontaneous prayer into our days. Prayer routines are as varied as the people who have them. Some pick up the book, CHRISTIAN PRAYER, and pray the psalms for morning and evening prayer. Others use the full multi-volume LITURGY OF THE HOURS and pray some or even all of it. Some pray one or more Rosaries a day, and some spend a daily time reading in the New … Continue reading
Hating on the Rosary makes the people who do it look foolish and ignorant. Even more ridiculous, they claim the Bible as their justification for speaking out against the Rosary. I think my readers are better than that and if they do not already know the awesomeness of the Rosary they are at least open to knowing what it is and why they should not hate on it. For those who don’t know: The Rosary is a structured meditation on the GOSPELS. The 20 meditations taken from Scripture. The pattern of prayers, the contents of which are also Gospel based, … Continue reading
After enjoying a lovely conversation on religion and history, I promised to send a write-up of the books I had mentioned. Maggie, this post is for you. 🙂 Catholic and fun and history. So, I will begin with the works of fiction I thought she would enjoy. Declan Finn writes wild action adventures, in modern settings, but often with historical roots and themes. The Pius Trilogy is my first suggestion. These are: A Pius Man, A Pius Legacy, and A Pius Stand. In addition are books such as Pius Tales which are background short pieces on some characters, and Pius … Continue reading
I love this particular prayer. I love it because I love the Holy Trinity. I love the Our Father, because it references the first person of the one God. I love the Jesus Prayer and the Hail Mary for their focus on the second person of the Godhead. Few prayers say much about the Holy Spirit, third person of the Triune God, so I find myself praying this one in honor of God the Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, enkindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit, and they shall … Continue reading
Having chosen by an act of will to be grateful for our many blessings and having chosen to pray for God to correct our emotions to bring them into line with the fact of our gratitude. We next should consider an appropriate response to this new attitude. What action should we take? I suggest we look at our blessings, note how we have enough, we have what we need, and can recognize how blessed we are in this. From here we should turn out eyes outward, to the news we hear and read, the Christian martyrs in Syria and surrounding … Continue reading
Preparation for Spiritual Warfare takes many shapes. Confession, aka Sacrament of Reconciliation, is always a good place to begin, but another very good beginning is GRATITUDE. An act of will is a good way to begin with any virtue and can be chosen even in the face of uncooperative emotions. Feelings are not fact! It is not essential to FEEL a virtue to HAVE that virtue. I’m grateful as an axiom. Still, I wanted to feel the emotion of gratitude, not just the fact of it. Recently, we had a fire that cost a lot in lost equipment and there was … Continue reading
Scripture is clear that our enemies are not the people whom we see before us but the principalities and powers in the spiritual realm who are driving the evil being done by our obvious human enemies. History is full of endless rounds of futile violence that generally cycles back around years after it seems to have all been settled. WHY? Because of sin of course. We all KNOW this if we know anything about our faith, but it is so basic, so obvious, that most of us give it no thought at all. Yet, that sin is the hook that … Continue reading
Christians alive today are part of the Church Militant. The secular world thinks of violence when they think of militant things. But the secular world is limited in its thoughts to the would of the visible and material. Church Militant is all about spiritual warfare. Spiritual Warfare is about prayer and growing in heroic virtue. I speak of course of the vocational goal of becoming a SAINT. So I see darkness rising, what am I to do? As a Christian, I step up my prayers. I make an effort to pray more diligently for the leaders of our Church, for … Continue reading
“Right now I have a sense of growing evil that has me both a little shaken and increasingly combative. I am taking some steps in my own life in the face of what I see on the horizon. I suggest that you do to. As part of that preparation… GO TO CONFESSION.”– Fr. Z’s Blog I’ve been feeling this for a number of years now, growing stronger over time. At first, it would only be short waves of evil, easily over-looked, but in the past year the sense has been intense and almost over-whelming. I’ve stepped up my efforts with … Continue reading