Politics! You Reap What You Sow.

My Dear People,

When the Jewish nation in the Old Testament insisted that they have a king reign over them instead of a judge, God allowed them their hearts desire. And so came along many corrupt and evil kings who brought down sorrow and condemnation upon them. When we ignore the law of God in our own country, and elect corrupt and evil leaders in Washington, we can expect the same result.

We have not even begun to see the bad fruit of our evil choices as a nation. Unfortunately, the "good" will suffer and well as the bad. Jeremiah reminded us in the first reading last Sunday. "Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock." This applies not only to the Church, but also to government and civil leaders as well. God will allow the consequences of our immoral and evil choice to overcome us. Maybe then as a nation, we might finally repent before it is too late. Pray for the corruption and evil to come to an end in our changing government. We might just wake up one day and ask ourselves, just where and when did this all change? Pray, pray, pray for the conversion of our nation to return to God and His Divine Law!

May we gladly give our gifts over to the Lord, knowing that just as He did with the loaves and fishes. He can multiply our humble offerings for the benefit of many.

Entrusting you to the care of Our Lady,

Fr. Mark

Bible Tactics To Control Lust

To control lust one must know the steps that lead to it. Agree? Read the following and look for Satan's process and see how lust starts small and keeps growing.

Discover these Bible Secrets to Conquer Lust

Daniel 13:7-11

When the people left at noon, Susanna used to enter her husband's garden for a walk.
When the old men saw her enter every day for her walk,
they began to lust for her.
They suppressed their consciences;
they would not allow their eyes to look to heaven,
and did not keep in mind just judgments.
Though both were enamored of her, they did not tell each other their trouble,
for they were ashamed to reveal their lustful desire to have her.

Here are the steps Satan uses and how we can combat them at each level.

1. saw her enter every day - Idleness is the devil's play ground.
2. suppressed their consciences - The lustful thought is not a sin, but entertaining it is.
3. would not allow their eyes to look to heaven - Jesus gave us this example in John 17:1 "When Jesus had said this, he raised his eyes to heaven." We must turn to God for help desiring purity and holiness.
4. did not keep in mind just judgments - 2 Chronicles 19:7 "Now then, let the fear of the LORD be upon you; take heed what you do, for there is no perversion of justice with the LORD our God, or partiality, or taking bribes." A proper fear of the Lord produces righteousness, because we do not want God in His Mercy to give us our due justice. The remedy here is to reflect on the pains of hell and purgatory.
5. did not tell each other their trouble - Go to confession and if possible a trusted friend.
6. ashamed to reveal their lustful desire - 1 Kings 2:1-2 "Take courage and be a man.
   Keep the mandate of the LORD, your God, following his ways and observing his statutes, commands, ordinances, and decrees as they are written..." God uses fear to draw us to a hatred of sin. Notice that Satan also uses fear to keep us from going to God. Take courage and bring this evil to the light, then God can take over from there.
   

These old men did not heed these steps. They fell into mortal sin by trying to get Susanna to sleep with them. For them and for us the punishment is death, when we choose to follow these steps.

Key To Control Lust

Lust is a serious issue. By identifying the problem early in the process one can fight the snares of the devil with God's grace and have a much greater chance of success.

May God bless you and grant us all a pure heart.

Go ahead and email this to friend. They will thank you for it.

"That's What Jesus Says." Family Funny

Quote from Anne Marie just moments ago, "Mom it's easier for a needle to go through a camel, than a rich man to enter heaven. That's what Jesus says."

This one is a family funny from a friend.

Ethan asked me once"mommy if God made us from mud, how did he make our eye balls?" Then he said "maybe God forgot to give the blind man eyes & that's why Jesus put mud on them." I was speechless....

Yet from another friend.

Whenever my Beau says "I love you mommy" he then says "but i love God the most, you're supposed to love God the most".

What's your family funny?

Family Funny

So, my wife reminds me three times to call my Godchild to wish him happy birthday.

"All right, I'll do it."

So, three hours later, I remembered something and called my twin brother, my Godson's father. We had a great manly conversation. We talked about religion, careers, home improvement projects, sports etc.. Everything but the wishing my Godchild happy birthday.


Now, we are getting ready for bed.

"Did you remember to wish your Godchild a happy birthday?"

Realizing my mistake, I said "Did you feel how hot it was today?"

Getting out of bed, I called my brother to apologized and wished the boy a happy first birthday.

Fast forward . . .

The next day my wife answers my brother's phone call. "Is John Michael the worst Godfather ever for forgetting your son's first birthday?"

"No, I forget Anne Marie's all the time."

"Um, Rose is your Goddaughter, not Anne Marie."

At least my wife learned forgetting runs in the family.

Adoration - Eternal Benefits

My Dear People,

Is Jesus Pulling You Aside?

So eager were the crowds to see Jesus, that He could barely find a quiet place to be alone. As soon as word got out that He was coming to that region, people would begin to swell in in large numbers. In today's Gospel, Mark tells us that Jesus pulled aside the Twelve Apostles, in order that He might pray with them. But because of the vast crowd, it was difficult to find peace and quiet. Do you have an Eucharistic Adoration Chapel or times the Church is unlocked?

Like the Apostles, we have to make time for peace and quiet. If you have lax in coming to visit our Eucharistic Lord, make up your mind to begin again. For those of you who have never even made a visit to be with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, please pray about beginning as well. It sad to know how much blessings we miss by not sacrificing time to go to Adoration. This is holy prayer that will last into eternity. Please pray about making a Holy Hour with Jesus each and every week!

May we find comfort in the love of Jesus present in the Blessed Sacrament. Trusting that He gives us all that we need.

Entrusting you to the care of Our Lady,

Fr. Mark

Notre Dame Bishop Causing A Stir

Bishop D’Arcy, first made headlines with the Notre Dame scandal, now he goes deeper calling his flock to put Jesus in the center of the Church. Literally, he is mandating all tabernacles to be placed in the center of the Church.

Read below for full details.

To Priests, Deacons, Religious, and to All the Faithful,
The presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is at the center of our faith and of the devotional life of our Catholic people.

In recent years, the place of the tabernacle in our churches has become a source of controversy. This should not be. The Eucharist, whether we are referring to its celebration or to the place of reservation, should always be a means of unity and communion, and never of division.

The place of the tabernacle in our church should reflect our faith in the real presence of Christ, and should always be guided by church documents.

My experience is that our people, with their instinct of faith, have always desired that the tabernacle be central and visible. They find it confusing when the tabernacle in their churches is not visible, and if possible, central.

Because of my responsibility to foster the devotional life of our people, and to keep it sound, I have asked our Office of Worship to prepare norms for the placement and design of the tabernacle in this diocese. These norms were brought before the Presbyteral Council, the Liturgical Commission and the Environment and Arts Committee. Suitable refinements and improvements were prepared.


I urge all priests to follow these norms carefully and completely, and most importantly — to foster devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.

Sincerely yours in our Lord,

Most Reverend John M. D’Arcy

Correct Teaching Leads To ?

My Dear People,

Proper Living In The Faith!

When we look at the thirty three years Jesus lived upon the Earth, in only three do we receive any detail of in the Holy Scriptures. Of the four Gospels, we find Our Lord teaching, preaching and healing. Pope John Paul ll declared before He died, that we were living in a New Era of Evangelization. The Pontiff stated that the Good News of the teaching, preaching and healing of Jesus needed to be shared with all mankind in a new way.

In today's Gospel, we find Jesus giving a new commission to His Disciples, to go out to all the world, and share the Good News. "Take a walking stick - but no food, no sack, no money in their belts." The Disciples were to rely completely upon God's Holy Providence. So they went out preaching, healing, and casting many kinds of demons. The sick upon whom they laid hands, were cured. When are hearts and minds are one again with God, so follows the body. The Holy Balance we seek comes only from the Lord. And it begins with correct teaching. Proper instructions in the faith yields to proper living in the faith. Pray for the Lord to raise up new and powerful teachers of the Holy Catholic Faith.

May we learn from the Holy Apostles, in giving up our strong attachment to material goods.

Entrusting you to the care of Our Lady,
Fr. Mark

U2 Praises The Virgin

U2 Honors Blessed Virgin Mary with a Song.

Be sure to hit play.

Blogger Note: Bono does not have best belief system from the last I checked, but Our Lady works wonders for those who honor her. Mommy Mary do your thing.

Posted by Tim Drake at the National Catholic Register


In a recent Rolling Stone magazine interview with Brian Hiatt, U2’s Bono says that the song “Magnificent” is inspired by the Blessed Virgin Mary.

“All music for me is worship of one kind or another,” says Bono.

The song appears on the band’s new album, “No Line on the Horizon.”

“Magnificent was inspired by the Magnificat, a passage from the Gospel of Luke in the voice of the Virgin Mary that was previously set to music by Bach,” says Bono. “There’s this theme running through the album of surrender and devotion and all the things I find really difficult.”

The lyrics include: “Magnificent, Magnificent, I was born, I was born to be with you in this space and time. I was born, I was born to sing for you. I didn’t have a choice but to lift you up and sing whatever song you wanted me to. I give you back my voice. From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise ... Only love, only love can leave such a mark, but only love, only love can heal such a scar.”

Recorded in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1: 41-45), the Magnificat (Latin for “magnifies”), also known as the Canticle of Mary, is the Blessed Virgin Mary’s joyful prayer in response to her cousin Elizabeth’s greeting.

HT to The Catholic Key Blog

Secrets Revealed, Little Known Purgatory Fact!

Shockingly Most Catholics Don't Realize
The Holy Souls Obtain Graces For Us.

Cardinal Bellarmine observes that we may well believe that the souls in Purgatory pray and obtain graces for us, since the rich man in hell prayed for his brothers, although he suffered much more than they suffer in Purgatory. And Francisco Suarez, S.J., who praises this opinion as pious and probable, confirms it by these words:

"The souls in Purgatory can pray for those who earnestly implore their deliverance of God, and who endeavour to obtain it by good works. For their prayers can but be useful to those persons whom they do not know, but whom God knows. Nothing then prevents them from begging God to assist these persons in necessity, to forgive their offenses, to preserve them from temptations, etc."

This is therefore another reason for believing that our good works applied to the dead have more power to draw down on us great gifts from heaven. For although the dead may not know in particular who we are, nor of what we stand in need, they can always recommend their benefactors to God, and implore Him to give them what they desire for His glory and for their salvation. " It is, in fact," says Suarez " a duty of charity and gratitude; why then should they refuse to acquit themselves of it? We have then," concludes the same Doctor, " a holy and real reason for doing good to the souls in Purgatory, so that we may have a greater share in their prayers."

Taken from The Twelve Months Sancified by Prayer: November, by Fr. Antoine Ricard D.S.G.

Originally posted by Joseph, Good Jesuit; Bad Jesuit

Fr. Z Stirring the Pot

Here is Father Z with his best post of the year.

Caution: This is sure to charge your emotions! His blog has over 111 comments in 8 hours. Go ahead and take the time to read this.

The Problem With Toning Down the Rhetoric – And Why We Probably Won’t Do It

Some of my Catholic friends have been urging me and others on the Catholic right to tone down the rhetoric when it comes to discussing issues related to the Notre Dame scandal, or Notre Shame as time is showing it to have been. They want us to tone down our "harsh rhetoric" on issues such as abortion, President Obama and other Catholics who support him. These friends insist that they respect my right to my point of view, and they assure me that they, too, oppose abortion. However, they argue that many tactics of the Catholic pro-life movement are “negative” (e.g. showing pictures of aborted fetuses) and therefore counter-productive. They argue further that these tactics – which include protesting Notre Dame’s bestowing an honorary doctorate of law on President Obama – actually exacerbate tensions and divisions within the Catholic Church and within society at large. Finally, they charge that such tactics are spiteful and otherwise uncharitable. We on the right would say “sinful,” but these friends of mine don’t use that language.

I am not impervious to these criticisms. I don’t like being thought of in these terms, though I confess I sometimes accept their judgment with a touch of mischievous relish. I don’t know anyone on the Catholic or Christian right who wants to be thought of as using language that is counter-productive, divisive and spiteful.

Okay, maybe Ann Coulter, bless her.

But when it comes to their suggestion to tone down the rhetoric, I think we shouldn’t, and I doubt we will.

First of all, there’s history. No matter how earnestly these Catholic friends of mine insist that they oppose abortion, when I think about what they want us not to do, I am forced to conclude that they just don’t see the symmetry between the abortion issue and other moral tragedies in recent history, such as the Holocaust and racial segregation. Would my Catholic friends today not applaud those German, Austrian and Italian Catholics who risked their lives to speak out in the strongest terms against the racial policies of Hitler and Mussolini, even though in doing so they used language that their friends thought was counter-productive, divisive and spiteful?

And why can’t these friends of mine cast themselves in the role of American whites who, during the civil rights struggles of the 1960’s, urged those few outspoken Catholic priests, sisters, and laypeople who rode freedom buses and were arrested during sit-ins to tone down the rhetoric, because it was counter-productive and divisive?

Is it me, or is the outrage of these Catholic friends of mine over the recent murder of the abortionist George Tiller, and the blame they hurl at the “extreme rhetoric” of pro-lifers for his death, not analogous to the anger of those white Catholics in the 60’s who blamed civil rights activists for instigating the Watts and Detroit riots?

My second reason for not toning down the rhetoric on abortion follows from the first. When and why did the abortion issue cease to be a “justice and peace” issue? Answer: when it became a women’s issue.

Have you noticed that there’s something about opposition to abortion that gives the creeps to “progressive” Catholics?

By the way, they hate to be called “liberals” or “left-wing” Catholics; they think of themselves as just plain, ordinary Catholics. We aren’t to label them, but they freely label us. This is what "liberal" now means. For liberals, pro-lifers are “single-issue Catholics” or “single-issue voters”, a label intended to accuse us of ignoring all the other life issues in the “seamless garment” that makes up their precious “consistent life ethic.”

QUAERUNTUR: When was the last time you saw a “consistent life ethics” Catholic instead of simply assuring you that, yes, they too oppose abortion, actually speak out loudly against abortion? Do you know any “consistent life ethic” Catholics who seriously weigh a candidate’s position on abortion when deciding how to vote in an election?

No. For progressive Catholics it’s okay, even respectable, not to get upset about abortion to the point of voting against legislators who support it. Abortion is the issue that gets left off of “peace and justice” agendas. Progressivist Catholics associate abortion with sexual ethics, not with human life ethics. They complain that pro-lifers do not care about the other “life issues” such as capital punishment, war, poverty and health care. Never mind that no one really knows what pro-life Catholics think about these issues! But “peace and justice” Catholics only mention abortion when they are clucking their tongues at the pro-life movement.

I suspect that behind this “peace and justice” Catholic vs. pro-life Catholic tension is the divide between Democrat and Republican Catholics. I’m not saying that all pro-life Catholics vote for Republicans. I know a few who don’t. But let’s be honest, it’s hard to find pro-life Democrats holding public office. Progressivist Catholics know this too. Their loyalty to the aims and leadership of the Democrat party accounts for part of their opposition to the rhetoric of pro-life Catholics.

My third reason for not wanting us to tone down the rhetoric is a sense I have, a feeling not easy to pin down.

I am sensing a kind of Zeitgeist in the air which censures the use of “harsh rhetoric.”

I’ve been told by my progressivist Catholic friends that people today are turned off by the kind of angry, abrasive, “us v. them” rhetoric that reached a fever pitch during the Notre Dame controversy. Just think! American bishops were publicly critical of Notre Dame’s president. Pro-life protesters disrupted the graduation ceremony while President Obama was present, and some of them – “outsiders” as they were called – were arrested for trespassing on Notre Shame’s property.

Can you hear on the wind, on the waves, that whiny “why can’t we all just get along” mantra, scolding us for disrupting the feeling of harmony and comity we’re all supposed to be feeling in this Obama, post-political era?

These friends of mine praise Pres. Obama for his search for a “common ground” and his insistence on “dialogue,” even as they accuse pro-life Catholics of engaging in juvenile, discourteous rhetoric and of pursuing short-sighted, unrealistic and divisive political goals. What’s worse, in their eyes we are dragging this political conflict over abortion into the Church itself, where everybody should feel welcome, regardless of their views on abortion. Priests who preach about abortion are accused of alienating people in the pews. The new sin is making someone, anyone, feel uncomfortable because of his or her views or "lifestyle".

But the net effect of this unrelenting censorship from the left is that the pro-life (yes, read: anti-abortion) message is ground down, silenced under the rubric of “it’s all right that we agree to disagree about this issue.”

Homosexual activists have a saying, "silence equals death." What they know, what the Catholic left doesn’t, is that all rhetoric aimed at effecting social and political change must, above all, be heard.

In the meantime, how many progressivist Catholic media shills will complain next week that this week’s G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, was disrupted by protesters advocating on behalf of the global poor or the environment?

You see, it’s not all acerbic rhetoric that merits labeling as counter-productive, divisive and uncharitable. It’s just pro-life rhetoric.

And that, in the end, is why we probably won’t tone it down.

The Devil Doesn't Take Vacations

My Dear People,

Pray, Pray, Pray!

These are the lazy, hazy, days of summer. Picnics, family vacations, and rest highlight our time. But it is not an excuse to become "lazy and hazy" in our prayer. The devil looks for any excuse to convince us that daily prayer, Sunday Mass and the Rosary, can take a vacation with us. Don't listen. We live in current times, when daily prayer and discernment are essential.

In today's Gospel, we see the contemporaries of Jesus trying to figure out just "who He really IS". Is He and ordinary man, a great prophet, an important political figure??? Oddly enough, even some Christians today are still asking the same question. Confusion and doubt are the work of the devil. We can never take a vacation from protecting ourselves from the devil's lying ways. So pray, pray and pray! Do not let your guard down. Walk and talk with Jesus all summer long...

In the spirit of service and sacrifice, may we generously use our time, talent and treasure to do the work which God has placed us here on earth to do.

Entrusting you to the care of Our Lady,
Fr. Mark