A variety of charges are made against loyal Catholics from critics, especially our present holy Father against loyal Faithful Catholics of being hard boiled and nasty. It's good to take all criticism seriously and apply it to ourselves personally and to try to find out if any of it is true. Not just to dump it out of hand. I was thinking about this and wondered if it makes any difference if we pray or don't? If we believe in God or don't , if we pray or don't. If we are Faithful or not? Can't people be just as good and moral , living good and upright productive lives with no Faith at all whatsoever? So rigid , fundamentalist, Conservative , Traditional cranky old me thought it would be good to take a look at the lives of those who live around me in our little apartment block, to consider how they are getting on. We have 8 apartments in two sets of blocks. I keep myself to myself but can't help seeing a lot of what is going down because we live side by side closely. My first comment would be that none of them are people of Faith, apart from myself I am the only one who practices religion. So I suppose who would class them all as Apostate Catholics. It is a good place then to study how they get along with that in their lives. The first thing I would say is that I am the only one who works. The rest of them are on welfare , although many of them are young and healthy. That would be my first point of concern. My second point of concern would be the rate of alcohol and drug use, for I would class at least two of them as chronic alcoholics. But my main concern would be how very unhappy they all seems really to be. Also how hostile they seem to be with each other. 'Partners' , for instance shouting and rowing and even physical violence. Now I contrast this with rigid fundamentalist old me. I am very,very happy and at peace with myself and the world. They on the other hand appear to me to be living in a state of a kind of undeclared war or even hell. They are deeply, deeply restless, fearful and unhappy. If I take the example of my immediate neighbours and place it to the wider world I see the exact same things. Anger, hostility, constant fear and anxiety, profound lack of peace. They say take people and things as you find them, well I am sorry that's how i find them. If that makes me a crank, well then I am a crank. “Peace, peace, peace! Be reconciled! Only peace. Make your peace with God and among yourselves. For that, it is necessary to believe, to pray, to fast, and to go to confession.” June 26, 1981 October 1984 “...When the Holy Spirit comes, peace will be established...” Our Lady says on December 25, 1988: “...I call you to peace. Live it in your heart and all around you so that all will know peace - peace which does not come from you but from God...” December 25, 1988: “...Glorify the Nativity of Jesus through the peace that I give. It is for this peace that I have come as your Mother, Queen of Peace...” “Glory to God in the highest and on earth PEACE to those on whom His favor rests.” (Luke 2:14)
You describe a lamp in a very dark place. By that I mean the light of Christ within you is the only light your neighbours have. How good is God to those poor lost souls around you. God help them. God bless you and your family and all those who cross your path today and every day. I love the picture of Blessed Mother with the doves. Gorgeous.
I was waling in the forest in the middle of nowhere yesterday on a really gorgeous sunny day that would have made anyone happy. When far out in the forest I met few people but one or two I met when I said , 'Hello' but looked at me with suspicious silence, even veiled hostility. So sad. Where are they coming from? What did they expect me to do, suddenly attack them? So sad. This virus thing has, I suspect, escalated already present bad attitudes. It makes everyone and everything their enemy.
Sometimes I think it is good to take a cool hard look at the world around us. We are living in an increasingly Godless Pagan world. That is a fact. Actions have consequences and so we are more and more, as Jesus said going out as sheep among wolves. Wolves will turn and kill each other, but they prefer to attack sheep. This is something I bear more and more in mind. If this makes me a crank, fine. But I find the counsel of being nice and they'll be nice, you just have to, 'Accompany them' idiotic. Treat a tiger like a tiger.
Padraig, I know it is not funny but when I read your post and saw waling, I thought no wonder those people looked at you with suspicious silence. Then I realised you must have meant walking. Sorry but I did giggle at the thought of you wailing in the forest. Cheer up for heavens sake, you only live once. So make happy memories, cause no one else will do that for you. And you are a treasure, and we all think the sun shines out of your tail. LOL
Padraig, I know it is not funny but when I read your post and saw waling, I thought no wonder those people looked at you with suspicious silence. Then I realised you must have meant walking. Sorry but I did giggle at the thought of you wailing in the forest. Cheer up for heavens sake, you only live once. So make happy memories, cause no one else will do that for you. And you are a treasure, and we all think the sun shines out of your tail. LOL[/QUOTE] Well to look at the bright side. There is a gentleman across the street, Stephen who was a boxer and did very well out of it. I think he had some kind of near death experience after getting shot years and years ago and had a radical conversion. He is the most devout of devout Catholics and walks about doing nothing but good. He has a huge Devotion to Divine Mercy and runs Divine Mercy Sunday in a local Church with Divine Mercy Devotions each Friday, plus prayer groups. He gets lovely Catholic booklets printed which he hands out to anyone who will take them He also runs his very own kind of hostel/ large house for folks down on their luck. He never ever stops doing good. He even had a go at converting me, which was so sweet. It could be said of him that he walks the earth doing good.
It is beautiful. It used to be the estate of a Duke, the Beresford's . One beautiful area in the Park is the Hernitage . It was built as a tribute to young friend of his who died very young. The Dukes had loads of money to burn and erected loads of lovely , 'Follies' on their estate.
If, in doing so, they provided employment to the people in the area and employed craftsmen to create objects of beauty, then they are far from being "follies" and closer to what G_D gave them their money to do.
It depends. If you have more money than you know what to do with , you might be inclined to burn it on wasteful extravagant expenses. I was out walking through a Night Club area with the dog at the week end out of curiosity to see how things are reviving and saw a Ferrari parked up. I saw people gathered round to admire it. I saw today in a magazine that it is the most recent , 'retro', addition, dating back to the sixties, just out and retails at £171,000 ($241,500 US). Folly indeed. The 'Ferrari Roma' THE EPISTLE OF JAMES: Chapter 5 Warning to the Rich 1Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. 4 Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.[1] 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in sensual indulgence. You have fattened[2] your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned, and you have murdered[3] the righteous one; he does not resist you. The Ferrari Roma
C.S Lewis once wrote, Lewis was from my home town of Belfast, so therefore must be right. 'The only things we will take to heaven are the things we have given away'.
This is not to say that a rich person cannot be good. A rich person can be very, very good if he is very very poor inside. But it is so very, very hard for a rich person to be poor inside. Matthew 19:24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."
Sir Alec Guinness , who plays Pope Gregory IX in this scene was a devout Catholic and daily mass goer. He tells the most beautiful story about a miracle that happened to him in London while he was filming He used to get up each morning for mass at Westminster Cathedral at 7.am before catching a train to Pinewood studios in the hone counties. Well one morning he went to mass as usual, early in the morning. and afterwards went to catch his train but it was not there. He made enquiries but was told it was (am and the train had left and hour before. Confused he went back to the Cathedral, but there was only the 7:am mass. So how come he missed his 8 am train. He went back to his hotel and learnt the train he was supposed to be on had crashed with many, many deaths and injuries. But how had he lost the hour and missed it? A miracle. The miracle of the missing hour. Proverbs 16:9 “ In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.”
They probably thought you were going to spread your Covid cooties on them Time to head for Abruzzo, brother, and get out of the cities. We had a few families up this weekend to our land, it was nothing but peace, joy, their van loads of kids skinning knees playing in the fields and woods, bunch of the boys slept in the treehouse, adults drinking too much wine and passionately talking about Bishops and church lockdowns and where we go from here. Our pastor came yesterday and led us all in a Eucharistic Procession down to the little old church at the edge of our property where we had adoration and prayed a beautiful rosary together as faithful Catholic families before going back and eating more great food and emptying more wine bottles. This is what God is calling us to do, find His Peace and Joy that is still in this world. But we need to separate ourselves for now, and support one another in a very orthodox and traditional Catholic way, while He allows them to implode upon themselves before intervening to set the table straight once again. Head for Abruzzo, brother...here's our little American version:
Look at how Jesus, Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth.. Look at how the first Christians lived in community in Acts. Look at how our fraternal sisters and brothers live in authentic Catholic communities. In the West we have become so rich and materialistic we have found we do not need God. But we do need God. So the call to return to how our grandparents. or great grand parents lived as authentic but very primitive believers. The times of greatest crisis in the Church are the time of greatest growth. This is the greatest crisis in the history of the world. We are, once again called upon to die in blood and be reborn in Christ. This will occur in very many small groups , communities.. Marian Refuges. Revelation 12 The Woman and the Dragon 1A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. 4Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. 5She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days. 7Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
