Search Page
Showing 861 - 880 of 1911
Christ showed me, before Mass began, the glory above the sanctuary, and the steps that led to the Father's throne. He asked me to paint what I saw, and then to complete a huge picture, with Saints and Angels too. Everything that we do at Mass, with and through Christ, is done for the glory of our Heavenly Father.
As God looks upon the world, He sees how few of us believe in His goodness, how few of us expect answers to prayer, how few of us have prayed with faith in the merits of His Son Jesus, Who died for us. Our faith has not developed because we have not really given our whole lives to God, in regular prayer and works of charity.
St. Catherine of Sienna, who lived in a street I once saw, believed in the Father's goodness. She obeyed Him. She prayed with faith, and was answered like the Apostles in earlier times; she put her trust in God even when He led her through suffering in the course of her particular vocation; yet her reward was Heaven.
If we have Christ as our Saviour we have Him with us at all times, for example, on all our journeys and in every danger or time of apprehension; and He can always be met in the Blessed Sacrament, in a special way.
God has permitted capital punishment at certain times, for grave crimes. Yet the human race has been in such a dire state of sinfulness, since the Original Sin, that in whatever era of history Christ might have come to earth to speak the truth about sin and salvation, He would have been persecuted, and then killed by whatever method was usual at the time, despite His innocence.
The Father's Love for us is tender, and very deep. Everything that comes to us from Him is good, and conveys what is good for us or brings about good later on. He is tremendously pleased by all we do and say out of love for Him, and with all we say about His love to other people.
We know that sin is like a chain round the ankle that prevents us from serving God. But a little weakness such as fear of public opinion - or our own family - can be like a 'thread' holding us back from valiant work for God, unless with His help we break it.
Christ told me that we offer glory and honour to the Blessed Trinity at every valid Mass. And He wants everyone to know how highly He values the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, and to appreciate all that is good about its antiquity, wording, language and reverence.
The journey to Heaven can be seen as a route across dangerous terrain, to the beautiful city hidden far beyond the mountains. People who refuse good advice about travel and who insist on going where they please, and persevering in their sins, are like people foolish enough to insist on hopping all the way, or riding a unicycle.
Prayer and penance, faith and love, are essential. A person who hopes to reach the highest stages of the spiritual life, and Heaven, whilst ill-prepared and ill-disciplined, and self-centered in his opinions and plans is like a man who declares that he will climb Mount Everest by his own methods, and who sets out ill-equipped, and wearing flip-flops on his feet.
People who have been helped by our intercession can be brought to the edge of the bridge that Christ has constructed for us, which leads to Heaven. The handrails represent the Church, the firm grid beneath our feet, the Commandments. People who ignore warnings rush wherever they please, and fall through the gaps into the flames below.
Whoever trusts in God and in the merits of Jesus His Son, and prays with faith that he will be helped, is indeed helped, even in the deepest pit of sinfulness, despair and self-disgust. He can even be led into an intimate friendship with his Creator, when he has been drawn up from darkness.
Although some people expected the Saviour to appear on earth as a triumphant warrior, He came to earth to a quite place: into the womb of a chaste, gentle virgin who consented to be His Mother. He was with her, in ordinary life, for over thirty years. He longs to see us develop the virtues which His Mother had from her Conception.
Even someone as selfless and Christ-centered as Mother Teresa had to undergo - for her soul's sake - a long period in interior darkness. God provided her with this spiritual purification to make her perfect, as her order expanded and she experienced outward success and adulation as well as opposition.
A person who is determined to make preparation, to be worthy to receive the gift of contemplation, is like a man willing to go to the station, and travel on a train through dark tunnels, in order to reach the heights of the Himalayas. Someone who will not get out of bed to pray is like a man who wants to travel on high, but who sits waiting for a sedan chair to be sent down to fetch him. It will not come.
Sick people have no special right to enter Heaven just because they have suffered much, no matter what sentimental onlookers say. The sick, too, are called to holiness. They need to believe, to think and act with charity, and to persevere, in order to be saved. Yet they have had greater than usual opportunities to do penance, by accepting their sufferings in patience.
Christ and Our Lady are ready to greet everyone who arrives in Church for Mass. Yet they also look beyond the church building, searching for those family members of the 'Communion of Saints' who rarely or never come to take part in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Just as there was a place allotted and made ready for each child, at the nursery school, so there is a 'place' ready for each of us in Heaven, if we will accept God's invitation, and persevere in faith and love, to the end.
How can a man 'lose' God after death, by being in Hell, separated from God, when it is God Who holds everyone in existence? It is as if a man were living in a bright, beautiful home, but insisted on building concrete walls of sinfulness around Himself, which he refused to destroy. He would have 'lost' the company of His family and friends, while his suffering would be entirely due to his own actions.
Christ invites those Catholics who pay little honour to His ever-Virgin Mother Mary to imitate, in this matter, the Orthodox, who have not grown cold in their love for the Blessed Virgin nor lessened their devotion.
Showing 861 - 880 of 1911