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Carelessness can be the first step on a path that leads to terrible results. Carelessness about life leads to the deaths of innocent babies by abortion. Carelessness about our neighbour's welfare leads to silence when they are harmed by an evil regime. Carelessness in catechesis can lead to gross irreverence towards Christ our God and Saviour, and to uncharity towards the neighbour who prays - and even to carelessness about the moral law, and about sin and death.
Good Christians shine out a light into a troubled world; but there are many places where little or no light can be seen, in Christ's sight: places where many evils, cruelties, tortures, enslavements and acts against helpless women are perpetrated by people who want to remain in power.
Christ sees dark clouds of evil across much of the globe, clouds which hide the many cruelties and evils practiced against people of other races, religions, or another gender: all sorts of enslavement and torture, by people who want to retain their power. Black clouds over western Europe represent the evils occurring in abortion clinics.
People who churn out pornography for others to read are following the wishes of the same evil spirits who urge people to use their power to remain in power: resulting in the innocent suffering torture, or solitary confinement, or medical experimentation or other grossly sinful practices.
Good art is a gift made possible by God; but like all gifts it should be used wisely. It should never serve to offer malicious depictions of certain groups of persons or individuals, nor to inflame sinful desires by pornographic content, nor to corrupt the minds of the viewers, for example, by making an evil ideology or regime seem admirable.
Those nurses and doctors who dispose of some unborn babies and adult patients, having judged them to be inconvenient or useless, are as if casting them into a pit. Yet they themselves will fall into the pit of doom, unless they repent before they die. The pit represents, for evil-doers, the perpetual alienation from God that they might freely choose.
A priest has been ordained in order to preach the Gospel and to offer sacrifice, in order to rescue souls from their sins and lead them towards Heaven. So a priest who leads a soul towards Hell by suggesting his mortal sins are not serious, and that, in fact, someone can continue in his sins without any pangs of conscience, is a monster, in God's sight, because he is doing Satan's work.
People endanger their souls by their involvement in the occult, in any of its forms, which include spiritualism, with its attempts to speak with or to 'call up' the spirits of the dead. To take part is to risk evil spirits entering the souls of the curious. Yet anyone who grows fearful should know that Christ's power is greater that the power of any creature - whether demonic or human.
None of us need fear that God is powerless to help us withstand the assaults of the evil one. Christ on the Cross seemed to be weak; yet He was powerful enough to rise from the dead; and so He is certainly powerful enough to enable us to endure the assaults and temptations that come to us through the evil one. We ought not to live in fear, but rather, to be confident that Christ will keep His promises.
The evil one wants to destroy the Church. So marvellous is the work and life of a priest, that every priest and Bishop is targeted by the evil one. He tempts them, trying to drag them away from Christ, by subtle and determined methods - yet he can not succeed, when men are resolute in prayer, relying on Divine Grace. Satan is like a giant spider who tries to catch weak people and holy people in his web.
Some Catholics foolishly ignore the evidence; that the evil one has been especially active in the Church for four decades, determined to strike at Christ and Catholics by striking at the Mass. The evil one uses all sorts of people and methods to increase ignorance of the Real Presence, to confuse the laity, to discourage priests, to bring about a distorted or truncated presentation of the Faith in catechesis. It's as if he is lurking beneath a procession of the Blessed Sacrament, planning how to lessen our love for Christ and to diminish our fervour.
If we picture an underground car-park, after an earthquake, with its floor a mess of broken concrete, and people feeling really unsafe on the uneven floor, with little hope: it will be worse than that for all who have preyed on the poor and have committed every sort of evil, and who have not repented before they died. They will experience Eternal separation from God and from loving friends and relations.
God's entire nature is Love. He is never unloving. The Father wants us to entrust ourselves to His care as confidently as a tiny child who entrusts himself to the care of his good mother. He knows of our sufferings and problems; yet He can bring good out of evil, make the weak strong, and make us joyful, ready for the joy of Heaven.
We must work and pray to help the lost to avoid disaster. Many Catholics are falling away from the practice of the Faith. They don't seem to notice the moral vacuum at the centre of their lives, or in the life of society. It is like a great hole in the ground which endangers the lives of all who thoughtlessly walk or run around it. The hole has appeared through Christian societies introducing immoral laws, careless of the consequences: abortion, and other evils. Family life, and national life, are endangered.
We are wasting time if we spend time grumbling instead of offering thanks. If we grumble, we feed our discontent, perhaps about our everyday duties, about the decisions of the priest, or about the dryness of our prayer. How can we pray without ceasing, with thankful hearts, if we cannot accept the Will of God in our lives (though this does not mean that we should be silent in the face of evil)?
Saint Michael is a powerful warrior, glad to protect God's children from the evil one: from temptation and spiritual assaults. We should turn to him in prayer, and to other holy Angels, and to the Saints, when we are in need of help, as well as to our Saviour and His Virgin Mother.
Satan is at work to draw us towards foolishness and sin. Wherever there is a crisis, stirred up by the influence and power of the evil one, innocent bystanders are caused to suffer - just as our Blessed Lady suffered as she stood beneath the Cross, though she was innocent, and watched her son die in agony. We must pray for all who become embroiled in tragic events, that they will remain united to Christ, and not lose heart.
There is a horrible surprise in store for a person who has deserted Christ and the Church, and who arrives at the moment of death, then finds himself helpless between the Evil One who had been leading him astray, and the pit into which he might soon fall, to remain there forever. But Christ appears, with a merciful face, to ask: 'Is that really your wish: to go to Hell? If you reach up your arms to me, I will save you.' He must choose well, and reach up in humility, if he wishes to reach Heaven one day.
We must encourage one another really to believe in Jesus Christ. If I am one of those fearful Catholics who constantly feels trapped between the memory of my sins, which we feel will bring us to Hell, and the assaults or temptations of the evil one - like a roaring beast, trying to devour us - I should look away from myself, upwards, to Jesus. If we call on Him, He is powerful enough to help us. But, to call, we first need faith in Him.
How watchful are we about our everyday habits? Much of what people feast upon today is actually damaging to their souls. It can 'poison' their spiritual lives. By gossip, or pornography or other evils it's as if people feast, like the rats that eat the pellets in the corner of a barn. They feel full, but will poison their souls just as the rats poison their bodies.
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