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Some conversions take a long time. Before a lasting conversion, a person needs to go on a 'journey' to the very centre of his soul and mind. By Divine grace, he can discover his own true will. Is his will fixed on achieving pleasure, above all, or power, or physical fitness, or truth or fame? He can discover his own motives, and change them, after providential times of rest and reflection.
Once Christ had become a man, we learned how precious is humanity to God. We are all brothers and sisters to Christ and to one another; and each of us should treat others with respect, as Christ treated people in His earthly life-time.
No matter how people die, whether of sickness, old age, or in what seem like accidents or freak storms or earthquakes, no-one leaves this life one second earlier or later than the time appointed by God the Father, Who governs all things and all people.
People who persist in sin, and 'drown', are doomed souls 'lost' in the ocean, and utterly lacking the grace of God which is life. Yet they will rise up at the end of time, for the Last Judgement, when the justice of God will be revealed, as well as His marvellous work of salvation.
The Lord advised me to approach my 'Last Judgement' picture just as I approach a domestic task. If I need new tablecloths I measure the table, choose the fabric and make decisions about my time. In the same way, with a huge painting to do, I can simply measure, prepare, reflect, and take one step at a time.
We sometimes receive special consolations in prayer as if bathed in a river of love, flowing over and around us like the torrent of graces I once painted in the 'Sanctus' picture on the Mass Poster.
It is the Will of Christ that we treat Sunday as a holy day and a day of rest. It delights Him to see us rest from our labours and to enjoy good things that we don't have time for on normal work-days.
Christ wants people to reflect on my Last Judgement painting, and to ponder how they will feel when they come at last into the presence of God the Father, whose glory I have seen in prayer, and who is awesome in His holiness and beauty. Christ wants everyone to repent of their sins, while there is still time.
In the Lord's Eternal life, He sees every event that has ever occurred or ever will occur, as if in a river or torrent of events which flows past Him all-at-once. When He Wills, He has sometimes chosen and 'frozen' a frame of that scene of future events, to insert it into the mind of one of His friends at prayer, as a gift, and a promise of future joy.
There are times in life when a person who had been mired for a long time in habitual sin sees clearly the consequences of those sins, if he fails to conquer them. It's as if a war-zone lies in front of Him with destruction in every direction. Yet he has only to call out to God in humility, to find that God swoops to rescue him, and bring him to safety.
Some Anglican women do hear a call from God to full-time service amongst Christian people; but it is mistaken as a call to Priesthood, when it is not His wish that women be priests, nor that people believe that Anglican Orders are valid.
In ancient times, when God gave the Commandments to Moses, God forbade the making of images. He was helping a primitive people to turn away from idolatry. But ever since the living, invisible God has revealed to the world His Son Jesus Christ, the 'living image' of the Father, Christians have rightly used imagery to inspire and educate fellow human beings.
The Lord Showed me one woman being released from Purgatory, and another requiring further purification. Both had been baptised, then had sinned. Each was saved at death through having been anointed in the Sacrament of the Sick. One spent a short time in Purgatory, because she had been badly taught, as a Protestant, about sin. The other, a cradle Catholic, was more blame-worthy, and should have known better.
As Sacred Scripture tells us, we are certain to be attacked, as followers of the Crucified Christ. Whether we suffer verbal, physical or spiritual assaults, however, Christ sees what we undergo for love for Him; and He sometimes intervenes with Divine power, to banish the attackers and to bring refreshment and peace.
Just as a branch is gradually weighed down by snow, which has arrived quietly, one snow-flake at a time until a great burden of snow causes the branch to bend, so a person can become weighed down, through carelessness, by one venial sin after another, so that he scarcely notices when he commits a mortal sin, and forgets about his salvation.
If we wish we could give to a beloved relation all the wisdom and goodness that we have received from God in a life-time, the best means is by encouraging them to receive Christ with devotion in Holy Communion. In Christ is His Divinity, wisdom, power, beauty, and goodness: more than enough to fill our hearts, if we open our hearts fully to receive Him.
It would please Christ very much if priests were to say: "We all do wrong. The Church can tell us what is right and wrong, but we can be forgiven. I shall be in the Confessional at certain times, this week, and every week". Christ wants them to invite people to repent, to change their lives, and to find freedom and peace-of-soul at last.
It seems outrageous that men had the power of life and death over others, who simply had skin of a different colour, in the time of the slave trade. It seems outrageous, today, to all good people, that the power of life and death has been given to many, over other little people, simply because those human beings are very small, unwanted, and unborn.
Fathers have traditionally sacrificed themselves to defend their wives and children. Mothers have traditionally sacrificed their hopes, in times of crisis, to send their children into safe-keeping, away from danger. Today, many mothers sacrifice their babies on the altar of convenience. To avoid hardship to themselves, they sentence their own children to death by abortion.
When societies in which abortion is common-place offer help to poorer countries, they sometimes make their offer of aid conditional upon the adoption of immoral practices such as contraception, abortion, and sterilisation. They damage families, and foster an anti-child mentality amongst women by their extreme feminist propaganda. It is a modern form of colonialism.
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