Prayer Request September 8, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in Admin, Domestic Church, family, General Catholic, Holy suffering, sadness, Virtue.comments closed
Very, very longtime readers may recall the name SSGT Mark Juarez USMC. Mark is a cousin to my brother-in-law. I had not seen him in a few years, but I ran into him this past weekend. He was traumatically injured in combat in Afghanistan in 2010 during his seventh deployment overseas. He just retired from the Marine Corps after 16 years of service, but due to his severe injury and 100% disability the Marines “bumped” him to 20 years effective and so he’ll get the normal retirement benefits.
Which, is a very large transition. Many servicemembers, especially combat veterans, have a difficult time transitioning to a civilian life. I imagine that may be doubly true in the case of a debilitating injury. He’s a father of three lovely girls so that will obviously take a great deal of his time. Since his injury, Mark has had to re-learn so many things many of us take for granted – walking, reading, writing, etc.
So there’s that, but Mark has a great deal else going on of a personal nature. I’d like to ask your prayers for him again. His recovery from his original injuries was truly miraculous and I’m certain the prayer of many good souls associated with this blog had at least a little to do with that. He’s in need of a different kind of, and possibly bigger, miracle now. It is not health-related, thank God, as he’s been through enough (including being a survivor of the horrific Midland veteran’s parade float truck/train collision disaster that killed several) in that regard, and it’s also not PTSD or anything of that sort. It’s a personal matter.
If you could add him to your regular list of intentions for an indefinite period, I would certainly appreciate it. I have added he and his family to mine, among several families for which I am praying at present. At the very least, pray that this latest suffering may redound to his further sanctification. Enough said.
St. John Vianney: Don’t Leave God Behind at Mass….. September 8, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, catachesis, Eucharist, family, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, Interior Life, Liturgy, priests, Saints, sanctity, Tradition, true leadership, Virtue.comments closed
……….but carry all that Grace home with you, and bring it into your life every day. Don’t treat Mass as something to be escaped from, bolting for the door the second it ends and hoping to find some secular, worldly topic to discuss as soon as you are outside. Or even before that. I had to assist at Novus Ordo Masses for the first time in almost 3 years this past weekend, and aye yay yay, people behave with more decorum in a movie theater. There was virtually no focus on the Lord (of course, His Eucharistic Presence was absent from the sanctuary in both parishes I attended), no silent, reflective preparation, just gab gab and the blaring tones of the over-eager 10 piece band and Ms. Music Minister making a spectacle of herself again up front. Not that I’m harshly critical or anything.
From The Sermons of the Cure’ of Ars, pp. 196-7:
On her return to her kingdom, the Queen of Sheba could never weary of relating all that she had seen in the temple of Solomon; she talked of it unceasingly, with fresh pleasure. The same thing should happen to the Christian who has assisted properly at holy Mass. When he comes back to his house, he ought to have a talk with his children and his servants and ask them what they have retained of it and what touched them the most. Alas! Dear God, what am I going to say?
How many fathers and mothers, masters and mistresses, are there who, if someone wanted to talk with them about what they had heard at Mass, would laugh at all that and say that they were tired of it, that hey knew enough about it…..Although generally speaking it seems that people still listen to the holy word of God, the moment they come out of church, they fall into all sorts of careless and frivolous ways. They get up with a sudden rush. They hurry. They jostle at the door. Often the priest has not even come down from the altar when they are already outside the door, and there they give themselves up to discussions upon all sorts of secular subjects.
Do you know what the result of this kind of thing is, my dear brethren? This is it. People derive no profit and gain no benefit from what they have heard and seen in the house of God. What graces have been lost! What means of salvation trodden underfoot! What a misfortune that is, to turn to our loss what should have helped so much to save us! You can see for yourselves how many of these services are a burden to the majority of Christians! For those few moments, they stay in the church as if it were some kind of prison. and as soon as they are out, you will hear them shouting at the door, like prisoners who have been given liberty. Are we not quite frequently obliged to close the door on the church in order not to be deafened by their continual noise? [Ahem. This is even something of a problem at the local Fraternity parish, at least on Sunday]
Dear God, are these really Christians, who ought to leave Your holy temple with minds filled only with all kinds of good thoughts and desires? Should not they be seeking to engrave those in their memory, that they may never lose them and that they may put them into practice as soon as the opportunity presents itself? Alas! The number of those who assist at the services with attention and who try to profit from them is a little like the number of the elect; how small it is!
Closely related, via the same book, is the following exhortation on properly preparing oneself for Mass:
If you desire that the worship that you give to God to be pleasing to Him and valuable for the salvation of your soul, put it properly into practice. Begin by preparing for Holy Mass as soon as your are awake, uniting yourself to all the Masses which are being said at that moment. When the bell rings to call you to the house of God, consider the fact that ti is Jesus Christ Himself calling to you. Start out immediately, so that you will have a moment to meditate upon the tremendous act at which you are about to assist. Do not say, like those people who have no religion, that you have plenty of time, that you will be there soon enough. But say, rather, with the holy prophet: “I rejoice when I am told that we are going into the House of the Lord.”
When you come out from your home, think about what you are going to do, and what you are going to ask God. Begin by clearing your mind of earthly matters so that you will be thinking of God only. Avoid all sorts of unnecessary conversations which serve no purpose than to make you hear Mass badly. When you enter the Church, recall to yourself what the holy patriarch Job said: “How awesome is this place! How holy it is! It is truly the house of God and the gateway to Heaven!”
When you get to your place, humble yourself profoundly as you think of your own unworthiness and the greatness of your God, Who, nevertheless, in spite of your sins, wishes to suffer you in His holy presence. Make an act of faith with all your heart. Ask God to give you the grace to lose none of the m any favors which He grants to those who come here with good dispositions. Open your heart so that the word of God may enter it, take root in it, and bear fruit there for eternal life. Before leaving the Church, do not fail to thank God for the graces He has just given you and go straight home, fully occupied with the thoughts of what you have seen and heard. [I don’t know if one must go “straight home,” so long as one keeps in their heart what they gained during the Mass. There is definitely something to be said for community, for brotherhood and fellowship. But I’m gratified to know that a great Saint has recommended something that fits in so well with my native predispositions…….heh]
Yes, my dear children, if we conducted ourselves in this manner we should never come away from the services of the Church without being filled with a fresh desire for Heaven and a new disgust for ourselves and the things of this earth. Our hearts and our minds would be given over altogether to God and not at all to the world. Then the house of God would truly be for us the gateway of Heaven. That is what I desire for you.
——–End Quote———
I think the key is, make Mass about God, keep the focus on Him and give Him the respect, reverence, and attention He is due. Perhaps that is to say, when it comes to Mass, the before, during, and after, keep it in the supernatural, not the natural.
Vet Obliterates Hillary Over Classified Document Felonies September 8, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, disaster, error, General Catholic, horror, It's all about the $$$, Revolution, scandals, self-serving, sickness, Society, unadulterated evil.comments closed
I’ve heard from probably scores of people who carry or have carried security clearances over the past 18 months or so, that if they had done a tiny fraction of what Hillary has so apparently done they’d have been successfully prosecuted for multiple felonies and probably have spent most of the rest of their life in a federal pen, if not all of it. A Navy veteran at a recent Hillary “public forum” – usually these things are so scripted and all present so vetted that all questions and answers are rehearsed in advance – amazingly got to ask the first question, and challenged Hillary on this very point. How is it possible, per the law, that her blatant compromise of reams of the most sensitive, classified data around could not have been prosecuted? The law doesn’t say anything about intent, if you carry classified data in an unsecure way, you have committed a felony or felonies. And she did just that literally thousands of time, with the knowledge and connivance of her entire staff, all so that she could enrich herself selling US influence for vast sums free from the scrutiny that might come from using a more secure server:
Julian Assange claims to have thousands of documents marked classified from the Hillary e-mail server. It is also known she directed staff to remove the classified headers from documents in a deliberate attempt to get around the law, which makes this a conspiracy and something much more serious.
But we all know that, increasingly in this country, the degree of freedom you have, the rights one enjoys, even almost total immunity from prosecution, depends on what political party you support and how high up in the socio-political food chain you are. The FBI has shredded its credibility pretending that Hillary didn’t break the law by having no “criminal intent” – which, again, makes absolutely no difference in this case – demonstrating yet again the degree to which more and more supposedly impartial bureaucracies have been thoroughly penetrated and politicized in the Left’s long march through the institutions.
If you take the last three posts as sort of a three part series, think of where this is leading: the left forcing its mammoth insecurities and inadequacies upon the country/world as a sort of new anti-Christian religious dogma, the state, under dominion of left-leaners (or all out leftists) implementing policies (for these are generally not laws) that make apostasy from the one false religion of leftism heresy punishable by jail, and governmental institutions, up to and including law enforcement agencies like the FBI, ATF, and IRS, becoming compromised and thoroughly given over to leftist viewpoints and holding all the leftist shibboleths like received dogma, and tell me………where is all this headed?
Mass. to Force Church to Implement Transgender Bathrooms September 8, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in asshatery, disaster, error, foolishness, General Catholic, horror, paganism, persecution, rank stupidity, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sexual depravity, sickness, Society, unadulterated evil.comments closed
What was I just saying yesterday? That the official state religion was coming hard for the damnable heretics of the Christian church?
Yeah baby……here we go:
Under a Massachusetts civil rights agency’s interpretation of new anti-discrimination law, churches can be forced to let biological males who identify as transgender women use the women’s bathroom.
Recently passed legislation amending the state’s anti-discrimination law to include protections for “gender identity” will take effect Oct. 1.
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, which enforces the state’s anti-discrimination laws, recently published a “Gender identity guidance” that lays out what will be legally required of employers and “agents of places of public accommodation.” [I thought churches had ALWAYS been held to be private locations, not places of “public accommodation?” But you can see what end the creeping expansion of public accommodation has always been about, gradually forcing Christianity entirely out of the public sphere even in the sense of private gatherings (but held in an open way), and back into the catacombs]
The guidance was published Sept. 1 but has gone unreported by the media until now. The commission confirmed that the version of the guidance online is the “final edition.”
The guidance notes that Massachusetts law defines “public accommodation” as “any place, whether licensed or unlicensed, which is open to and accepts or solicits the patronage of the general public.” (Restaurants and hotels, for example, are generally considered public accommodations.) Violators of the law face up to one year in jail………[A year in jail – for each violation? For refusing to buy into the deranged fantasies of a tiny few and expose women and girls to greatly increased chances of being sexually assaulted?!?]
……The guidance suggests that Massachusetts may force churches to comply with the new legislation.
“Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public,” the guidance notes. [Entirely consistent with the novel, and altogether reductive, view the Obama administration has advocated regarding “freedom of worship” versus “freedom of religion.” This has a double effect: curtailing fundraising efforts, and greatly diminishing outreach to others, as anything open to the public – evangelization efforts? – can now be used to try to force churches to comply with gravely immoral things, like buying into other’s fantasies regarding their sex]
The guidance does not specify what criteria the government would use to determine whether or not church events are considered “secular.”
The piece goes on to note that people claiming a certain gender identity do not have to provide any proof of holding that identity, only a “sincere belief,” which, I’m certain, the state would be perfectly fine with even if it changes day to day or hour to hour. Thus, a sexual predator can feel like a woman when he wants to get his child rape on, and then not so much later on.
Anyone who thinks this will end in any other way than disastrously is deluded. Of course, the media will likely do all it can to bury all instances where their fervent religious beliefs have resulted in heinous crimes and irreparable personal tragedies.
My personal belief, supported by a not-inconsiderable amount of evidence, is that this is all part of a deliberate process to eventually make Christianity all but illegal, at least outside the confines of the home, and perhaps even there. If you haven’t read We by Yevgeny Zemyatin, I strongly suggest you do. It wasn’t written as a critique of the ultimate Orwellian communist super-state, but in breathless anticipation of it. That’s the kind of world the Left eventually wants to create.
But they must know, the more the persecute the Church, the more martyrs that are raised up, the stronger the tree of faith will grow. Perhaps this will be God’s way of cleansing and converting this wicked, lost culture.
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