Lent begins today. The first reading for Ash Wednesday comes from Joel and begins with verse 12. I have included part of the verse prior to 12:
“For the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; who can endure it? ‘Yet even now,’ says the LORD, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.’ Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil” (Joel 2: 11-13).
It was common in the ancient world to rip one’s clothes when confronted with a great sorrow. God is not so much interested in how we look on the outside; He cares what is in our hearts. When our hearts are attached to sin and to the good things of this world, its receptacles are filled up and have no room for God. We need to free our hearts from all its attachments and pray as it says in today’s psalm: “A clean heart create for me, O God” (Psalm 51:10). God tells us that we need to rend our hearts; that is a powerful image; it is a painful route to take, but it brings us new life.
The key to our living the faith is turning our heart back to God. The repentant heart is the key. We express that repentance by our fasting, sorrow for our sin, and our almsgiving, and they are meant to be painful as we rend our hearts. We also rend our hearts by the confession of our sins and by our prayer and charitable deeds. These penitential activities help to turn our dead hearts of stone into hearts of flesh which seek to please God. They resurrect our dead, fruitless trees of life into fruitful, abundant, overflowing trees of life which bear good fruit each month and out of which flow rivers of living water.
There are three main parts to a plan for Lent, a program for our increased daily conversion of heart: 1) we need to cut out the ways we sin; 2) we should give us something good as a sacrifice to God; 3) we should increase something better we already do or start something new.
An example for a Lenten plan could look something like this: first, I am going to be committed to avoid that near occasion of sin which I am too comfortable with right now; second, I am going to give up alcohol; third, I am going to say a decade of the rosary each day and do the stations of the cross on Fridays. Another example: first, I am not going to gossip; second, I will give up coffee and chocolate; third, I will get to daily Mass and read the daily Mass readings for the next day the night before. Of course, the options are endless, but it is important to stop sinning, have a sacrifice of something good and put something better in its place. All these items help our hearts to draw closer to God and attach to the only worthy and life-giving attachment.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
Showing posts with label Mass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mass. Show all posts
1.22.2008
Abortion: The Glory of Satan
Thirty-five years ago began the reign of terror of abortion on demand in this country resulting in the murder of tens of millions of innocent babies; on top of that, it has left a moral and spiritual wasteland for all of us, particularly those who have sold their soul to promote, encourage, defend, and commit the great sin of the slaughter of the in-utero innocents.
The glory of God is man fully alive. We glorify God when we bear good fruit; ultimately, we glorify God when we lay down our life for another and when we witness to His truth at the cost of our own blood in martyrdom. We glorify Him in becoming a self-sacrificing lover; parents glorify Him as they make the daily multitude of sacrifices required to raise a family well; we glorify Him at Mass as we receive Him in the Holy Eucharist with pure and loving hearts so that we can have the grace to do what He did.
On this day of infamy, it is worth asking this question to better understand the battle we are in: What is the glory of Satan? He hates mankind with a passion beyond understanding, and he loves to see our destruction. God loves us, and Satan hates us. At a most basic level, Satan loves to mock the things God holds most dear. Satan’s glory is in the mockery of God.
We are made to be God’s children, God’s temple, and God’s spouse. Satan wants to reduce us down to mere animals, even less than animals. He seeks to depersonalize us, making us objects for use. He mocks our exalted dignity trying whatever he can to drag us into the mud. The main tool at his disposal is to desecrate sex, making it all about self-gratification and turning it into nothing other than another one of our bodily needs just like eating, drinking and sleeping. He wants us to think it is a basic need that we should meet with whomever or whatever, whenever and however we want; there is no morality associated with sex. That is the lie he has been promoting, especially the past two generations.
Of course, that kind of “thinking” about sex leads to many other problems. Normally, sex has very serious consequences, consequences which should not accompany the simple satisfaction of a bodily necessity. Those consequences have to be eliminated. The first line of defense against these unsightly results is usually the grave evil of contraception. When that doesn’t work, the logical step to deal with the problem is abortion.
Abortion is the great mockery of fatherhood and motherhood. Children learn about who God is and how He acts by knowing who their parents are and how they act, especially who and how the father acts. In certain respects, parents are God to their children. In abortion, parents willingly murder their own children; this is not an image of who God is but of who Satan is. Satan, from the beginning, is a murderous father; those who commit abortion of their own children imitate the evil one. Abortion is one of the highest forms of satanic worship; herein we find his glory.
The evil one is glorified when parents take the life of their children, and this is an act of worship of him and of uniting oneself to him. I assume most people do not realize that, but that is what is happening. He is mocking fathers and mothers, and ultimately, he is mocking God the Father. God the Father gives life, and the evil one destroys it; he even entices the very ones who should be the ones to cherish and protect life, the life which springs from their very own flesh, he entices these very ones to mercilessly destroy that life. It is hard to think of a higher victory for Satan than when parents murder their unborn children.
The other primary way that Satan mocks God is the black mass. My understanding of the black mass is that the words of the Mass are said backward and it ends with the desecration of the Holy Eucharist. Jesus is the Divine Spouse who gives us His Body in the Mass; Satan is mocking God’s Fatherhood and God as mankind’s Spouse. He is mocking the self-sacrificing and life-giving act of Jesus offering Himself up as our Passover Lamb. It is the formal rejection of God and His gift of Himself to us.
There are a number of parallels between the black mass and abortion, as there are a number of parallels between the Mass and having children. My goal tonight is to shed some light on the dark deed of abortion. There is much more that could be said. As with any sin, the important thing is to see and understand the true nature of the act so as to be better equipped to enlighten others and guide them away from sin. It is God’s work to judge the hearts of those who commit the sin; God has given us the intellect and the grace to judge the actions to empower us to prevent their happening.
The battle to end abortion is, from beginning to end, a spiritual battle, a battle attempting to put an end to a “high” form of satanic worship. It will only be won on our knees and at the cost of great sacrifice by those who love God. I believe it could be more easily won with a small army of victim souls who will offer themselves up for its cessation. If you are not willing to be a victim soul in totality, are you willing to offer up all the many trials and difficulties of your days as sacrifices to God for the end of this scourge? Each of us plays a part in either its continuation or its end; none of us are innocent bystanders.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
The glory of God is man fully alive. We glorify God when we bear good fruit; ultimately, we glorify God when we lay down our life for another and when we witness to His truth at the cost of our own blood in martyrdom. We glorify Him in becoming a self-sacrificing lover; parents glorify Him as they make the daily multitude of sacrifices required to raise a family well; we glorify Him at Mass as we receive Him in the Holy Eucharist with pure and loving hearts so that we can have the grace to do what He did.
On this day of infamy, it is worth asking this question to better understand the battle we are in: What is the glory of Satan? He hates mankind with a passion beyond understanding, and he loves to see our destruction. God loves us, and Satan hates us. At a most basic level, Satan loves to mock the things God holds most dear. Satan’s glory is in the mockery of God.
We are made to be God’s children, God’s temple, and God’s spouse. Satan wants to reduce us down to mere animals, even less than animals. He seeks to depersonalize us, making us objects for use. He mocks our exalted dignity trying whatever he can to drag us into the mud. The main tool at his disposal is to desecrate sex, making it all about self-gratification and turning it into nothing other than another one of our bodily needs just like eating, drinking and sleeping. He wants us to think it is a basic need that we should meet with whomever or whatever, whenever and however we want; there is no morality associated with sex. That is the lie he has been promoting, especially the past two generations.
Of course, that kind of “thinking” about sex leads to many other problems. Normally, sex has very serious consequences, consequences which should not accompany the simple satisfaction of a bodily necessity. Those consequences have to be eliminated. The first line of defense against these unsightly results is usually the grave evil of contraception. When that doesn’t work, the logical step to deal with the problem is abortion.
Abortion is the great mockery of fatherhood and motherhood. Children learn about who God is and how He acts by knowing who their parents are and how they act, especially who and how the father acts. In certain respects, parents are God to their children. In abortion, parents willingly murder their own children; this is not an image of who God is but of who Satan is. Satan, from the beginning, is a murderous father; those who commit abortion of their own children imitate the evil one. Abortion is one of the highest forms of satanic worship; herein we find his glory.
The evil one is glorified when parents take the life of their children, and this is an act of worship of him and of uniting oneself to him. I assume most people do not realize that, but that is what is happening. He is mocking fathers and mothers, and ultimately, he is mocking God the Father. God the Father gives life, and the evil one destroys it; he even entices the very ones who should be the ones to cherish and protect life, the life which springs from their very own flesh, he entices these very ones to mercilessly destroy that life. It is hard to think of a higher victory for Satan than when parents murder their unborn children.
The other primary way that Satan mocks God is the black mass. My understanding of the black mass is that the words of the Mass are said backward and it ends with the desecration of the Holy Eucharist. Jesus is the Divine Spouse who gives us His Body in the Mass; Satan is mocking God’s Fatherhood and God as mankind’s Spouse. He is mocking the self-sacrificing and life-giving act of Jesus offering Himself up as our Passover Lamb. It is the formal rejection of God and His gift of Himself to us.
There are a number of parallels between the black mass and abortion, as there are a number of parallels between the Mass and having children. My goal tonight is to shed some light on the dark deed of abortion. There is much more that could be said. As with any sin, the important thing is to see and understand the true nature of the act so as to be better equipped to enlighten others and guide them away from sin. It is God’s work to judge the hearts of those who commit the sin; God has given us the intellect and the grace to judge the actions to empower us to prevent their happening.
The battle to end abortion is, from beginning to end, a spiritual battle, a battle attempting to put an end to a “high” form of satanic worship. It will only be won on our knees and at the cost of great sacrifice by those who love God. I believe it could be more easily won with a small army of victim souls who will offer themselves up for its cessation. If you are not willing to be a victim soul in totality, are you willing to offer up all the many trials and difficulties of your days as sacrifices to God for the end of this scourge? Each of us plays a part in either its continuation or its end; none of us are innocent bystanders.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
12.21.2007
Guardian Angel: Protector of the Heart
In an earlier entry I talked about how the Garden of Eden actually refers to the man and the woman, for they are God’s garden of delight (which is what eden means). God gives us many gifts and abilities, but He gives us two in particular; He refers to these abilities as trees: one is the tree of life, and the other is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life is the heart, and it is symbolized by the river that separates into four rivers.
The tree of life is the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. The tree of life is the tree of life because when we love, trust and obey God, we have life. After the Fall, God sends an angel to protect the tree of life. I state that the angel is not given to keep us from the tree of life but to keep our hearts protected from disobedience and doubt. The woman was made from the man’s rib, and so she was made to encourage the man to stay faithful to God. She did the exact opposite of what she was made for, and the result is the “death” of humanity. Now we need a helper more than ever in our weakened state, and so God sends us each our own guardian angel. Genesis 3:24 which states, “at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life,” relates the giving of the guardian angel to protect our heart and keep us faithful.
That is how I understand that passage. Not long ago, I was reading Saint Josemaria Escriva’s book, The Forge, when I came upon entry 412:
“Custody of the heart. That priest used to pray: ‘Jesus, may my poor heart be an enclosed garden; may my poor heart be a paradise where you live; may my Guardian Angel watch over it with a sword of fire and use it to purify every affection before it comes into me. Jesus, with the divine seal of your Cross, seal my poor heart’.”
Many of the same elements of what I think about Genesis 3:24 are present in this paragraph. The founder of Opus Dei does not call the heart a tree here, but he does call it a garden and a paradise which is guarded by our Guardian Angel with a sword of fire. The center of our garden is our heart; the temple’s center was the holy of holies: the temple is a symbol of our body, and the holy of holies is a symbol of our heart. What are gardens for but to bear good fruit, and what are temples for but to worship God? We bear good fruit when our gardens and temples are protected from scavengers on the one side, and when it consists of good dirt which gets healthy amounts of water and sun on the other. We have to keep away from sin, be steeped in humility, drink deeply of God’s grace, and bask in the warmth of his divine love, seen most clearly in Mass and Eucharistic Adoration.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
The tree of life is the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. The tree of life is the tree of life because when we love, trust and obey God, we have life. After the Fall, God sends an angel to protect the tree of life. I state that the angel is not given to keep us from the tree of life but to keep our hearts protected from disobedience and doubt. The woman was made from the man’s rib, and so she was made to encourage the man to stay faithful to God. She did the exact opposite of what she was made for, and the result is the “death” of humanity. Now we need a helper more than ever in our weakened state, and so God sends us each our own guardian angel. Genesis 3:24 which states, “at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life,” relates the giving of the guardian angel to protect our heart and keep us faithful.
That is how I understand that passage. Not long ago, I was reading Saint Josemaria Escriva’s book, The Forge, when I came upon entry 412:
“Custody of the heart. That priest used to pray: ‘Jesus, may my poor heart be an enclosed garden; may my poor heart be a paradise where you live; may my Guardian Angel watch over it with a sword of fire and use it to purify every affection before it comes into me. Jesus, with the divine seal of your Cross, seal my poor heart’.”
Many of the same elements of what I think about Genesis 3:24 are present in this paragraph. The founder of Opus Dei does not call the heart a tree here, but he does call it a garden and a paradise which is guarded by our Guardian Angel with a sword of fire. The center of our garden is our heart; the temple’s center was the holy of holies: the temple is a symbol of our body, and the holy of holies is a symbol of our heart. What are gardens for but to bear good fruit, and what are temples for but to worship God? We bear good fruit when our gardens and temples are protected from scavengers on the one side, and when it consists of good dirt which gets healthy amounts of water and sun on the other. We have to keep away from sin, be steeped in humility, drink deeply of God’s grace, and bask in the warmth of his divine love, seen most clearly in Mass and Eucharistic Adoration.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
11.29.2007
The Eucharist: Our New Heart
As I was saying yesterday, one of the primary underlying points of the Old Testament is that man needs a new heart; in many respects, the Old Testament reads like a soap opera or like Desperate Housewives or some other pathetic reality show. The human condition is in need of a make-over. We need help; apart from God, there is precious little evil that man will not do.
Did you ever wonder why God gave the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone? Of course, writing in stone is great for a permanent and lasting reminder of what is written; however, there is more to it than that. The two tablets with the law engraved on the outside is a symbol of our hearts. We have hearts of stone; our hearts are cold and dead; our tree of life is barren because we only obey when we have to or because we don't want to be punished; whenever we can, we disobey. We love our sin and are slow to give it up.
Ezekiel 36:26-27 states: "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances." A new heart of flesh is one that seeks to please God out of love for Him. It is not a servile, slavish heart; it is the heart of a child with his father or of a bride for her husband. The beating heart seeks to please the beloved.
Jeremiah 31:31ff states: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel... not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband....I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God.... for they shall all know me...." This is the only time "new covenant" is mentioned in the Old Testament, and it is connected to God our husband who will write His law upon our hearts, and we shall all know Him.
Connecting both of these passages we have this: when God gives the new covenant, He will give us a new heart of flesh which contains God's law and which will be careful to obey Him and will come to know Him. When Jesus uses the phrase "the new covenant," He is celebrating the first Mass as He fulfills and completes the Passover. He is the Passover Lamb who lays down His life and is lifted up on the cross where He gives His whole self, ending in the piercing of His Sacred Heart and the blood and water flowing forth from it.
From Eucharistic miracles, we know that the flesh of the Eucharist, when the reality is not hiding, is cardiac tissue. The Eucharist is Jesus' heart. His heart is the heart that loves, trusts, obeys; His heart loves to the point of giving Himself completely; His heart lays down His life for the beloved; His heart only seeks to please the Father. Every Holy Communion Jesus gives us His heart anew. He gives us the grace and courage and desire to love God above all things and our neighbor as our self. The problem of our hard, unbelieving heart is solved when we worthily receive Jesus' heart each Eucharist. He is our tree of life; when we are in communion with Him, we have life abundantly.
Tomorrow I would like to explain how the Eucharist is the precise antidote to the condition we find ourselves in due to the Fall.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
Did you ever wonder why God gave the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone? Of course, writing in stone is great for a permanent and lasting reminder of what is written; however, there is more to it than that. The two tablets with the law engraved on the outside is a symbol of our hearts. We have hearts of stone; our hearts are cold and dead; our tree of life is barren because we only obey when we have to or because we don't want to be punished; whenever we can, we disobey. We love our sin and are slow to give it up.
Ezekiel 36:26-27 states: "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances." A new heart of flesh is one that seeks to please God out of love for Him. It is not a servile, slavish heart; it is the heart of a child with his father or of a bride for her husband. The beating heart seeks to please the beloved.
Jeremiah 31:31ff states: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel... not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband....I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God.... for they shall all know me...." This is the only time "new covenant" is mentioned in the Old Testament, and it is connected to God our husband who will write His law upon our hearts, and we shall all know Him.
Connecting both of these passages we have this: when God gives the new covenant, He will give us a new heart of flesh which contains God's law and which will be careful to obey Him and will come to know Him. When Jesus uses the phrase "the new covenant," He is celebrating the first Mass as He fulfills and completes the Passover. He is the Passover Lamb who lays down His life and is lifted up on the cross where He gives His whole self, ending in the piercing of His Sacred Heart and the blood and water flowing forth from it.
From Eucharistic miracles, we know that the flesh of the Eucharist, when the reality is not hiding, is cardiac tissue. The Eucharist is Jesus' heart. His heart is the heart that loves, trusts, obeys; His heart loves to the point of giving Himself completely; His heart lays down His life for the beloved; His heart only seeks to please the Father. Every Holy Communion Jesus gives us His heart anew. He gives us the grace and courage and desire to love God above all things and our neighbor as our self. The problem of our hard, unbelieving heart is solved when we worthily receive Jesus' heart each Eucharist. He is our tree of life; when we are in communion with Him, we have life abundantly.
Tomorrow I would like to explain how the Eucharist is the precise antidote to the condition we find ourselves in due to the Fall.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
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