Private Vows in The Laity/Spirituality

[Pax17]

Barb, there is certainly a place for Netflix in our lives...as well as greasy cheeseburgers, heating pads, fuzzy socks and anything else we use to keep our mind off things, especially pain.  Having lived with endometriosis for many years (it has run its course), I know how debilitating pain can be. 

And as a retired writer/editor, I know that you need energy to write anything, even a sentence in a greeting card. 

I admire your faith.  You are in my thoughts.

[BarbTherese]

On 6/28/2022 at 8:49 AM, Pax17 said:

Barb, there is certainly a place for Netflix in our lives...as well as greasy cheeseburgers, heating pads, fuzzy socks and anything else we use to keep our mind off things, especially pain.  Having lived with endometriosis for many years (it has run its course), I know how debilitating pain can be. 

And as a retired writer/editor, I know that you need energy to write anything, even a sentence in a greeting card. 

I admire your faith.  You are in my thoughts.

I have no idea what has been happening, or the why of it rather.  I have been unable to post into Phatmass, though it was showing I was logged in.  I had to change my Password to be able to lov in this time.

I dont know how to make a New Post!  Hence, please excuse me Pax.  The only way I can Post, it would seem, is by quoting an existing Post.  

I have missed my Pham Phamily HEAPS AND HEAPS AND HEAPS.  At least, thnk The Lord, I am now back in.  JOY JOY JOY   Much has been happening and my DECIDEDLY ANNOYING physical problems, I am almost blind and crippled, get the better of me a dreadful lot.  I have told The Lord, I unite anything I go through to His Cross, if He would Mercifully, Most Mercifully, accept the poverty of my offerings since I bear my sufferings appallingly...........i.e. much cussing!  I mean, if He can accept me..............who on earth can He refuse and therein my primary ambition!!!

My jolly alarm has gone off on my cellphone telling me it is time for medication...............I am so happy to have found my home again.

 

[BarbTherese]

Ok!!!  Now I can Post without quoting a Post.  There you go Ol Nik, FOILED AGAIN BY A CRAZY BIPOLARER LADY !!!  sO much for the most intelligent of angels!  

You have no idea out therre in cyberspace just HOW HAPPY I AM TO BE BACK ON PHAM.  JOY JOY JOY 

I return after sO MANY awols AND DISCOVER MY RANK IS NEWBIE.  ....................dUSt, you have to be joking mate!

The following is what I should post:  " I took the road least travellled and now.............scuse me, where the heck am I?  Still on Phatmass I hope!"  All you are good for Ol Nik is complete unmitigated CONFUSION. 

[BarbTherese]

My son, now living in another state, was here for a few weeks and he has done absolute wonders in my back pergola especially, buying many plants and installing an automatic watering system.  What has caused me wonder is that those plants that can flower i.e. not the ferns, are all in full flower.  It is winter here and a very cold winter with very little sunshine and yet my pergola garden is in full flower.  My back pergola is my private prayer space and I have and do give much thanks.

He also installed a big screen connected to my computer and I can watch Netflix and surf on YouTube on the big screen.  Early this afternoon my IT man w9ll be here to connect everything on my computer to the big screen, making things much easier for me to read with my poor .eyesight.

I have much more to fill in that happened while I could not connect to Pham, but I will leave it for another time and after my big screen is connected.

One great blessing that has come about is that a Jesui Church )it is a Church, not a chapel) close to me has now a 12 noon weelday Mass.  This has filled me with much Joy and Happiness - truly have I experienced ;that "unoless you eat of the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you shall NOT HAVE LIFE IN YOU"..

Bye for just now...............

 

[BarbTherese]

Thank you for the prop, Luigi.  I often read your Posts into Pham as I respect your knowledge and concepts shared.  It is an encouragement too for me to see that other members whose Posts I can understand^^^ though they are obviously educated are indeed reading this Posts into thread. at times  I do happen to know that respected Lurkers have a read on Pham now and then and this should also be an encouragement to @dUSt to continue this site, which is paid for by him.  And that is a really good reason for support for him and therefore Phatmass by donations.

*** The Dominican nuns responsible for our college education would not accept a 'big word' if ordinary everyday words could be used instead.  God bless their white cotton pickin 'socks'.(stockings actually) That particular insistence was to be of incredible support to me in evangelizing attempts in this my later life after college.  We MUST get The Gospel into the vernacular, so ordinary everyday people can understand.  This is i the footsteps of Jesus - He used parables for that purpose.  Also we MUST walk the talk !!!  The very ordinary person 'in the street' is remarkably quick in identifying insincerity and/or falsehood.

  

[BarbTherese]

Thank you for the prop, Luigi.  I often read your Posts into Pham as I respect your knowledge and concepts shared.  It is an encouragement too for me to see that other members whose Posts I can understand^^^ though they are obviously educated are indeed reading this Posts into thread. at times  I do happen to know that respected Lurkers have a read on Pham now and then and this should also be an encouragement to @dUSt to continue this site, which is paid for by him.  And that is a really good reason for support for him and therefore Phatmass by donations.

*** The Dominican nuns responsible for our college education would not accept a 'big word' if ordinary everyday words could be used instead.  God bless their white cotton pickin 'socks'.(stockings actually) That particular insistence was to be of incredible support to me in evangelizing attempts in this my later life after college.  We MUST get The Gospel into the vernacular, so ordinary everyday people can understand.  This is i the footsteps of Jesus - He used parables for that purpose.  Also we MUST walk the talk !!!  The very ordinary person 'in the street' is remarkably quick in identifying insincerity and/or falsehood.

  

 

 

_________________________________________________

 

 Apologies!  My IT guy has been and now everything is on the big screen.  Laudate Dominum Deo Gratius!

However,  I have lost the actual Post I had ready to go but what has happened is that what has posted is actually now the previous Post posted twice.

Cant win em all, but jolly good to ever win at all !   S***t happens, but thankfully not all the time.

 

 

[BarbTherese]

 

[BarbTherese]

 

Not for everyone, but certainly for students of psychology and psychiatry as well as practising specialists.....and the interested ...  (perhaps especially psychiatric patients who have the ability to grasp more complex p&p teaching).  I am going to copy this for my own psychiatrist who has proven for over 20 years she has an open and enquiring mind.  Some of my experiences and only if I choose to share them, she wants to listen to - and I suspect does what I sometimes do and puts it on my (metaphysical) 'mind-shelf' for later to think over and about when I have time and space in my day or night.

My psychiatrist's mother-in-law is a truly fundamental Catholic and every so often my psychiatrist checks out that something mind boggling, to me, her MIL has said, is the actual Catholic teaching.........But...........and no.....in.....at the end of sentences, or at the commencement.  Apply which rule applies !

Punctuation is of vital importance too to the grasping of reader to a body of writing.................yeah yeah, I know.......I know..........

                  

....and read both signs is essential............

[BarbTherese]

 

 

                                   

 

 

     Very easy to grasp meaning:

........................and a very important video..............

 

 

                             

[BarbTherese]

 

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/psalms/100

PSALM 100 (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: USCCB)

1.  A psalm of thanksgiving.

Shout joyfully to the LORD, all you lands;

2. serve the LORD with gladness;

come before him with joyful song.

3. *Know that the LORD is God,

he made us, we belong to him,

we are his people, the flock he shepherds.a

4. Enter his gates with thanksgiving,

his courts with praise.

Give thanks to him, bless his name;b

5. good indeed is the LORD,

His mercy endures forever,

his faithfulness lasts through every generation.

 

 

 

[BarbTherese]

If The Lord had called me to religious life, I would have been praying with all my heart for a vocation to the strict Carmelite Monastic Life..........

 

[BarbTherese]

 

 

My Carmelite Prioress OCD pal often calls me "Honey".............
 

 

My Carmelite Prioress - OCD - pal is, I think, a real miracle worker and I am her evidence should anyone doubt it..........she stayed constantly close to me as my closest confidant and pal, over and above totally the call of duty***, all ALL through my bipolar illness from beginning to grave.......whenever.....She is now in her nineties a little over midway..........

('scuse the Benedictine habit in above image......)..............

 

*** Can't fill in in any detail just how much over and above the call of any duty.......the 'squares on board' our incredible ship would have a heart attack probably; however, St Teresa of Avila would have been as proud as punch fer shure.............her original Constitution for her nuns has a few hidden type secrets.....not really hidden at all but a couple of things I read just would not sit right - a bit of prayer and thought.........and aahhhh....all then sat revealingly right....

The Vatican has revised her original constitution and then did revisions on the revisions.  But my Carmelite Prioress OCD pal gave me a copy of her original constitution.  St Teresa had written in one part that her nuns were to have donkeys for travel.  My CPP OCD said : "Dont get a donkey, honey, I suggest you get a bike".  We laughed.  I did buy a bike and did quite a bit of travel until one day flying into the driveway of Bethany, I came a  huge cropper.  That ended my bike days too and two legs became my primary means of transport.

 

                                  

Come a cropper:        https://www.theidioms.com/come-a-cropper/

Edited August 11, 2022 by BarbTherese

[BarbTherese]

 

  

 

Must add that the Constitution and especially the original by St Teresa MUST be read in conjunction with the Ancient Rule of Carmel by St Albert.

 

 

[BarbTherese]

 

  

 

My original priest, theologian and religious, confessor and SD said to me: "You are a new type of religious sister", when I was enquiring where on earth I would fit in in The Church and other questions after deciding I would make private vows and choose deliberately to remain Laity. Back then I had never heard of private vows before and wondered what on earth was I contemplating?  Much later, years later,  I read in the CCC :

Quote

 

http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p123a9p4.htm

919 Bishops will always strive to discern new gifts of consecrated life granted to the Church by the Holy Spirit; the approval of new forms of consecrated life is reserved to the Apostolic See.459 The eremitic life

 

The above quotation does not refer specifically to the Bethany way of life, rather what did come home was that, of course new forms of religious living, commitment, call it whatever - a rose by any other name and all that jazz (as opposed to religious life as in Canon Law Consecrated Life) is a potential in The Church.  Nothing can be official until approved by Rome, at which time, in the normal course, the way of life is incorporated into consecrated life - no longer Laity.   That is not what Bethany is about.

We certainly cannot put fences/borders/enclosure around The Holy Spirit.  All that is good comes from God, has God as Alpha and Omega.  That applies to the most minute to the greatest of good in our world.

Bethany as a way of life is specifically 'founded' as a way of life that is fully Laity in nature.  Never to change.  It is a bit more complicated than that, much too long to go into here, but built into the Bethany rule of life.  A previous Archbishop (now deceased) was really interested in the concept of Bethany as a way of life in the Laity and so I wrote to him about it, enclosing a diagram of an imagined Bethany monastery.  Long story!  Short possibly of it all is that Bethany is dedicated under the title "of Our Lady of The Way".  A while after I wrote to His Grace, he opened a chapel just of the main CBD and shopping mall/street in Adelaide.  He titled it "Chapel of Our Lady of The Way" and Mass was celebrated every week.  Sadly, it had to close after a short while due to lack of attendance.   Boy! I sort of know the story, Your Grace! 

That same priest theologian and religious, my confessor and SD, asked me to write a rule of life for Bethany, which I duly did.  After reading it, he gave it back to me saying that he though it was ok.  Next visit, I lamented to him that  after that last visit I had left the rule of life on a bus stop and lost it.  He kept laughing and I loved his laughter - it was a rollicking laughter that came from deep inside embracing his whole being.  But all I would hear was a gentle "TeeHee, TeeHee - Lost on a bus stop.  TeeHee, TeeHee - lost on a bus stop" every so often.  I thought to myself that I know of the Hound of Heaven, but this dear Lord is getting ridiculous.

Failure?  Nah, might have lost possibly many a battle but the war continues...........

 

               

 

 

Did Jesus Ever Laugh?

Excerpt only: "The great saints who in their lives reflected the life of the Lord knew the value of laughter and good humor.  Only those inclined to a pessimistic spirituality would condemn laughter.  St. Teresa of Avila, one of the great mystics of our Church, once looked around the chapel and saw all of the serious looking sisters; she blurted-out, “Lord, save me from these sullen-faced saints!”  St. Teresa was also able to laugh at life and herself:  once she commented about convent life, “Experience has taught me what a house full of women is like.”

Other saints too knew the value of laughter and joy:  St. Ignatius of Loyola taught, “Laugh and grow strong.”  St. John Bosco said, “I want no long-faced saints.”  St. Francis de Sales said, “A sad saint is a sorry saint.”  St. Thomas Aquinas taught, “Happiness is the natural life of man.”  What would have inspired these saints to make such statements if not meditating on the life of our Lord?  Not to take away from the great example of St. Anthony Claret, but joyful love of the Lord and well-placed laughter has made more converts than harsh penances and sullen faces.  Archbishop Fulton Sheen summed it up well: “The only time laughter is wicked is when it is turned against Him who gave it.”

 

 

I never saw Fulton Sheen on TV or video as a child, I don't think we had TV back then in Sth Aust anyway,  but I used to love to hear him talk on the radio.  We didn't have a TV at home until years after it was established in Sth Aust.  My heart ALWAYS lifted when he said "Bye now......and God Love you" on the radio.  I love it even more to see him say the words at the end of a video on YouTube.....with raised arms and his gleaming deeply ascetic deep brown eyes a-twinkling.  Now there is a man who can laugh - and I think I see mischief too in those eyes.  A great man and leader in Catholicism - a true Gift of The Lord.

                               "Goodnight.......and God Love us ALL"..........

1.30am almost on Friday 11th August.  It is really great to me to be back on Pham again!  Oh how I missed it not wanting to simply read posts as I would not have the opportunity to butt in a say my tuppence worth.  Deo Gratius Laudate Dominum.

[BarbTherese]

I never actually founded the way of life I titled "Bethany".  It simply unfolded in my journey until my confessor and SD said that I was already living a religious way of life, which was a surprise to me until time and space in my journey gave me time to reflect about what Father had said.  What I had been doing was simply responding to my life circumstances at any given point.  That became a cause that, of course, had an effect, which effect became another cause.  It was an unfolding of cause and effect in my journey.  I never despise the secular - The Holy Spirit blows wherever He Will.  He is not bigoted and certainly is in our life circumstances, very often as His Invitation to a certain action or response to what is cause in our life.  The Holy Spirit can crop up in the most unexpected people and/or places.  Crop up, that is, sometimes to teach, to proclaim or state something.  This is what I hear as it were when Jesus cries: "Listen! You that have ears to hear!"  I recall too something else Jesus said:
 

Quote

 

John 14 From Verse 26 on: "Jesus answered and said to him, "Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.

Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.  "I have told you this while I am with you.

The Advocate, the holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name - he will teach you everything and remind you of all that (I) told you.

Peace 12 I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid. You heard me tell you, 'I am going away and I will come back to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I.

And now I have told you this before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe.

https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PXM.HTM

 

I read when researching Gestalt Therapy "get the basic energy up to the ears".  In other words, learn to listen not only to others but to our own inner world.  This is something that has become an acute spontaneous awareness for me due to physical inability to get out and about as my poor overworked bones start to protest most loudly indeed.  Due indeed to Grace DGLD.  Disability became cause and was a life circumstance.  I responded (effect) very much so by listening and hearing especially to my own inner world - nothing much else I could do and due to circumstances i.e. severe disability.  That listening and hearing, in turn, has become cause that now exists as an invitation to "sit quietly in your cell and your cell will tell you what to do" (read in Thomas Merton that those were the words of a formator senior monk to a monk novice.  The young novice had asked his formator what he had to do).

So I am now sitting quietly alone in Bethany insofar as normal human contact is concerned.  Normal, of course, means what is embraced in the herd, in society, as the rational, the sane.  There is a question looming before me as it were: "What indeed IS sane and sanity, what IS reality or real."  I am at either end of a polarity: On one end is sanity and on the other end is what society calls insanity. Frankly, there is deception in either.   How can opposites become one.  Heck, I dunno, haven't got the foggiest notion! But Catholic Spirituality is full of paradoxes,  "All things are possible to God" and therein I rest secure and Joyful, giving thanks and praise "Oh! What a God have we!"

Writing these Posts I am often working myself out.........or on a way or road to it rather: Jesus said "I am The Way, The Truth and The Life".

 

  

Think about it

"and lead us not into temptation" (Pater Noster)

"Take up your cross and follow Me"

I cannot state what I am trying to say.  Even I do not know just now.

 

 

Oh heck, don't tell me I have travelled all this way to arrive at what I thought in the first place.    .............Ah well, c'est la vie, that's life and life only and Life, I love You.

........and yet......and yet............haven't got a clue just yet.............something doesn't quite fit.  There is a jarring in it.

.............and thus, on I go................4.30am almost and still awake writing and thinking.  How I love the late nights and early mornings:  no doorbell, no phone.  Just wrapped in the Complete Silence that is Presence........a True Gift of advanced age and severe disability is that today, Friday, I have no appointments whatsoever and I can switch off my cell phone sounds and just check it every so often.............Peace and Quiet............then suddenly that jolly doorbell.......drat the jolly thing!.............Murphy's Law applies here nowadays...........

 

  

[BarbTherese]

I had a real marathon of posting yesterday and throughout last night.  I was so happy to be able to get into Phatmass again and now, after my IT man left yesterday, I can access absolutely everything on my laptop on to my big screen.  It is huge and a real relief for tired eyes.  Not only that my keyboard is now directly under the big screen.  I was not expecting it really, but now I can touch type with ease.  Deo Gratius Laudate Dominum.

I not only can witness to the essential importance of Holy Communion ("unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you shall not have life in you") but also to practice patience as a quality of Love.   I find patience very difficult, but my son has been regularly encouraging me to be patient and that all things will fall into place in their due time.  How right he is about patience!  In the cause and effect follow-on in life's journey, I have had to learn the time to "sit in my cell and my cell will tell me what to do".  In other words, the times to patiently await the further unfolding of God's Will in a circumstance.  It is not always obvious and apparent.

I have never read about the above nor heard about it(except for the cell quote, which I read in Merton's Contemplation in a World of Action Kindle Edition $15.19 in Australia.***1 What I an about in my journey is to think over whatever, e.g. circumstances, as my journey unfolds; therefore, all is subject to E&OE (error and omission excepted).  Back in the day, dark ages, we used to put E&OE on all our  quotes to clients.   I am an armchair nothing at all.  Merely an ordinary everyday 'face in the pew' ... truly, of the least of the very little ones among the Children of God, His People.  No pious platitude, a fact of life.  Be that as it may, I am conscious of a great dignity, a right by birth and by baptism.  Nothing deserved, merely conferred gratuitously by virtue of birth and baptism and through, by virtue of, every single birth and baptism.  Through baptism we are conferred gratuitously a deeper Gift than that at birth.

 

***1 "The spiritual and psychological insights of these essays were nurtured in a monastic milieu, but their issues are universally human. Thomas Merton lays a foundation for personal growth and transformation through fidelity to "our own truth and inner being." His main focus is our desire and need to attain "a fully human and personal identity." This classic is a newly restored and corrected edition and the inaugural volume of Gethsemane Studies in Psychological and Religious Anthropology, a series of books that explores, through the twin perspectives of psychology and religion, the dynamics and depths of being fully human. "When I speak of the contemplative life I do not mean the institutional, cloistered life, . . . I am talking about a special dimension of inner discipline and experience, a certain integrity and fullness of personal development . . . . Discovering the contemplative life is a new self-discovery. One might say it is the flowering of a deeper identity on an entirely different plane . . ." --Thomas Merton, from the book" (If you like to listen and watch now on YouTube Archbishop Fulton Sheen, he gives much insight into the importance of the ideal partnership of psychology and theology. The Dominican nun who taught us in College said that science and theology must walk hand in hand. If they do not, then something is amiss or wrong in the science or in the theology.  Fiery tiny Sr Mary Benignus OP (decd) who taught me in second through to fifth year, was one of the greatest Gifts The Lord ever gratuitously benefitted and with which to bless all her students, who had ears to listen and to hear - one only Gift at Confirmation.  Biggy. as we fondly called her. sure could put a fire under all of us ... a fire of fear!  She was Irish and about five foot nothing, very tiny and slender and elderly even when she taught me.

It was not unusual for her to respond to a question from me with "we have libraries in the city, go at 3pm and find out for yourself.  Either that or "Sit down and DO NOT put your hand up again!"  Talking one day about the great importance of purity and the terrible sin to betray it.  I put my hand up and said something like "But Sister, the urge to create is instilled in all of us, but to steal is not?" "Sit down and do not speak another word".  "Yes, Stt"  "Do NOT call me Stt". "Sorry Sister".   We used to shorten Sister to a Stt".

 

                       

Edited August 12, 2022 by BarbTherese

[BarbTherese]

The Nature of Our Minds FULTON J. SHEEN Every human being at his birth has everything to learn (CERC website)

Excerpts from here and there in the above article text - which is rather long but well worth the read:

Quote

 

Quote:  This change of attitude and transformation requires that an outside Power or Spirit that acts like a catalyst bring together discordant elements into a new unity.

Quote: The world is not as irreligious as it seems at first glance. Religion has moved out of churches, to a large extent, to cope with our frustrations, despairs, shames and neuroses. The only mistake the churches can make in the new order is to assume that everybody must come to them instead of their going to everybody.

Quote: The famous painting by Holman Hunt entitled Opportunity pictures Christ at an ivy-clad door, knocking. Hunt has been criticized for not putting a latch on the outside of the door. The answer of the artist was, The door is opened from the inside.

His words were a confirmation of the story of opportunity. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My Voice and open the door, I will come into him and will sup with him and he with Me. These gracious words declare the long suffering of Our Lord as He waits for the conversion of sinners; but the love which seeks to bring that conversion about is a knock. The knock is an inspiration, a thought, an intuition anything which seems to spring up from our subconscious mind, either telling us that we are on the wrong path or showing us the right path. It is unfortunate that we have come to think of the subconscious mind as being a kind of cesspool or garbage can, in which all the refuse of the conscious mind is thrown. Actually, the subconscious mind is the cellar door or rear entrance into the conscious mind by which Divinity gains admittance, almost surreptitiously.

Quote: To have the courage to look into ourselves is the beginning of a dialogue that takes place between the mask and the face, the shadow self and the real self. Once this dialogue has been achieved honestly, then there opens another dialogue that of the soul with God. We cannot have communications with heaven until we have communications with ourselves. The prayerless people are the masked people.

Barb - my tuppense:The above quote begs a new question to me.  What IS REAL PRAYER? Is there such a thing as praying, but it is not REAL PRAYER. One response crops up immediately to mind i.e. prayer(s) leant by rote and never with reflection – i.e. to not grasp the meaning of what one is saying  And yet, if the person has a real intention to pray in truth, then the rote person is INDEED PRAYING IN TRUTH. "Man judges appearances, but The Lord KNOWS the heart" (Book of Samuel)

Quote: When we wear the mask, we talk about the weather at cocktail parties in order that we will not have to be embarrassed by revealing the true self, but in the dialogue with self, the subject is: How do I stand, not in the face of fellow man, but in the face of the One Who will judge me? This kind of conversation is not intellectual; it is rather anecdotal, as the Bible is anecdotal, as the Iliad and Odyssey are anecdotal. For here we have not a tale, but the experience of a personal truth. The soul is then no longer like the husband who keeps from his wife things that she should know as he asks, Should I tell my wife? Once the soul truly discovers itself, then there is nothing to be hidden either from the self or the wife or from God. It is a mark of sanity to talk to yourself provided the subject is the real self.

 

7 minute video:

 

Below is a brilliant and easy to understand explanation of consciousness and the unconscious~quite a few giggles now and then.  Suggest you put on the subtitles/closed captions: I am an Aussie and can find the American accent  a difficulty at times and I can laugh till I have tears of laughter at the problems the typist or whoever or whatever it be of the captions has problems translating.......25 minute video:

 

There is a 9.56 minutes i.e. almost 10 minute video posted as Part 2, but it is merely repeating the conclusions in Part 1, or the first video from His Grace, which I have posted already.  Hence, I have not posted Part 2.

But below is another fascinating video from His Grace.  Don't sweat the small stuff, leave it to The Holy Spirit to guide you wherever you need to be.  Patience.  If Jesus was crucified for my sins, regarded the fool for doing so sometimes.  Surely I can take flack and be regarded as fool for trying to serve Him as He calls me..........and calls you too to your own identity in Him......."They have persecuted Me AND THEY WILL PERSECUTE YOU".  Any form of persecution mild or severe is a badge of true discipleship in Jesus.

That same Dominican nun who taught me, told us that we all have a unique identity in Jesus Truly Man, Truly God.  It is that I have and you have something to be done in His World that only you or I can accomplish through our unique identity in Him, through our true selves, found only as we walk in the Footsteps of Jesus, Who is The Way, The Truth and The Life.

23 minute video:

His Grace recorded video 50 years or so ago.  It is prophetic as we all walk, particularly perhaps the USA, towards the year 2024.

 

 

 Glass of wine and vaping - chucked the cigarettes.  My son was very concerned about my health taking up smoking again at my age.  One glass of wine around 200mls aint gonna kill me or do any harm - or I would be long gone.

My pocket sure appreciates ditching the cigs.

                                      

 

[BarbTherese]

Whever there is division, especially where unity once prevailed, therein you see the work of Satan, The Evil One, Ol Nik ... whatever name you care to give that thing.  What an insult to the male gender to call it an he, male.  It is an It!

Here is a sign of division and the work of Satan:

If you have NOT read the article by Archbishop Fulton Sheen and the following two videos by Hi Grace, which I posted, I don't think you can get it!  Whether we like it or not, Vatican II was a work of The Holy Spirit and it is not up to society to come to us, The Church.  It is up to us, The Church, to go out to society.

Are we missionary or are we not.  The Mass comes from Missio, mission, to send.  If I am indeed missionary, then one of the better preparations is to study the work and times of St Paul.

[BarbTherese]

The book which the A/b in the above video has written is a bit of plaigerism from Pope Benedict, when he ws A/b Cardinal Ratzinger: Faith and The Future :

Quote

 

The church will become small

CARDINAL JOSEPH RATZINGER

The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.

She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes . . . she will lose many of her social privileges. . . As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members....

It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek . . . The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain . . . But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man's home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

 

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Future-Joseph-Ratzinger/dp/1586172190   Also available on Kindle.  Prices etc. available on above Amazon link.

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Increasingly, the future is becoming a theme for theological reflection. In the backIng

round we can detect a growing concern among many people for the future of faith. Does faith have any future at all, and, if so, where in all the confusion of today's trends will we discover its embryo?

But the problem of the future assails not only the believer. In the ever more rapidly advancing process of historical evolution, man is confronted with enormous opportunities, but also with colossal perils. For him, the future is not only hope, but sorrow-a nightmare, indeed. He cannot avoid asking what part faith can play in building tomorrow's world. Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, approaches this problem of universal concern from a variety of angles, bringing his deep personal faith and theological brilliance to bear on these serious questions.

 

Jesus posed a question: "When I return will I find Faith on earth?

Those advocating a retuirn to pre V2 have lost Faith that The Holy Spirit was at work in V2.  For anyone who has made the journey of Faith knows, we have to TRUST NO MATTER HOW DARK AND CONFUSING THINGS MIGHT BE.  WE HAVE TO WALK ON TRUSTING.  dEO gRATIUS lADATE Doiminum.

 

Edited August 13, 2022 by BarbTherese

[BarbTherese]

Apologies for all typing problems.  Overnight for some reason, this morning I could not connect to the big screen.  I will have to contact my IT guy on Monday.  I can hardly see this small screen  and now my keyboard is no longer under the screen - it is to the far right of the much smaller screen.

It is almost as if this unit is haunted as things have just disappeared vanished - caput, gone and I cannot find them anywhere.  Perhaps a polterg0ost or something is at work.

Something weird happened last night and I am almost used to the weird since I shifted here.  My home here is blessed and consecrated to The Sacred Heart.  Last night finally got to bed when there was a sudden loud bang on my front verandah.  Put the lights all out and just listened.  Nothing more and so after a short listening space in the dark, I put the light back on again and then I heard the sound of my computer starting up.  It is located in my family room area not at all near my bedroom.  I just ignored it thinking I will deal with whatever in the morning.  I had a great nights sleep..  This morning, I could not connect to the big screen.

Almost unbelievable are the problems I have had trying to read and type etc. today.

Apologies again

 

That dam-nedf thing can try, but to date has not won the war.  Just a battle or two or three or whatever.  All for Thee, Sacred Heart of Jesus, no matter what befalls me, Jesus, it is all for Thee Amen

Laudate Dominum Deo Gratius.