Dear
friends of the Neocatecumenal Way,
Since I tried to serve the Neocatecumenal
communities for 10 years, naturally a few people spoke to me in
person, by telephone and by email about my decision: “In
conscience, before God, I can no longer celebrate a Mass not approved
by the Church.” Some did not understand this my decision; I offer
here more clarification.
One can find the first email, last month, about the Neocatecumenal
Mass at:
My fundamental reply is what I already wrote
(http://wordbelife.blogspot.it/2015/01/spiritual-food-1501.html).
That is, even if I do not understand all of the motives of the list
of “decisions of the Holy Father” in the letter
sent by Cardinal Francis Arinze on
December 1, 2005, I trust in the Vicar
of Christ, and I obey the “decisions
of the Holy Father”. Thus, I will try to explain at least a little
of what I understood in the guidance and wisdom of Pope Benedict, and
in particular, in the “Liturgical Books” which guide the whole
Catholic Church in the liturgical celebrations, above all the most
important one, the Holy Mass!
As I already wrote: “The recall of Benedict XVI
regards the ways in which the neocatecumenal groups celebrate the
Mass. The Pope wants them to conform to what is prescribed in the
liturgical norms valid for the whole Church. … In
the “Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Community of the
Neocatechumenal Way”, January 20, 2012, Pope Benedict gave a
genuine lecture – almost an ultimatum – that the celebrations in
the small communities must be “regulated
by the liturgical books that must be faithfully followed”,
as he had ordered already in the letter of Cardinal Arinze more than
6 years earlier.”
Also
Pope John Paul II gave the same recall to the Neocatecumens:
“Celebrate the Eucharist and, above all, Easter,
with true piety, with great dignity, with love for the liturgical
rites of the Church, with exact
observance of the established norms by
the competent authority, with the will of communion with all the
brothers…” (In Italian: Osservatore Romano, 11 febbraio
1983; http://www.geocities.ws/Athens/Delphi/6919/OR110283.htm).
As I already indicated, the
attitude of the saints was to trust the Pope,
to seek to under stand the thought and desire of the Vicar of Christ,
INSTEAD of
seeking, in a perhaps cunning way, ways to get around the orders of
the superior, or to seek in everyway possible to justify the way of
doing things not in harmony with the order of the superior. Thus I
will not try to explain in a casuistic way the motive for which Pope
Benedict did not approve the Neocatecumenal Mass from the point of
view of the “Liturgical Books”, but rather I will try to indicate
what I understood of the wisdom of the “Liturgical Books” in
general.
One
can find easily the Liturgical books on the Web; I offer two of the
most important ones:
The
General Instruction of the Roman Missal
Redemptionis
Sacramentum
These Liturgical Books offer “certain
matters to be observed or to be avoided regarding the Most Holy
Eucharist” for the Church in the
whole world. Beyond the normal liturgical norms, one finds
explanations when a Priest or a Bishop must make an exception
according to the needs of the situation. For example in a small
parish the Priest must distribute the Eucharist by himself, whereas
in a parish in Huntington Beach, California, where I worked for one
year (1990-1991), there were about 1000 people at each Mass with one
Priest, and thus there are the explanations in the liturgical books
when one can apply the exceptions to the norms in order to guide the
Priest of Bishop in order to maintain as much reverence as possible
before the Most Holy Eucharist. Or, for example, the norms explain
where to put the Tabernacle in a church where there is very little
tourism and where there is a lot of tourism, etc., always
with the goal of maintaining as much reverence as possible before the
Most Holy Eucharist. “I am the Lord
your God, … you shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:2-5;
CCC 2083-2141). “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only
shall you serve” (Mt 4:10), not men!
In
the liturgical books there are norms about the importance of the
sanctuary and that
“The Priest may give the sign of peace to the
ministers but always remains within the sanctuary, so as not to
disturb the celebration.” There are explanations when one can apply
an exception to use a normal table to
celebrate the Holy Mass while the norm
is to use an altar in the sanctuary as dignified as possible to
celebrate the most important celebration on the face of the earth. Is
this not what the document of Cardinal Arinze, ordered by the Pope,
said?
5. On the manner of receiving Holy Communion, a
period of transition (not exceeding two years) is granted to the
Neocatechumenal Way to pass from the widespread manner of receiving
Holy Communion in its communities (seated, with a cloth-covered table
placed at the center of the church INSTEAD
OF THE DEDICATED ALTAR IN THE SANCTUARY)
to the normal way in which the entire Church receives Holy Communion.
This means that the Neocatechumenal Way must begin to adopt the
manner of distributing the Body and Blood of Christ that is provided
in the liturgical books.
There is always the tendency to NOT
maintain the cult or worship of the
Creator, but to slid toward the cult or
worship of creatures in the Holy Mass.
It is nice to be together! A community of believers helps a lot to
persevere in the faith, if the community
leads us toward God, TOWARD THE CREATOR!
One also feels good to be esteemed by others around us in the
community and in the Church. “For they
loved the praise of men more than the praise of God” (Jn 12:43).
“HOW CAN YOU BELIEVE, who receive glory from one another and do not
seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (Jn 5:44; Gal 1:10).
But Jesus said: “WOE TO YOU, WHEN ALL MEN SPEAK WELL OF YOU” (Lk
6:26). “If I sought to please men I
should not be the servant of Christ”; St. Augustine; Week 13,
Tuesday). Behold the motive of our holy Mother Church to offer us
“certain matters to be observed or to be avoided regarding the Most
Holy Eucharist”, in the liturgical books. And thus there is often
the temptation for the exceptions
(for particular cases), one after the
other, accumulated together, indicated
in the liturgical books, to become the
rule (habitual), not only for a Mass or
for a parish, but even for the celebrations of the Holy Mass for an
entire ecclesial movement!
THE
PURITY OF INTENTION IS FUNDAMENTAL:
Jesus wants our heart. If one struggles, if one
watches over the heart continuously, one succeeds in always giving
more the heart to Jesus with the help of Mary. If one does not
struggle, if one does not watch over his/her own heart continually,
automatically one gives the heart to
other things, created things, but not
to the Creator! “For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord,
whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God
(Ex 34:14). “You shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the
peoples who are round about you; for the Lord you God in the midst of
you is a jealous God; lest the anger of the Lord you God be kindled
against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth”
(Deut 6:14-15). “He who loves father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not
worthy of me” (Mt 10:37). “If any one come to me and does not
hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and
sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Lk
14:26). What would Jesus say if someone
loves the community more than Jesus,
even to the point of using the great sacrifice of Jesus, the Holy
Mass, for himself or for the community?!? But if you say this is
impossible for us Catholics in the Mass, then what is Jesus saying in
these passages: “If any one come to me and does
not hate his own father…”, or the
community?!? Do we think that Jesus is a little bit exaggerated but
we modern people are intelligent and wise (Mt 11:25; Lc 10:21)!?!
“Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving
the Lord and not men,
knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your
reward; you are serving the Lord Christ” (Col 3:23). “For if any
one thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he
deceives himself… Do not be deceived; God is not
mocked” (Gal 6:3,7).
“On several occasions, I have learned how some
religious defend their own glory under
the pretext of being concerned for the glory of God, whereas it is
not a question of the glory of God, but of glory of self. O Jesus,
how painful this has been for me! What secrets the day of Your
judgment will bring to light! How can one steal God's gifts?”
(Diary of Saint Faustina, no. 1149). “He who wants to learn true
humility should reflect upon the Passion
of Jesus” (Diary, no. 267).
Sister Mary Gabriel (in purgatory) communicated to Sister Mary of the
Cross:
“Alas, how many lives seem to be filled with
good works and at the death are found empty.
This is because all those actions that appeared to be good, all those
showy works, all that conduct that seemed irreproachable - all these
were not done for Jesus alone. Some will have their eyes opened when
they come here to this life (in Purgatory). On earth they wanted to
be made much of, to shine, to be thought very exact in religious
observances, to be esteemed as perfect religious. This is the
mainspring of so many lives. If you only
knew how few people work for God and act for Him alone.
Alas, at death, when they are no longer blinded, what regrets they
will have. If only sometimes they would think of eternity. What is
life compared to that day which will have no evening for the elect,
or to that night which will have no dawning for the damned? On earth,
people attach themselves to everything and everyone except to Him,
who alone ought to have our love and to whom we refuse it. Jesus in
the Tabernacle waits for souls to love Him and He finds none. Hardly
one soul in a thousand loves Him as it should. You love Him and make
up to Him for this guilty indifference which exists all over this
world.”
The Vatican's chief exorcist, Father Gabriele
Amorth, in his interview of 2001, speaking about many bishops who do
not believe that the devil exists, said: “I
could give you the names of so many bishops and cardinals who, on
their appointment to a diocese, stripped exorcists of their faculty
to perform the rite. Or there are bishops who openly say they don’t
believe, that these are things of the past. Why is that?
UNFORTUNATELY, WE HAVE HAD THE INSIDIOUS INFLUENCE OF CERTAIN
BIBLISTS and I could mention some illustrious names. We who are in
daily physical contact with the ‘other world’ know that this
influence is evident in numerous liturgical reforms. (For example?)
The Second Vatican Council asked that some texts be revised.
Disobeying this command, they set about re-writing them completely
with no thought for the danger of making things worse instead of
better. So many rites came off badly
from this mania to throw out the old and start from scratch, as if
the Church to date had always conned us and as if only now the time
had at last come of the great geniuses, the super theologians, the
super-biblists and the super-liturgists who know what the right thing
is for the Church. This is a lie: the
last Council simply asked that the texts be revised, not destroyed.”
(http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=2879;
http://www.vaticans.org/index.php?/archives/61-An-interview-with-the-Vaticans-chief-excorcist,-Father-Gabriele.html).
Lex orandi, lex credendi
(Latin loosely translated as "the law of praying [is] the law of
believing" or “the content of prayer is the content of the
faith”) refers to the relationship between worship and belief. The
liturgy of the Holy Mass must lead us to more faith in the real and
substantial presence of the infinite God in the Most Holy Eucharist,
not less!
Modern men today do not want to make an act or gesture of humility
even before the infinite God in the Eucharist. But one cannot detach
or separate the body fro the heart; one ends up with less reverence
before God even in the heart. And our holy Mother Church knows this
very well! The way in which we celebrate the Holy Mass INFLUENCES
GREATLY ON OUR FAITH, or on the loss of
faith slowly, in the real and substantial presence of the infinite
God in the Most Holy Eucharist! A similar saying to “Lex orandi,
lex credenda” is: “If you do not live what you believe, you end
up believing what you live.” There is always the possibility of
liturgical minimalism. 50 years ago people tried to avoid talking in
church before the infinite God in the tabernacle; today it is normal
to chatter in church!
Bishop Athanasius Schneider observes ruefully that
there are many whose views coincide with those of the pagan world who
“declare themselves Catholics and even faithful to the Pope”,
while “those who are faithful to the Catholic faith or those who
are promoting the glory of Christ in the liturgy” are
labeled extremists. Such critics may
assert that Bishop Schneider’s concern over Holy Communion is like
worrying over the numbers of angels on a pinhead. But the bishop
insists that treatment of the Eucharist
is at the very heart of the crisis.
“The Eucharist is at the heart of the Church,” he said. “When
the heart is weak, the whole body is weak.” He argued that
receiving Communion in hand “contributes
gradually to the loss of the Catholic faith in the Real Presence and
in transubstantiation”. Bishop
Schneider also rejected the idea that concern for the liturgy is less
important than, or even separate from, concern for the poor. “This
is erroneous. The first commandment which Christ gave us was to adore
God alone. Liturgy is not a meeting of
friends. It is our first task to adore
and glorify God in the liturgy and also in our manner of life. From a
true adoration and love of God grows
love for the poor and our neighbor. It
is a consequence.”
The popes did not want to change the custom of
receiving Holy Communion on the tongue, but so many bishops and so
many priests did not obey the Magisterium of the Church. Read:
“Memoriale Domini”, “Inaestimabile Donum”.
Often I say to my parishioners before the “Our
Father”: “Have we made that act of
faith , each one of us, that five
minutes ago there was on this altar only a piece of bread and wine,
and now there is the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God? If not, automatically our faith diminishes!”
The liturgical books are precisely for
this purpose! If one does not obey the
liturgical books of the Catholic Church, automatically the faith, the
love and the reverential humility slowly diminishes before the
infinite God in the Eucharist, “the
source and summit of the Christian life”, without
realizing it!
Dead
bodies float and go down with the flow of the river; in order to
arrive to the Truth, to heaven, it is necessary to swim against the
current everyday, especially today with so many beautiful lies and
underhanded deception spread about everywhere by our enemy.
I
also tell my parishioners: “If at a certain point Father Joe begins
to say things that are not in agreement with the Catechism of the
Catholic Church for adults (CCC), follow the CCC because the Truth,
which frees and saves, does not change. DO NOT FOLLOW FATHER JOE
ALONG THE PATH OF PERDITION! I must preach according to the CCC, not
according to my head or for human respect; I will not go to hell for
anyone”! “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach
to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be
accursed!” (Gal 1:8).
Many people do not understand how one can maintain
the two extremes of total trust in God as trustful children and at
the same time reverential humility before the infinite God in the
Eucharist. That is, how can one
maintain in the liturgy the nearness to God without loosing
reverential humility? Only with the help of God can one maintain the
proper relationship with Jesus who has two natures, divine and human,
our God and Creator, and our elder Brother. Some religions, such as
Muslim, see God as if far away, and far above us, and do not
understand how we Christians can believe that the infinite God became
a man among us; the heresy of Jansenism tends in this direction. But
today the pendulum is totally to the other side in which one hears
only about the humanity of Jesus, and it is put aside, at least
silence, that Jesus is also One of the Persons of the Most Holy
Trinity. One finds this equilibrium between the two extremes in
biblical tradition, explained in the documents of the Magisterium of
the Church. One who truly trusts in God, as children, with the help
of our heavenly Mother, understands well how it is possible to
maintain the truth of who we are and Who is God, which is essentially
humility, which is the fundamental definition of humility! “Truly,
I say to you, unless you turn and BECOME LIKE CHILDREN, you will
never enter the Kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3). How can one become a
child without the Mother, the Mother who gave us the Holy Rosary, who
accompanies us on our knees before her Eucharistic Son? The most
fundamental virtue of children is trust! It is not by chance, in
these times of the greatest crisis ever, that God has offered us in a
more profound way the Divine Mercy by way of Saint Faustina: “Jesus
I trust in You”! Jesus said to Saint
Faustina: “BEFORE
I COME AS A JUST JUDGE, I first open wide the door of My mercy. He
who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through
the door of My Justice” (Diary, 1146). “YOU WILL PREPARE THE
WORLD FOR MY FINAL COMING” (Diary of Saint Faustina, 429).
In the booklet, "Saint Veronica Giuliani - True Disciple and
Apostle of Mary”, by Fr. Emmanuele of the Immaculate and Sorrowful
Heart of Mary, on reads:
- And to the Holy Eucharist, this "great
invention of love," as she called It,
to which she resorted to ask the most difficult graces, obtaining
permission to receive Him every day; and how often she received Him
from the hands of the Angels ... or from Most Holy Mary ... One must
look in the mirror of the Diary to understand how
little reverence and so much superficiality we approach the Sacred
today, and how little faith in the real
and working presence of God in this wonderful Sacrament, even to the
limits of desecration ... How important
it was for her the way to receive Him! All ... ALL THE SPIRITUAL
FRUITS DEPENDED ON THIS. She used to
say, "Whenever we receive Him in the Blessed Sacrament, God is
reborn in the souls of the righteous who,
with the heart ,serve Him and receive Him with purity."
It is enough to remember that she was raptured into union with God
after almost every Communion …
“THE DREAM OF ST. JOHN BOSCO” coincides very
well with this warning of Msgr. Schneider and it helps us to
understand the great importance of remaining close to Jesus in the
Eucharist, with our Rosary in hand, precisely in this period of
crisis in the Church and outside of the Church. It is very
interesting in this his most well known dream that the
man in white at the helm of the ship in
a great storm, attacked on all sides by other boats, guides the ship
in the direction between the two pillars: on
the top of one there is our Eucharistic Lord in the monstrance, on
the top of the other one sees Our Lady.
Blessed
Anne-Catherine Emmerick, an Augustinian German nun (1774 – 1824),
proclaimed Blessed on October 3, 2004 by Blessed John Paul II, wrote:
May 13, 1820: “I saw also the relationship
between the two popes. . . I saw how baleful would be the
consequences of this false church.
… Once more I saw that the Church of Peter was undermined by a plan
evolved by the SECRET SECT, while storms were damaging it. But I saw
also that help was coming when distress had reached its peak. I saw
again the Blessed Virgin ascend on the Church and spread her mantle
[over it]. I saw a Pope who was at once
gentle, and very firm....”.
Pope
John Paul II tells us:
“THERE CAN BE NO DANGER OF EXCESS in our care
for this Mystery, for “in this
sacrament is recapitulated the whole mystery of our salvation”.”
The Pharisee thought that it was very
exaggerated when the sinner “standing
behind Jesus at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her
tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet,
and anointed them with the ointment” (Lk 7:38)!
Il fariseo pensava che era molto esagerato quando la peccatrice “si
rannicchiò piangendo ai piedi di Gesù e cominciò a bagnarli di
lacrime, poi lì asciugava con i suoi capelli, li baciava e li
cospargeva di olio profumato” (Lc 7,38)!
In
the “Letter of His Holiness Pope, Benedict XVI, Proclaiming A Year
For Priests, On the 150th Anniversary Of The "Dies Natalis"
of John Mary Vianney (06-16-2009), Pope Benedict wrote:
He (John Vianney) was convinced that the fervor of
a priest’s life depended entirely upon the Mass: “The reason why
a priest is lax is that he does not pay attention to the Mass! My
God, how we ought to pity a priest who
celebrates as if he were engaged in something routine!”.
He was accustomed, when celebrating, also to offer his own life in
sacrifice: “What a good thing it is for a priest each morning to
offer himself to God in sacrifice!”. … “By spending long hours
in church before the tabernacle, he inspired the faithful to imitate
him by coming to visit Jesus with the knowledge that their parish
priest would be there, ready to listen and offer forgiveness. Later,
the growing numbers of penitents from all over France would keep him
in the confessional for up to sixteen hours a day. It
was said that Ars had become “a great hospital of souls”.
His first biographer relates that “the grace he obtained [for the
conversion of sinners] was so powerful that it would pursue them, not
leaving them a moment of peace!”. The saintly Curé reflected
something of the same idea when he said: “It is not the sinner who
returns to God to beg his forgiveness, but God himself who runs after
the sinner and makes him return to him”. “This good Savior is so
filled with love that he seeks us everywhere”.
BUT
TODAY, HOW MANY PRIESTS AND BISHOPS DO AS DID THE HOLY CURATE OF ARS?
The last several popes have told us that the gravest sin today is
that there is no more sin; we have lost the sense of sin. One of the
most fundamental tasks for Jesus was that of Redeemer, to free us
from our sins for those of good will who are willing to confess their
sins (Mk 2:17; Lk 5:31-32, etc.). Thus one of the most fundamental
tasks for priests is to be the doctor of the souls, to help the souls
to identify and tu cure the sicknesses of the soul, especially those
most grave which are called “mortal sins”, that is, the sins that
render the soul dead, but the body walks with a dead soul up until
death if there is no priest to help the person to recognize the
gravity of their situation and to make a good confession! If priests
do not help people to identify the sicknesses of the soul, people do
not have anything to confess, and thus have no need of Jesus the
Redeemer, who came for sinners, not for the just who believe to have
no sins. In this way the Redemption is nullified for these people
because they do not believe to have need of the Savior.
WHAT WOULD YOU THINK OF A DOCTOR WHO CARED NOTHING
ABOUT DISEASE and sends home the patients with grave sicknesses
saying to not to worry because THE
DOCTOR DOES NOT WANT TO SCARE OR UPSET THE PATIENT.
Such doctors would be called quakes, incompetents, guilty of gross
professional negligence; they would be sued for malpractice. But if
priests do not speak about the only thing that can kill the soul,
mortal sin, because the people (spiritual patients) do not want to
hear these things, what would we think about such priests? If the
doctor acts in this way, the person could lose his life; but if the
doctor of souls, the priest, does like this, the person could loose
his immortal which last for all eternity! “For what will it profit
a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what
shall a man give in return for his life” (Mt 16:26; Mk 8:36)?
We
must recognize that our human nature is such that we
automatically slid toward the easiest path, or toward the path which
gives us more recognition before people. Precisely for this one finds
often in the Gospels from the mouth of Jesus: “Watch therefore…”!
Seven times in the Book of Judges alone, in the Old Testament, the
people of Israel went through the cycle of sin, suffering,
supplication to God, salvation from God, and then the slide back
again into the lack of prayer and of the observance ot the 10
Commandments, and then they began all over again to sin again. It is
interesting that when the Israelites were tired of deciding and doing
things on their own and experienced how much better it is to follow
God’s chosen ones, they finally pleaded with Gideon to “rule over
us, you and your son and your grandson also...” (Judg 8:22). How
many Catholics are not yet tired of following their own heads of
relativism instead of the teachings of the Magisterium of the Church?
You
parents understand well the great tendency for the children to take
the easy way; but also our Holy Mother Church understands this
very well. The Second Vatican Council gave more responsibility to the
people, but unfortunately the great majority, instead of living this
responsibility as Christians who want to give joy to Jesus, which
means to seek to discover and do what Jesus wants, took the easy way
just like spoiled children all their lives. For example, the
documents of the council told us that we could substitute abstinence
from meat on Friday with some other sacrifice to honor the day that
Jesus died for us, given the fact that many eat delicious fish which
was not a sacrifice. And so, almost all the Catholics only heard the
words that it is not necessary to abstain from meat each Friday, and
nothing else! When the “pill” arrived in 1960, the great majority
of Catholics took the easy way, and thus when “Humanae Vitae” was
published there was a great rebellion by the spoiled grownup children
that were habituated to a Christianity without the cross, even though
this does not lead toward true freedom and afterwards to heaven. Very
quickly the contraceptive mentality lead us to abortion, euthanasia,
gay unions, … When the Mom is not around to push us, the children
who have not assumed their responsibilities, that is, those who have
not fallen in love with Him who gave us everything, Jesus, they take
the easiest way, or the way that is more gratifying to their
self-importance. God who is totally respectful of our free will,
waits for each one of us in silence to give freely as we have receive
freely everything that we have (Mt 10:8).
How many Jews thought that when the Messiah
arrived everything would be easier e
that they would even be at least more free from the 10 Commandments?
Instead Jesus took us to the heart of the Law: “Think not that I
have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to
abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till
heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from
the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the
least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least
in the kingdom of heaven…” (Mt 5:17-20). When the children leave
home, how many have an attitude to be free from the rules of the
parents, and how many seek to understand the wisdom of what they
received from their for their true good? How many Catholics, after
the council offered more responsibility, took advantage of the
situation to do things as they pleased, to trust in themselves,
instead of seeking to discover and to understand the documents of our
Mother Church for our true good together with the cross of Christ?
If a person does not struggle
to remember and to make an act of faith as profound as possible
before the Eucharist, especially during the celebrations of the Holy
Mass, automatically
the faith, love and reverential humility diminishes! The liturgy,
guided by the liturgical books of the Church, must help us to do
precisely this!
So many today do not want to pay attention to the
liturgical books which offer “certain matters to be observed or to
be avoided regarding the Most Holy Eucharist”. But when we look at
the directives, in detail, which God gave to the Israelites, who did
not even have the infinite God in the Eucharist, I
hope it helps us to make a good examine of conscience!
"If
his offering to the LORD is a burnt offering of birds, then he shall
bring his offering of turtledoves or of young pigeons. And the priest
shall bring it to the altar and wring off its head, and burn it on
the altar; and its blood shall be drained out on the side of the
altar; and he shall take away its crop with the feathers, and cast it
beside the altar on the east side, in the place for ashes; he shall
tear it by its wings, but shall not divide it asunder. And the priest
shall burn it on the altar, upon the wood that is on the fire; it is
a burnt offering, an offering by fire, a pleasing odor to the LORD”
(Lev 1:14-17).
There are two good reasons why this does not mean much to us.
One is that we know now that God is no longer honoured by animal
sacrifices, a primitive thing. We as Christians have even a stronger
reason for not taking this seriously, because we know that is it the
sacrifice of Calvary that renders all other sacrifices useless and
needless.
But when we look more attentively at the passage
we see other things: 1) There could only be two types of birds:
turtle doves or young pigeons. Why would that be? In those times,
they were the noblest types of fowl. The point behind that is,
nothing but the best is what God is deserving of. This must apply
also today, when I do what I do for God, nothing slipshod; it ought
to be the best. 2)
You note the fact that everybody is going to be making a sacrifice;
if you were wealthy you would sacrifice a lamb; if you were poor you
would bring up birds. Why what was the reason for that? Well it is a
tribute to God, a way of acknowledging God’s Lordship, a way of
saying to God, I have an utter dependence upon you. Today I should
have said that very same thing! It is not something that that poor
man in 600 BC felt the need to, I should be doing the same. 3)
Notice the great detail is in all this. It doesn’t say bring the
birds up and the priest will sacrifice them. No. They have to be
certain kind of birds. Then it must be the priest who brings it to
the altar. Then the priest “shall tear it
by its wings, but shall not divide it asunder. And the priest shall
burn it on the altar …” (Lev 1:14-17).
There are about 10 specifications that have to be observed here. What
does that imply? If someone here would give me very specific
instructions about where to look, how to sit, how to speak… I would
gather that this is very important. The more precise and specified it
becomes, the more you are stressing the significance of this. The
point is this: when you do what you do for God, you cannot be
slipshod; you have to be very very earnest and careful. He deserves
nothing but the best from you. Here the
directives come from God by way of Moses; for Catholics the
directives come from God by way of the Magisterium of the Church!
The Magisterium of the Church has given us many
directives to help us to not neglect the things of God, in particular
the Eucharist! The problem is that when
there is lacking faith, the faith to
believe that the directives of Moses or of the Magisterium of the
Church are directives of God, or even to not care at all, these
directives from Moses or from the Magisterium of the Church are taken
in the way spoiled and rebellious or full of proud children receive
them from their parents. On interprets the directives like from a
mother, not considered very intelligent, who perhaps nags too much.
The rebellious children even accuse the
parents of being full of pride because
they do no do like the great majority of parents do today who have
let themselves slid into relativism, the easier path and more
gratifying to our personal individualism! These untrusting children
even say to their parents to shut up, because the parents are
sinners, the priests are sinners, and so, everybody shut up! How many
Catholics today do as good children who trust in their parents and
seek to understand the directives of the parents instead of seeking
all the excuses and all the scapegoats to do as they please???
Also
in the Book of Leviticus, God explains the attitude, THE SPIRIT IN
WHICH IT IS NECESSARY TO LOVE ONES NEIGHBOR:
"And when you reap the harvest of your land,
you shall not reap your field to its very border, nor shall you
gather the gleanings after your harvest; you shall leave them for the
poor and for the stranger: I am the LORD your God” (Lev 23:22).
These are the instructions given to wealthy
landowners in those days; this is how widows and orphans could
sustain themselves by gleaning, as did Ruth and Noeme. This was a way
of saying to people: take thought of the need of those around you,
especially those who are hurting. This passage also indicated to not
do good for goodness sake, which too many people tend to do today.
They just feel good doing the charity they do. And that is not bad,
but there is a higher motive suggested here. You do this not because
you feels good when you help someone who is in need. Not even because
that is justice; I have so much more than I need, I should share with
those who are in desperate need. NO.
The reason given here is: “I
am the LORD your God”; that is, do
it for God’s sake. That’s what keeps if from being mere social
action. When you get Christians who forget this, that you are doing
it to honor God, you are no better than any government worker who is
involved in helping the poor. Even the head of the social workers in
India said one time to Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “I finally have
understood the difference between us social workers and you sisters;
you do it for Someone, and we do it for something!” And this man in
charge was not even a Christian!
In an interview with “Time Magazine”
(1989), Mother Teresa of Calcutta was asked:
“Why have you been so successful?”
Mother Teresa replied:
“Jesus made Himself the bread of life to give us life. That's where
we begin the day, with MASS. And we end the day with ADORATION of the
Blessed Sacrament. I don't think that I could do this work for even
one week if I didn't have four hours of prayer every day.”
(http://www.servelec.net/mothertheresa.htm).
When I saw Mother Teresa (together with Jean Vanier, founder of
l’Arche, for people with developmental disabilities) in the Church
at Mondo Migliore (Rocca di Papa, Roma; January 1989), when she
looked at the Eucharist and when she bowed down to the point of
touching her head on the cold marble floor during the Consecration of
the Mass, it made a great impression on me! Mother Teresa never
opened a new house for her sisters if there was not the possibility
of having not only daily Mass everyday, but also adoration everyday;
because she would say that spending time in adoration before our
Eucharistic Lord, the faith grows in the real, substantial and
personal presence of Jesus, and thus one is able to see more and more
with the eyes of faith the presence of Jesus in “the least of these
my brethren”. Mother Teresa’s motto of life was: “You did it to
Me” (Mt 25:40)!
TODAY, IN THE MASS, THERE IS SO MUCH EMPHASIS ON
THE PEOPLE, ON THE MUSIC, DANCING, BALLOONS… You just have to say:
where are we? Are we in the entertainment business, and if you are
you will lose out because you cannot be entertaining every week. It
is important to love your neighbour, but Mass has really turned into
a social issue, and then the sacrifice, many times, the whole idea of
Calvary, communion with God seems to be slipping away. With the
unapproved and misguided liturgical innovations, we
are loosing the sense of the sacred,
the depth of mystery; we no longer awestruck at the Sacrifice of
Jesus for the redemption of the world. After the Council in many
churches the Blessed Sacrament was moved from the center. With that
went the custom of genuflecting as you entered the church. The fact
to have easy access to the sanctuary which before was consider sacred
and reserved. All of these exception of the rules made by “the
great geniuses, the super theologians, the super-biblists and the
super-liturgists who know what the right thing is for the Church”,
as Father Amorth said, have chiped
away at the holiness, the sense of the sacred. It’s gone.
SLOWLY THE PRAYER IN FAMILIES HAS DIMINISHED;
very few families pray the Rosary together today. Due to the fact
that there is much less prayer today, many older people, who still
come to church on Sunday, grumble because the Mass is too long, while
they have so much time for everything else, being in retirement. A
priest in France said to me that very few Catholics go to Sunday
Mass, and they do not even want a Funeral Mass but they want only a
little holy water sprinkled on the coffin at the cemetery. Among
other things, behold the consequences of not following the liturgical
books with the motive: “to do the communion “in this way” is an
essential instrument to convert the ones further away from the faith:
to abandon this would compromise their mission.” It seems to me to
do the Holy Mass “in this way” would
compromise the faith of all who celebrate the Mass “in this way”,
slowly without realizing it!
Theologians explain to us that Judas Iscariot believe he was doing a
good thing to force Jesus to show His power before everyone in order
to save the people from the Romans; but he did not do things
according to God in humility and suffering on the cross, but
according to the mentality of the world, in a triumphal way before
the people.
How many young priests
succeed, with their person charisma, a gift from God, to attract the
youth in the parishes, but afterwards do
not use this gift from God to lead the youth toward Jesus in the
Eucharist, with the help of Mary, but
finish like a community that exists to serve itself, which serves the
gratification of the people in the community? “He (Jesus) must
increase, but I must decrease” (Jn 3:30). “Truly, truly, I say to
you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his
life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it
for eternal life” (Jn 12:24-25). If a person, with a charisma from
God, does not die in the hands of God, in the hands of the guidance
of the Magisterium of the Church, there will not be true fruits that
last!
“Every one to whom much is given, of him will
much be required” (Lk 12:48). “But the prophet who presumes to
speak a word in my name which I have not commanded him to speak, or
who speaks in the name of other gods that same prophet shall die”
(Deut 18:20).
WE ARE LEAVING BEHIND THE BIBLICAL TRADITION,
because in the Old Testament, there was a profound reverence for the
sacred. Their attitudes in the Temple where there was the Arc of the
Covenant (much less than the infinite God in the Eucharist!) where
there was the special presence of God, the way in which they offered
the sacrifices, they had a tangible sense of God, the nearness of
God. Everyone knew that how one was to behave! Only the high priest,
once a year (the feast of Yom Kippur), entered the second Tent of the
Temple (Ex 30:10; Lev 16:2-29; Heb 7:27; 9:7). They did not into the
Temple in a hurried fashion once a year; the motive was respect, not
forgetfulness or neglect. Even today the
habit of using God’s proper name; no Jew would say Yahweh, only to
show reverence and respect, to create a sense of awe. So when they
would read the text and they came upon the word Yahweh, they would
hold back, they would not even think of pronouncing it. In
these small ways, you build up that sense of the sacred.
And “the great geniuses, the super
theologians, the super-biblists and the super-liturgists who know
what the right thing is for the Church”, have
gotten rid of all these devices that had developed over the years to
do just that, to create a sense of awe, about the Eucharist
specifically.
One justifies getting rid of these signs and
disciplines in order to attract those further
away from the faith, or to make
children of 9 or 10 years to feel more at ease, while in the schools
is taught sex education to these children which 60 years ago was for
older boys and girls which was to be explained by the parents at the
right moment for each boy or girl! We are
seeing that the experimentation that we have done in this area has
failed. And it is a terrible failure. If it had been math that we had
been experimenting with, there would had been the human cry, we would
never had let it happen. We have let children grow up into adulthood
without a proper grasp on the faith, of the sacred, without a proper
understanding of the Eucharist, butchered! The question should never
be introduced to making it more attractive; we do not go there for
kicks. You go to worship God to pay a debt, if anything, and even you
are feeling lousy, you go. But we are not saying that to the kids
coming up, especially with our example of faith which is seen in our
unspoken attitudes before the Eucharist. The Holy Mass is
not meant to be fun.
THEY SAY THE MASS IS A MEAL. You never hear
anymore that the Mass is a holy sacrifice. We have lost the biblical
tradition of maintaining the first
priority of rendering worship to God,
not to man! Thus the first priority today is to have this sense of
all being here together, while putting aside the question of worship
of God. Certainly a meal fosters the convivial experience; and thus
this is what is promoted. The big thing is to be together. The alter
therefore is the table. And the Eucharist is a meal.
This is not to deny that the Mass is a meal; it is
after all patterned on the last supper. But it is also a sacrifice,
and that table is also an altar on which a sacrifice is performed.
The exegetes of Sacred Scripture and of the first period of the
Christian community explain to us that when we look at the time of
the Apostles, right after the resurrection, the first generation of
Christians were Jewish, and they continued to be Jewish even after
the resurrection. And so the went every Saturday to the synagogue
where they would read part of the Scriptures. And they went Saturday
afternoon then, the Sabbath, to the temple where there would be the
afternoon sacrifice. Then in the year 70, the temple was destroyed,
and so they did not go to the temple anymore. We read in Acts, of
John and Peter, as a routine thing, going up to the afternoon
sacrifice. Now the temple is gone. They continue to go to the
synagogue until their Jewish confreres decide that their belief in
Jesus, who they called the Nazarene Rabbi, their belief in this
person as the Messiah, disqualifies them as Jews, they were
excommunicated. So now these people, how do they worship. They did
always, since our Lord had directed it, the breaking of the bread. So
what they do now? They put together this
form of worship which is based both on the experience of the
synagogue and on the experience of the sacrifice in the temple.
So the liturgy of the Word that we have today is a reflection of the
synagogue – we have readings, we pray over the ideas that turn up
in those readings, we have a homily on those readings. Then we go to
the altar; there you have the modern day counterpart of the temple.
There you have a real sacrifice. The liturgical books hold us to not
loose this our precious heritage, guided by the Holy Spirit, in which
in the Mass there is the parts of the synagogue, of the sacrifice and
of the breaking of bread.
We are at the service of God, not God at our service! The
first question in the catechism for children was: Who created you? We
responded as children: God. The Second question was: Why did God
create you? We responded: To know God, to love Him and to serve Him,
and to be with Him in Heaven. For a great number of people today,
religion, the liturgy, the parish, the pastor, the pope and even God
Himself, exist to serve us! The cult of man instead of the cult of
God! For a great number of people today religion does not exist to
help us discover the will of God and to do the will of God!
For many people the documents of the Church, in
particular the “Liturgical Books”, and also the writings of the
popes and of the saints regarding these things, will
seem exaggerated, after years of
sliding into the exceptions, into our relativism. In his homily at
the Mass preceding the conclave that quickly elected him Pope
Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger said: “Today, having a clear
faith based on the Creed of the Church IS
OFTEN LABELED AS FUNDAMENTALISM.
Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and
there, carried about by every wind of doctrine", seems the only
attitude that can cope with modern times. We
are building a dictatorship of relativism
that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate
goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.”
(http://www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/homily-pro-eligendo-pontifice_20050418_en.html;
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/colson_relativism_may05.asp).
Professor Dr. Scott Hahn, of the Franciscan
University of Steubenville, Ohio, said that
“the crisis in the Church began when Catholics began to
see the Eucharist as a sacred object instead the divine Person.”
The Servant of God, Archbishop Fulton Sheen,
said that “whenever there is a falling
off in the faith of our Catholic people it will always be seen first
in regard to the Eucharist, to their
devotion to the Eucharist.” And he proves this from the Gospel of
St. John ch. 6, when Jesus talked about the bread of life, which He
promised to give it to the people. And He said “my flesh is real
food and my blood is real drink” (Jn 6:55). And many of the people
who had been following him walked away. The bishop points out that
Jesus lost some of his disciples too that day and even lost one of
his Apostles. “Jesus said to the twelve, “Will you also go away?”
Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the
words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know,
that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus answered them, “Did I
not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” He spoke of
Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was to
betray him” (Jn 6:67-71). Bishop Sheen points out that Jesus is
referring to Judas who did not believe in the teaching of the
Eucharist. Today there are many
Catholics, and many Catholic leaders, who do not believe in the real
presence.
Why do so many people NOT
WANT TO CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY OF SLIDING INTO NEGLIGENCE IN
MAINTAINING RESPECT AND REVERENTIAL HUMILITY BEFORE OUR EUCHARISTIC
LORD, while they realize this danger of
sliding in the normal things of life? If a husband or a wife neglects
the relationship with the spouse, one knows what happens to this
matrimonial relationship! If males habitually look at pornography,
without repenting and struggling against this temptation, they end up
looking at women as objects of pleasure, instead of people to
appreciate and to esteem. When husbands, who are habituated to
looking at pornography, make love with their wives, they are making
love with the pornographic image in their heads, not with their
wives, which is a true betrayal
(http://wordbelife.blogspot.it/2013/04/james-59.html)!
When a girl uses her half naked body as bait, she attracts fish which
are interested in her body; when these fish are tired of her body, he
goes to another body and she falls into depression and she wonders
why?!? If she covers her body modestly and uses the mystery of her
unique personality that God has given her, she attracts boys who are
interested in her unique character that is unrepeatable and thus this
attraction will last a whole lifetime, with the help of prayer, and
into eternity! This is not easy when the great majority of male fish
have become intoxicated, even to the point of modifying their brains,
with pornography and thus are brainwashed and strongly stimulated to
seek what they see in the pornographic magazines, the TV, the perfect
bodies which do not exist. The girls end up trying to compete with
the perfectly disguised,
camouflaged and fixed-up models and end up doing extreme diets and
all kinds of other body-shaping exercises. One of my nieces in
California had great difficulty with anorexia!
Our Eucharistic Lord wants to be treated as a
Person to be loved, NOT AS A SACRED OBJECT that is useful to create
community or for other motives!!!
It
is interesting to read the writings of Sister Lucy of Fatima:
“At times we found little Francisco, who was
hiding in order “to pray of to think”, as he would say, to the
Lord, sad due to so many sins. If we asked him: - Francisco, why do
you not tell me and Jacinta to pray with you? He would respond: - I
like more to pray alone, to think and to console the Lord who is very
sad. One day I asked him: - Francisco what pleases you more: to
console the Lord or the convert sinners, so that souls do not go to
hell? – I like more to console the
Lord. Did you not notice how Our Lady,
also last month, became so sad, when she said to not offend anymore
the Lord God, who is already very offended? I would like to console
the Lord and then convert the sinners so that they might not offend
Him any more”.
For so many Catholics today, the first priority is
man or the community, not God. Everything is upside down, for motives
that seem good! Behold how “Satan
disguises himself as an angel of light”
(2Cor 11:14)!
HOW
MANY PEOPLE ARE IN LOVE WITH JESUS like Blessed Francisco of
Fatima, who want to console the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the
Immaculate Heart of Mary? Saint Padre Pio said that Jesus will suffer
until the end of the world for our sins, because for God, there is
neither the past nor the future, but the eternal present. At the Holy
Mass we are truly present at Calvary, the sacrifice of Jesus
substantially; but how many Catholics want to discover or know this
reality in order to put God at the center of the liturgy, at the
center of the Holy Mass, instead of people or the community?
Blessed
Francisco of Fatima, after having received Holy Communion from the
Angel at Fatima, began to pass at least three hours everyday before
the Tabernacle.
Pope
John Paul II said in his homily at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the
Rosary of Fatima; Saturday, May 13, 2000:
“Later Francisco, one of the three privileged
children, exclaimed: "We were burning in that light which is God
and we were not consumed. What is God like? It is impossible to say.
In fact we will never be able to tell people". God: a light that
burns without consuming. Moses had the same experience when he saw
God in the burning bush; he heard God say that he was concerned about
the slavery of his people and had decided to deliver them through
him: "I will be with you" (cf. Ex 3: 2-12). Those who
welcome this presence become the dwelling-place and, consequently, a
"BURNING BUSH" of the Most High.”
“The sons of this world are
wiser in their own generation than the sons of light”
(Lk 16:8). Satan and his followers know well the tactic help people
slowly slide in the direction according to his agenda.
"Religion does not fear the dagger’s point;
but it can vanish under corruption.
Let us not grow tired of corruption: we may use a pretext, such as
sport, hygiene, health resorts. It is necessary to corrupt, that our
boys and girls practice nudism in dress. To avoid too much reaction,
one would have to progress in a methodical manner: first, undress up
to the elbow; then up to the knees; then arms and legs completely
uncovered; later, the upper part of the chest, the shoulders, etc.
etc." (International Review on Freemasonry, 1928)
In
an interview with the Sec. of Agriculture, Esra Taft Benson during
the Eisenhower administration, KHRUSHCHEV said, “You Americans are
so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright; but we’ll
keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake
up and find that you already have communism. We won’t have to
fight you; we will so weaken your economy UNTIL YOU FALL LIKE
OVERRIPE FRUIT INTO OUR HANDS.”
From
a website in Italian one finds the following in regards to MASONRY
AND SEXUAL CORRUPTION:
2)
“Our job is to PROMOTE A WAVE OF PORNOGRAPHY and to present it with
sympathy as the supreme goal of artistic freedom” (Word of order of
the Italian Communist Party).
3)
“If we want to destroy a nation, WE MUST FIRST DESTROY IT’S
MORALS; then it will fall in our laps as a ripe fruit. Awaken the
interest of the youth for sex and it will be yours” (Lenin).
When Pope Paul VI issued his prophetic encyclical,
“HUMANAE VITAE” (1968), there was an incredible negative reaction
not only on the part of the laity who wanted to enjoy the pleasures
of sex without any responsibility or openness to life by using
artificial birth control, but even on the part of a great number of
priests and bishops, even entire Episcopal conferences (e.g., the
‘Winnipeg Statement’
of the Canadian Bishops)!
BEFORE 1930 ALL MAINLINE PROTESTANT DENOMINATIONS WERE IN ACCORD
WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH that the use of artificial birth control was
a grave evil and a serious sin. When the Anglican Church changed its
stance in 1930 (Lambeth Conference) the other protestants churches
quickly followed suit while Pope Pius XI reaffirmed the Church’s
constant teaching on this grave evil in his encyclical Casti Cannubii
(1930).
WHEN THE ANGLICAN CHURCH FIRST APPROVED THE USE OF
CONTRACEPTION IN 1930 IT WAS ONLY FOR SERIOUS REASONS and only for
married people who have been generous for life. However, by
providing an opening for contraception, the qualifying phrase “for
serious reason” was quickly ignored. Subsequently the use of
contraception was viewed as virtuous behavior, and even the silent
holocaust of abortion has become a private ethical choice of birth
control. The unborn, unwanted babies no longer have any legal
protection; they are now ripped to pieces after they are brutally
murdered. BABIES DO NOT CHOOSE TO DIE! IS THIS NOT A GOOD EXAMPLE
OF THE SLIPPERY SLOP?
The former Hippocratic oath for health care workers read: “I will
administer no abortafacient to a pregnant woman.” The original
Hippocratic oath acknowledged that abortion was a form of doing
violence not only to the child but to the woman as well. Read also:
“CONTRACEPTION: WHY NOT?”. Janet Smith
explains why the Catholic Church keeps insisting, in the face of the
opposite position held by most of the rest of the modern world, that
contraception is one of the worst inventions of our time.
(http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0002.html).
As soon as we do not see life as a precious
gift but only as a convenience to
ourselves, our society quickly sinks into the chaos of hell in the
culture of death! When everything totally crashes and there is great
suffering and confusion, the great majority will wander why! We are
so blind to our fundamental egoism, pride, sloth and lack of charity
which caused the catastrophe! Visit: “Prophecies
of Humanae Vitae”
(http://pop.org/201003231196/prophecies-of-humanae-vitae).
Behold the agenda of the angel of light who
“disguises himself as an angel of light”
(2Cor 11:14)! Step by step – pornography, artificial birth control,
abortion, euthanasia, gay unions – toward the culture of death!
Behold the agenda of the angel of light working in the Church to take
from us the graces of the Eucharist with the lose of faith, love and
reverential humility before the “the
source and summit of the Christian life”! SAINT
PADRE PIO said: "It would be
easier for the world to survive without the sun than to do so without
the HOLY MASS."
Satan knows very well the principle of the
slippery slope, slowly. The
Gay activists after the “War
Conference” in Warrenton, Virginia (February 1988), and then the
book "After the Ball (1989), programmed very well how to
brainwash and manipulate the American public to loose the sense of
grave sin in the act of homosexuality. Visit the section: “37.
The Astounding Impact of the Ruthless Manipulation of Militant Gay
Activists!” (“Catholic Prophecy Today”;
http://markbeast.blogspot.com).
Over a hundred years ago the homosexual act
was considered Sodomy and it was identified as an act. It still is
Sodomy. It was referred to as the homosexual act. But in the 1960’s
it was then conditioned. The condition of homosexuality was
redefined as a condition rather than an act. It did not change, it
was just redefined. What really happened here was while you can
criticize an act and you can even say it is a criminal act, how do
you criticize a condition that someone suffers with? How can you
criticize the act that one commits who has this regrettable
condition! “Can’t you be more compassionate?!?” AND THEN FROM
THE CONDITION WE NOW HAVE AN IDENTITY.
This is not a new technique. In 1970, the
CALIFORNIA MEDICAL JOURNAL released an article how abortion would be
a very lucrative business; it was admitted in the article that indeed
that if this were to be presented to the American population it would
never fly because the American population would never permit the
killing of a child in the womb. It was admitted in the article that
everyone knows that life begins at the moment of conception. So
they had to change the language; they
had to change the way in which people refer to the child in the womb;
they had to begin to depersonalize the child. (“Recycling Wrongs:
All Over Again”;
http://lawreview.vermontlaw.edu/articles/v32/3/short.pdf;
http://www.all-creatures.org/murti/pub-thelib-01.html;
http://www.prolifecare.com/holyinnocents/evidence.html).
In order to change those concepts you have to
obfuscate, you have to change
terminology, you have to change language, you have to rationalize,
you have to make something abstract which God makes very clear.
“Positivism” sounds like something nice and
reasonable, to adapt the laws for our
new times and needs. But the incredible deception is that the
elected government officials and the appointed judges apply
positivism individually like little dictators without letting the
citizens vote on changing the laws for our new times and needs. Our
founding fathers, having suffered under tyrannical governments and
having seen the folly of the French Revolution, knew very well that
the best constitution in the world will crumble if the citizens loose
their faith and morals.
I write these things to help us understand the
strategy of our enemy regarding the Eucharist. It
is necessary to CHANGE THE EUCHARIST FROM THE REAL SUBSTANTIAL
PRESENCE Jesus Christ in Person, to a sacred object, like a crucifix;
it is necessary to take away the exterior gestures of reverential
humility before the Eucharist! Satan
knows very well that you cannot detach or separate the body from the
heart; one ends up with less and less reverence before God also in
the heart. And our Holy Mother Church knows this very well! Spoiled
children say to the mother: “Be quiet
Mom; we have already heard these thing,
enough!” Satan uses the same strategy
as in the sexual revolution,
brainwashing us with the mass media that you can detach and separate
the body from the heart and the mind in order to use the body for
pleasure without the consequences to the person. But how is it that
so many people enter into depression in our sexualized culture; three
times more among the females?!?
Even
Jesus Himself complained often of this loss of faith with Saint
Faustina:
“Oh, how painful it is to Me that souls so
seldom unite themselves to Me in Holy Communion. I wait for souls,
and they are indifferent toward Me.
I love them tenderly and sincerely, and they distrust Me. I want to
lavish My graces on them, and they do not want to accept them. They
treat Me as a dead object,
whereas My Heart is full of love and mercy. In order that you may
know at least some of My pain, imagine the most tender of mothers who
has great love for her children, while those children spurn her love.
Consider her pain. No one is in a position to console her. This is
but a feeble image and likeness of My love” (Diary of Saint
Faustina, no. 1447).
“After Communion today, Jesus told me how much
He desires to come to human hearts. I desire to unite Myself with
human souls; My great delight is to unite Myself with souls. Know, My
daughter, that when I come to a human heart in Holy Communion, My
hands are full of all kinds of graces which I want to give to the
soul. But souls do not even pay any
attention to Me; they leave Me to
Myself and busy themselves with other things. Oh, how sad I am that
souls do not recognize Love! They treat
Me as a dead object. I answered Jesus,
"O Treasure of my heart, the only object of my love and entire
delight of my soul, I want to adore You in my heart as You are adored
on the throne of Your eternal glory. My love wants to make up to You
at least in part for the coldness of so great a number of souls.
Jesus, behold my heart which is for You a dwelling place to which no
one else has entry. You alone repose in it as in a beautiful garden.
O my Jesus, farewell; I must go already to take up my tasks. But I
will prove my love for You with sacrifice, neither neglecting nor
letting any chance for practicing it slip by" (Diary of Saint
Faustina, no. 1385).
Sister Mary Gabriel (in purgatory) communicated to Sister Mary of the
Cross:
(October 3rd,
1880) “If only it were given you to understand with what scorn and
indifference Jesus is treated on earth, not only by the world in
general, but how He is insulted, mocked and held in derision even by
those who ought to love Him. Such indifference is found even in
religious communities of men and women, His chosen people, where He
ought to be treated as a Friend, a Father, a spouse. Often He does
not even receive the consideration shown to a stranger. This
indifference is found also among the clergy, at present more than at
any other time. He is treated as an equal by those who should tremble
at the thought of the awful and august mission with which they have
been entrusted. The most sacred reality is often treated with
coldness and boredom. How many are there who have the interior
spirit? I can assure you that there are but a few. Here in Purgatory
the priests who are expiating their indifference and their want of
love are numerous. Their culpable negligence must be atoned for in
the midst of fire and torture of all kinds. You can judge from this
that God who is so good and loving to all His creatures finds few who
love and console Him. Alas, there are few. That is the sorrow of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus, the ingratitude of His own. Yet His Sacred
Heart is full of overflowing love and seeks only to share it. He
wants to find some souls bereft of self so as to overpower them with
His love, more than He has as yet done for anyone. Oh, how little
Jesus is understood on earth, and how little are His mercy and His
love understood! People try to seek everything except that which
gives real happiness. How pitiable!”
Visit also: “A
Damned Priest Warns About Hell”
(http://spir-food.blogspot.it/2013/12/damned-priest.html).
From the meditations of Cardinal Ratzinger on the
“Way of the Cross” at The Colosseum (Good Friday 2005):
“The Lord compares the course of his whole
earthly existence to that of a grain of wheat, which only by dying
can produce fruit. He interprets his
earthly life, his death and resurrection from the standpoint of the
Most Holy Eucharist, which recapitulates his entire mystery.
He had experienced his death as an act of self-oblation, an act of
love, and his body was then transfigured in the new life of the
Resurrection. He, the Incarnate Word, now becomes our food, food
which leads to true life, life eternal. The Eternal Word – the
power which creates life – comes down from heaven as the true
manna, the bread bestowed upon man in faith and in sacrament. The
Way of the Cross is thus a path leading to the heart of the
Eucharistic mystery: popular piety and
sacramental piety of the Church blend together and become one. The
prayer of the Way of the Cross is a path leading to a deep spiritual
communion with Jesus; lacking this, our sacramental communion would
remain empty. The Way of the Cross is thus a “mystagogical” way.”
Jesus “loved them to the end” (Jn 13:1), that
is to say, to the summit of every possibility of love, because Jesus
renders perpetual, today, the Sacrifice
accomplished one single time on Calvary for the salvation of all:
“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friends” (Jn 15:13).
When Jesus was surrounded by the Pharisees’
snares and rejected by the mighty; when He was making his way along
the roads of Galilee and Judea to announce the Good News; when He was
healing the sick, pardoning sinners, and setting free the possessed;
when He was awaited by the poor and consoled by the little ones…
Jesus was constantly yearning to reach the fulfillment of this, his
Passover. “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you
before I suffer” (Lk 22:15). “I have
earnestly desired!” Jesus’ whole
life was directed to this supreme and ineffable moment. From the
incarnation in the womb of Mary to his birth, from the threatened
childhood to youth, from early manhood spent in the poor house of
Nazareth to his public life, each day
Jesus was constantly impelled toward this moment.
Jesus perpetuates this same offering for us in the
Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. Because
it is there we adore Jesus risen who sits at the right hand of the
Father, still with the wounds of his passion,
in an attitude of intercession for us. The Holy Father Benedict, at
the World Youth Day at Cologne, said: “By making the bread into his
Body and the wine into his Blood, He anticipates his death, he
accepts it in his heart, and he transforms it into an action of love.
What on the outside is simply brutal violence - the Crucifixion -
from within becomes an act of total self-giving love. This
is the substantial transformation which was accomplished at the Last
Supper and was destined to set in
motion a series of transformations leading ultimately to the
transformation of the world when God will be all in all (cf. I Cor
15: 28). (August 21, 2005;
http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2005/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20050821_20th-world-youth-day.html).
HOW DO WE LIVE OUR DAY, OUR WEEK,
in view of sacrificing ourselves with Christ on the cross,
humiliated, in the supreme sacrifice of Jesus, that is, in the Holy
Mass?!? Do we ardently desire this (Lk
12:15)?!? Or is the Mass rather something that gives me kicks,
something for me, a benefit for me, to be together with other
creatures, but not to suffer with Mary at the feet of the cross where
the Creator suffers for us in the
eternal present?!?
Before the passion and crucifixion of Jesus,
with all the different people involved, DURING THE HOLY MASS, each
one of us can ask ourselves: “WHICH PERSONALITY DO I REFLECT?
In stark contrast with the “liturgical books”
of the Catholic Church, on finds in
“The Masonic Plan For The Destruction Of The
Catholic Church”
(http://spir-food.blogspot.it/2013/11/masonic-plan.html):
3. Assign the
Protestant ministers to reconsider the Holy Mass and to desecrate it.
Sown doubts about the Real Presence in
the Eucharist and confirm that the
Eucharist - with greater proximity to the Protestant faith - is only
bread and wine and is intended as a pure symbol. Spread Protestants
in seminaries and schools. Encourage ecumenism as the path towards
unity. Accuse anyone who believes in the Real Presence as subversive
and disobedient to the Church.
6. Prevent
the faithful from taking Holy Communion kneeling.
Tell the nuns that they must dissuade the children from keeping their
hands together before and after Communion. Tell them that God loves
them as they are and that they should feel completely at ease.
Eliminate in the church kneeling and any genuflection. Remove
the pews. Tell people that during the
Mass they must show their faith in an upright position.
9 Eliminate all
the hymns even those to Jesus because they make the people think of
happiness and serenity that comes from the life of mortification and
penance for God already from childhood. Introduce new songs only to
convince people that the previous rites were somehow false. Make sure
that in every Mass that there is at least one in which Jesus
is not mentioned and instead speaks only of love for men.
The youth will be thrilled to hear about the love of neighbor. Preach
love, tolerance and unity. Do not mention Jesus, prohibit
any announcements of the Eucharist.
11. Discontinue
the practice of celebrating the Holy Mass in the presence of the
Blessed Sacrament in the Tabernacle. Do
not admit any Tabernacle on the Altars that are used for the
celebration of the Holy Mass. The board should have the appearance of
a kitchen table. It must be
transportable to express that it is not at all sacred but must serve
a dual purpose as, for example, a table for conferences or for play
cards on it. Later place a chair at that table. The priest must take
that position to indicate that after the Communion he rests as after
a meal. The priest must never kneel during the Mass or do
genuflections. At meals, in fact, no one ever kneels. The chair of
the Priest must be placed in the place of the Tabernacle. Encourage
the people to worship and also to adore the priest instead of the
Eucharist, to obey him instead of the
Eucharist. Tell the people that the priest is Christ, their leader.
Place the Tabernacle in a separate room, out of sight.
14. Try to get
all the personal books of piety to disappear and destroy them. As a
consequence of this the Litanies of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, of the
Mother of God, of St. Joseph will cease also as the preparation for
Holy Communion. The thanksgiving after
Communion will become superfluous as well.
29. Have the
distributing of Communion done by women and lay people. You say that
this is the time of the laity. Begin with giving Communion in the
hand, as do the Protestants, rather than on the tongue. Explain that
Christ did it the same way. Collect some hosts for "black
masses" in our temples. Afterwards distribute instead of the
personal Communion a cup of unconsecrated hosts that one can bring
home with them. Explain to them that in this way they one can take
the divine gifts into everyday life. Place automatic dispensers of
hosts for communions and name these Tabernacles. Tell them that they
must be exchanged peace signs. Encourage people to move into the
church to interrupt devotion and prayer. Do not make Signs of the
Cross; in place of it instead a sign of peace. Explain that also
Christ got up to greet the Disciples. Do not allow any concentration
in such moments. The Priests must turn
their back to the Eucharist and honor the people.
Our culture has disconnected human life and
human morality from the Author of human life and morality,
and thus, as Fedor Dostoevsky put it, ALL BECOMES PERMISSIBLE, except
of course the 10 Commandments and all of God’s laws! Our culture
today tells us that if it feels good, if you subjectively think it is
right, if it is easy and if it satisfies you in that moment, do it!
Our culture has “separated freedom for
the Truth” (Pope John Paul II,
“Evangelium Vitae”).
Slowly, with great
astuteness and subtleness, Satan leads us to disconnect the Eucharist
from the Real and Substantial Presence of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God. As soon as Saint John the Apostle saw the principle Celebrant of
the heavenly Holy Mass, he “fell at
his feed as though dead” (Rev 1:17)!
Someone in the Neocatecumenal Way told me that
Kiko explained that after the Second Vatican Council many Catholics,
who sought dialogue and tried to draw closer to atheists and non
believers, lost their authentic faith in the Catholic Church. But
how is it that one does not realize the same danger regarding the
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in order to
“to make it more understandable and
acceptable”?
Our
Lady revealed to Father Stefano Gobbi:
“Jesus is the Truth because it is He – the
living Word – who is the font and seal of all divine revelation.
And so the ecclesiastical Masonry works to obscure his divine word,
by means of natural and rational interpretations and, in the attempt
to make it more understandable and
acceptable, empties it of all its
supernatural content. Thus errors are spread in every part of the
Catholic Church itself. Because of the spread of these errors, many
are moving away today from the true faith, bringing to fulfillment
the prophecy which was given to you by me at Fatima: - The times will
come when many will lose the true faith” (June 13, 1989).
“It is lack of discipline to disregard with
ease the norms which the Church has
laid down for the regulation of liturgical and ecclesiastical life.
Today each one tends to direct himself according to his own tastes or
free choice, and with what scandalous facility are violated the norms
of the Church” (February 2, 1979).
WHEN PARENTS CORRECT THEIR CHILDREN, how many
children ask their parents questions in order to understand better
the thought and directives of their parents in order to follow these
directives better? Instead how many children have rather the attitude
of “what have I done wrong”, in order to try to do as much as
possible as they desire? How many neocatecumens asked me: “And so,
what is it that we have not done in regard to the decree of December
1, 2005?” Or even to say that the decree is already out of date;
people who speak in this way, are they truly seeking what God wants,
ready to loose their ideas and their attachments, or
do they want things the way they want things?!?
As I wrote last month: “It is in fact the
diffuse opinion among the neocatecumenals that the letter of Arinze
was something provisionary, modifiable, a simple “instrumentum
laboris”, and that in the end their practice will be substantially
approved.” Does one trust in God or
does one trust in himself? How easy it
is to make little compromises (accompanied with more and more
blindness) in order not to loose something to which we are attached
and thus there is not the sincere desire to discover the guidance of
the Holy Spirit by way of the Magisterium of the Church!?!
How strong it is the temptation to not take the
risk of dialoguing or to label a person
who “is not in agreement with us”, to put the person in another
category, indicating his errors or sins of the past as if it were
impossible to learn form our errors and to go forward?!? This means
that children or parishioners must not listen to their parents or
pastors, because parents and pastors have committed some errors in
the past and are sinners! But who is willing to take the risk of
dialoguing in seeking the reality, the truth outside of ones own
head, with the foundation of the documents of the Magisterium of the
Church and other documents outside of ones own head? How many want to
put certain information or certain facts in a closed box and embrace
the easier philosophy of life which does not lead to the Truth on the
cross: “Ignorance is bliss”? The person labeled “not normal”,
or a proud “bigot” (because he does not do as does the majority),
but willing to open his eyes, OR THOSE INTELLIGENT AND WISE ONES (Mt
11:25; Lk 10:21) who do not want to sincerely dialogue with those who
are not in agreement with themselves? “For
the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them
day and night before our God” (Rev 12:10; Job ch. 1). “The
Truth will make you free!” (Jn 8:32; Jer 6:16)! How
many very intelligent scientists do not believe in the existence of
the Creator of the universe? How many very intelligent “Catholics”
do not care about the guidance of the Magisterum of the Church?
All the words and explanations in the world
cannot help to discover the wisdom of
God if we have allowed ourselves to slide into compromises. Pope
Benedict and Pope John Paul II could have offered more explanations
about the necessity to follow faithfully the liturgical books, but if
there is no obedience, if there is not trust in the Magisterium of
the Church; what use is an attempt to explain the motives of a
decree? If I obey only what I am in agreement, am I obeying the
Magisterium of the Church or obeying myself? “IT
WAS PRIDE that changes angels into
devils; it is humility that makes men as angels. Humility is the
foundation of all the other virtues.”
In this very short life, each one of us makes a
fundamental choice for all eternity, to
trust in God or in himself. In heaven there is room for one God, not
two. In hell, everyone believes to be God as did the first inhabitant
of hell, Lucifer (which means “carrier of light”) who became
Satan, the carrier of darkness, “the father of lies” (Jn 8:44)!
I AM TRULY CONVINCED
that if Kiko, Carmen and Father Mario might have trusted in God, in
the Magisterium of the Church, instead of themselves, they would have
helped many in the Neocatecumenal Way to not gently slide into
apostasy (2Thess 2:3-4) in this period of “great tribulation” (Mt
24:21)!
Let us pray for each other
in order to struggle everyday to discover the uncomfortable Truth
from God, accompanied by the cross of Jesus on this earth, in order
to arrive to the absolute Truth (“which makes us free”) in
paradise for all eternity!
Father
Joseph Dwight
- - - - - - -
APPENDIX:
I OFFER HERE SOME WRITINGS AND DOCUMENT
REFERENCES OF THE POPES AND OF THE SAINTS
to help us under stand and appreciate more the greatness of the
Eucharist, which will help us to penetrate more the wisdom of the
documents of the Magisterium of the Church in regard to safeguarding
the faith, love and reverential humility before the Eucharist, “the
source and summit of the Christian life”.”
(Vat. II: LG 11; CCC 1324).
Post-Synodal, Apostolic Exhortation, Sacramentum
Caritatis, of the Holy Father Benedict XVI, to the Bishops, Clergy,
Consecrated Persons, and the Lay Faithful, on the Eucharist, as the
Source And Summit of the Church's Life and Mission (02-22-2007;
http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20070222_sacramentum-caritatis.html).
In Italian: “Ufficio delle Celebrazioni Liturgiche del Sommo
Pontefice: Le disposizioni integrative del Cæremoniale Episcoporum
al Missale Romanum” (15-06-2011;
http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/details/ns_lit_doc_20110615_disposizioni-integrative_it.html).
Saint
Martin de Porres: “He loved the most holy Eucharist also with
complete single-mindedness, often adoring it for hours on end in the
sanctuary of the church and longed to receive it as often as possible
as the food of his soul.” (Office of Readings; 3 November).
Saint John of Kenty:
“Each day, when he had finished his work, he would go straight from
the college to the church. There before Christ present in the
Eucharist he would spend long hours in prayer and contemplation. The
God of whom he spoke was the same God who was in his heart.”
(Breviary; Dicember 23).
Saint
John Bosco would say: “Make frequent visits to Jesus in the
Blessed Sacrament and the devil will be powerless against you”!
“A Damned Priest Warns About Hell”
A
mother of a family is a reparatory soul that since 27 years old, or
rather from her fourteenth year, was tormented by terrible crisis of
fear and periods of total insomnia. She was treated during eight
sessions in the clinic, with all the modern means of medicine and
psychiatry.
When,
after a rigorous treatment of sleep, discharged as an unexplained
case, a well-known exorcist, fortuitously met, determined that it was
an irrefutable case of possession. After an exorcism which was
attended by several priests, in Fontanelle - Montichiari (Brescia),
angelic demons (fallen angels) and also human demons (damned men) had
to make, by order of the Holy Virgin, cautionary disclosures
addressed to the Church.
Since
1975, shortly after that possession was established by a famous
exorcist (Father Ernest Fischer), in addition to a number of human
and angelic demons (damned and demons), VERDI GARANDIEU was also
forced to manifest himself. He would have exercised his priestly
ministry in the seventeenth century in a village in the Pyrenees of
the diocese of Tarbes. What we know of his life is known to us by the
revelations that he had to make during an exorcism, April 5, 1978.
Here
are some of the revelations of the damned priest:
Indifference
towards the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
V: ... because I
had already left the way that the Holy Spirit has indicated to me and
prescribed for me! It is terribly tragic, much more than you people
might be able to think about it. It is all the more tragic because a
priest (crying) that no longer gives a good example and is about to
leave the path of virtue draws with him a mass of people or at least
a good number, and this also begins at the Mass. From beginning to
end a priest does not celebrate the Holy Mass with depth and
compassion if his priestly conduct is not in conformity. He will
arrive even, in each case it happened to me ... (almost crying).
E: Speak the
truth, Verdi Garandieu, only the truth in the name of Jesus Christ
and the Most Blessed Virgin ...!
V: ... he will
come to the point of feeling repugnance for the Mass, to the point of
preferring that it does not exist. And yet, because he is a priest,
he says it, he must celebrate it before the people. Perhaps, in my
case, the Sacred Host was still consecrated, and still is with
thousands and thousands of priests who still believe, because God is
merciful, because the faithful come with piety in the heart, and
cannot know what is in the hearts of the priests, but, but (with an
exhorting voice) woe, woe ...
Father Pellegrino Maria Ernetti
(1925-1994), a Benedictine Monk in the
Abbey of Saint George Major in Venice (Italy), where he received
hundreds of people each week to undergo exorcism, began to record on
magnetic tapes these exorcisms, and so little
by little emerged a catechesis on the devil.
Here
are some revelations recorded by Father Ernetti:
“B) The meal where you eat the flesh and the
blood of that crucified One that I
killed… It is here where I loose my battles…, it is here where I
find myself disarmed… I no longer have strength to fight…, those
who nourish themselves with this flesh and drink this blood become
very strong against me, they become invincible against my shrewd
seductions and temptations, they seem different from the others, it
seems that they have a special light and a very quick intelligence…
they reject me immediately and they distance themselves from me and
they crush me as if I were a dog… what sadness, what pain to deal
with these CANNIBALS… But I fiercely persecute them… and many go
and eat that host in sin… hahaha… what happiness… what
contentment… what joy… they hate their God and they eat Him,
hahahaha! My victory… victory… a hurrah… How senseless are
those who waste hours and hours during the day and night, kneeling TO
ADORE A PIECE OF BREAD hidden in a box on the altar of that false
God. How much these people anger me! They destroy all my works that I
obtain through so many sacrilegious Christians, priests, sisters and
bishops… How many sacrileges I continually reap, it is my incessant
victory… How much pain… How much rage these irrational
adorations…!”
(“Likes and Dislikes of the Devil”;
http://spir-food.blogspot.it/2014/01/likes-and-dislikes-of-devil.html).
HUMILITY
OF THE SAINTS BEFORE THE EUCHARIST:
(in
contrast with our presumption!)
“March 21, 1935. Often during Mass, I see the
Lord in my soul; I feel His presence which pervades my being. I sense
His divine gaze; I have long talks with Him without saying a word; I
know what His divine Heart desires, and I always do what will please
Him the most. 1 love Him to distraction, and I feel that I am being
loved by God. At those times when I meet with God deep within myself,
I feel so happy that I do not know how to express it. Such moments
are short, for the soul could not bear it for long, as separation
from the body would be inevitable. Though these moments are very
short, their power, however, which is transmitted to the soul,
remains with it for a very long time. Without the least effort, I
experience the profound recollection which then envelops me-and it
does not diminish even if I talk with people, nor does it interfere
with the performance of my duties. I feel the constant presence of
God without any effort of my soul. I know that I am united with Him
as closely as a drop of water is united
with the bottomless ocean” (Diary of
Saint Faustina; no. 411).
St.
Therese of Lisieux:
“I am just a speck of dust,
but I want to make my dwelling in the shadow of the sanctuary with
the prisoner of love. My soul longs for the host; I love Him and want
nothing more. It is a hidden God who attracts me. I am the atom of
Jesus Christ.”
THE SECRET OF MARY by
St.Louis de Montfort
“37. 3. Consecrating ourselves in this way to
Jesus through Mary implies placing our good deeds in Mary's hands.
Now, although these deeds may appear good to us, they are often
defective, and not worthy to be considered and accepted by God,
before whom even the stars lack brightness. Let us pray, then, to our
dear Mother and Queen that having accepted our poor present, she may
purify it, sanctify it, beautify it, and so make it worthy of God.
Any good our soul could produce is of
less value to God our Father, in winning his friendship and favor,
than a worm-eaten apple would be in the sight of a king, when
presented by a poor peasant to his royal master
as payment for the rent of his farm. But what would the peasant do if
he were wise and if he enjoyed the esteem of the queen? Would he not
present his apple first to her, and would she not, out of kindness to
the poor man and out of respect for the king, remove from the apple
all that was maggoty and spoilt, place it on a golden dish, and
surround it with flowers? Could the king then refuse the apple? Would
he not accept it most willingly from the hands of his queen who
showed such loving concern for that poor man? "If you wish to
present something to God, no matter how small it may be," says
St Bernard, "place it in the hands of Mary to ensure its certain
acceptance".”
In
Italian, you can also visit articles that I have posted:
“A Servizio di Tutti”
(http://cibo-spir.blogspot.it/2014/08/a-servizio-di-tutti.html).
“Il Dio Infinito Fra Noi”
(http://cibo-spir.blogspot.it/2014/01/il-dio-infinito-fra-noi.html).
- - - - - - -
The
Word of Life for February 2015:
Welcome
one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the
glory of God (Rom 15:7).
- - - - - - -
An Experience of Life:
I was in Prague for study. One evening I was
preparing for an exam for the next morning. Daniel, a friend who was
going through a difficult time, came to the college on the outskirts
of the city to visit me. I told him about my situation, but his
concerns did not allow him to realize that he was not the only one at
the center of the world. I listened to him for a long time, for hours
and hours forgetting my examination, but everything I said seemed
useless . His problem had closed his ears and his heart.
By now there was no bus to go back into town and,
taking advantage of the fact that the other bed in the room was free,
Daniel stayed to sleep in my room.
The next morning we were woken by someone at the door
telling me that they were looking for me at the university for the
examination to which I did not show up.
At that point Daniel really woke up and he realized
the problem. Weeping he asked me for forgiveness.
At college I was the last one to be interrogated and
the exam, despite my tiredness, went quite well. Could I have done
better? I did not care. I only know that I had done something for
Daniel.
On leaving the university there was Daniel with a
gift for me. And I saw him smile in a way that I had never thought
possible.
T.M.
