Dear
Friends,
I
would like to offer one of my experiences less than a year ago,
but first I would like to offer a few thoughts as an introduction to
this experience.
As
we know, each one of us has received a call from God, a vocation,
together with the responsibility of that assignment as well as the
graces of God to be able to accomplish that beautiful design for each
one of us. The greater the responsibility, the more talents God gives
to each one of us (Mt 25,14-30), the greater are the consequences,
positive or negative. A bishop is like a general in this “dour
combat” (CCC 409) of life; perhaps a priest would be like a
colonel.
Today,
very few people realize (or rather they do not want to realize) the
gravity of the situation today. In my last email I cited:
“Cardinal Ivan Dias often cited the phrase of
Pope John Paul II: “We are standing before today the greatest fight
that humanity has ever seen. I do not believe that the Christian
community has totally understood this. We are today before the FINAL
CONFRONTATION between the Church and
the anti-Church, between the Gospel and the anti-Gospel”
(http://www.lastampa.it/2007/12/13/blogs/san-pietro-e-dintorni/lotta-finale-all-anticristo-VjY7tBXJk6gNU3YmWcyOvN/pagina.html).”
“By some fissure the smoke of Satan has
entered into the temple of God (Pope
Paul VI on June 29 1972;
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/homilies/1972/documents/hf_p-vi_hom_19720629_it.html).
Saint Michael the Archangel at Garabandal (Spain, 1965) said:
“Many Cardinal, many Bishops and many Priests are on the road to
perdition and with them they are bring many souls”!
“SCANDAL is an
attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. the person who
gives scandal becomes his neighbor's tempter. He damages virtue and
integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal
is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led
into a grave offense” (CCC 2284).
“But let us have no misunderstanding about this,
my brothers. No man who is responsible for defiling a household can
expect any share in the kingdom of God. … Such a wretch in his
uncleanness is bound for the unquenchable fire, and
so is anyone else who gives him a hearing”
(St. Ignatius of Antioch; Breviary, Monday OT, Week 2).
“So everyone who lives evilly in the sight of
those over whom he is set, as far as in him lies is killing even the
strong. The one who imitates him dies;
the one who does not imitate him goes on living. Yet as far as he is
concerned he is killing both. ‘You slaughter the fatlings’, the
Lord says, ‘but you do not feed the sheep’ (Ez 34:3). (Breviary;
Sermon of St. Augustine on the Shepherds; OT 24, Thursday). (See
also: Mk 9:42-49).
The responsibility of bishops and priests is so
great that the saints John Chrysostom,
John Eudes and Athanasius said that the road (or the floor of hell)
to Hell is paved with the bones of priests and monks, and the skulls
of bishops are the lamp posts that light the path! Behold why Our
Lady asks us continually to pray for the priests and the bishops! No
one goes to heaven nor to hell alone; the greater the responsibility
of the vocation, the more people one brings with him to heaven or to
hell!
I THINK THAT WE ARE IN AGREEMENT THAT TODAY IT IS NOT EASY! Our
enemy, “the father of lies” (Jn 8:44) does not sleep and is very
intelligent! We are all called to this “dour combat with the powers
of evil” (CCC 409), but a great number of people today have
neglected prayer and thus they have justified themselves in not
continuing the combat and slowly they end up as the proverb tells us:
“If you do not live as you believe, you end up believing as you
live”, precisely in the spiritual blindness to believe that all is
ok!
“A Damned Priest Warns About Hell”
explains to us that the beginning of his fall into hell was precisely
the negligence to prayer!
(http://spir-food.blogspot.it/2013/12/damned-priest.html).
MANY OF US, as
also myself, persevering in prayer, perhaps at a certain point or
gradually, we came to realize how far away we are from God and from
His law, after having been born in a very secularized culture which
has slowly slid far from God, with many compromises with the law of
God, in which we too many times have fallen into. When God confronted
us, in one way or another, about how far we were from God in the
current and environment of our Godless society, we were each before a
choice, to continue the easy way of going along with the crowd, or
take the risk to ask questions and seek
answers that might lead us to discovering that we must change our
lives and suffer with Jesus in order to save our very souls!
THE
SITUATION TODAY IS SIMILAR TO CHILDREN WITH PARENTS WHO DO NOT PRAY
and have nothing to do with God, but even so, the children must save
themselves. But at the same time they must maintain humility and thus
respect for their parents, which is not easy. If the children do not
do this, they end up doing as so many other youth today who rebel
against their parents and all authority, as in the French Revolution,
and they end up worse. In the past the rebellious children left the
house of their parents, and afterwards, some of them discovered how
difficult it is to maintain a house and they matured even to the
point of having gratitude for their parents and for God Who gave them
everything they have. But in the last decades, the rebellious
children have thrown out the parents, and with the help of the
puppets of the prince of the world, Satan, in particular the many
groups under the Freemasons, have taken control of the motors of the
culture – the mass media, the schools, the religious institutions –
in order to brainwash the societies in the direction of socialism,
secularism, relativism, in other words, “the culture of death”
(Evangelium Vitae).
In
the Catholic Church, 400 years ago the protestants protested and left
the Church. Instead in the last 50 years, at least, THOSE WHO PROTEST
AGAINST THE MAGISTERIUM OF THE CHURCH, with patience, have taken
control of the motors of the Catholic Church at all levels, from the
seminaries to the Catholic Universities.
As I wrote in past emails, Our Lady revealed to
Father Stefano Gobbi (Feb. 9, 1985): “Darkness, with A
THICK, COLD FOG, has entered the
Church, obscuring it in the splendor of its truth. For this reason,
every day, my word is forming you to the spirit of wisdom, that you
may always see, in the light, the truth which my Son has taught you
and proclaim it with courage to all in its integrity.”
Cardinal Burke says confusion is spreading
among Catholics ‘in an alarming way’!
(https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/exclusive-interview-cardinal-burke-says-confusion-spreading-among-catholics;
http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2015/03/exclusive-cardinal-burke-interview-with.html).
By neglecting prayer, there is a great tendency
today, pushed by Satan and the Freemasonry, TO SEEK SOLUTIONS AMONG
MEN AND IN THE COMMUNITY RATHER THAN FROM GOD. As I wrote in the last
“Spiritual Food”
(http://spir-food.blogspot.it/2015/02/the-neocatecumenal-mass.html),
often in the history of the Church, while the great majority was
sliding into mediocrity with compromises accompanied by blindness,
swinging away from God, God gave rise to saints who detached
themselves from the herd in order to find union with God. Moses went
to Mount Tabor; Saint Antonio Abate went into the desert; Saint
Benedict went to Subiaco; Saint Francis of Assisi went to Laverna!
In an exclusive interview with Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger on the World Over Live (EWTN,
2003; “Conversations The World Over -
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger Pt. 1”;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TO6mzCPWbg),
Raymond Arroyo asked Cardinal Ratzinger what did Pope John Paul II
mean by “a new springtime in the Church”. Cardinal Ratzinger
replied:
“This does not mean that there will be great
masses of conversions; this is not the way of God. Essential things
in history begin always with small but convinced communities. The
Church began with the 12 apostles. And even the churches of Saint
Paul diffused in the Mediterranean with little communities, but these
communities had in themselves the future of the world, because they
had the truth; and the force of true conviction. I think also today
it would be an error to think that now in 10 years in a new
springtime all people will be catholic. This is not our future or our
expectation. But we will have really convinced communities. This
is the springtime, a new life in very convinced persons with the joy
of the faith. But from these small numbers we will have a radiation
of joy, an attraction.”
Jean-Baptiste Chautard in his classic book, “Soul
of the Apostolate”, also explains how
the parishes are renewed by small convinced groups with the truth and
on fire for the Lord.
Instead today, not doing as did the saints
such as Saint Anthony Abate, Saint Benedict and Saint Francis of
Assisi, one seeks first to go to the
peripheries, without putting first God
in the heart, capable of living the First Commandment: “You shall
worship the Lord you God and Him only shall you serve” (Ex 20:2-5;
Deut 5:6-9; CCC 2084). By now the world is so far from God that many
religious leaders believe that the only way to evangelize is to
compromise the 10 Commandments, to put aside the fullness of the
means of sanctification, the sacraments above all the Eucharist, and
the fullness of the Truth with the guidance of the Magisterium of the
Church (Lumen Gentium 8) in order to evangelize the non Catholics.
This is false ecumenism, which leads us to the reduction to the
lowest common denominator of all the religions, to forfeit our
spiritual defenses and weapons against the forces of evil. In the
name of (false) love, in the name of (false) mercy, in the name of
(false) ecumenism, the Catholics are lead to be deprived of their
greatest treasures of grace and truth, which are precisely the most
powerful means of salvation for us, for the others and, in effect,
for the whole world! In this way one
goes ever more toward mediocrity
seeking to receive and to please everyone, with compromises after
compromises, to the point of loosing all the true values of Jesus
Christ.
More than 14 years ago I welcomed the invitation
of the Servant of God, ARCHBISHOP FULTON SHEEN, for priests and
bishops, to make everyday a holy hour in
church before the infinite God in the tabernacle.
In the past few years I had encouraged other priests in my diocese to
do the same, but they all said: “I do not have time”. I replied
to them that if I did not make a holy hour everyday, I would end up
giving to others a poor priest named Father Joe instead of Jesus
Christ. We forget so easily the words we say every year at the
beginning of Lent: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you
shall return.”
How
many pastors and how many youth animators do not put God first,
as did Saint John Bosco and all the saints, in order to attract the
parishioners and the youth toward our Eucharistic Lord with Mary, and
they ends up creating a community to try to be happy together, but in
reality human beings or the community are at the center instead of
God.
In the “Spiritual Food 1501”, I wrote that the
three founders of the Neocatecumenal Way defended
their “way of doing the communion”.
“They underline that 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. On this crucial point
of the communion they indicated that they want to follow their way.”
But after neocatecumens become accustomed,
after a few years, of this way of putting the community at the center
of the Mass, as if it were only a meal together, instead of the
substantial sacrifice of Jesus Christ, they
do not want to change the direction to feel less important in the
community and in the liturgy, in order
to adore the infinite God in the Eucharist in true humility as the
liturgical books of the Church instruct us to do. Thus, the motive to
not want to do the communion “in this way” is not just for the
“ones further away from the faith” but above all for all those
who have tasted the sensation of being protagonists without putting
our Eucharistic Lord first absolutely, and they want to continue in
this direction, this sliding further and further away from the cult
of God. They do not realize that slowly
they are overturning everything, that
the religion, and even God, exist to serve us instead of religion
existing to help us serve and adore God! This
happens often also with many groups in the parishes,
especially youth groups, who do not go toward the cult of God,
towards adoration of our Eucharistic Lord, toward Calvary with Mary
at the foot of the cross, but ever more
toward the cult of man, in the
community. Behold why Pope Benedict considered the situation as
“alarming”
and of “great urgency”
for the whole Church.
In the same exclusive interview with Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger on the World Over Live (EWTN,
2003; “Conversations The World Over -
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger Pt. 1”;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TO6mzCPWbg),
Raymond Arroyo asked Cardinal Ratzinger
about the concrete actualization of the
reform of the reform that Cardinal Ratzinger had often spoken about:
“Generally I would say that the liturgical reform
was not well implemented because it was a general idea now that the
liturgy is a thing of the community; it is the community representing
itself, and so with the creativity of the priest or of the groups,
they create their own liturgy. It is more the presence of their own
experiences and ideas than meeting with the presence of the Lord in
the Church. The essence of liturgy is that we can go over our own
experiences and see what is not of our own experiences but a gift of
God. So I think we have to restore not so much certain ceremonies but
THE ESSENTIAL IDEA OF THE LITURGY TO
UNDERSTAND THAT IN THE LITURGY WE ARE NOT REPRESENTING OURSELVES BUT
WE RECEIVE THE GRACE OF THE PRESENCE OF LORD WITH THE CHURCH OF
HEAVEN AND OF EARTH. The universality of
the liturgy is essential. The definition of liturgy and the idea of
restoration of the liturgy will also help us see obedience to the
norms not as a juridical positivism, but really as sharing,
participating in what is given to us from the Lord in the Church.
“Versus Orientem” (toward the East), I would say could be a help
because it is really a tradition from the apostolic times; it is not
only a norm but it is an expression also of the cosmic dimension, of
the historical dimension of the liturgy. We are celebrating with the
cosmos, with the world. It is in the direction of the future of the
world, of our history represented in cosmic realities. I think today
this new discovering of our relation with the created world can be
also understood by the people better than perhaps 20 years ago. Also
it is a common direction that priests and people are oriented to the
Lord. External gestures are not simply a remedy in itself, but it
could be a help because it is a very classical interpretation of what
is the direction of the liturgy.”
When thinking about “THE
DREAM OF ST. JOHN BOSCO”, precisely in this period of crisis in the
Church and outside of the Church, the idea came to me that the
man in white at the helm of the ship in
a great storm, attacked on all sides by other boats, represents not
just one pope but two popes. A very fundamental impetus of Pope John
Paul II was Mary, the Mother of God; for Pope Benedict, the
Eucharist. These two popes have offered us very important guidance in
these very difficult times, 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.
The
temptation is so strong for us to look at the creatures instead of
looking at the Creator that Jesus tells us: “And when you pray,
you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray
in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by
men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when
you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father
who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you”
(Mt 6:5-6).
It is difficult to turn around and go back after
getting used to a way of doing things that we like or is an easier
way. After the Second World War, with
the arrival of the “pill” very few
Catholics were willing to obey the constant teaching of the Church,
at all levels of the Church, that the use of artificial birth
control, and the use of the natural method not for grave just
reasons, is an objectively grave, mortal sin. Jesus
is always ready to offer mercy, for
those who ask for mercy for their sins according to the criteria of
God for sins, a criteria that is imprinted in the soul of every
creature; Jesus never offered compromises as do so many religious
leader today, which leads to more compromises in the slide down and
away from the laws of God, the thus from God Himself! For many
Catholics today, at all levels of the Church, to be coherent with
their false “contrition”, they will have to change the words of
the Act of Contrition, and exclude: “I promise with the help of Thy
grace to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin”! If we
do not go with the saints to Subiaco, or to Laverna, or in the
desert, or to Mount Tabor, that is, before our Eucharistic Lord in
humble adoration with Mary, it is impossible to not slide more and
more into compromises, especially today in a world totally
secularized in the arrogance and blindness of relativism. The
inhabitants of Sodom and Gommorah, after many years of sliding away
from the law of God, had no idea that their cities were about to be
destroyed (Gen 19). With the governments of Europe and the USA
promoting the culture of death around the whole world, even the
principle sin of Sodom and Gommorah, homosexuality, very few people
realize that: “If men do not repent and
better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on
all humanity. It will be punishment greater than the deluge, such as
one will never have seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will
wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad,
sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find
themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead.” (The
Blessed Virgin, in the final message of, October 13, 1973, Akita,
Japan; http://www.miraclerosarymission.org/akita.htm).
Also Jesus, in the beginning of His public
ministry, attracted many people with
miracles and healings, but afterwards He
explained more and more clearly what it
means to follow Him all the way, to put God first; in the end the
group of true Christians, ready to die for Jesus, was very small,
even though Jesus offers the graces needed to be true Christians.
And so, I offer you my experience, for the motive
of helping us to not slide into the cult
of man, slowly without realizing it,
especially when so many pastors neglect their great vocation to
protect and to warn the sheep of the underhanded and hidden
deceptions of the very astute and shrewd wolf disguised as an
innocent lamb! One cannot substitute for the vocation of another
person. For this reason Our Lady asks us always to pray for the
priests and bishops!
- - - - - - -
Since
I ran out of time this month, I will offer my experience next month
in the “Spiritual Food 1505”.
In
the meantime, I offer you the following:
-
- - - - - -
An
Experience of Life:
For some time now in our neighborhood we are in a very critical
situation due to many homeless Romanians who first established
themselves in the former Enel central (electric company) and in other
abandoned buildings, and then after the forced eviction by the police
for security and degradation reasons, even under the arches of the
church and in other places transforming the places around in open
latrines. At the same time bicycle theft and other problems
increased. Every time I go out of my house I feel anxiety out of fear
of being subjected to theft. In this situation, "to love
everyone" really put me in crisis!
I talked about this with those who guide me spiritually: but why
continue to give aid to these people who in most cases are criminals,
who take advantage of the situation and refuse the "official"
aid such as the Charities. And she said yes it is true; most of the
times it seems that it is all for nothing ..., but every now and then
thanks to these helps someone succeeds in rebuilding their lives with
dignity and within the law, maybe one in a thousand , but he
succeeds. And for that one it is worth continuing.
The next morning, meditating on this, I asked Archangel Michael to
help me fight that "evil" that I felt in me. Shortly after
on the street I saw in the distance the usual homeless Romanian which
I run into every morning in front of the supermarket, but I realized
that on that day he was walking barefoot, without shoes! There and
then, even though I immediately felt very sorry for him, I tried to
distance myself from his image and I continued on my way, but, as
soon as I had this thought, I suddenly remembered that in the
rectory, left there a year ago, there were a pair of sneakers that no
one had come to claim: it was useless to still keep them there when
there was someone without! So I went over and gently asked him why he
was without shoes: he replied that he no longer had any shoes.
Thus I went to get them and I gave them to him , they were just his
size.
In the present time , in the moment of need, I loved him.
