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Sue Cifelli

Prayers in Time of Suffering - 0 views

  • Why God Gives US Problems Hope this will help you to see opportunities behind the threats! Why God Gives Us Problem? LIFE IS A SERIES OF PROBLEM-SOLVING OPPORTUNITIES. 1. God uses problems to DIRECT you. 2. God uses problems to INSPECT you. 3. God uses problems to CORRECT you. 4. God uses problems to PROTECT you. 5. God uses problems to PERFECT you. The problems you face will either defeat you or develop you -- depending on how you respond to them. Unfortunately most people fail to see how God wants to use problems for good in their lives. They react foolishly and resent their problems rather than pausing to consider what benefit they might bring. Here are five ways God wants to use the problems in your life: 1. God uses problems to DIRECT you. Sometimes God must light a fire under you to get you moving. Problems often point us in a new direction and motivate us to change. Is God trying to get your attention? "Sometimes it takes a painful situation to make us change our ways." Proverbs 20:30 2. God uses problems to INSPECT you. People are like tea bags ... if you want to know what's inside them, just drop them into hot water! Has God ever tested your faith with a problem? What do problems reveal about you?"When you have many kinds of troubles, you should be full of joy, because you know that these troubles test your faith, and this will give you patience." James 1:2-3 3. God uses problems to CORRECT you. Some lessons we learn only through pain and failure. It's likely that as a child your parents told you not to touch a hot stove. But you probably learned by being burned. Sometimes we only learn the value of something ... health, money, a relationship... by losing it. "It was the best thing that could have happened to me, for it taught me to pay attention to your laws." Psalm 119:71-72 4. God uses problems to PROTECT you. A problem can be a blessing in disguise if it prevents you from being harmed by something more serious. Last year a friend was fired for refusing to do something unethical that his boss had asked him to do. His unemployment was a problem, but it saved him from being convicted and sent to prison a year later when management's actions were eventually discovered."You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good." Genesis 50:20 5. God uses problems to PERFECT you. Problems, when responded to correctly, are character builders. God is far more interested in your character than our comfort. Your relationship to God and your character are the only two things you're going to take with you into eternity. "We can rejoice when we run into problems ... they help us learn to be patient. And patience develops strength of character in us and helps us trust God more each time we use it until finally our hope and faith are strong and steady." Romans 5:3-4 Here's the point: God is at work in your life even when you do not recognize it or understand it. But it's much easier and profitable when you cooperate with Him! ~~by Mena Haryanto
Sue Cifelli

Christ in the Home - Part 1 - 0 views

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    "You are there, my God. I love You." It will take you no more time than that and all that you do will be much better done having such a help. And what help it is! Little by little, you will acquire the habit and you will finally be always aware of this sweet companion within yourself, this God of our hearts... Let us pray for each other that we may both keep this dear Guest of our souls loving company." If husband and wife were equally convinced of the living splendor their souls actually present, how the marital act, so holy to begin with, would become for them an act of divine faith, an act penetrated by the highest supernatural spirit. I want to meditate often on my baptism, and the mystery of the divine life in me. I want to become accustomed to treat myself as a living tabernacle of my Lord, to regard the companion of my life as the thrice holy shrine of the Divinity, for I know this to be a reality. The just live by faith. I want to live by faith. MARRIAGE AND THE MYSTICAL BODY CHRIST came to restore the divine life lost to us by sin. But how? He did not save us only by some act external to Himself as one might lay down a sum of money to ransom a slave but by incorporating us in Himself, by making all of us with Him a single organism. "I am the Vine, you are the branches." Christ is the Head, we the members and together we are the whole body, Christ. The aggregate of all the members, all the branches united constitutes the Church joined by an unbreakable bond to Christ, its Leader and Head. And Christian marriage will be . . . and will only be . . . but the symbol of this union of Christ with His Church, of the Church with its Head Saint. Paul at the end of his Epistle to the Christians at Ephesus gives no other rule of love and of security in their union to the married than the counsel to copy this union in their life. He says to wives. "Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord: because the husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of
Sue Cifelli

Novena in Honor of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament - 0 views

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    NOVENA in HONOR of OUR LADY OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT FIRST DAY THE TITLE OF OUR LADY OF THE MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT O Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, All praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine Blessed be the holy and Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God! O Virgin Immaculate, Mother of Jesus and our tender Mother, we invoke thee under the title of Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, because thou art the Mother of the Savior who lives in the Eucharist, and because it was from thee that He took the Flesh and Blood with which He there feeds us! We invoke thee under that title because, again, thou art the sovereign dispensatrix of all graces and, consequently, of those contained in the august Eucharist, also, because thou didst first fulfill the duties of the Eucharistic life, teaching us by thy example how to assist properly at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, how to communicate worthily, and how to visit frequently and piously the Most Blessed Sacrament. V. Pray for us, O Virgin Immaculate, Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament. R. That the Eucharistic Kingdom of Jesus Christ may come among us! Let us pray: Lord Jesus Christ, our King and our God, who having become Man to make us sharers in The Divinity, art truly our Bread in the adorable Eucharist, grant, we beseech Thee, that in venerating so great a Mystery, we may be mindful of the most sweet Virgin Mary, of whom Thou didst will to be conceived by the operation of the Holy Ghost! Grant, also that we may imitate the worship that she rendered while on earth to this most august Sacrament, so we may behold Thy Eucharistic Kingdom spread and flourish throughout the whole world! O Thou who livest and reignest forever and ever! Amen. PRAYER TO OUR LADY OF THE MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT O Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, the glory of Christians, the joy of the universal Church, and the hope of the world, pray for us. Kindle in all
Sue Cifelli

Novena to God the Father - starts June 2! - 0 views

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    Fr. Benedict Groeschel this evening on his EWTN broadcast requested we pray the Novena to God the Father, starting Monday, June 2, for Ireland's vote to defeat the Lisbon Treaty. This vote is extremely critical for preserving Ireland from the governance of the European Union and its myriad of anti-God, anti-life and anti-family laws and initiatives. Please join me, would you? Please also take a moment to ask others to pray this novena with us.
Sue Cifelli

St. Augustine on Adoring the Eucharist - Canterbury Tales by Taylor Marshall - 0 views

  • St. Augustine on Adoring the Eucharist Published Thursday, May 31, 2007 by Taylor Marshall | E-mail this post E-mail this post // Remember me (?) All personal information that you provide here will be governed by the Privacy Policy of Blogger.com. More... There has been a debate in the comments over whether St. Augustine believed that the elements of the Eucharist are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. It is also claimed that St. Augustine held to a spiritual presence of Christ akin to that taught by John Calvin.Concerning the Eucharist, St. Augustine wrote:"Nobody eats this flesh without previously adoring it."- St. Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 98, 9As St. Augustine taught, Catholic Christians bow or kneel before receiving the Eucharist. This is because Catholics show worship or adoration (Greek - latria; Latin - adoratio) to the Eucharist because it is the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ and worthy of our worship.St. Augustine also explained that the Christians of his day prayed for the departed at the Eucharistic liturgy and he referred to the offering of the Eucharist as "the most true sacrifice" (verissium sacrificium) that the priest offers (immolat) to God. (cf. City of God, 10, 20)Either St. Augustine believed that he was offering the one true Sacrifice of Calvary at the Eucharist or he believed he was offering an independent sacrifice of symbolic bread and wine. A sacrifice to God of symbolic bread and wine would be blasphemous since the only acceptable sacrifice before God is the sacrifice of Christ that was offered once and for all. Therefore, Augustine must have believed that the sacrifice of the Eucharist was the same sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Hence, we have here the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist.The Eucharistic sacrifice is NOT a new sacrifice or a repetition of the sacrifice of Christ. It is the one sacrifice that Christ offered once and for all time. The presence of this one sacrifice is eternal and it realized in the eschatological banquet of the Holy Mass. Christ does not die again and again. But that one sacrificial death of redemption is re-presented every time the Holy Mass is offered or, to use the Latin phrase of St. Augustine, immolated.
Sue Cifelli

Spirit Daily - WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE, THE HEIGHT OF ETERNITY IS INDESCRIBABLE 'VISI... - 0 views

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    WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE, THE HEIGHT OF ETERNITY IS INDESCRIBABLE 'VISION OF GOD'
Sue Cifelli

Is the pope Catholic? - 1 views

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    Is the pope Catholic? 20 Comments Written by Tony Woodlief December 22, 9:49 AM John Allen, senior correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter, offered in Friday's New York Times a moderating interpretation of the Vatican's recent statement, "Dignity of a Person." Allen's concern is that conservative Catholics will view the statement, which condemns embryonic stem cell research among other scientific tinkerings with human life, as a call to arms against a decidedly pro-abortion incoming American president. "Call to arms" is hyperbole, but it pales in comparison to Allen's rhetoric, which claims that Pope Benedict XVI's latest document on life "risks being read as encouragement for the most ardent pro-life forces in America to let slip the dogs of war." He also frets that the pope's document "may be the political equivalent of shouting 'Fire!' in a crowded theater." To counteract all this dog unleashing and theater shouting, Allen counsels the pope to find some way to "mobilize those Catholics who hope to build bridges." He doesn't want "strategic silence" on abortion, he says, but this rings a bit hollow after extended hand-wringing at the damage done by vocally Catholic pro-life leaders. Perhaps Allen isn't advocating strategic silence, but he does seem to call for less forceful talk. After all, if the pope says something that convinces Catholics that abortion is truly evil, we might "unleash the dogs of war." By all means, Pope Benedict, don't be strategically silent, but on the other hand, would you mind toning it down a bit? It's the kind of false verbal parsing one expects out of a congressional office. In effect, what Allen is asking is for the pope not to be Catholic. Or at least that he be less conspicuously so out of consideration for the tender American situation, which is fascinating insofar as Allen begins his essay by noting that Americans comprise only 6 percent of the global Catholic populat
Daniel Gauthier

Response to Fr. Mitch Pacwa, Maria Valtora's Poem - 0 views

  • Fr. Gabriel Roschini, one of the most eminent Mariologists of the twentieth century, was so impressed by The Poem that he wrote a work entitled The Virgin Mary in the Writings of Maria Valtorta. He had this to say on The Poem: I must candidly admit that the Mariology found in Maria Valtorta’s writings, whether published or not, has been for me a real discovery. No other Marian writing, not even the sum total of all the writings I have read and studied were able to give me as clear, as lively, as complete, as luminous, or as fascinating an image, both simple and sublime, of Mary, God’s masterpiece.
  • I absolutely agree that there is a lot of bad "pasturage" out there. However, The Poem of the Man-God and other works like it are the antidote, for they bring us back to the full truth and wonder of our faith and rescue it from the stale desert our modern skeptical intellectualism has led us to. May we once again turn from the wasteland of contemporary doubt to the true Jesus and Mary—both of whom are found in The Poem of the Man-God.
Peter McLean

WhatTheRomanCatholicChurchReallyTeaches - 0 views

  • The Catholic Mass is also misrepresented as being a "new sacrifice" of Jesus Christ. That is, at Mass, Jesus is "re-sacrificed." Mass is NOT a "new" Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The Roman Catholic Church teaches Mass is Jesus "one-time" bloody sacrifice "made present" in an unbloody manner. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: 1366. "The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit: (Christ), our Lord and God, was once and for all to offer himself to God the Father by his death on the altar of the cross, to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death, at the Last Supper 'on the night when he was betrayed,' (he wanted) to leave to his beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands) by which the bloody sacrifice which he was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be re-presented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power be applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit.[Council of Trent (1562): DS 1740; cf. 1 Cor
Sue Cifelli

Patron Saints Index: Saint Anthony the Abbot - 0 views

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    Saint Anthony told his monks: When, therefore, they demons come by night to you and wish to tell the future, or say 'We are the angels,' give no heed, for they lie....

    But if they shamelessly stand their ground, capering and change their forms of appearance, fear them not, nor shrink, nor heed them as though they were good spirits. For the presence either of the good or evil by the help of God can easily be distinguished.

    The vision of the holy ones is not fraught with distraction: 'For they will not strive, nor cry, nor shall anyone hear their voice' (Matthew 12:19; Isaiah 42:2).

    But it comes quietly and gently that an immediate joy, gladness, and courage arise in the soul. For the Lord who is our joy is with them, and the power of God the Father.
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