I'm praying for you!

:)

“The media only writes about the sinners and the scandals, he said, but that’s normal, because “a tree that falls makes more noise than a forest that grows.”

—	Pope Francis

I'm praying for you!

:)

Prayer for Perseverance 

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, 
living and life giving fountain of eternal life, 
infinite treasure of the Divinity, 
and glow furnace of love, 
You are my sanctuary. 
O adorable and glorious Savior, 
consume my heart with that burning fire 
that ever inflames Your Heart.
Pour down on my soul those graces 
which flow from Your Love. 
Let my heart be one with You, 
and in all things conformed to Yours.
May Your Will be the rule of both my desires and my actions. 

Amen.

I'm praying for you!

:) 

"What I Learned From a Muslim About Eucharistic Adoration" By Peter Kreeft 

My friend John, a very intelligent and faithful Catholic, told me the following story when he was one of my students at Boston College. John’s friend, Isa—a very intelligent and faithful Muslim—expressed an interest in understanding the Catholic faith (not out of any doubt of his own) and asked John to take him to Mass. After Mass, John asked Isa what he had thought of it. Isa said, very slowly and thoughtfully, “Do Catholics really believe that thing, that piece of bread, is not bread at all but Jesus Christ (blessed be his name)?" (Christ is a revered prophet to Muslims, though not the Son of God.)
"We do, said John.
"Your Church teaches that he is really present there, yes? That what’s there is the man who was God?" "
Yes. The formula is ‘Body and blood, soul and divinity.’"
"And you believe that?" “Yes."
Isa made as if to say something, but stifled it. John assured him he would not be offended.
Finally, reluctantly, Isa said, “I don’t understand."
"I understand how you feel. It sounds very shocking."
"No, you don’t understand. That’s not what I mean. You will take it as an insult, but I don’t mean it to be."
"I promise I won’t take it as an insult. But I really want to know what’s on your mind."
"Well then. …I don’t think you really do believe that. I don’t mean to say you’re dishonest, but … ."
"I think I know what you mean. You can’t empathize with anyone who believes something so shocking. You don’t see how you could ever get down on your knees before that altar."
"No, I don’t see how I could ever get up. If I believed that thing that looks like a little round piece of bread was really Allah Himself, I think I would just faint. I would fall at His feet like a dead man."
John looked carefully at my reaction as he reported Isa’s words. My eyes opened, and he smiled. “What did you say to him?" I asked.
"Nothing. Then, after a while, just ‘Yes."’ John is a wise man.

I'm praying for you!

:)

“The Most Holy Trinity grants you grace and expects you to make use of it responsibly. Given such an endowment, there is no place for your adopting easy, slow, lazy attitudes, because, apart from everything else, souls await you.”

—	St. Josemaria Escriva, Furrow, #957

I'm praying for you!

:)

"Lord, grant us the grace to weep over our indifference, over the cruelty that is in the world and in ourselves." - Pope Francis via Twitter

I'm praying for you!

:)

I really like this picture, because Jesus is just playing. He's not working alongside Joseph, even. He's just being a normal kid and playing on the floor. But at the same time, there's so much crucifixion symbolism going on that He doesn't seem to understand, because He's a kid.



I'm praying for you!

:)

“Give something, however small, to the one in need. For it is not small to one who has nothing. Neither is it small to God, if we have given what we could.”

—	St. Gregory Nazianzen

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:)

Prayer to Know One’s Vocation
Lord Jesus, up until now you have been quietly preparing me to be your disciple. Now the time of preparation is ending. I seem to hear you say to me as once to Peter: Will you also go away?" You were saddened then by friends who failed you. But Peter did not fail. “Lord", he said, “to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."
I stand with Peter. Through prayer and counsel, show me, Lord, where it is in your vineyard that you want me to serve. Then give me strength to be faithful.
Mary, Mother and Model, help me to respond in generous love to the call of your divine Son. Amen.

—	St. Alphonsus Liguori, Patron Saint of Vocations

I'm praying for you!

:)

“Even the weakest and most vulnerable, the sick, the old, the unborn and the poor are masterpieces of God’s creation, made in his own image, destined to live forever, and deserving of the utmost reverence and respect.”

—	Pope Francis

I'm praying for you!

:)

Food for thought:

“The great method of prayer is to have none. If in going to prayer one can form in oneself a pure capacity for receiving the spirit of God, that will suffice for all method.”
— St. Jane Frances de Chantal

I'm praying for you!





:)

Ok, the puns are getting bad now. People should just be banned from the internet.


I'm praying for you!

:)

My cousin introduced me to this song the other day (he's 4).

I'm praying for you!

:)

P.S. From the next post through July 26, everything's on a queue. I'm at Camp Kesem!

“Atheism is not the knowledge that God does not exist, rather the wish that He did not. In order that one could sin without reproach and exalt one’s ego without challenge.”

— Archbishop Fulton Sheen

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:)

“Those rare Christians whose very presence incites others to be better Christians. I want to be that rare Christian.”

— A.W. Tozer

I'm praying for you!

:) 

“I thank You, Jesus, You who first drank the cup of bitterness before You gave it to me, in a much milder form. I put my lips to this cup of Your holy will. Let all be done according to Your good pleasure; let that which Your wisdom ordained before the ages be done to me. I want to drink the cup to its last drop, and not seek to know the reason why. In bitterness is my joy, in hopelessness is my trust. In You, O Lord, all is good, all is a gift of Your paternal Heart. I do not prefer consolations, but thank You, O Jesus, for everything! It is my delight to fix my gaze upon You, O mysterious dwelling places, and there I am at home. I know very well the dwelling place of my Spouse. I feel there is not a single drop of blood in me that does not burn with love for You.”

—	St. Faustina

I'm praying for you! :)

“You hear in church oftener than anything the voices of the priests, deacons, readers, and singers praying God to have mercy on us. What does this signify? It signifies that all of us who are in God’s Temple are deserving, by our sins, of God’s punishment, and that before everything — on our coming into the church — we must remember that we are sinners, and have come to the Lord of Heaven and Earth, to our Creator and Benefactor, Whom we have daily and hourly angered by our iniquities, to ask for mercy, each one for himself and also, in accordance with Christian love, for others…

As there is not a single superfluous word in the church service, it is especially necessary at the time of the singing of the redoubled [i.e., insistent] litany to pray to God most fervently, from the very depths of a most contrite heart, as we are reminded at the very beginning of the litany by the words: “Let us say with our whole souls and with our whole understanding." At this time we must lay aside even the slightest coldness, the slightest inattention of heart, and, burning with the spirit of humility, becoming all attention, offer up to the Creator our most fervent prayers to have mercy upon us sinners.”
— Saint John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ


I'm praying for you!

:)

Cute artwork by David Zinn.

I'm praying for you!

:)

I'm baaaaack!

I spent a few days without internet access while I was in Nashville getting a new leg. I'm now only a few thousand upgrades away from having an actual robot leg!

I'm praying for you!

:)

Fireworks

When you watch fireworks, do you live completely in the moment, or does your mind wander? Do you think about the last time you saw fireworks? I know that, personally, my mind gets lost in all sorts of deep philosophical thoughts when I watch fireworks, and this 4th of July, the thought was that I don't ever let myself live completely in the moment during fireworks. I watch the show, but I'm not paying attention to it.

I realized that I also don't live in the moment when I'm on my computer, playing video games, watching tv, etc. We have so many modern distractions, and that's just what they are - distractions. None of these activities fully consumes my mind while I'm participating in it - not for long, anyway. Thus, I start multi-tasking. I text and talk and eat during fireworks. I spent a couple days last week making friendship bracelets while I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer (yes, I said a couple days).

These attitudes towards today's distractions spill over into our interactions with other people. I'm constantly texting 5 people at once, even while I'm talking to somebody in real life. I'd much rather be talking to a lot of people at once over Facebook, Tumblr, and text messages than to talk to one person in front of me. And I'd like to pretend that the reason is that I don't have time to devote to all my friends and family and that I'm making an efficient use of my time by multitasking. But the truth is that I don't want to have to actually devote all my energy at once to one person, because that would require being still in the moment; it would require love. 

Marc Barnes' most recent post on BadCatholic talks about how we have to confront a person's unique self when we look them in the eyes. We cannot be apathetic towards someone when we look in their eyes. We must love them or hate them.

I think also, though, when we look someone in the eyes and remain in the moment with them, we have to confront within ourselves the reality of how we treat them.

I can pretend I love someone because I text them every day and tell them so, or because I post cat pictures on their Facebook page once a week, or because I'll give them some of my attention. But when I am alone with them, when I am confronted with the choice to devote all my energy to them alone for even a few minutes, I must own up to the reality that I do not love them as I should.

Love requires being present. Fully present. In fact, if you truly love someone, you get sucked completely into the present and no other time exists for you. The present turns into eternity. In a way, you get a glimpse of eternity, of the way God views time, which is to say, to not observe time at all. If you sit in Eucharistic Adoration long enough, ardently and fully adoring Christ, you will eventually lose track of all else in existence. Thus, the emergence of Jeff's face in the Frassatti House chapel, the one that looks like he's died and gone to heaven. And for earthly love, too, the lovers ardently looking into each other's eyes or in any way actually loving each other are not thinking about anything else.

I've discovered that children are much better at this, at placing themselves completely in the moment. Everything looks new and wonderful to them, and so every interaction with a child happens, for them at least, completely in the moment. I think that's one reason why young children are really never lukewarm. They see each thing, each person, each experience, as a unique entity, and so they either love it or they hate it. Like Tinkerbell, they only have room for one emotion, one response.

But then they get older. And they get distracted by everything in the world. And everything becomes commonplace. And we avoid living in the moment, because it's scary and because we really don't know how.

But God, like a child, lives in the now. He doesn't live in hypothetical pasts and futures with a million different possible interpretations. He IS. And so to find him, we must become like children. We must lose distractions of all sorts and live now, with our families, with our friends, and with God. And yes, when we find God completely in the now, we have to confront whether we actually love Him at all, we must choose rather to love or to hate Him, but I think it's ridiculous that we avoid that confrontation because of our pasts, because each moment we choose anew whether to love or hate God, and if we're actually actively loving God, we have nothing to fear, because He's not keeping score.

I'm praying for you!

:)

St. John Vianney

“Do you know what the Devil’s first temptation is to the person who wants to serve God with dedication? It is human respect.”

—	St. John Vianney

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:)

Quotes

“Remember continually that in your body dwells the Body of Christ, then you will fear to defile this body or to make it an instrument of sin.”

—	His Holiness Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria

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:)

Blessed Pier Giorgio

“It is a difficult battle, but we must strive to win it and to rediscover our small road to Damascus in order to walk toward the destination to which we all must arrive… What is clear is that faith is the only anchor of salvation and we must hold tightly to it: without it, what would our lives be? Nothing, or rather, wasted, because in life there is only suffering, and suffering without faith is unbearable. But suffering that is nourished by the flame of faith becomes something beautiful, because it tempers the soul to deal with suffering." ~ Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati”

I'm praying for you!

:)

I lie to myself about prayer

I think one of the biggest lies I tell myself is that my prayer life is "evolved" beyond structure and habit, that I don't need to establish a routine because I live in constant prayer.

Of course, it's obvious that I don't actually live in constant prayer, but since I randomly talk to God at different points during the day, I pretend that random constitutes "constant."

I picked up a book today about "Dynamic Catholics," and it said, "Establish a routine every day, even something small."

To which I replied, "Oh, I have a routine. I talk to God throughout the day. I pray 15 Hail Mary's, 1 prayer to St. Thomas, 1 prayer to Jesus. And then I write Josh's blog post and I write in a prayer journal and I talk directly to Jesus right before I go to sleep."

I know, super impressive, especially given that my Lenten resolution was "go to Mass every day for the rest of my life."

But then the book was like, "Do this routine at the same time every day," and I said, "I do!"

But then I thought about it, and I don't. I mean, I generally do it all right before bed, although I might pray the Hail Mary's and such at random points throughout the day. But I never go to bed at the same time, so it can hardly count as a routine.

But even if it is a routine, it's rather a lame one.

Because if I'm honest, my daily "prayer" routine looks more like this:

1. Go about day doing whatever I want. If something bothers me, say "God, why?!"

2. When bored, mindlessly recite Hail Mary's and the two other prayers for the Confraternity of Angelic Warfare while actually concentrating on something else, anything else. 

3. At some point, probably really late at night, remember Josh's blog. Google "cute animals" and then copy the picture into a "blog post." Add "I'm praying for you!" because that makes it look legit.

4. Open prayer journal. Think of generic well-wishing statement. Does it fill up 1 line? Awesome. Add "amen." That makes it a prayer.

5. "Dear Jesus, help everyone. I love you. Goodnight."

I honestly don't know where I was going with this blog post, other than some weird confession that, despite the fact that Jesus spoke to me at Lourdes and told me that my vocation was to speak for Him, I have spent the last few months pretty much actively avoiding any true conversation with Him.

I'm praying for you! (looks legit, right?)

:)

Apparently posts have to have titles now...

So my pastor's 25th anniversary of his ordination is tomorrow (Tuesday), and I just found out that the humongous party being thrown at the church isn't being thrown for him. It's being thrown by him.

Apparently, he takes to heart that the Church is his spouse, and so on his wedding anniversary, especially such a big anniversary as 25th, he throws a party for his bride, AKA for all of us.

My dad says he also does stuff like pay out of his own pocket for cash prizes for the parish Easter Egg hunt, even though if anyone has over $400 to stick in Easter eggs, it's definitely not a parish priest.

This is just one of a million reasons why Fr. Jim Martell is an amazing human being. And if you ever get the chance to meet him, take that chance! :)

I'm praying for you!

:)

“‘The Catholic Church forbids divorce’– so we are always reading in the newspapers.  Of course, that isn’t true.  It isn’t the Catholic Church which forbids divorce; Almighty God forbids divorce, and all the Catholic Church does is to say she’s very sorry, but there it is; the Divine Law will not allow a marriage to be dissolved, so she is afraid she can’t very well do anything about it.  If it was the Church that had made this law, she would be able to dispense people from this law; the whole point of the situation is that the Church is powerless; she can do nothing.  She can no more prevent a person who has two wives being in mortal sin that she can prevent a person who falls off a precipice breaking his neck.  It is not part of her legislation that a married man should not remarry.  It is part of her doctrine that a married man cannot remarry, so long as his first wife is alive.  If he goes through the form of marriage, it is an empty farce.” - In Soft Garments, Monsignor Ronald Knox.

If you need something good to read, I recommend this book. It's a collection of sermons he gave at I think Oxford and it is amazing. The above quote is the first paragraph of a sermon on divorce.

I'm praying for you!

:)