…who kindly blesses each one of us with the Sign of the Cross + from the sidewalk when we come out of Church. Or when we pass on the street. O blessed Sign! Once when I needed to Confess my sins only to find it was one of those rare days when the church was… Read More I know a priest
“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” Christians and non-Christians alike. “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”— 1 Jn.1:10 All we, like sheep, have gone astray,each of us has turned to our own way; — Isaiah 53:6 “For… Read More Truth and “Catholic Guilt”
“LORD JESUS CHRIST, Who revealed the infinite mercy of Thy SACRED HEART in saying, Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you (Matt. 5:44), and again, Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you (Luke 6:28): Give me, I beseech Thee, grace to obey these commandments of Thine and to… Read More Beginning Again. A Prayer of Forgiveness, Reparation, and Penitential Love.
Cannot all the waters of the seven seas wash this blood clean from my hand? — Lady Macbeth Friends: It used to be that people escaped admitting their own guilt by blaming it on capitalism, communism, lack of soft drink parlors, Grade B milk, and naughty ductless glands. Now a new psychology arises to blame… Read More Morbidity, the Denial of Guilt, and Forgiveness. Archbishop Fulton J Sheen.
What Fulton J. Sheen saw so clearly that others seek to forget: We are only sojourners here in a strange and foreign land. “Our whole life ought to be one continued penance“. — Frs. Francis Spirago, Richard F. Clarke on Penance. Joel 2:12-13 “Yet even now,” says the Lord, “return to me with all of your heart,with… Read More Repentance and / or the American Dialectic
“Failure is a better teacher than success.” Variants of this old saying have been attributed to a number of different people over the years. It has also been the rallying cry of sports teams, working professionals, academics, entrepreneurs and almost anyone else who has struggled, failed and been determined to come back stronger. People make… Read More 7 Famous Sinners and What We Can Learn From Them
“O Lord, You are my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? You are the protector of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? If armies in camp should stand together against me, my heart shall not fear. If a battle should rise up against me, in this will I be confident. One… Read More Whom Shall I Fear? Expect the Lord.
By Arjun Badola, January 5, 2020. The novel, Crime and punishment, is written by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky who shows us the plight of an ordinary person and the effect on his psyche after he commits a murder. The protagonist in the novel, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, is a former student and is currently living… Read More Raskolnikov, Napoleon & Übermensch
By Fr. Gabriel of St Mary Magalene, 1953 Grant, O Lord, that by Your grace I may persevere unto the end. 1. To become a saint, it is not enough to be courageous and patient and to practice the other virtues for a few days or a few months, or even for a few years.… Read More Perseverance
I wish all those responsible would just go back to the Church, confess, and get their sins forgiven by Christ. Then we can all do quiet penance to make the world better, begin anew, knowing that God is more desirous to forgive us all than we ourselves could ever conceive. Cf. Matthew 12:31: “And so I… Read More Iraq and Sleepless nights
CCC 2784: “The free gift of adoption requires on our part continual conversion and new life.“ Philippians 1: 6 I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5: 24 The one who calls you is… Read More Continual Conversion in and towards Christ Daily
On overcoming. St. Augustine teaches, “When the unlawful pleasure of concupiscence tempts you, fight, resist, do not consent; and the saying is fulfilled, Go not after thy desires.” Still further, he says elsewhere that of two persons who have the same temptation to impurity, it sometimes happens that one consents to it and the other… Read More Predominant Sin of Our Times
St. Bernard declared forcefully, “[You may say] I have committed a great sin. My conscience will be troubled but I will not despair because I remember the wounds of my Lord. For indeed, He was wounded for our iniquities. What sin is there so deadly that it cannot be remitted through the death of Christ?… Read More Never to despair
“We acknowledge our wickedness, O Lord, and the iniquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against you.” Jeremiah 14: Though our iniquities testify against us, act, O Lord, for your name’s sake;for our backslidings are many; we have sinned against you.8 O you hope of Israel, its savior in time of trouble,why should you be like a stranger in the land, like a traveler… Read More “Our backslidings are many; we have sinned against you”
Why did our Lord thirst? It Is Finished. “28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I thirst!” 29 Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. 30 So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He… Read More The Lord Said ‘I Thirst’
Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. — Hebrews 12:14. I hope. I hope holiness means the striving for holiness. I’ve wanted it, holiness, ever since I was an aimless teenager. Today I am in my seventh decade and I know I am not… Read More How I Hope for Us All.
“It is the truth which is assailed in any age which tests our fidelity. It is to confess we are called, not merely to profess. If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are… Read More Confessing the Faith
“Sinners themselves admit the magnitude of their misery, as we read in the Book of Wisdom: “We wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction, and have walked through hard ways, but the way of the Lord we did not know. What has pride profited us? Or what advantage has the boasting of riches… Read More The Destiny of Wickedness
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all iniquity. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his… Read More If We Say
“While the Sacraments of Confession (also called Reconciliation or Penance) and Baptism are distinct, they share some profound similarities because both are sacraments of forgiveness and restoration. Similarities: 1. Both Forgive Sins: – Baptism forgives all sins—both original sin, which we inherit from Adam and Eve (cf. Romans 5:12), and any personal sins committed… Read More Confession is Like “A Second Baptism”
On Confession, by Fr.Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, OCD. “Penance is the sacrament of Christ’s Precious Blood in which God — according to the eloquent words of St. Catherine of Siena — “has bathed us in order to cleanse the face of our souls from the leprosy of sin.” If mortal sin only is the… Read More On Confession. By Fr.Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, OCD.
Patience in Penance. Fourteen Years the Abbot spent on Overcoming One Fault. “Love demands a complete inner transformation – for without this we cannot possibly come to identify ourselves with our brother… And this involves a death of selfishness In the Verba Seniorum [Words of the Elders] we read of Abbot Ammonas, who spent fourteen… Read More Perseverance, Patience, Penance.
“We are surprised at falling: an evident mark that we scarcely know ourselves. We ought, on the contrary, to be surprised at not falling more frequently, and into more grievous faults, and to return thanks to God for the dangers from which He preserves us. We are troubled every time that we are beguiled into… Read More St. Francis de Sales on Spiritual Self-knowledge
If there has been a better talk on Confession in recent years, I haven’t heard it.
Quoting St. Thomas Aquinas, John Paul wrote: “When through sin, the soul commits a disorder that reaches the point of turning away from its ultimate end God to which it is bound by charity, then the sin is mortal; on the other hand, whenever the disorder does not reach the point of a turning away… Read More Pope St. John Paul II on Mortal and Venial Sin
By Brian Kelly. It is written (Ezechiel 18:22): “I will not remember all his iniquities that he hath done: in his justice which he hath wrought, he shall live.” Saint Thomas in the third part of his Summa Theologica, Q. 86, art. 1 uses this quote from Ezechiel in his Sed Contra to refute the… Read More Forgiveness. “I Will Not Remember Their Sins”
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