The denial of St Peter and our own unfaithfulness

Today being the Solemnity if Sts Peter & Paul got me reflecting on the denial of St Peter and my own unfaithfulness during the Covid pandemic while churches closed. 

At the beginning of the year as you can see from previous posts I was getting back into my faith, the sacraments, going to Mass up to 5 times a week and praying Divine Office daily. Then the pandemic struck... 

Just before it did,  my brother who I have lived with for 6 years got a girlfriend and moved out (great news is I have recently found out now I will be an uncle Praise God 🙏). Then Covd hit, my hours at work got halved and I had too much time on my hands trying to adjust to being home alone - feeling isolated and depressed. During this time I fell back into sinful habits, acted out and rarely prayed. 

My unfaithfulness during this time reminded me of St Peter’s denial of our Lord. We can be so passionate and enthusiastic about our love for Jesus, yet when adversity hits then our weakness and cowardice surfaces, just like St Peter. 

But we can also remember the Lord is merciful and always ready to forgive us as soon as we turn to Him. Jesus asks us to love Him and trust Him again and again, not counting our faults but showing new mercies every moment. Jesus is faithful to us in spite of our own unfaithfulness - like St Peter, we too can become great saints through repentance. 

Ministry of Acolyte

I was approached by my Parish Priest and one of our Acolytes a few months ago to consider the ministry of Acolyte in our Parish, they didn’t realise that I was Instituted as an Acolyte many years ago but stopped serving due to personal reasons. So this evening I will commence the ministry of Acolyte in my Parish. 

For those of you who are wondering what an Acolyte is in the Latin Rite, it is an Altar Server that also assists with distributing Holy Communion and purifying the vessels. 

After the reforms of Vatican 2, Pope St Paul the VI changed the minor order of Subdeacon and changed it to the ministry of Acolyte - meaning that it is now a lay ministry and not considered part of the clerical state. 

Please see the definition of an Acolyte according to Pope St Paul VI in his Apostolic Letter “Ministeria Quedam” 

“6. The acolyte is appointed in order to aid the deacon and to minister to the priest. It is his duty therefore to attend to the service of the altar and to assist the deacon and the priest in liturgical celebrations, especially in the celebration of Mass; he is also to distribute communion as a special minister when the ministers spoken of in the Codex Iuris Canonici can. 845 are not available or are prevented by ill health, age, or another pastoral ministry from performing this function, or when the number of communicants is so great that the celebration of Mass would be unduly prolonged. In the same extraordinary circumstances an acolyte may be entrusted with publicly exposing the blessed sacrament for adoration by the faithful and afterward replacing it, but not with blessing the people. He may also, to the extent needed, take care of instructing other faithful who on a temporary basis are appointed to assist the priest or deacon in liturgical celebrations by carrying the missal, cross, candles, etc., or by performing other such duties. He will perform these functions more worthily if he participates in the holy eucharist with increasingly fervent devotion, receives nourishment from it, and deepens his knowledge about it.

As one set aside in a special way for the service of the altar, the acolyte should learn all matters concerning public divine worship and strive to grasp their inner spiritual meaning: in that way he will be able each day to offer himself entirely to God, be an example to all by his gravity and reverence in church, and have a sincere love for the Mystical Body of Christ, the people of God, especially for the weak and the sick.” 

Please keep me in your prayers 🙏

Blessing of Obedience

A few weeks ago I got home from work, feeling very tired and was trying to organise my birthday party. Going through my list of people to invite it brought back a lot of memories of old friends, people who had been former hookups or those I had crushes on. 

The same evening I was due to have a meeting with my spiritual director. 

With all the old memories and feelings coming to mind, I was struggling with a lot of temptation against purity. But Praise God I was able to force myself to go pray Vespers before leaving to see my spiritual director. As I was praying the Office, the reading for the day was about resisting the devil and he will flee from you, come close to God and He will draw bear to you. 

What Providence! Instantly my temptations went away and I had a very fruitful meeting with my spiritual director. It just shows you the blessings you receive when you remain obedient to God 

Discerning eremetical life

Dear readers, 

I know it has almost been another year since I have blogged again. As mentioned below I have been struggling with depression and self pity in my sins instead of clinging to God for grace and Mercy. 

I went to confession Christmas Eve and ever since then I feel God has given me some special new grace of conversion. My temptations and lust have disappeared without me praying or asking for it! So I have been making the most of this time of grace to go to Mass regularly, pray the Divine Office, consecrate myself to Our Lady everyday and keep loving God. Part of this blessing has been finding a group of likeminded Christians with SSA who I pray together with and have fellowship with fortnightly- see my post below.. 

During this time I have been having an overwhelming urge to discern becoming a consecrated hermit. If you have read my blog before you may have seen that many years ago I was in seminary and had tried a few religious orders. My desire for religious life has never gone away, I’ve just felt so hurt and rejected by God and the Church for many years that I have been living my own personal rebellion against God - being promiscuous and trying to have same sex relationships. But nothing could stop the gentle call of Christ calling me back to him. 

So now that I no longer feel lonely and am happy being alone, for the first time EMBRACING my celibacy with joy, I have been getting this desire to be a consecrated hermit. I have accepted that I can never be a priest or religious due to my SSA and I am turning 36 this year so getting to the age that no communities will want me anyway. 

The blessing of a hermit vocation is that it is private and hidden between you and God. You work and support yourself, you live a plan of life under a spiritual director, you pray privately, interceding for the world and others. For the first time in a long time, I am having a sense of the Peace that Christ promised us - not of this world. 

I am working in a job that supports my values, I am a Community Support Worker for people with disabilities. I am not stressed and unhappy like I was last year and able to support myself without needing to work fulltime in an office. 

I am still praying for a spiritual director and I know that it is a long, slow, private, intimate journey. But I wanted to share with you the power of other people praying for you and to encourage you to intercede and pray for others!! 

I will leave you with a quote from the Catechism about the charism of consecrated hermits: 

921 They manifest to everyone the interior aspect of the mystery of the Church, that is, personal intimacy with Christ. Hidden from the eyes of men, the life of the hermit is a silent preaching of the Lord, to whom he has surrendered his life simply because he is everything to him. Here is a particular call to find in the desert, in the thick of spiritual battle, the glory of the Crucified One.

Mary Queen of Hermits - pray for me a sinner, the Irascible Hermit 🙏

Fellowship - the importance of the Communion of Saints

For many years I have struggled with my Same Sex Attraction, chastity and purity. This combined with depression would leave me to isolate myself from the Church and God for months at a time. 

Recently I came across a group of other Faithful Christians struggling with SSA like me! How amazing it felt to find other people who think and feel like me. 

For so long as I have felt lonely because I was misunderstood. Most of my Catholic friends now are married with kids or priests, so they are busy and have different lives to me. But meeting other Christians with SSA I feel so strengthened and re energised in my faith - because I no longer feel LONELY even though a am alone. The paradox being is that now I am very happy being alone because I have discovered fellowship. 

Fellowship is often seen as a Protestant term, as we Catholics focus on the Church and Communion. So I like to think of fellowship as participating in the Communion of Saints - not just the Saints in glory, but also my fellow pilgrim brothers and sisters in Christ here below who are becoming Saints. 

Since having this newfound fellowship my faith feels much stronger, more stable and empowered.  We pray for each other, console and comfort each other in Christ. Praise God for the gift of fellowship 🙏 

Nothing can separate us from the love of God

The Cross - the key to death, the radical love of Jesus

Let us return once more to the night of Holy Saturday. In the Creed we say about Christ’s journey that he “descended into hell.” What happened then? Since we have no knowledge of the world of death, we can only imagine his triumph over death with the help of images which remain very inadequate. Yet, inadequate as they are, they can help us to understand something of the mystery. The liturgy applies to Jesus’ descent into the night of death the words of Psalm 23[24]: “Lift up your heads, O gates; be lifted up, O ancient doors!” The gates of death are closed, no one can return from there. There is no key for those iron doors. But Christ has the key. His Cross opens wide the gates of death, the stern doors. They are barred no longer. His Cross, his radical love, is the key that opens them. The love of the One who, though God, became man in order to die – this love has the power to open those doors. This love is stronger than death. The Easter icons of the Oriental Church show how Christ enters the world of the dead. He is clothed with light, for God is light. “The night is bright as the day, the darkness is as light” (cf. Ps 138[139]12).

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI 

Consummatum est

 

18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 

19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 

20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake

The Mass - time, space and purgatory

This is a wonderful talk on the holiness of the Mass, specifically dealing with purgatory 

https://youtu.be/fyDh80ZWkpw

Lent - from the desert of creation to the garden of Communion with God

If you haven’t had a chance to read and reflect on Pope Francis’ Lenten message for 2019, I highly recommend it 

“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God” (Rom 8:19)

Dear Brothers and Sisters

Each year, through Mother Church, God “gives us this joyful season when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery with mind and heart renewed… as we recall the great events that gave us new life in Christ” (Preface of Lent I). We can thus journey from Easter to Easter towards the fulfilment of the salvation we have already received as a result of Christ’s paschal mystery – “for in hope we were saved” (Rom 8:24). This mystery of salvation, already at work in us during our earthly lives, is a dynamic process that also embraces history and all of creation. As Saint Paul says, “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God” (Rom 8:19). In this perspective, I would like to offer a few reflections to accompany our journey of conversion this coming Lent.

1. The redemption of creation

The celebration of the Paschal Triduum of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, the culmination of the liturgical year, calls us yearly to undertake a journey of preparation, in the knowledge that our being conformed to Christ (cf. Rom 8:29) is a priceless gift of God’s mercy.

When we live as children of God, redeemed, led by the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom 8:14) and capable of acknowledging and obeying God’s law, beginning with the law written on our hearts and in nature, we also benefit creation by cooperating in its redemption. That is why Saint Paul says that creation eagerly longs for the revelation of the children of God; in other words, that all those who enjoy the grace of Jesus’ paschal mystery may experience its fulfilment in the redemption of the human body itself. When the love of Christ transfigures the lives of the saints in spirit, body and soul, they give praise to God. Through prayer, contemplation and art, they also include other creatures in that praise, as we see admirably expressed in the “Canticle of the Creatures” by Saint Francis of Assisi (cf. Laudato Si’, 87). Yet in this world, the harmony generated by redemption is constantly threatened by the negative power of sin and death.

2. The destructive power of sin

Indeed, when we fail to live as children of God, we often behave in a destructive way towards our neighbours and other creatures – and ourselves as well – since we begin to think more or less consciously that we can use them as we will. Intemperance then takes the upper hand: we start to live a life that exceeds those limits imposed by our human condition and nature itself. We yield to those untrammelled desires that the Book of Wisdom sees as typical of the ungodly, those who act without thought for God or hope for the future (cf. 2:1-11). Unless we tend constantly towards Easter, towards the horizon of the Resurrection, the mentality expressed in the slogans “I want it all and I want it now!” and “Too much is never enough”, gains the upper hand.

The root of all evil, as we know, is sin, which from its first appearance has disrupted our communion with God, with others and with creation itself, to which we are linked in a particular way by our body. This rupture of communion with God likewise undermines our harmonious relationship with the environment in which we are called to live, so that the garden has become a wilderness (cf. Gen 3:17-18). Sin leads man to consider himself the god of creation, to see himself as its absolute master and to use it, not for the purpose willed by the Creator but for his own interests, to the detriment of other creatures.

Once God’s law, the law of love, is forsaken, then the law of the strong over the weak takes over. The sin that lurks in the human heart (cf. Mk 7:20-23) takes the shape of greed and unbridled pursuit of comfort, lack of concern for the good of others and even of oneself. It leads to the exploitation of creation, both persons and the environment, due to that insatiable covetousness which sees every desire as a right and sooner or later destroys all those in its grip.

3. The healing power of repentance and forgiveness

Creation urgently needs the revelation of the children of God, who have been made “a new creation”. For “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). Indeed, by virtue of their being revealed, creation itself can celebrate a Pasch, opening itself to a new heaven and a new earth (cf. Rev 21:1). The path to Easter demands that we renew our faces and hearts as Christians through repentance, conversion and forgiveness, so as to live fully the abundant grace of the paschal mystery.

This “eager longing”, this expectation of all creation, will be fulfilled in the revelation of the children of God, that is, when Christians and all people enter decisively into the “travail” that conversion entails. All creation is called, with us, to go forth “from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). Lent is a sacramental sign of this conversion. It invites Christians to embody the paschal mystery more deeply and concretely in their personal, family and social lives, above all by fasting, prayer and almsgiving.

Fasting, that is, learning to change our attitude towards others and all of creation, turning away from the temptation to “devour” everything to satisfy our voracity and being ready to suffer for love, which can fill the emptiness of our hearts. Prayer, which teaches us to abandon idolatry and the self-sufficiency of our ego, and to acknowledge our need of the Lord and his mercy. Almsgiving, whereby we escape from the insanity of hoarding everything for ourselves in the illusory belief that we can secure a future that does not belong to us. And thus to rediscover the joy of God’s plan for creation and for each of us, which is to love him, our brothers and sisters, and the entire world, and to find in this love our true happiness.

Dear brothers and sisters, the “lenten” period of forty days spent by the Son of God in the desert of creation had the goal of making it once more that garden of communion with God that it was before original sin (cf. Mk 1:12-13; Is 51:3). May our Lent this year be a journey along that same path, bringing the hope of Christ also to creation, so that it may be “set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). Let us not allow this season of grace to pass in vain! Let us ask God to help us set out on a path of true conversion. Let us leave behind our selfishness and self-absorption, and turn to Jesus’ Pasch. Let us stand beside our brothers and sisters in need, sharing our spiritual and material goods with them. In this way, by concretely welcoming Christ’s victory over sin and death into our lives, we will also radiate its transforming power to all of creation.

From the Vatican, 4 October 2018,

Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi

FRANCIS

[Original text: English]

© Copyright – Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Existential desire as prayer

A friend of mine has recently written a book about deepening your understanding of prayer life. I highly recommend it. 

Easy to read with insights from the Saints 🙏

click here 

The Immaculate Conception, Dawn of Creation - Virgin who crushes Satan

Dear Brothers and Sisters, 

On 8 December we celebrate one of the most beautiful Feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary: the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. But what does Mary being "Immaculate" mean? And what does this title tell us? First of all let us refer to the biblical texts of today's Liturgy, especially the great "fresco" of the third chapter of the Book of Genesis and the account of the Annunciation in the Gospel according to Luke. After the original sin, God addresses the serpent, which represents Satan, curses it and adds a promise: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel" (Gn 3: 15). It is the announcement of revenge: at the dawn of the Creation, Satan seems to have the upper hand, but the son of a woman is to crush his head. Thus, through the descendence of a woman, God himself will triumph. Goodness will triumph. That woman is the Virgin Mary of whom was born Jesus Christ who, with his sacrifice, defeated the ancient tempter once and for all. This is why in so many paintings and statues of the Virgin Immaculate she is portrayed in the act of crushing a serpent with her foot. 

Luke the Evangelist, on the other hand, shows the Virgin Mary receiving the Annunciation of the heavenly Messenger (cf. Lk 1: 26-38). She appears us the humble, authentic daughter of Israel, the true Zion in which God wishes to take up his abode. She is the shoot from which the Messiah, the just and merciful King, is to spring. In the simplicity of the house of Nazareth dwells the pure "remnant" of Israel from which God wants his People to be reborn, like a new tree that will spread its branches throughout the world, offering to all humanity the good fruit of salvation. Unlike Adam and Eve, Mary stays obedient to the Lord's will, with her whole being she speaks her "yes" and makes herself entirely available to the divine plan. She is the new Eve, the true "mother of all the living", namely, those who, because of their faith in Christ, receive eternal life. 

Dear friends, what an immense joy to have Mary Immaculate as our Mother! Every time we experience our frailty and the promptings of evil, we may turn to her and our hearts receive light and comfort. Even in the trials of life, in the storms that cause faith and hope to vacillate, let us recall that we are her children and that our existence is deeply rooted in the infinite grace of God. Although the Church is exposed to the negative influences of the world, she always finds in Mary the star to guide her so that she may follow the route pointed out to her by Christ. Indeed, Mary is the Mother of the Church, as Pope Paul VI and the Second Vatican Council solemnly proclaimed. Therefore, while we thank God for this marvellous sign of his goodness, let us entrust to the Virgin Immaculate each one of us, our families and communities, the entire Church and the whole world.

Pope Benedict XVI 

The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Ark of the Covenant, Mother of the living and of the Church

If any of you have not read Brant Pitre’s book yet, you need to STOP right now. Buy it , borrow it and read it immediately!! 

It is the best, easy to read, biblical Mariology book I have ever read. Written in simple down to earth style similar to Scott Hahn, yet still scholarly. It demonstrates how Catholic dogma and believe regarding our Lady is completely biblical, using Old Testament prophecies and typology, then weaving in quotes from Church Fathers. 

I only wish there was a chapter exploring Our Lady and Judith in regards to spiritual warfare. 

https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Jewish-Roots-Mary-Unveiling/dp/0525572732

Archbiship Vigano’s third letter

I have been trying to keep out of this, many people have taken to attacking ad hominem the whistle blower. It appears that his testimony is clearer with each letter. 

Regina Magazine on Facebook has the link, please read for yourself. Pray for our Holy Father that he may be the leader and rock during this time, pray for the safety of Archbishop Vigano, pray for the Church and pray for the truth to be manifest.