I got to mass for the first time in several days last night and was delighted to do so. I used tog et every days but the night shifts have not made this possible. But I go when I can. However last night at communion I had the sad sense of guilt that I had prepared worthily an this saddened me. I woke up about half an hour ago and was still thinking of this and asked for advice from my Guardian Angel, who told me not to fret about this one way or another but to learn from this that we should always prepare better and better for the Eucharist. Which is so true. The though came to me to cheer me up that my every thought since I woke had been on God and things of God and I thought to myself when if this is true I can;t be too very far from him. I was then praying to the Arcangel Michael and suddenly through a grace of Faith I saw he was actually bending from heaven and actually listening to me. Of course the angels always listen but it a great grace to see eve3n for a few seconds quite clearly that it is so. Then I saw him , with inner eye come into the room in Golden armour, he reminded me of a Ancient Roman Military Tribune only his armour was all Gold. I saw other angels grouped around him and I mentioned to him that he had not come alone. He glanced at them and he laughed and said, 'There are always others with me Padraig, it goes with the job description!' ..and he laughed again. I asked him if he really looked like he appeared to be since he was pure Spirit and he nodded and said that he did. That the way he looked was a direct expression of how he was, that the tow things were one and the same. To me the Arcangel Michael reminds me of a very little child. The greatest in heaven look like this. St Joseph is a very good example. I do not worry when these things happen how, 'True' they are. I take them very gently. They bring me huge joy and peace and help me to pray and meditate better. They bring me closer to Christ/ They teach and lead on the Heavenly realities. So what's not to like? But yes it was St Michael come calling with friends. St Michael , Prince of the Heavenly Host; teach us to be very, very little children so you can at last carry us in your arms ,swiftly to heaven.
ohhhh no.."..sciatica alone is horrible! You must be dong some serious soul saving..... Glad I know...you really need our love and prayers Katfalls. please keep us updated! Dear God....please heal dear Katfalls+++
ohhhhhh how Id love just a quick glimpse of St. Michael! He’s rescued me more times than I can count or deserve! Anyone not asking his favor is truly missing out...he is soooo powerful! I love you St. Michael!
I should clarify. Your quotation at the top is very apt. Those theologians from the past weren't universalists like Rahner and Balthasar, and weren't excusing poorly-evangelised of guilt for sin of which their God-given intellects made them perfectly aware. Like the pagans, there must be many people of good heart in Western societies nowadays that simply have never heard the faith, or only a shallow likeness of it, though they would also, like the pagans, still only be a minority, perhaps a very small one. In justice, Our Lord will take this into account. I don't imagine He will be very impressed with those responsible for the circumstances which have led to the collapse of this cathechisation. I wonder how many Catholics have read Fr. Hardon's Dictionary, or his great Catechism? Unfortunately, it is probably only people who are quite knowledgeable of the material in the first place that read them.
There was a story I read one time in a book about the Life of Padre Pio which is very, very sobering. Padre Pio as you know was a Great Mystic and Confessional saint responsible for the conversion of who knows how many souls? Maybe millions. But it seems he had a sister who seems to have gone really, really far off the rails. Clearly he would have spent his entire life praying for this poor woman. But the sobering part is that nowhere is their record of her ever converting. Nowhere. It is a great reminder that we have perfect freedom of choice to either accept grace or refuse it. Judas Iscariot is another great example. Three years in the direct company of Our Lady and Jesus Himself.Chosen as an Apostle, one of the Twelve Pillars of the Church. Still he fell. We can all make choices. We all have perfect freedom. Heaven. Or Hell. It's our choice.
This was bought home to me in a very ordinary way only recently. I'd left my sunglasses on a train and prayed that they would be found. They were, but they had been snapped in the middle. After I'd finished grumbling to my daughter, she said, "But mum, your prayers do not override someone else's free will."
What a really nasty thing for someone to do! I kind of think when I hear of something like this of demons. It is such a random pure act of badness. If someone steals for instance it may not be so bad in that they act out of self interest, we can see this. But this was done out of pure badness. I remmeber looking out the window one time and seeing a neeghbour breaking my flowers in half in the garden. It seemed spooky to me too. An act of pure spite. Demonic.
I purchased a combined brown scapular an St Michael scapular recently. I put it on each morning with the prayer :who is like unto God'. Makes me feel very protected
This reminds me of Mother Angelica. She was flat on her back in the hospital and she prayed to God if He got her up and walking again she would go and start a monastery in the deep south. God got her up and walking and she fulfilled her promise, but she was walking with a backbrace , crutches, ect. She said she learned from this that when you pray to God to be very specific!
My understanding is that it is too late after death-once one dies one is immediately judged, as far as I'm aware. Of course, nobody knows the subjective experience of another in their last moments before death. One hears of people in near-death-experiences recalling seeing their lives flash before their eyes, so obviously a lot can happen in what might seem only a very short time for an onlooker and the onlooker might be totally unaware of what's going on. Jacques Maritain was of the opinion that all souls would be given a final choice before death, a brief decisive encounter with Christ. There is the old saying 'between the stirrup and the ground'. As for a person who doesn't convert to Catholicism, as far as I understand it, a person might undergo a baptism of desire, something which, I think, might not necessarily be conscious, but would be dependent on their having a very good heart, living morally according to the natural law and genuinely looking for God. Only Christ can know these things.
I think perhaps a more correct way of saying it is at death by Fr. Chris Alar, MIC We then talked about a relative who had died after 20 years in which we all prayed for a conversion — and this person never converted, never came back to the Church. I told the priest that my dad said, “Well, there’s 20 years of prayer wasted.” Is that true? No! Again, he referenced St. Faustina’s Diary, and this added the final straw to the proverbial camel’s back that was my former life. I was now changed forever. Saint Faustina wrote: God’s mercy sometimes touches the sinner at the last moment in a wondrous and mysterious way. Outwardly it seems as if everything were lost. [This is what it looked like for my grandmother.] But it is not so. The soul illuminated by a ray of God’s powerful final grace turns to God in the last moment with such a power of love that, in an instant, it receives from God forgiveness of sin and punishment, while outwardly it shows no sign either of repentance or of contrition, because souls [at that stage] no longer react to external things. Oh, how beyond comprehension is God’s mercy! … Although a person is at the point of death, the merciful God gives the soul that interior vivid moment, so that if the soul is willing, it has the possibility of returning to God (Diary, 1698) Divine Mercy After Suicide
