It's all about the heart isn't it? The intentions and motives that lay deep within us. It's as you say " At the end of the day we shall be judged on love". I pray for an increase of love every day. Lord have mercy on a sinner like me.
If you go to the , 'Spirit Digest' web site today you'll notice they headline the case of the Father. So I see both , 'Spirit Daily' and , 'Spirit Digest' are following this forum , which is knda nice. :wink: http://spirit-digest.com/
It's very nice indeed. You have done and great job here Padraig. We all are blessed by the insightful, intelligent and knowledgeable contributions our members make, but it's the love that's shared that keeps us here.
Two aspects of Father Stephen's testimony struck me. First, he stated that prior to the accident, most of his Confessions were probably invalid since he had no firm purpose of amendment. This was exactly my situation in college when considering my partying lifestyle. I felt guilty about it and so confessed; but, I had no intention of giving it up. Praise God he spared me, though I was close to death on at least one occasion. Second, and more relevant to today: Fr. Stephen acknowledged he was aware of being in the state of mortal sin, but he was too attached to his pleasures. There is much to ponder! :shock: Safe in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary!
What struck me is the similarity of his account of judgment and the one I had in my dream I'm always yammering about. He speaks about how he's standing before the judgment seat and how he wants to make excuses for his failures in life. "I had a bad day." He wants to explain to Jesus. "She pushed me . . . " he tries to excuse himself. But all he can say to the accussation is yes, he's guilty as charged. No excuses allowed. Reminds me of my own mini-judgment: "I found myself before God. I did not see Him, but experienced Him . . .. I was being judged . . . I could see my sins (not specific ones, but in a general way) and I tried to make excuses for them. I wanted to explain why I did this or that--sure I could make Him understand. But it was not like in life, where I could manipulate the truth to get out of something or get what I wanted. As I was exposed before God, there were no excuses. I could not defend myself. The truth of who I was spoke for me." Naturally I'm buying this priests story all the way :
I think no matter what excuses we make for our actions we all somewhere maybe deep in our hearts no the truth and then when we meet truth itself all the clouds fade away and we stand in the clear light of truth. So, to take an extreme example like Bin Laden, he and his friends have had and have a billion wonderful reasons for acting like thet do, including that they act on behalf of God Himself. But I think everyone realy at some level knows the turth becuase grace, through their conscience tells them so. Its very very basic that we should act with deep love towards others as God acts towards us and when we do not do so alrm bells go off inside. The problem is , I think if we continually act badly over a period of time this voice becomes silenced and is replaced by other voices. This is not God's fault but our own, for we can with practise silence it and shut it up. The Fathers of the Desert always seem to consider the key part for listening to our conscience to be our death beds. This the period when all the lies we have told ourselves shall melt as we prepare to meet the Truth. They speak of a titanic struggle between God aand the devil at this period. We see this in the lives of the saints. St Therese of Liseaux, for instance was clouded in intense darkness and asked for her medicines to be kept far from her out of reach in case she OD'ed herself. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was observed by her Archbishop to be under the direct attack of Satan at this time and ordered a special exocism blessing to protect her. There is an old prayer we used to say that we be protected from a sudden unrpovided for death. St James signally warns in Scripture that when we say, 'Tomrrow I will this , that or the other' we shoud always add, 'God willing', for few of us know the day or the hour without a direct revelation of God. When my father died I was with him by his death bed and had a signal experience of the presence of the devil there. I was sitting in a chair thinking and praying waiting for him to die when I quite clearly out of the side of my eye saw a large black dog leave the side of his bed and walk from the room. Of course there was no dog in the house. I knew at once my father was just about to expire as the devil had ralised the struggle was over, my father had won the victory. I realsied at once my father would die shortly, which he did a few minutes later.... But I was so conscious in the weeks it took him to die of a titanic struggle between the forces of light and darkness for his soul. He was a good,a very good Catholic. I see more and more the importance of praying for a happy death, for the grace of final perserverance... JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH JESUS, Mary and Joseph, I give Thee my heart and my soul. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, assist me in my last agony. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may I breathe forth my soul in peace with thee. My own very great consolation is in Devotion to Lady. I cannot believe that anyone who has a True Devotion to Our Blessed Mother will ever be lost. It is simply impossible. DEATHBED CONVERSION Deathbed conversion, however difficult, is still possible. Even when we see no sign of contrition, we can still not affirm that, at the last moment, just before the separation of soul from body, the soul is definitively obstinate. A sinner may be converted at that last-minute in such fashion that God alone can know it. The holy Cure of Ars, Divinely enlightened, said to a weeping widow: “Your prayer, Madame, has been heard. Your husband is saved. When he threw himself into the Rhone, the Blessed Virgin obtained for him the grace of conversion just before he died. Recall how, a month before, in your garden, he plucked the most beautiful rose and said to you, ‘Carry this to the altar of the Blessed Virgin.’ She has not forgotten.” Other souls, too, have been converted in extremis, souls that could barely recall a few religious acts in the course of their life. A sailor, for example, preserved the practice of uncovering his head when he passed before a church. He did not know even the Our Father or the Hail Mary, but the lifting of his hat kept him from departing definitively from God. In the life of the saintly Bishop Bertau of Tulle, friend of Louis Veuillot, a poor girl in that city, who had once been chanter in the cathedral, fell first into misery, then into misconduct, and finally became a public sinner. She was assassinated at night, in one of the streets of Tulle. Police found her dying and carried her to a hospital. While she was dying, she cried out: “Jesus, Jesus.” Could she be granted Church burial? The Bishop answered: “Yes, because she died pronouncing the name of Jesus. But bury her early in the morning without incense.” In the room of this poor woman was found a portrait of the holy Bishop, on the back of which was written: “The best of Fathers.” Fallen though she was, she still recognized the holiness of her bishop and preserved in her heart the memory of the goodness of Our Lord. A certain licentious writer, Armand Sylvestre, promised his mother when she was dying to say a Hail Mary every day. He kept his promise. Out of the swamp in which he lived, he daily lifted up to God this one little flower. Pneumonia brought him to the hospital, served by religious, who said to him: “Do you wish a priest?” “Certainly,” he answered. And he received absolution, probably with sufficient attrition [imperfect contrition], through a special grace obtained for him by the Blessed Mother, though we can hardly doubt he underwent a long and heavy Purgatory. Another French writer, Adolphe Rette, shortly after his conversion, which was sincere and profound, was struck by a sentence he read in the visitors’ book of the Carmelite Convent: “Pray for those who will die during the Mass at which you are going to assist.” He did so. Some days later he fell grievously ill, and was confined to bed in the hospital at Beaune, for many years, up to his death. Each morning he offered all his sufferings for those who would die during the day. Thus he obtained many deathbed conversions. We shall see in Heaven how many conversions there are in the world, owing to such prayers. In the life of St. Catherine of Siena we read of the conversion of two great criminals. The Saint had gone to visit one of her friends. As they heard, in the street below, a loud noise, her friend looked through the window. Two condemned men were being led to execution. Their jailers were tormenting them with nails heated red-hot, while the condemned men blasphemed and cried. St. Catherine, inside the house, fell to prayer, with her arms extended in the form of a cross. At once the wicked men ceased to blaspheme and asked for a confessor. People in the street could not understand this sudden change. They did not know that a nearby Saint had obtained this double conversion. Several years ago the chaplain in a prison in Nancy had the reputation of converting all criminals whom he had accompanied to the guillotine. On one occasion he found himself alone, shut up with an assassin who refused to go to Confession before death. The cart, with the condemned man, passed before the sanctuary of Our Lady of Refuge. The old chaplain prayed: “Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who had recourse to thy intercession was abandoned. Convert this criminal of mine: otherwise I will say that it has been heard that you have not heard.” At once the criminal was converted. Return to God is always possible, up to the time of death, but it becomes more and more difficult as hard-heartedness grows. Let us not put off our conversion. Let us say every day a Hail Mary for the grace of a happy death. Father Garrigou-Lagrange On Deathbed Conversion
