We recently had "adopted" our new young priest- brought him home, fed him, admired him (truly) and we cared for him. He has abruptly left the church now with little explanation but for a crisis of faith. This man is so full of the holy spirit that he made me smile with joy every time I heard him preach. He would set me straight in confession and give great guidance. I don't understand what has happened, but I do understand that those that are close to God are often the target of the devil in some way or another. Keep him in your prayers. I so miss him. Thanks, Kath
We lost a young priest in our Parish a few years back Kathleen. We all must pray, but priests must pray, very, very much..their path is one of great Faith.... ...and so Our Lady asks us to pray for them, but, very often, we do not and so we loose them, our failure as much as theirs, we live in very, very testing times, being tested as gold in the very fierce Tribulation furnace. Satan knows his targets, priests are the very apple of God's eyes. I have seen a priest for two days running with prideful anger in his heart at the altar celebrating mass....its not only the young priests, its the older ones too, often, but the older ones can stay, some of them like rotten carcases, their faith extinguished, for fear of leaving. There is a really an awesome crisis of Faith amongst the Churxch...a Titanic struggle for all our hearts is being fought.. But I warned one , one time, who is in prison now, damned priests face the most condign punishment; to those to whom most has been given; most will be expected....
Padraig - you are so right - the battle is being fought in our hearts - we are all being tested to find the quality of love in our hearts. satan is sifting the church attacking our priests like never before. Joshua 24 v15 - And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. This generation does not know how to love. There is such a coldness and indifference in many hearts and we see man's inhumanity to man all around us not least in the wombs of millions of mothers who kill the very life and fruit of their wombs. But behind every abortion is a 'man' who has failed to love and therefore he is not a real man so here is a real crisis of manhood in our world. And the scary thing is that the darkness and the hatred will get worse for many hearts are far from God and many hearts are unconverted. In fact, we are being led by unbelievers who have no love in their hearts: I am reminded of a biblical verse from Matthew 'because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold' I have on occasions too let my love run cold because we all are affected by the culture around us. But we Christians are called to be counter-cultural 'see the love they bear for one another'. On this day when we celebrate the Incarnation of the God Man Jesus Christ born of a virgin let us pray that we will allow Christ to be truely born anew in our hearts. Let us pray for an explosion of love in our hearts that they may burn with the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Times of tribulation are also times of opportunity for God provides the graces we need to endure. Perhaps even, he provides the graces for each of us here on this forum to become His apostles of Love. Now isn't that an exciting thought for this Christmas and New Year
Bobby, I'm praying for this as I'm sure most of us are. It's become so clear to me that without out priests we have no Eucharist. Sometimes I think I would die without it. My prayers lift priests every day, those I know, those I've heard of and all of those who are blessed to be Catholic priests. I put them in the Challis every morning at mass and ask for the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to ignite them in love, faithfulness and obedience. I put all of us in there too! :wink: The oddest thing occurred last night. At 12:10 I was asleep and a small earthquake came rumbling and woke me up. All the power went out. I started praying for the people at Midnight Mass, and fell asleep saying the rosary. When I woke early this morning everything was back to normal. Honestly for a short time I thought my uneasy feelings of this Christmas were manifesting but God has other plans.
Gail, I wonder who the Patron Saint of Earthquakes Is? I often wondered how the people who live in somewhere like San Francisco feel? I heard a story many year ago about San Francisco and I was ondering if it might be true as I never read it anywhere else? It said that most of the origninal inhabitants of San Francisco were Catholics and lived a Godly life. However over time the morals of her people decayed and then came the Great Earth quake of San Frncisco which caused so much death and destruction. The story goes that many , many Catholics (many of them Irish Catholics) fled San Francisco as they felt it was subject to the wrath of God and would be destroyed again in the future! I wonder if this is so....it goes on to say that after these people left San Francisco decayed even more rapidly due to the loss of these good people. Sometimes you know I think cities are a bit like people and I think Satan tempts certain cities as with certain people on particular line[ he goes for their weaknesses as it were. If this is so the twin demons of impurity and homosexuality seem very, very strong there now. This would go along with the Catholic tradition that each town, city and countryhas its own particular guardian angel (Rome for instance has Saint Michael himself). The corrollary would be that each city has its own tutelary demon. I think what would go along with this is that each city faces a condite punishment , particular to itself in line with its own sin trend, thus Rome would be fire, San Francisco earth quake, Amrsterdam flooding and so on.. This goes back to Bobby's wonderful scriptural Quote: Matthew 24:12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, and the very reassuring verse that follows: Matthew 24:13 but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. So I think, from what we learn in Scripture is that God uses His angels to implement His plans as for instance, messengers but also to be instruments of His Justice. Thus , I suspect it was, for instance the angel the Guardian Angel of San Francisco who drew the sword of justice to destroy Frico i nthe great Earthquake and that it will be the very same angel who will weild the sword in Frisco's final great earthquake which will come shortly. For it the Guardian Angle did not destroy that benighted city its inhabitants would continue to walk the road to damnation..so Justice is tied up with mercy. The angels serving as reported or witnesses to God on the power wickedness holds in a particular person or place. Thus we can see certain wocked people like King Herod for instance being cut down by his angel: Acts 12:23 23And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died. 24But the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied. 25And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their mission, taking along with them John, who was also called Mark. You might well say, Well thats interesting and may be true, but how does it all help us in our Christian Life?'' Well it helps me personally because I am endlessly nosey and interested in such things and get a great kick out of studying them. But I think it might help people as we enter the Tribualtion i nthis way. We will see an endless series of the most terrible events such as the break up of the the Union, schism and persection and terrible physical events...but to understand such things a little better throws light on them and shows that such events have their own innate logic, if you see what I mean. For one of the most awful things about suffering is to imagine it is totally random, when in fact, as Scripture shows us it is not random at all.
This is really strange. After checking with a few neighbors at mass I learned that no one felt the "earthquake" and there was no power outage. I'm beginning to think this was a personal earthquake of the spiritual nature. I had to reset clocks and computer this morning, so I know that part was real. :roll: Well, the earthquake was real too, the approaching rumbling and shaking woke me, only I may have been the only one "sensitive" to it.
Lee, I think there was a 7.3 earthquake this morning in the Pacific Ocean around Vanuatu and they also has a tsunami along with it, so maybe that is what you felt.
