'True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin'

Is she the person who abused Bernadette out of jealousy of Bernadette having been visited by Our Lady? I've seen that bit in previous reading, but without a name.

No, no, no.

Christians are supposed to uplift, not persecute, each other. Persecution isn't Christ-like behavior.

That priest is also answering for his foolish enabling of a wayward soul, when he should've acknowledged her confession of wrongdoing.

 

I think maybe when we go to confession it should hurt or pang at least a little, like been treated with a good strong antiseptic. I am afraid we have lost this. It is much easier to give people a nod and smile.

We are told on occasions folks ran out of Padre Pio's confession box screaming. This may be an exaggeration, but it would not surprise me in the least.

When folks went to Confession with Padre Pio they knew they had been to Confession.

This was the old way of things; I so wish it would return.

 

It's so interesting, Padre Pio always gave preference to hearing men's confessions because he thought men needed to go to Confession much more than women.

I am sure he was totally wrong on that one.

 

I can only wonder how. But I'll take his word for it.

 

One thing I notice in the lives of the saints, they sometimes fret over things that have me puzzled. I honestly cannot see how something they consider a grave sin is even a small fault. But this is because they have such clear consciences.

St Augustine is such a good example when he frets over stealing pears from an orchard as a child, all those years later.

https://augustinianvocations.org/bl...t-augustine-and-the-pear-tree-a-lasting-story

St. Augustine and the Pear Tree: A Lasting Story




"It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing."

Perhaps we tell a lie, and we have nothing to gain from this lie. We steal, and we do not want what we’ve stolen. We turn on the lights, and walk out of the room.

These actions are hard to explain, but not impossible. Of the stories related by St. Augustine, the one with the most continual resonance is a short passage from Book 2, where he describes once stealing from a pear tree as a teenager. Seems simple enough—a youthful indiscretion.

Nevertheless, his story of teenage hijincks has been adopted and adapted through the centuries, recited whenever social scientists, philosophers, or poets need to address the topic of guilt or disobedience. Twenty-first-century neurologists have used this story to illustrate the rewards provided by adrenaline-inducing thrills. The great poet W. H. Auden pointed to it as evidence that “St. Augustine was the first real psychologist."

Let’s look at the story.

As is well known, St. Augustine ran with a sketchy crowd as a teen, they’re name was something like “The Destructors.” One night, after the gang had finished playing sports in the streets of their neighborhood, their attention turned to a pear tree that was heavy with ripe fruit. The tree did not belong to any of their families, but it grew on a plot adjacent to that of Augustine’s family. The boys did not find the pears tempting in their color or flavor.

Nevertheless, they wanted to steal them. They went to the base of the tree and shook down the ripe pears. Augustine relates:

We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart–which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself.
Writing in his mid-40s, Augustine looked back on this theft and was stuck by the fact that he did not even want the pears. Yet, he knew the pears were not his. The natural law that he should not steal the property of others--this is what pushed him to steal the pears. He took a pear merely to throw it to the pigs, not for the pigs’ sake, but for the sake of his own desire to disobey.

He explains the act this way:


It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error–not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself.
This story has been chosen by many more recent critics as a prime example of “Catholic Guilt”—of attaching and unnecessary amount of self-punishment over a tiny error. No one less than the highest judge in the US, former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. commented that it was an “[Odd] thing to see a man making a mountain out of robbing a pear tree in his teens."

However, St. Augustine does not appear to be infatuated with the idea of punishing himself in these passages. He begins from a place of wonder and fascination, a self-astonishment that many of us share.

The majority of our sins are not so complex. We often choose incorrectly between short-term and long-term goals, we sacrifice a value we hold for a lesser good. Most who steal money, for example, desire the money. Things are different with St. Augustine’s example. He enters into the realm of Pure Sin. This is the sin that enjoys that it’s a sin. This sin does not want a forbidden fruit. It does not even desire a Knowledge of Good and Evil, as with Eve’s sin. Augustine’s sin just hopes to be a sin.

Where Augustine succeeds, however, is that he does not wallow in his guilt. He does not rest in shame and self-loathing. Rather he uses this to kindle within him a Divine Restlessness--or even a Divine Un-Ease—that drives him close to the Lord. This restlessness makes him seek for greater perfection, while acknowledging that humans will always need the divine aid of Grace if they are to finally reach peace. This is the form of Divine Restlessness that became the charism of the Augustinian Order.

 

St Louis is so delightful in his praise of Mary in the first Part of the book. It is as though he has written some great song or poetry.

This is so true of Mary, that she is like a door way to some huge , rich and beautiful Palace. The more you get to know her the more in awe and the more and deeper our love.

This Prophecy from St Louis jumped out at me as it is reserved for our own days. It is very reassuring.

'But the power of Mary over all the devils will especially break out in the latter times, when Satan will lay his snares against her heel; that is to say, her humble slaves and her poor children, whom she will raise up to make war against him. They shall be little and poor in the world’s esteem, and abased before all, like the heel, trodden underfoot and persecuted as the heel is by the other members of the body. But in return for this, they shall be rich in the grace of God, which Mary shall distribute to them abundantly. They shall be great and exalted before God in sanctity, superior to all other creatures by their animated zeal, and leaning so strongly on the divine succour, that, with the humility of their heel, in union with Mary, they shall crush the head of the devil, and cause Jesus Christ to triumph.'

 

So these are the Signs of the Times of which the saint speaks. You can tick of the boxes to see if they do indeed refer to our own times.

1. It will be the time of the greatest evil in the history of the world, when Satan comes right out in the open with his evil. He no longer hides it.

2. It shall be a time of Great Persecution.

3. The Catholic Faith will be everywhere despised.

4. Amongst the Church , God will raise up the greatest Saints she has ever given birth too.

5. They shall lead the Church into the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart.

 

I see the Holy Father has declared three new titles tot he Litany of Mary. He does indeed appear to have a strong devotion to her, which is wonderful. It's lovely to have something positive to say about him.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...holic-litany-of-the-blessed-virgin-mary-23190

Pope Francis adds three titles to Catholic litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary



Vatican City, Jun 20, 2020 / 05:04 am MT (CNA).- Pope Francis has approved the inclusion of three additional invocations in the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also called the Litany of Loreto.

In a June 20 letter to the presidents of bishops’ conferences, Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for the Divine Liturgy and the Discipline of the Sacraments, said the invocations “Mater misericordiae,” “Mater spei,” and “Solacium migrantium” should be inserted in the Marian litany.

“The titles and invocations which Christian piety has reserved for the Virgin Mary over the course of the centuries, as the privileged and sure way to an encounter with Christ, are innumerable,” Sarah wrote.

“Even in this present moment which is marked by feelings of uncertainty and trepidation, devout recourse to her, which is full of affection and trust, is deeply felt by the People of God,” the cardinal continued.

Sarah said Pope Francis welcomed people’s desire to include these invocations in the formulary of the litany.

The Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also known as the Litany of Loreto, has been an approved prayer for the intercession of Mary by the Church since the late 16th century, with its usage recorded even prior.

It consists of the recitation of formal and informal titles of Mary, followed by the request to Mary to “pray for us.”

The litany can be prayed in Latin or the vernacular.

In his letter, Cardinal Sarah noted where each invocation should be added, using the Latin formulations. “Mater misericordiae,” which means, “Mother of mercy,” should be placed after “Mater Ecclesiae.”

“Mater spei,” which means “Mother of hope,” should follow “Mater divinae gratiae,” and “Solacium migrantium,” which means “Comfort of migrants,” should follow “Refugium peccatorum.”

“With every good wish and kind regard, we wish to entrust this notification to you for your information and application,” Sarah wrote to the bishops’ conferences. The letter is dated June 20, the day the Church celebrates the memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Sarah said “the Church which walks along the pathways of history as a pilgrim towards the heavenly Jerusalem and enjoys inseparable communion with Christ her Spouse and Saviour, entrusts herself to her who believed in the word of the Lord.”

“We know from the Gospel that the disciples of Jesus had in fact learned from the very beginning to praise her as ‘blessed amongst women’ and to count on her maternal intercession,” he wrote.