Jerome was an intelligent young boy. Even at age twelve, he was known for his diligence in his studies of languages and spent incredible amount of hours studying Cicero and Virgil which were written in Latin. After his conversion to the Catholic Christian Faith, he had a dream that was a turning point in his life: He saw Jesus who approached him and asked: "Who are you?" Jerome in his dream answered: "I am a Christian!" Jesus said he was not a "Christian" but a "Ciceronian". You have spent much more time with Cicero than with My Word!" He awoke and realized what Jesus said was absolutely true. He began to throw himself into the study of the Word of God.
His reputation grew both in his great academic abilities and his devotion to Christ. He became a priest. He eventually became well known for his mastery of Greek, Hebrew and Latin. Latin was the language of the common people in those days. It was the universal language of the people. Pope Damasene, hearing of Jerome's gift for languages called him in for an audience. There Jerome received the Papal commission to translate the whole Bible from Greek to Latin and from Hebrew to Latin. He put into one book all the 72 books of Holy Scripure. He gave this compiled 72 book into one volume the "Bible". This universal name for the Holy Word of God came from this one little man of a great intellect, holiness, devotion and faith. The Pope must have been inspired to give this great task to Jerome. The finished work of Jerome is the Biblical masterpiece for all ages.
How close was Jerome in his translation? Did he even slightly change to meaning while translating since these books written in Greek and Hebrew reflect the idiom and culture of their day, not his day. Well, here is a tiny sample of how close he was. When the Angel Gabriel greeted Mary, he called her "full of grace". Well, the Greek word for the Angel's pharse was "Karotopekne" (needs Greek letters; but I am using phonectic spelling). The exact meaning of the Greek word is "fully graced" Jerome translated that phrase into Latin as "gratia plena" which means "full of grace". From "fully graced" to "full of grace" is as close as possible given the languages' own idiom and culture. If we randomly take this one example that shows most exact meaning of the Greek into the meaning of Latin, then we can see how scrupulous and maticulous Jerome was in doing this task.
How long did it take to write the whole Bible from the Hebrew and the Greek? 30 years! This was Jerome's daily task for 30 years. That is about 87,000 hours of work. 30 years usually is the length of our present day career. I worked for Ford Engineering for 34 years; so I know from experience what a task that would be. I never worked on one task all those years. This means that Jerome never had the satisfaction of a job well done until after the 30 years were completed. That took a lot of prayer and steady work and belief that it all could be done in his own life time. The Pope probably did not even see its completion. Pope John Paul II's papacy was the second longest in Church history, and that was less than 30 years. So Pope Damasene probably did not see the final work. But for sure the Pope saw installments of the work.
Jerome was so familiar with the Sacred Scripture that he had the whole New Testament memorized. We all have some of Scripture memorized. If I had to write every word I knew from the Bible and was given a nickle for every word that was in perfect order and words, I may end up with $15 dollars. What would you end up with? Well, Jerome would end up with a $100,000 dollars.
There have been two Magisterial documents written specifically about the importance of the Sacred Scriptures: "Dei Verbum" - a Vatican II document and "Verbum Domini" - encyclical Pope Benedict XVI.
"Dei Verbum" - literally means "The Word of God".
Here Vatican II emphasized the importance of our being acquainted with the Holy Word of God as it will "instruct us in the way of Salvation." He wrote that all Scripture was Divinely revealed and that all the writers of the Scriptures were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write only what the Holy Spirit wanted, no more or less. This inspiration of the Holy Word of God did not mean that God dictated each word. God let the writers to use their own style and skills but guided those to write what the Holy Spirit wanted, no more or less. This guidance also extended to the translaters such as Jerome. So Jerome could not have translated the whole Bible without direct inpiration from the Holy Spirit. Even the Pope who asked Jerome to do this task was inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit not only guides in the very task, He gives the very idea to do the task in the first place. Jerome was even mentioned in the Encyclical by Pope John Paul II and gave a quote from Jerome, himself: "Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ."
"Verbum Domini" - literally means "The Word of the Lord".
Today is the one-year anniversary of this Letter written by Pope Benedict XVI. This grew out of a Synod of Bishops to study the role of Holy Scripture in the Life an Mission of the Chruch. The Pope's theme, therefore, was the Word of God in the life of the Church and mission of the Church. This was discussed in the Synod of Bishops who set forth in a document all their their fidings. It emphasizies the role of the Holy Spirit. All Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit for correction, teaching for righteousness. This work reflected the idea of Jerome who said: "How can we live without knowldge of Scripture? But the most important idea of Pope Benedict XVI was his emphasis on the interpretation of Holy Scripture. It cannot be interpreted by the individual which would be open to error and personal interpretation. All interpretation must be in harmony with the Magisterium and the whole Catholilc Church. The letter goes on to say: "The Ordinary way that God speaks to us is in Holy Scripture.
Coming back to Jerome, let us see how his whole life turned out: He became a holy priest, a great scholar and was named a Doctor of the Church. He was canonized a Saint (a ST. is better than a Ph.D.). His Feast day is honored every year on September 30. He lived from the year 347 AD to 413 AD. Since he completed his great translation of the Bible, there has not been one Christian generation that has not been directly enfluenced and touched by his work which has contributed to the lives of the saints and the very life of the Church and the Holiness of the faithful.
In today's Gospel for the Feast of St. Jerome, Jesus emphasizes the virtue of true "listening". He points out that Corosan and Bethsida both would go down to the "Netherworld" because they did not listen to the Word of God which was sent to them. They heard the Word of God but did not really listen to it. What is the result? Both of these towns do not exist. If you go to the Holy Land, you will find the City of Cana and Bethlehem; but you will not find Corozan and Bethsida. Why? They did not listen. The Latin uses two words that will help us to understand better: "Audire" means "To hear". Obaudire" means "to listen and obey." [Those Latin words contrasting the meaning of hearing and listening were given by Fr. Doug at his school Mass this morning. Here also is an example given by Fr. Doug.] There was a man who went to get his hearing examined by a good doctor. The doctor held up his gold watch on a chain and said: "Can you hear that ticking?" "Yes," said the man. The doctor then moved to the end of the room and again ask ed the same question. The man concentrated and strained by said he could hear it. The doctor went out of the room into the next room but could be seen through the doorway. The doctor then asked, "Can you hear it ticking?" The man really strained, and the house became dead silent. The man said, "Yes, I think I can just hear it." The doctor came back into his own office and said: "There is nothing wrong with your hearing only with your listening." This was to show that if the man could not hear well before coming to here it was due not to his hearing but his not listening for what he needed to hear." Fr. Doug gave one more example: a naturalist was talking to his friend on a busy street. The naturalist said: "Can you hear a cricket?" The friend said he could not and that no one could. But the naturalist bent down and pick up a stone and showed a cricket that was hiding under it. The friend could not hear the cricket because he was not listening for a cricket. But if someone threw down a handful of coins - money - his friend could hear that. We listen to what is important to us. When Jesus gave the Word of God to Corozan and Bethsida, they heard (Audire) but did listen (Obaudire) with obedience.
Let us look at a few errors and additions to the Word of God and how those totally changed the meaning of which the Holy Spirit intended. 1) The first is from the theology of the Jehovah Witnesses: The Catholic Bible reads as follows regarding John's Gospel:
"In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God; and the Word became flesh and dwelled amongs us."
The Jehoval Witnesses' Bible reads as follows regarding the same passage of John:
"In the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was a god; and the word became flesh and dwelled amongs us."
Let us examin the above passage as written in the Jehovah Witnesses' Bible. First of all, there is no article "a" in the Greek nor in the Latin. The article "a" above is an absolute addition to the Word of God. Secondly the term "a god" makes Jesus into a creature like the angels who are called "gods" in some translations. The Word of God in the Jehovah Witnesses' Bible is not God. Yet John expresses the Word as being eternal with God and is God. When I asked once why this was so from a Jehovah Witness, he said that the Word was not God but only "a god" because Jesus said: "The Father is greater than I." Yet the Catholic Chruch's teaching is that the Word of God is eternal with God the Father and the Holy Spirit. They are all co-equal. It takes the Holy Spirit - in Communion with the Church - to know what Jesus meant when He said: "The Father is greater than I." The Father is greater than Jesus' human nature; but this human nature is hypostatically joined to the Word of God who is God. Jesus therefore is a God-man. The Father is greater than Jesus'manhood. Yet Jesus is the only Son of God. There are not two Sons of God. The Word and the human nature of Jesus are joind as one. Therefore, it is an error to interpret Scripture as saying that Jesus is "a god" thus stripping Him of His Divinity. The Jehovah Witnesses are a living memorial to the Arian Heresy: Arian was a priest who taught very persuasively that Jesus was not co-eternal with the Father and was only an exalter creature. In a very recent Watch Tower Magazine, the Jehovah Witness' theology says that the Trinity makes God non-relatable by the faithful and incomprehensible. They quote from the Athanasian Creed that says: "The Father, Incomprehensible, the Son, incompreshensible and the Holy Spirit, Incomprehensible." Yes, God is a absolute Mystery; but we can relate to God as God our Our Father and Creator, to Jesus our God, our Brother and Redeemer, and to the Holy Spirit, the God who sanctifies us. All these three Persons in One God are mention in the Gospels when Jesus was being baptized by John: Jesus was there. The Father's Voice came saying: "This is My Beloved Son in whom I am well Pleased. Listen to Him." Also the Holy Spirit was there in the form of a Dove. Thus the Trinity was manifested - three Divine Persons in the One God. All are co-eternal with God. So, when the Jehovah Witnesses make Jesus to be "a god", they take away His Divinity and co-eternality with God and thus adhear to the doctrine taught by the priest Arian whose doctrines were condemned by the Church. And it is very odd that the Jehovah Witnesses would quote Athanasius to suppor their belief that the Trinity is "incomprehensible" as to mean synonimous with "irrelatable" because it was St. Athanisius who fought against the Arian Heresy and prevailed against it. But the Jehovah Witnesses are unwittingly resurrecting the Arian Heresy and teaching it today as their own dogma. This is what happens when interpretation of Holy Scripture is divorced from the Catholic Church, its Magisterium and the Community of all the Faithful. And Scripture, Itself, warns: "Woe be to him who adds or substracts from Scripture. Adding "a" before God and changing "God" to "god" in John's Gospel is truly a changing of Holy Scripture to say whay they hold in their beliefs and to reinforce their own beliefs that are heretical. They are very good and kind people and love God; but they have dethroned Jesus Christ to a creature. That negates the redemption of all human kind because only Jesus who is both God and man can redeem the Human race. If He is "a god", he cannot redeem anyone. Sin is an infinite offense against God. Only God can atone for sin. Once Jesus has died for our sins, then we can also do penance by joining our sufferings to Jesus' sufferings. But if Jesus - God and man - did not die first for us on the cross, then all the suffering we would have in this world would not buy our way into Heaven. Only Jesus can unlock the gates to Heaven that were closed until the second He died for us. Then the flood gates were open as His Precious Blood washed away all my sins and your sins. Now we can stand before the Father with our robes made white in the Blood of the Lamb. So, no man can redeem the Human race. Only the God -man, Jesus can. I invite all Jehovah Witnesses to come home to the Catholic Church because Jesus said: "Not those who say, Lord, Lord', but only those who do the will of the Father will enter into the Kingdom of God."
Some Lutherans believe in "Sola Scripture" which means that the whole deposit of Faith is in God's Word alone - no traditon. And that not in good works does our salvation depend. But rather in Faith alone. But no where in the Bible does the Word say either of those things. St. Paul expressively and precisely says to hold on to the traditions handed down from the apostles and from his own teachings. One of those traditions is the "breaking of the bread" which Paul calls the "Body and Blood of the Lord." The interpretation of many Protestants is that Jesus' word at the last supper where only figurative/symbolic - as when Jesus said: "I am the door." But because of this false interpretation, the Holy Eucharist has been eliminated and made to be a mere memorial for millions of Christians. The Catholic Chruch's teaching is clear: The Holy Eucharist is both its symbolic/memorial aspects but most importantly it is the Absolute and Very Body and Blood Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ! St. Paul was very much aware of this Catholic interpretation. (St. Paul was the first to call the Church "catolicis" - "universal".) St. Paul said "Is not this a sharing in the body of the Lord?" "Is not this cup a sharing in the Blood of the Lord?" Now here is the most powerful passage of St. Paul that shows his own total belief in the Eucharist: "Any one who eats and drinks this unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord and eats and drinks damnation to himself." How could that interpetation of St. Paul be true if it were a mere symbol or figurative? It could only be true if the Eucharist is the very Body and Blood of the Lord.
Also, as regard the not by works but only by Faith is our salvation made sure, there is only one place in the Bible that places these two words - "faith" and "alone" - together. It is this Scripture: "Not by faith alone."
Also Jesus Himself says it all with these word: "As long as you did it for the least of my brethren, you did it to me."........."As long as you neglected to do it for the least of my brethren, you neglected to do it to me." Jesus said that those who will enter the Kingdom are those who clothed the naked, fed the hungry, visited the sick and the imprisoned. Whereas those who go to hell are those who did not do these basic acts of charity to the least of His people. Jesus identifies Himself with His brethren. Jesus is reinforcing the Scripture: "Faith without works in dead."
I believe that al our works follow us into paradise. I believe that all the love we have given or received as coming from God will all follow us into paradise. Jacques Maritain says that in heaven we will have subjective memory. On this earth we have objective memory - a recalling of events. But subjective memory is actually re-experiencing those loving memories. Thus all the true love we have given to others and have received from others will follow us into paradise. In Scripture, Mary is said to have "pondered all these things in her heart." But in heaven she will fully experience and know those mysteries subjectively. So when Mary recalls the Birth of Jesus, it is more than a recalling, it is an immediate re-experiencing that mystery in her heart.
The Church of the Latter Day Saints have not only added a word to Scripture; they have added a whole book of Morman as Divinely revealed and equal to Holy Scriture. It is not impossible that Jesus visited the Americas; but no Evangelist wrote about it under the direct influence and guidance of the Holy Spirit. There have been no Scriptures after the Book of Revelation by St. John. The book of Morman is a pious reading but not the Word of God. The beliefs in the Morman Church are based upon the divinely revealed sayings of the supreme Prophet. One such pronounced meant that has the honor of being divinely inspired is this one spoken by the supreme Prophet as if heard from God and God is speaking to the Prophet: "As you are I was; and as I am so you shall become." This is a total misunderstanding of the narture of God the Father. It is possible for God the Father to become incarnate; but He did not do so because in His plan for our salvation, He willed that the Word of God should become incarnate. But in this saying above, God is saying that before He became God, He was a man. That is philosophically and theologically an impossibility. A finite creature cannot ever become God. Why? Because God was totally and supremely actualized as God from all eternity. If He were to have begun as a human, he would have had a limitation and not eternal. God has been fully God from all eternity. Even if God the Father could become incarnate as a man if He wished, He could never have started out as a non-divine man. Human nature is finite, limited, and not existing from eternity. So, if the Morman Church can believe that God was once a man and that we as men can become God, then our minds will reject that as irrational and impossible.
Additionally, the Morman Church says that in the New Testament there is proof that the "holy priesthood" was lost. and had to re-established. This is their interpretation of Holy Scripture. But if the priesthood had been lost and therefore the loss of apostolic succession with it, then for the last 2000 years, there has been no valid Eucharist ever celebrated. I politely asked a Morman which scriptures were used to prove that the priesthood had been lost. They would not tell me. I asked serveral times. They only said that there were passages in the Bible that said that. They believe that they have re-established the holy priesthood. Only a truly ordained Bishop with apostolic succession could re-establish the priesthood if it ever could be lost. The Holy Spirit inspired the evangelist to write these words down of Jesus regarding His Church: "Thou are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." If the priesthood were to become lost, then the gates of hell would have prevailed! The gates of heel have never been able to eliminate the Holy Priesthood and the Eucharist. But the Morman Chruch says it is the true Church founded by Jesus Christ. Well, we have a problem here. When Jesus said "I will build My Church", He did not say, "Churches". He put it in the singular not the plural. The Morman Church was founded by Joseph Smith who was died not in the best circumstances. This would mean that the true Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints is less than a hundred years old. How can that be? The Holy Catholic Church has been around since Jesus established it while He was alive.
Muslims - which means "one who submits to God" - in all respect - are very devout; and we can learn from them how to pray five times a day and to submit ourselves to God. I and my son prayed with them in the mosque and say how devout they are even the five-year olds as we all bowed down to "Allah" - whom we call "Abba". Their women dress according to the dress of "Maryam" - "Mary". They believe that Jesus - Isa - was conceived in Mary's womb by God and not by any man. They love Jesus very much and await Jesus' coming on the clouds at the last judgment at the end of the world.
But all that being said, let us look at what the Koran - Qu'an - says. Mohammed dictated this whole book about the year 550 years after Christ to his servant who took down faithfully every word that the humble prophet Mohammed said. I say "humble" because he was humble and called God "God" and he was only his prophet: God's mouth peice. The whole Koran is beautiful. There are only two theological problems: Even though Muslims do accept the Old and New Testaments as the Word of God, as Divinely inspired, there is here a problem: The Koran says that Jesus did not die on the cross or was resurrected not needed to die on the cross to atone for sin because they do not believe in original sin. God would not let his son die such a cruel death on the cross. The Koran say that another man who looked like Jesus took His place. On the third day, Jesus kept His word and appeared and God raised Jesus - Isa - into heaven as in the "Ascension" of Jesus - the Masih ( Messiah) into heaven. He will return at the last judgment to restore justice amd defeat the Anti-Christ, Masih ad Dakka; (false messiah). But the New Testament says in all four Gospels and in the Letters of St. Paul as well as in the Old Testament in Isaiah and the Psalms of David that the Messiah would suffer and die. The whole Old and Old Testaments cannot be wrong. The New Testament, therefore, testifies that Jesus is the Son of God, a fully Divine Being, the Son of God. Islam does not believe that Jesus was God incarnate, nor crucified, not resurrected, nor needed to atone for the sins of mankind. But they do love Isa, Jesus, as the last prophet of Israel, to bring his people to God. Christians believe that Jesus was sent not only to Israel but to all the people, the Gentiles and even appointed St. Paul to be his instrument to bring the Gentiles to true belief in God and salvation in Jesus. These views are therefore mutually exclusive. From simple logic and theology, the Holy Spirit cannot be the Author of two diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive truths. Opposite views cannot be at the same time true. Both cannot be Divinely inspired. St. Jerome - who lived before the Koran was written - can still speak to this issue by his exact translations from the Hebrew and Greek that convey the true meaning of Holy Scripture. But with loving dialogue, Jesus wants us to love our Muslims brothers and sisters since they love the One True God, Allah Who is the same God we love and worship. We are all children of Abraham. Amen.
For Jerome not only read the Word of God, he listened to God who spoke to him in the Scriptures. When Catholics are sometimes chided for focusing on the Sacraments and the Saints, the truth is that the Catholic Church put the first Bible together. All Protestant texts came from the hands of Jerome, a Catholic priest and saint. Catholic do read the Word. Especially do they hear to Mass daily with readings from the Old Testament, Psalms and the Gospels. There is a three-year cycle in these readings to accomplish reading of the whole Bible in those three years. Do the non-Catholics read the whole Bible in a prayerful setting every three years? Let them come home to the Catholic Church and enjoy the fullness of the Word of God. They already do love the Word of God; so let them "come home" to the one true Church founded by Jesus upon the rock of Peter where the Word of God is loved, honored. I once heard a Catholic Priest, Fr. Joe, say this: "The Word of God is God!" We can ponder that for a life time.
Let us pray:
Father, thank you for talking to Your children of all ages by giving us Your Love-Letters: Your Word. Help us to read them as Love-Leters from You that are full of wisdom, direction, devotion that only a Daddy would write to His kids.
Bless us, Father, with the Spirit of Understanding as we read the Holy Scriptures. Grant that the whole Christian Body of believers be in harmony with the whole the Catholic Church and its Magisterium so that no one will take it upon himself or herself to preach their own interpretation apart from the Christian Community.
Forgive those who have added or subtracted from the Bible and gently instruct them of their errors; for it is written in Your Word: "Woe to those who add or subtract from the Word of God." Only in Communion with the Catholic Church can these errors be seen and corrected.
Give us the Holy Spirit in reading the Word so that we can understand the meaning that You intended. You have given the Holy Spirit to those who wrote Your Word; now please give us the Spirit of God to let the Word penetrate our whole being and bring us closer to Your Son, Jesus Christ.
Please send us Your Holy Spirit to unite all the People of God: Jews, Muslims and Christians - into one Body of Christ. Let us see each others as "Children of Abraham" - and therefore brothers and sisters with each other - since Jesus prayed: "Father, that they may be one; just as You and I are one; that they may be one in us." Father, please answer Your Son's prayer in our day.
Father, let us be rewarded for out love for Your Word by one day seeing the Word of God, face to face.
All this we ask in Jesus Name. Amen.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Pio's Proverb 122: Expansion of Your Mind and Love - Eternally!
To begin to achieve infinite expansion of your mind, start right now by believing in your heart:
"Every moment of life is to be fully enjoyed, celebrated, relished
because each one is willed by God who willed you into existence
and gave you each moment in order to know Him and reach Him now -
in this moment - and in each eternal moment with Him."
If you have not read that before, it is because I just was just now inspired to write it - just for you. After you have pondered that quote and how it applies to your life right now, let us go further: Our minds are created to be expanded infinitely. We will never become infinite in our being but our minds - made in the image and likeness of God - will continue grow - in the capacity of our mind and love - to be expanded by God eternally because He is infinite loveable and eternal.
How will God do this?:
1) First understand that from your conception, your mind/soul began to grow in its capacity to know and love - began developing and expanding - even to this precise moment. You can remember part of this expansion from Kintergarted to High School Graduation, perhaps from college and then the university. But you learned so much from watching your parents and siblings and your teachers..not only in what they told you but by they way they lived their values and handed down their wisdom. My mom was the wisest person I ever met. She only went to the 4th grade, but no doctor, counselor, clergyman could ever surpass her because the wisdom she had was from the Holy Spirit. It was so inspired that even my own brother said: "Mom was never wrong!" Precisely my feelings. She died the way she lived: after receiving three Sacraments of the Church, she was saying the rosary and finishing her last "Hail Mary", took two small breaths and never exhaled. She exhaled in heaven. I watched and experienced her very last moment that God gave her and in which He called her hom. Yes, she was very wise. All the love experiences of her life expanded her mind and soul and made her ready for heaven.
2) When we get to heaven, that's when the expansion of our minds and souls really begin. Here's how:
Now that we are not encombered by our limited human understanding, God can expand our knowledge and love for Him - which is not for His sake - but rather for ours. He does enjoy us expanding our mind and capacity to love Him; but the axiom: "Bonum est diffusivum sui" - "Goodness tends to go out of itself"
is not a static concept but a dynamic one: God will for all eternity do this for you and me:
a) He will reveal to us something we never ever imagined about Himself as we look upon His face in the Beatific Vision. This revelation will so awe us as to make us cry out with astonishment and wonder. We will so well up in the expansion of our minds ans souls as to be totally moved to love God in graitude that we never dreamed was in us. God will let us totally "enjoy, celebrate and relish" this heavenly moment. After having let this revelation expand us further by letting our hearts grow in love for God, then He will do something unexpected:
b) He will give us another revelation of his Being, His Beauty and His Love! But this time it will be predicated on our new capacity to know and love Him. This second revelation will be greater than the first. We will be as they say "blown away" - actually so awed as to almost die of love except in heaven, Love is Life.
c) But this kind of knowledge, if given on earth. would cause a person to die. Even Moses was only able to look at the Back of God lest he die. I have had a "Moses-experience" 15 years ago after attending Mass at Sacred Heart in Dearborn. I was walking in the woods and whimsically telling God: "Father, I see You in the sky and clouds, in the flowers and trees, and can hear You in the running brook and sound of the trees in the wind." Then I heard - still having the Blessed Sacrament/Holy Communion viably in me - the Father emotionally responding to my simple sincere childlike words to Him said to me in an eternal voice that had an echo that echoed down the ages of eternity: "You belong to Me!", I was so awed that I waited for a time thinking that God would take me home and that God was indeen calling me home to Himself. But God was only letting me know that I was His child and that all I have came from Him: body, soul, talents work, parents, siblings, all the love I have given and recieved -- All came from Him. I was denuded and shown that every speck of my being and life belonged to Him! I truly waited to die because infused contemplation by Him was the greatest spiritual experience I ever had until then or after then. I have never experienced God like that ever again. But the memory of that experience erased my Faith. I no longer had to believe. I know God and His love for me. He is more awesome than I could put into words to you. But after waiting and realizing that God was not taking me home with that incredible utterance to me through His Spirit yet coming absolutely from the Heart of God the Father, I then told God with a little comic relief: "Well, Father, if I belong to You that much, then that means You belong to me, too." God had given me as much as my soul could take - just short of His possessive eternal love causing me to die. He was not looking at my soul just at the moment. He has a total knowledge of ALL that I will ever say to Him - the sum total of all my love - the sum total of all I will ever say to Him or be for Him --throughtout all eternity. He thinks eternally in the eternal moment and in the sum total of eternity because He has experienced eternity. There never was a moment that God did not exist! That eternal Self kind of colors His conversations with us...as He addresses not only who we are at this precise moment; but rather He addresses our full total and actualized self - into eternity with Him.
d) For some on this earth, their minds and souls will be so expanded as to be able to bi-locate. This phenomen of being in two places at the same time may be only a natural result of the expansion of their souls. For example: Padre Pio was able to be in his little town of Petrocina and be in Rome at the same exact moment. Many saints could do this. Padre Pio was [according to Joseph Cusamano] so focused on God as to let the Mind of God's pattern of thinking become his own. Padre Pio was so one with Christ as to have the life of Christ living in him. "Christ shared everything," says Joseph. I agree. Padre Pio's mind was so expanded - so focused on God - that he allowed God to take over his whole life, every moment of his life. He died as he kept repeating the names of "Jesus" and "Mary". If we could live like Padre Pio in our own calling and state of life - we would be able to bi-locate, walk on water or go through walls - because Jesus was able to do things. Jesus multiplies His Presence even now - not merely bi-locate - but be "Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in billions of places at the same time. Even Peter for a time was able to walk on water. This power to walk on water is not supernatural or miraculous. Peter could do it as long as he fully focused on Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit who expands our minds and souls to perform what our bodies can naturally do as long as we are totally supernaturally focused on God.
3) After in heaven when we have had our first two mind-heart expansions resulting from our experiencing God in His new revelations of Himself to each of us, He will give us His third glorious revelation of Himself! This time He has more to work with in us. He can now reveal something that He could not at first because we did not have the capacity to take it in. But after His having expanded our minds and souls to this new level of our being, He will again totally surprise us with His third revelation that will so awe us as to make out love for God soar beyond expression here on earth. God is doing something with great preciseness and plan according to the capacity of each of us. People like Padre Pio have an enormous capacity and headstart on us. But God will be expanding each of our minds and souls according to each one's capacity and response to His Love.
4) Heaven is not a static of boring place. Heaven is so awesome - so dynamic - so interesting - so joyful - so loving - so exciting - so beyond the imagination of mankind - so dynamically social in that as all of us are growing in our knowledge and love for God, we all will become that much more close to each other because we all will be becoming more beautiful in our souls. As loving parents delight in the developement of their children and are surprised by their phenominal growth and beauty, so too will this occur in Heaven. We will all be growing in mind and soul, in our capacity to know and love God and in our capacity to know and love one another. There will be a ever increasing cresendo of love for God and each other. We will all in Heaven enjoy the most dynamic society beyond any utopia ever dreamed of before. And this utopia is expanding not only by new souls coming into heaven - prehaps about 350,000 a day - but by the total upward expansion of our Love for God. Our minds will be ever more be expanded expodentially as God keeps revealing Hiimself for ever. He will continue to expand our minds - eternally!
5) As each new revelation and awesomeness of God which will expand out minds' and souls' capacity to know and love God - each revelation even being greater and greater - because God can freely reveal Himself as our capacity grows and as He actually grows our capacity. How long can God keep up the Divine Crescendo? He can and will keep it up for all eternity. Will not God run our of content of Himself to reveal? No! God's Being is Infinite. For all eternity He can reveals Himself to you and to me without ever being able to exhaust His Being or Capacity to reveal Himself. Why? Because knowing God for us will be an glorious eternal enterprize of Knowing and Loving God. What will be the state of all of us millions of millenia into eternity? Two simple words in Greek - put together - express this state well. The words are "en" - meanning "within/being caught up into" plus the second Greek word, "Theos" meaning "God". Thus we have the English word: "Enthusiasm" which really and etymologically means: "To be caught up into God." We will never be God even if He reveals so much of Himself that we will be so holy and full of love for God. No...the only One who knows God is God. Only God has the capacity to know Himself. The family life of the inner Trinity of the Three Divine Persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - infinitely know and love each other and are infinitely "caught up" in their Being. There is a Latin axiom: "Erit Unus Christus Semetipsum amans." which means: "There shall be One Christ loving Himself" - which is the goal of all the Church as we the Body of Christ are caught up in Him. But we can expand this quote to read: Erit Unus Theos Semetipsum Amans" - "There shall be One God loving Himself"; and He will take us all into the inner life of the Holy Trinity because the Father will recognize His Son - the Word of God made flesh - in all of us. We will with Christ enjoy the inner Family of God according to the capacity of each our minds and souls which God the Father will be ever expanding for all eternity.
6) The end result of the Redemption of the whole human race --- from the beginning of time to the end of time - when all humans who loved God are in Heaven - those who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior and have let the Cruifixion and Death of Jesus wash away all their sins by true repentance and belief and trust in Him ---will be a greater glory for God and of us in Him than if Adam and Eve never sinned in the first place. Why? Because "Where sin abounds, grace abounds more." The most fantastic Infinite Creativity of God is so wondrous that God can bring out a more beautiful result in us and in the Kingdom of God - in the total Economy of God - His Kingdom Come - than if Adam and Eve had never fallen. St. Paul said not to let this be an excuse for sin. It means that God is a God of Love. Love not only forgives: Love repairs and beautifies the Beloved - us - His Bride the Church - as to make it without spot or wrinkle. And in so doing, Jesus shows His tenderness and husbandly love to dry every tear from our eyes. From His wounded side - symbol of His wounded Sacred Heart - Jesus does a marvelous thing: all the confessed and forgiven sins we have given to Him - He uses for our good. Even on earth, this is so. We have seen it in the murderous Saul being transformed into a Saint Paul - greatest traveling apostle for Jesus - who wrote the most beautiful applications of the Gospel of Jesus in the early life of the Church. His letters spoon fed the children of God to nourish and give them life. He went from the killing of St. Stephen to giving life and nourishment - the Eucharist and the Word of God - all the new found churches in Rome and Corinth and many Christian Communities. He was like a Father to all of them...fed them, corrected them, encouraged them and died for them in giving his life in giving them the Gospel no matter the danger or peril or sacrifice. Had Saul not accepted Jesus, we would never have known he ever existed except the one line that "they laid their cloaks at the feet of Saul" Other than that line, we would never have known him. But Jesus - creative Word of God who walked this planet - changed Saul into Paul. And Jesus does this every day for you and me. And we will one day be Jesus' Bride in heaven. As far as we belong to Jesus - knowing and loving Him now as a member of His Church - which is His Bride - to that extent will we enjoy the intimacy with Him in paradise. The whole Divine Romance begins here.
7) In Heaven there is only one non-divine being that enjoys an intimacy with God that even our eternity of growing in capacity and love God will not ever equal. Our etenal growth in Knowledge and Love for God
will never catch up to the one who is God's greatest non-divine human being: She is Mary. Her capacity to know and love God was at her Immaculate Conception greater than all in heaven and on earth put together even with their eternal growth. No one will ever equal Mary. No angel or saint have or will be as holy as she who had the Trinity dwelling in her for 9 months. Jesus - even as a growing Divine Fetus - was the Word totally united to the Father and the Son. Mary was the tabernacle of God. How pure must she be? It is God who has taken us residence in her. She is a mystery. That is why we say the joyful and glorious mysteries of the Rosary: we are trying to take in the mystery of Mary.
Additonally, Mary who has been - in earth time calculations - in heaven for 2000 years and all this time has been growing in her capacity to know and love God, where is she in her "Enthusiam" for God?
How much has she been "caught into God"? How much has her heart been expanded when already was expanded so much earth which made her exclaim: "My soul magnifies the Lord; my sous rejoices in the Lord.." We now understand those words in a much greater depth: the word "magnifies" or "reflects" the glory of the Lord - how much does she do this even now? Has she not taken on the likeness of God into her very being? How much does her soul "rejoice" in the Lord? To know this, we would have to be her. As we cannot imagine the depth of God's Being unless we were God, so, too, we cannot imagine the depth of Mary's being - her holiness, beauty and humility - unless we had the capacity and holiness of Mary. We will never know Mary's beauty fully. Only God has access to her soul. The children of Fatima and Bernadette and St. Therese - all - were mesmorized the by the beauty of Mary. They were enamored of her. They in tears told others of her beauty. If they love her, how much will love her in heaven? She - a tender mom - is so great - as to be Queen of Heaven and earth: Queen of all hearts. All will love her for all eternity - especially knowing that her capacity to know and love God will be growing expodentially beyond any telling.
We speak of devotion to Mary. It is Mary who is devoted totally to us. Devotion mean "love". We also - as we grow in love for God for all eternity - will also grow in our love and devotion for Mary because her beauty will continue to grow for all eternity. We will see the Immaculate Conception grow more and more beautiful.
Will not Heaven be a Glorious Place!!
Mary, our Mother, help us to be faithful to Jesus so we can join you in Heaven. You found Jesus after looking for him for three days. Please keep looking for us when we get lost which is often. Help us to be found in Confession and Eucharist. Don't abandon us when we get so busy about our business and do not see your or your Son's business. Help us to be like Jesus who said: "I must be about My Father's busines."
Mom, make us as beautiful in our souls as you are so we can in our little way "Magnify for Lord" and "Rejoice" in Him. Mom, as you took Jesus home after those three days of looking for him, please help us and safely bring us home to Heaven: to you and Jesus and His Father. Thank you, Mary, for all your devotion to us: for bringing to Confession and Holy Communion so often We give you all....even our sins...we give you all our hopes and.desires, dreams and souls. All the saints in heaven got there because of you. Your greatest work and greatest joy is creating Saints for Heaven. You did it for Juan Diego, for Bernadette, for Maximillian Kolbe, for Therese of Lisieux. Mom, you are a great artist. You create Saints and make them beautiful for God. What a neat hobby you have: making saints. Please make me a saint too.
I give you all your childen on this earth. Make us all saints..because you are our Mom!
Love, Pio
Comments by Benjamin Bourlier - 24 year old musician, composer and philosopher - who just read this blog on October 3, 2011. His comments are as follows:
"I'm a pianist and composer at UofM -- a poet and "philosopher" privately, if you could call it that -- and was talking to Piotre about 'mystic experience', about what he calls here the 'eternal moment', precisely about the way in which it cannot in any conventional sense be 'talked about', as I see it, but rather with luck signified through some miraculous sympathy of aesthetic representation. Even then, I'm not sure we can be said to have 'talked about' this, but have rather been (or have provided) conduits for an experience in another that we cannot control any more than our original experience. It is selfless, essentially, gorgeously, a moment at once numb and infinitely aware and raw. This is essentially how I conceive of what I'm doing when composing, improvising, writing -- wrestling with mystical experience as it might reveal itself in aesthetic representation, not "symbolically", but directly.
The one experience of mine that's stuck with me all my life as the first memorable moment of total self-awareness -- which is at once a "selfless awareness" -- was at age nine or ten. My mother came home from work much later than I came home from school, and as she hadn't copied the apartment key yet, I would sit on the porch or play in the yard until she got back. This particular day I was still coming down from a cold, too sick to play, so I rested on the steps to wait. It was early spring. I began to meditate on what I might now call 'seasonal transformation', on <the enormity of Spring>, but the truth is though I've tried many times, I'll never be able to adequately express exactly <what> I was meditating on. It was a selfless exchange of environmental affect and sick, involuntary coughs, weezes etc, which revealed the selflessness of seasonal transition, the enormity of history not as human construct but as context, environment. As David Foster Wallace would suggest, as he does in his book "Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity", I was experiencing my first moment of <abstraction>, that which is 'removed from or transcending concrete particularity, sensuous experience', as he says.
But of course it was not <only abstract>, but, as we'd say, mystical. Piotre asked me about my relationship to God, after I mentioned this, and I said delicately that it is something that must remain personal, not as a choice -- I don't, that is, choose to keep it personal, but rather I feel that to try and share it would be to engage the sentential, propositional logic of language, which can't handle such an expression. It is personal because language has limited it thus. Only through deeply conditional, mannered, subversive use of language in poetry can I construct anything approaching a representation, and then it is most likely totally incomprehensible, as such, to just about anyone, given the contract of language that we enter into when we speak -- if we intend to say anything <meaningful>, consistent, generalized. I've been very influenced by Ludwig Wittegenstein for quite a while now, a philosopher I think of as a kind of mystical figure, a very important one. Of course qualifying him as such would seem to contradict his belief that one cannot speak -- that is, speak clearly, meaningfully -- of the mystic, which is true. But neither can one refrain. Wittgenstein, who did not consider himself religious but who approached everything with "a religious attitude", believed his philosophy, once understood, would reveal itself to be meaningless, a ladder used to climb to a ledge that one then kicked away. I am not a "religious" person, I emphatically do not subscribe to any systematic religious authority, because, in a Wittgensteinian sense I see religion as staying clung to the ladder, as it were. A mystic experience is a moment of freedom not in the familiar sense that we are free to act and navigate our experience, not in the religious sense that we may be free of sin or free of doubt or free of fear, but freedom from the very self and egoic sensibility necessary for worldly decision, the freedom of a waking dream; when younger, around five years old, I remember first considering the limits to the universe, what was beyond that conceptual edge, etc, and trying in that state to conceive of how I related at all to my family members, who were the core of my existence -- how could I "find" my mother and father in this vastness? Similarly, to have knowledge of "God the father" in a mystic state does not make sense to me propositionally, as in that state I have lost myself to discrete relations, I've become associatively continuous.
To say that in the mystic state I have made myself open to "God" makes sense to me only subjectively as I understand I have made myself open to something transcendent of egoic limitation, and I understand that culturally the word "God" has come to signify this transcendence, but the statement in no way does justice to the experience. This is very important to me because often when trying to express this it's assumed I'm talking about "atheism", or my lack of belief, when in fact I'm merely saying that I <can't> discuss my private sense of God, not meaningfully. I can say to you now that I have a very intense inner experience of what another person would call God, but, while true to me as I read it back, this is a nonsensical statement linguistically. A religious person may say that "no statement may do justice to the infinite presence of God", and I would say this is essentially true, because I understand subjectively what they mean to say, but I also understand that logistically this statement is nonsensical, because it is essentially a proposition speaking of itself -- Wittgenstein points out that a proposition may not speak of itself. That is, if the statement "no statement may do justice to God" is true, then it must logistically also be false, something we can privately overlook but with regard to language, can't admit as propositionally meaningful. We can see how mystic experience lies outside linguistic means of representation, inasmuch as language has to conform to propositional logic to be "taken seriously", to be "meaningful", and inasmuch as mystic experience appears contradictory put into such terms, private and self-less, individual and universal, explosive and implosive. We have sympathy with such contradictions, but I will never be able to subscribe to a religious system built on language, on hierarchical human systems dependant on expression in language, because such a system will always be contradictory. Now, this has nothing to do with my personal belief, my capacity to know God etc, but with my awareness of the injustice done to mystic experience by assertive, systematic use of language.
And yet, as Wittgenstein didn't refrain from attempting to articulate this in his philosophy, I don't refrain from trying to articulate something of it now, invited to by Piotre, nor should anybody refrain, I don't think, from allowing language to sensitize one's awareness to the "eternal moment". I would have to write a poem to sincerely attempt to answer Piotre's question about my relationship to God -- as I see it, this is in a sense precisely what I've been doing in writing poetry -- but I have no idea what that poem will mean to someone else, and it will appear new to me after having written it. To quote Wittgenstein on this, I take the following from his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:
On that note, I thank Piotre for sharing so openly his beautifully thoughtful blog with me and inviting me to share some of my own experience and thoughts!"
"Every moment of life is to be fully enjoyed, celebrated, relished
because each one is willed by God who willed you into existence
and gave you each moment in order to know Him and reach Him now -
in this moment - and in each eternal moment with Him."
If you have not read that before, it is because I just was just now inspired to write it - just for you. After you have pondered that quote and how it applies to your life right now, let us go further: Our minds are created to be expanded infinitely. We will never become infinite in our being but our minds - made in the image and likeness of God - will continue grow - in the capacity of our mind and love - to be expanded by God eternally because He is infinite loveable and eternal.
How will God do this?:
1) First understand that from your conception, your mind/soul began to grow in its capacity to know and love - began developing and expanding - even to this precise moment. You can remember part of this expansion from Kintergarted to High School Graduation, perhaps from college and then the university. But you learned so much from watching your parents and siblings and your teachers..not only in what they told you but by they way they lived their values and handed down their wisdom. My mom was the wisest person I ever met. She only went to the 4th grade, but no doctor, counselor, clergyman could ever surpass her because the wisdom she had was from the Holy Spirit. It was so inspired that even my own brother said: "Mom was never wrong!" Precisely my feelings. She died the way she lived: after receiving three Sacraments of the Church, she was saying the rosary and finishing her last "Hail Mary", took two small breaths and never exhaled. She exhaled in heaven. I watched and experienced her very last moment that God gave her and in which He called her hom. Yes, she was very wise. All the love experiences of her life expanded her mind and soul and made her ready for heaven.
2) When we get to heaven, that's when the expansion of our minds and souls really begin. Here's how:
Now that we are not encombered by our limited human understanding, God can expand our knowledge and love for Him - which is not for His sake - but rather for ours. He does enjoy us expanding our mind and capacity to love Him; but the axiom: "Bonum est diffusivum sui" - "Goodness tends to go out of itself"
is not a static concept but a dynamic one: God will for all eternity do this for you and me:
a) He will reveal to us something we never ever imagined about Himself as we look upon His face in the Beatific Vision. This revelation will so awe us as to make us cry out with astonishment and wonder. We will so well up in the expansion of our minds ans souls as to be totally moved to love God in graitude that we never dreamed was in us. God will let us totally "enjoy, celebrate and relish" this heavenly moment. After having let this revelation expand us further by letting our hearts grow in love for God, then He will do something unexpected:
b) He will give us another revelation of his Being, His Beauty and His Love! But this time it will be predicated on our new capacity to know and love Him. This second revelation will be greater than the first. We will be as they say "blown away" - actually so awed as to almost die of love except in heaven, Love is Life.
c) But this kind of knowledge, if given on earth. would cause a person to die. Even Moses was only able to look at the Back of God lest he die. I have had a "Moses-experience" 15 years ago after attending Mass at Sacred Heart in Dearborn. I was walking in the woods and whimsically telling God: "Father, I see You in the sky and clouds, in the flowers and trees, and can hear You in the running brook and sound of the trees in the wind." Then I heard - still having the Blessed Sacrament/Holy Communion viably in me - the Father emotionally responding to my simple sincere childlike words to Him said to me in an eternal voice that had an echo that echoed down the ages of eternity: "You belong to Me!", I was so awed that I waited for a time thinking that God would take me home and that God was indeen calling me home to Himself. But God was only letting me know that I was His child and that all I have came from Him: body, soul, talents work, parents, siblings, all the love I have given and recieved -- All came from Him. I was denuded and shown that every speck of my being and life belonged to Him! I truly waited to die because infused contemplation by Him was the greatest spiritual experience I ever had until then or after then. I have never experienced God like that ever again. But the memory of that experience erased my Faith. I no longer had to believe. I know God and His love for me. He is more awesome than I could put into words to you. But after waiting and realizing that God was not taking me home with that incredible utterance to me through His Spirit yet coming absolutely from the Heart of God the Father, I then told God with a little comic relief: "Well, Father, if I belong to You that much, then that means You belong to me, too." God had given me as much as my soul could take - just short of His possessive eternal love causing me to die. He was not looking at my soul just at the moment. He has a total knowledge of ALL that I will ever say to Him - the sum total of all my love - the sum total of all I will ever say to Him or be for Him --throughtout all eternity. He thinks eternally in the eternal moment and in the sum total of eternity because He has experienced eternity. There never was a moment that God did not exist! That eternal Self kind of colors His conversations with us...as He addresses not only who we are at this precise moment; but rather He addresses our full total and actualized self - into eternity with Him.
d) For some on this earth, their minds and souls will be so expanded as to be able to bi-locate. This phenomen of being in two places at the same time may be only a natural result of the expansion of their souls. For example: Padre Pio was able to be in his little town of Petrocina and be in Rome at the same exact moment. Many saints could do this. Padre Pio was [according to Joseph Cusamano] so focused on God as to let the Mind of God's pattern of thinking become his own. Padre Pio was so one with Christ as to have the life of Christ living in him. "Christ shared everything," says Joseph. I agree. Padre Pio's mind was so expanded - so focused on God - that he allowed God to take over his whole life, every moment of his life. He died as he kept repeating the names of "Jesus" and "Mary". If we could live like Padre Pio in our own calling and state of life - we would be able to bi-locate, walk on water or go through walls - because Jesus was able to do things. Jesus multiplies His Presence even now - not merely bi-locate - but be "Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in billions of places at the same time. Even Peter for a time was able to walk on water. This power to walk on water is not supernatural or miraculous. Peter could do it as long as he fully focused on Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit who expands our minds and souls to perform what our bodies can naturally do as long as we are totally supernaturally focused on God.
3) After in heaven when we have had our first two mind-heart expansions resulting from our experiencing God in His new revelations of Himself to each of us, He will give us His third glorious revelation of Himself! This time He has more to work with in us. He can now reveal something that He could not at first because we did not have the capacity to take it in. But after His having expanded our minds and souls to this new level of our being, He will again totally surprise us with His third revelation that will so awe us as to make out love for God soar beyond expression here on earth. God is doing something with great preciseness and plan according to the capacity of each of us. People like Padre Pio have an enormous capacity and headstart on us. But God will be expanding each of our minds and souls according to each one's capacity and response to His Love.
4) Heaven is not a static of boring place. Heaven is so awesome - so dynamic - so interesting - so joyful - so loving - so exciting - so beyond the imagination of mankind - so dynamically social in that as all of us are growing in our knowledge and love for God, we all will become that much more close to each other because we all will be becoming more beautiful in our souls. As loving parents delight in the developement of their children and are surprised by their phenominal growth and beauty, so too will this occur in Heaven. We will all be growing in mind and soul, in our capacity to know and love God and in our capacity to know and love one another. There will be a ever increasing cresendo of love for God and each other. We will all in Heaven enjoy the most dynamic society beyond any utopia ever dreamed of before. And this utopia is expanding not only by new souls coming into heaven - prehaps about 350,000 a day - but by the total upward expansion of our Love for God. Our minds will be ever more be expanded expodentially as God keeps revealing Hiimself for ever. He will continue to expand our minds - eternally!
5) As each new revelation and awesomeness of God which will expand out minds' and souls' capacity to know and love God - each revelation even being greater and greater - because God can freely reveal Himself as our capacity grows and as He actually grows our capacity. How long can God keep up the Divine Crescendo? He can and will keep it up for all eternity. Will not God run our of content of Himself to reveal? No! God's Being is Infinite. For all eternity He can reveals Himself to you and to me without ever being able to exhaust His Being or Capacity to reveal Himself. Why? Because knowing God for us will be an glorious eternal enterprize of Knowing and Loving God. What will be the state of all of us millions of millenia into eternity? Two simple words in Greek - put together - express this state well. The words are "en" - meanning "within/being caught up into" plus the second Greek word, "Theos" meaning "God". Thus we have the English word: "Enthusiasm" which really and etymologically means: "To be caught up into God." We will never be God even if He reveals so much of Himself that we will be so holy and full of love for God. No...the only One who knows God is God. Only God has the capacity to know Himself. The family life of the inner Trinity of the Three Divine Persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - infinitely know and love each other and are infinitely "caught up" in their Being. There is a Latin axiom: "Erit Unus Christus Semetipsum amans." which means: "There shall be One Christ loving Himself" - which is the goal of all the Church as we the Body of Christ are caught up in Him. But we can expand this quote to read: Erit Unus Theos Semetipsum Amans" - "There shall be One God loving Himself"; and He will take us all into the inner life of the Holy Trinity because the Father will recognize His Son - the Word of God made flesh - in all of us. We will with Christ enjoy the inner Family of God according to the capacity of each our minds and souls which God the Father will be ever expanding for all eternity.
6) The end result of the Redemption of the whole human race --- from the beginning of time to the end of time - when all humans who loved God are in Heaven - those who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior and have let the Cruifixion and Death of Jesus wash away all their sins by true repentance and belief and trust in Him ---will be a greater glory for God and of us in Him than if Adam and Eve never sinned in the first place. Why? Because "Where sin abounds, grace abounds more." The most fantastic Infinite Creativity of God is so wondrous that God can bring out a more beautiful result in us and in the Kingdom of God - in the total Economy of God - His Kingdom Come - than if Adam and Eve had never fallen. St. Paul said not to let this be an excuse for sin. It means that God is a God of Love. Love not only forgives: Love repairs and beautifies the Beloved - us - His Bride the Church - as to make it without spot or wrinkle. And in so doing, Jesus shows His tenderness and husbandly love to dry every tear from our eyes. From His wounded side - symbol of His wounded Sacred Heart - Jesus does a marvelous thing: all the confessed and forgiven sins we have given to Him - He uses for our good. Even on earth, this is so. We have seen it in the murderous Saul being transformed into a Saint Paul - greatest traveling apostle for Jesus - who wrote the most beautiful applications of the Gospel of Jesus in the early life of the Church. His letters spoon fed the children of God to nourish and give them life. He went from the killing of St. Stephen to giving life and nourishment - the Eucharist and the Word of God - all the new found churches in Rome and Corinth and many Christian Communities. He was like a Father to all of them...fed them, corrected them, encouraged them and died for them in giving his life in giving them the Gospel no matter the danger or peril or sacrifice. Had Saul not accepted Jesus, we would never have known he ever existed except the one line that "they laid their cloaks at the feet of Saul" Other than that line, we would never have known him. But Jesus - creative Word of God who walked this planet - changed Saul into Paul. And Jesus does this every day for you and me. And we will one day be Jesus' Bride in heaven. As far as we belong to Jesus - knowing and loving Him now as a member of His Church - which is His Bride - to that extent will we enjoy the intimacy with Him in paradise. The whole Divine Romance begins here.
7) In Heaven there is only one non-divine being that enjoys an intimacy with God that even our eternity of growing in capacity and love God will not ever equal. Our etenal growth in Knowledge and Love for God
will never catch up to the one who is God's greatest non-divine human being: She is Mary. Her capacity to know and love God was at her Immaculate Conception greater than all in heaven and on earth put together even with their eternal growth. No one will ever equal Mary. No angel or saint have or will be as holy as she who had the Trinity dwelling in her for 9 months. Jesus - even as a growing Divine Fetus - was the Word totally united to the Father and the Son. Mary was the tabernacle of God. How pure must she be? It is God who has taken us residence in her. She is a mystery. That is why we say the joyful and glorious mysteries of the Rosary: we are trying to take in the mystery of Mary.
Additonally, Mary who has been - in earth time calculations - in heaven for 2000 years and all this time has been growing in her capacity to know and love God, where is she in her "Enthusiam" for God?
How much has she been "caught into God"? How much has her heart been expanded when already was expanded so much earth which made her exclaim: "My soul magnifies the Lord; my sous rejoices in the Lord.." We now understand those words in a much greater depth: the word "magnifies" or "reflects" the glory of the Lord - how much does she do this even now? Has she not taken on the likeness of God into her very being? How much does her soul "rejoice" in the Lord? To know this, we would have to be her. As we cannot imagine the depth of God's Being unless we were God, so, too, we cannot imagine the depth of Mary's being - her holiness, beauty and humility - unless we had the capacity and holiness of Mary. We will never know Mary's beauty fully. Only God has access to her soul. The children of Fatima and Bernadette and St. Therese - all - were mesmorized the by the beauty of Mary. They were enamored of her. They in tears told others of her beauty. If they love her, how much will love her in heaven? She - a tender mom - is so great - as to be Queen of Heaven and earth: Queen of all hearts. All will love her for all eternity - especially knowing that her capacity to know and love God will be growing expodentially beyond any telling.
We speak of devotion to Mary. It is Mary who is devoted totally to us. Devotion mean "love". We also - as we grow in love for God for all eternity - will also grow in our love and devotion for Mary because her beauty will continue to grow for all eternity. We will see the Immaculate Conception grow more and more beautiful.
Will not Heaven be a Glorious Place!!
Mary, our Mother, help us to be faithful to Jesus so we can join you in Heaven. You found Jesus after looking for him for three days. Please keep looking for us when we get lost which is often. Help us to be found in Confession and Eucharist. Don't abandon us when we get so busy about our business and do not see your or your Son's business. Help us to be like Jesus who said: "I must be about My Father's busines."
Mom, make us as beautiful in our souls as you are so we can in our little way "Magnify for Lord" and "Rejoice" in Him. Mom, as you took Jesus home after those three days of looking for him, please help us and safely bring us home to Heaven: to you and Jesus and His Father. Thank you, Mary, for all your devotion to us: for bringing to Confession and Holy Communion so often We give you all....even our sins...we give you all our hopes and.desires, dreams and souls. All the saints in heaven got there because of you. Your greatest work and greatest joy is creating Saints for Heaven. You did it for Juan Diego, for Bernadette, for Maximillian Kolbe, for Therese of Lisieux. Mom, you are a great artist. You create Saints and make them beautiful for God. What a neat hobby you have: making saints. Please make me a saint too.
I give you all your childen on this earth. Make us all saints..because you are our Mom!
Love, Pio
Comments by Benjamin Bourlier - 24 year old musician, composer and philosopher - who just read this blog on October 3, 2011. His comments are as follows:
"I'm a pianist and composer at UofM -- a poet and "philosopher" privately, if you could call it that -- and was talking to Piotre about 'mystic experience', about what he calls here the 'eternal moment', precisely about the way in which it cannot in any conventional sense be 'talked about', as I see it, but rather with luck signified through some miraculous sympathy of aesthetic representation. Even then, I'm not sure we can be said to have 'talked about' this, but have rather been (or have provided) conduits for an experience in another that we cannot control any more than our original experience. It is selfless, essentially, gorgeously, a moment at once numb and infinitely aware and raw. This is essentially how I conceive of what I'm doing when composing, improvising, writing -- wrestling with mystical experience as it might reveal itself in aesthetic representation, not "symbolically", but directly.
The one experience of mine that's stuck with me all my life as the first memorable moment of total self-awareness -- which is at once a "selfless awareness" -- was at age nine or ten. My mother came home from work much later than I came home from school, and as she hadn't copied the apartment key yet, I would sit on the porch or play in the yard until she got back. This particular day I was still coming down from a cold, too sick to play, so I rested on the steps to wait. It was early spring. I began to meditate on what I might now call 'seasonal transformation', on <the enormity of Spring>, but the truth is though I've tried many times, I'll never be able to adequately express exactly <what> I was meditating on. It was a selfless exchange of environmental affect and sick, involuntary coughs, weezes etc, which revealed the selflessness of seasonal transition, the enormity of history not as human construct but as context, environment. As David Foster Wallace would suggest, as he does in his book "Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity", I was experiencing my first moment of <abstraction>, that which is 'removed from or transcending concrete particularity, sensuous experience', as he says.
But of course it was not <only abstract>, but, as we'd say, mystical. Piotre asked me about my relationship to God, after I mentioned this, and I said delicately that it is something that must remain personal, not as a choice -- I don't, that is, choose to keep it personal, but rather I feel that to try and share it would be to engage the sentential, propositional logic of language, which can't handle such an expression. It is personal because language has limited it thus. Only through deeply conditional, mannered, subversive use of language in poetry can I construct anything approaching a representation, and then it is most likely totally incomprehensible, as such, to just about anyone, given the contract of language that we enter into when we speak -- if we intend to say anything <meaningful>, consistent, generalized. I've been very influenced by Ludwig Wittegenstein for quite a while now, a philosopher I think of as a kind of mystical figure, a very important one. Of course qualifying him as such would seem to contradict his belief that one cannot speak -- that is, speak clearly, meaningfully -- of the mystic, which is true. But neither can one refrain. Wittgenstein, who did not consider himself religious but who approached everything with "a religious attitude", believed his philosophy, once understood, would reveal itself to be meaningless, a ladder used to climb to a ledge that one then kicked away. I am not a "religious" person, I emphatically do not subscribe to any systematic religious authority, because, in a Wittgensteinian sense I see religion as staying clung to the ladder, as it were. A mystic experience is a moment of freedom not in the familiar sense that we are free to act and navigate our experience, not in the religious sense that we may be free of sin or free of doubt or free of fear, but freedom from the very self and egoic sensibility necessary for worldly decision, the freedom of a waking dream; when younger, around five years old, I remember first considering the limits to the universe, what was beyond that conceptual edge, etc, and trying in that state to conceive of how I related at all to my family members, who were the core of my existence -- how could I "find" my mother and father in this vastness? Similarly, to have knowledge of "God the father" in a mystic state does not make sense to me propositionally, as in that state I have lost myself to discrete relations, I've become associatively continuous.
To say that in the mystic state I have made myself open to "God" makes sense to me only subjectively as I understand I have made myself open to something transcendent of egoic limitation, and I understand that culturally the word "God" has come to signify this transcendence, but the statement in no way does justice to the experience. This is very important to me because often when trying to express this it's assumed I'm talking about "atheism", or my lack of belief, when in fact I'm merely saying that I <can't> discuss my private sense of God, not meaningfully. I can say to you now that I have a very intense inner experience of what another person would call God, but, while true to me as I read it back, this is a nonsensical statement linguistically. A religious person may say that "no statement may do justice to the infinite presence of God", and I would say this is essentially true, because I understand subjectively what they mean to say, but I also understand that logistically this statement is nonsensical, because it is essentially a proposition speaking of itself -- Wittgenstein points out that a proposition may not speak of itself. That is, if the statement "no statement may do justice to God" is true, then it must logistically also be false, something we can privately overlook but with regard to language, can't admit as propositionally meaningful. We can see how mystic experience lies outside linguistic means of representation, inasmuch as language has to conform to propositional logic to be "taken seriously", to be "meaningful", and inasmuch as mystic experience appears contradictory put into such terms, private and self-less, individual and universal, explosive and implosive. We have sympathy with such contradictions, but I will never be able to subscribe to a religious system built on language, on hierarchical human systems dependant on expression in language, because such a system will always be contradictory. Now, this has nothing to do with my personal belief, my capacity to know God etc, but with my awareness of the injustice done to mystic experience by assertive, systematic use of language.
And yet, as Wittgenstein didn't refrain from attempting to articulate this in his philosophy, I don't refrain from trying to articulate something of it now, invited to by Piotre, nor should anybody refrain, I don't think, from allowing language to sensitize one's awareness to the "eternal moment". I would have to write a poem to sincerely attempt to answer Piotre's question about my relationship to God -- as I see it, this is in a sense precisely what I've been doing in writing poetry -- but I have no idea what that poem will mean to someone else, and it will appear new to me after having written it. To quote Wittgenstein on this, I take the following from his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:
- 6.371 The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
- 6.372 Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages. And in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained.
- 6.373 The world is independent of my will.
- 6.374 Even if all that we wish for were to happen, still this would only be a favour granted by fate, so to speak: for there is no logical connexion between the will and the world, which would guarantee it, and the supposed physical connexion itself is surely not something that we could will.
- 6. 375 Just as the only necessity that exists is logical necessity, so too the only impossibility that exists is logical impossibility.
On that note, I thank Piotre for sharing so openly his beautifully thoughtful blog with me and inviting me to share some of my own experience and thoughts!"
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Pio's Proverb 121: Feast of St. Michael, St. Gabriel and St. Raphael - Archangels - September 29, 2011
Have you ever thought that before creation of humans and the universe, there were angels? Palentologists say that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. They calculate this as the beginning of the Big Bang when God called out of nothingness the entire universe that has 20 immutable and precise laws that never vary which are comic constants - two being the speed of light and law of gravity. If these constant laws were to vary a fraction of a percent, there would be no life at all in the universe and no stars except blue giants. But to think that angels came before the Big Bang is mind boggling. These spiritual beings are older than we can imagine.
In Heavenly time, these angels were all given a test to be worthy of heaven. Not all passed that test. It is speculated that the test was a pre-image of Jesus Christ, God and man. Could they accept Him as their Lord? It is said that Lucifer (means "Lightbearer") protested because he thought that if God would take on a second nature, it should be an angelic nature not a lower human nature. But of course, The Word had to become man to redeem man. So, Lucifer was off base. Now we need to understand that angels when they make a decision it is irrevocable. Why? It is irrevocable because an angel sees totally clear what he is doing. They do not have second or third thoughts. They decide what they want to do and do it. Also, changeing one's mind would mean that they were wrong. Lucifer would not admit that. He was proud. He wanted to be like God and call the shots - to decide what is right and wrong. Interestingly, that was the exact temptation he made on Eve and Adam: for these humans to become independent of God and to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong. Lucifer deceived himself and now deceives the first humans in the exact same way. He appealed to the first couple's wanting to be like God in their wishing to decide for themselves what is sinful or not. Does this sound familiar? Hitler did the same thing. He made laws to change marriage. He gave the title of "Frau" to any woman who would bear and give birth to a child for the state. He had several mating camps - placing girls and boys together and encougeing them ingage in sex. He also made laws that is was ok to kill Jews because they were an inferior race. He also set out to conquor all of Europe including Russia. It did not matter to him that others wanted to have their own country. He wanted to rule the whole Euorpean continent. He changed all the laws of the state and tried to suppress and destroy the Catholic Church by especially occupying Poland - most Catholic Christian country in Europe - so that it would become a completely atheistic country. But he did not figure on Christ's words: "The gates of hell will never prevail against it." His killing of 6 million Poles and 6 million Jews did not put a dent in Catholics and Jews as to their Faith. Those 12 million only all the more strengthen the Faith of Catholics and Jews. Pope Pius XII did more than anyone in Europe to help and hide Jews. The Pope solicited the help from all the dioceses to aid and protect Jews. All those records are available in the Vatican archives including all Vatican Radio broadcasts to support Jews and renouce Nazism. Before becoming the Pope, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII) wrote an official letter denouncing Germany's ill treatment of Jews. Hitler got the message plain and simple and responded to that letter by killing 2300 priests in retaliation. Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli now knew what a monster was Hitler. The Cardinal worked to save Jews - focusing on them not Hitler.
The point in Lucifer refusal to adore God if He became man in Jesus and wanting to make the decisions as to what was right and wrong. His temptation to Adam and Eve - appealing to their pride - and His temptation of Hitler and Stalin (who killed 60 million of his own people) only shows that Lucifer - Satan - is still working to get human to refuse to obey God's 10 Commandments - especially the first and the fifth. First: "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me." And the Fifth: "Thou shalt not kill!" - but abortion alone has killed 60 million babies since 1973, Roe v Wade. We can see Lucifer's hand in all of this. There is a law that allows killing of babies up to 9 months gestation. We - in the United State - are even worst than Hitler whose laws allowed the killing of 6 million innocent Jews. We have killed 60 million innocent babies. Did you also know that because of Hitler's laws and "Final Solution" that 350 civilians volunteered to execute Jews by shooting them? "Final Solution" sounded so nice. "Pro-choice" sounds nice too; but the results of these words was and is Death to millions.
Because of Lucifer's rebellion, he and his followers - 1/3 of Heaven - were cast out by St. Michael the Archangel and his angelic hosts down to earth where they have been tempting mankind ever since. Even if they all landed eventually in hell, they are able to stimulate the imagination of humans to be inventive in evil. Abortion and wars are his biggest aces. He wants to kill as many humans as possible because they are all made in the image and likeness of God. If he kills humans, he kills off the images and likenesses of God. He is jealous of us taking his place in heaven. Some people do not believe in Satan and his devils; but by the fruits you shall know them: wars, abortion, murders, greed, lust, disrespect of people for one another - all these are victories of Satan. But Satan cannot cause us to do anything. He cannot change our wills. He can only stimulate our senses and imagination so as to present evil as a great good. He is so cleaver that he now has introduced successfully the concept of a woman's "abortion rights" even when the Constitution says we all have "inalienable rights endowed by the Creator to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness." So now not only is abortion legal, but there is a creation of "abortion rights" that are diametricially opposed to the baby's right to life. Do you not see something devilish in that? Let us not be fooled: the Satanic forces of hellish hosts are out for one thing: to hurt God by hurting His Creation - His creatures who are absolute reflections of God beauty - His image and likeness. Satan cannot hurt God; but he can hurt God's children...but only if we let him. Satan is powerless to do anything without our consent and cooperation. That is why we often say: "St Michael, defender in battle, ...pray for us and defend us!" St. Michael is the perfect one to appeal to against Satan because Michael prevailed over Satan and cast him out of heaven. St. Michael did not commit a sin of anger or arrogance or revenge on Lucifer. When they both had a confrontation, Michael strongly said to Lucifer: "May God correct you!" St. Michael used a prayer to defeat Satan. We should do the same. And St. Michael whose name means "who is like unto God" will help us.
There is still one more manifestation of Satan that I wanted to mention. He is the "accuser" of all accusers.
Satan - without mercy, forgiveness or hope - accuses us to God and to our very selves. During the trial of Jesus, accusations that had tinges of truth were hurled at Jesus. "He said if this temple were to be destroyed, he would re-build it in 3 days by himself." Whereas Jesus said: "(If you) Destroy this temple - (His Body), and I will raise it up in 3 days." Satan is the one who got Nero to accuse Christians of setting fire to Rome. Nero retaliated by using Christians a human torches in his garden and killing many in the arena - all to cover up his own crime in buring Rome to make room for his new construction of his pleasure palace.
But where Satan really triumps is his attacks on marriages. Especially when he gets wives to accuse their husbands of infidelity when there no substance to such an accusation. There are husbands who accuse their wives who work of have too close of friendships with co-workers - even having an affair with male co-workers. If a husband is on a business trip, his wife has more than suspicions of his infidelity, she accusing him as if her accusations were proof of his wrong doing. These accusation come from the devil in this sense. The devil is not in her; but the devil has stimulated her imagination to having images of him laying with another woman. She gets worried and her accusation are in a sense asking him for reassurance. But his reassurances of his fidelity to her all the more make her nervous and angry. His innocense angers her because she wants him to admit his infidelity so as to assure her of his perceptiveness and astuteness in seeing the clues of infidelity. She can even say to him: "Was she good - better than me?" "Is she in her twenties?" "Do you have more than one you are sleeping with?" All these accusations are not from God. They are from the evil the one who is building on her insecurities and lack of trust in others. In today's readings, in the Book of Revalation, it says that "Satan ever accuses (humanity) before God." Jesus never accuses those who come to him in repentance. To, the woman caught in adultery, he says, "Has any one condemned you? ...Neither will I condemn you. Go in peace and sin no more." Even when Peter sees Jesus after the Resurrection, Jesus does not tell Peter: "Told you so. Told you that you would deny me three times." No, Jesus does not accuse or even mention Peter's sins which have been wiped away in true sorrow with many tears. Jesus only wishes to re-astablish His relationship with Peter by giving Peter this question three times: "Peter, do you love me?"
In the end, Jesus and Peter are closer than they were before Peter's fall. That is how creative God is!
Once you have confessed a sin, God has to use that sin to bring about a greater good. That is why the Scripture says: "Where sin abounds, grace abounds more!" Adam and Eve sinned, but Jesus openned up Paradise for them by the great act of love - crucifixion - so that the whole world in the very end will be a better place and to God's greater glory than if Adam and Even never sinned in the first place. Only God can bring good out of evil because He is God. But God uses us and calls us to bring good out of evil with Him by following our vocations which are all oriented by the Holy Spirit to bring love from hate, life from death, generosity from selfishness, courage from cowardice, virtue from sinfullness, fidelity from infidelity, gentleness from harshness, kindness from cruelty, creative charity for others from destructive attacks on other's character and well being. The Holy Spirit needs out devotion to His inspirations to re-establish the Kingdon of God in this ungodly Nation that legally murders its own children in direct disobedience to the Fifth Commandment and the U.S. Constitution on human rights.
God does use us even when we are lowly. He said the humble will be exalted. This is true of angels as well. St. Michael is the highest angel in heaven. No one out ranks him. But remember in the ranking of angels you have the Ceraphim, Cheraphim, Powers, Archangels and angels. Archangels are second from the bottom. St. Michael was a lowly angel. Now he is number one! Why? Because God exalts the humble.
Today we also celebrate the Feast of St. Gabriel - whose name means "Power of God". He announces the Good News of the coming of the Savior. He is the messenger of God - the first in the New Testament to announce the Good News. We are called to do the same as Father Ray said in today's homily at St. Mary's during Mass. He said that "we are called to help others to know and love God which is the task of all angels": to help human beings to know and love God. If we do this, we will be like the angels and be immitating the virtures of the angels. Remember, every angel in Heaven is a Saint. Every one was humble enough to pledge their loyalty and worship of Jesus the God-man - even in the face of the fact that humans are below angels. All the angels in Heaven have the virtue of Humility to a heroic degree. They are all Saints and are therefore Holy. They annonced before and to God: "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory.." They can sing this with truth and meaning, love and praise because they, themselves, are holy!
St. Raphael's name means "God heals!" In the Book of Tobit, St. Raphael heals the eyes of Tobit through a medicine that his son, Tobias" is instructed by St. Raphael to apply to the eyes of his father. But St. Raphael does much more than that. He heals marriages. He brought Tobias and Sarah together and prevented the demon Amodeus from killiing Tobit as the demon had killed Sarah's husbands seven times. Each husband was slain on their wedding night because Amodeus was in love with Sarah. The demon had power over all these husbands because they lusted after Sarah and did not have true love for her. She prayed to God to release her from this shame. She asked for death. Also, Tobit who was blind asked for death. God sent St. Raphael to answer their prayers by his cleverness and goodness and guidance and love for humanity. Because of St. Raphael, Sarah's new husband, Tobias, survives the wedding night because St. Raphael told him to not have intercourse on the first night but rather pray for deleverance. After delieverance, then they could come together. St. Raphael took total commend of Amodeus and took him to upper Egypt and bound him there not be ever released. Thus Tobias and Sarah were delivered. They had many sons. They also both returned to Dad Tobit with a whole retinue of riches from Gabrelus - a fortune because Gabrelus was the Father of Sarah and so grateful that Tobit had rescued her from Shame and gave her happiness and him grandchildren. All was joy and happiness because St. Raphael had come and only at the very end identified himself. He said: "Praise God for all his blessing..I am Raphael, one of the Seven who stand before the Throne of God." May St. Raphael give us Joy and Peace and true love and Happiness with praise to God for everything.
I must in gratitude to St. Raphael to mention how he save my life - once when I was just 20 years old and once just months ago.
1) I was driving down a dirt road in Kentucky looking for a left turn opportunity to get back to the expressway because I only got off to make a U turn back to an interchange I had missed. The road ended without any signs or warning. I was doing nearly 40 mph when the road completed ended as I unknowingly sailed right off a cliff. The road did no turn but just ended with our guard rail. I later learned that a taxicab driver had done the same as I did but he was killed instantly. The cliff was high and there were rocks below. The police captain told me that it would be impossible to go off that cliff and survive. But he said that because he never met St. Raphael, patron of travelors from how he had guided Tobias over many miles to meet Sarah...and get home safely again. In fact there is a approved prayer that says: "St. Raphael, Patron of travelors - on land, air and sea - pray for me."
When I sailed off that cliff, I heard an audible voice - powerful, authoritive, loving, kind, assuring - which said to me: "Turn your wheels to the left!" That was the first and last time I would ever hear an audible angelic voice which not only conveyed the meaning of the word but the very emotions that the Angel Raphael wanted me to feel. He could communicate his very emotions and love so that I could feel everything. I was in the air already a few second maybe even 10 seconds. I was high up. I turned my wheels completely to the left. It was night and I could see nothing. I did have headlights on but they did me little good. They were pointing straight up not forward because my Volkswagon when going off the cliff up ended because the engine was in the back and made the Volkswagon to go verticle not horizontal. By turnig my wheels to the left they became perpendicular to the earth. I was falling backward with my head lights pointing to the sky!
Immediately after obeying St. Raphael, my front wheels now fully turned to the left, landed on the face of another cliff. I was in a V-shaped gorge and spanned the gorge from one cliff to another. I rolled backward on those two front wheels...until I got to the bottom of the cliff; then all four wheels were engaged. I was rolling on all four wheels and the bottom of the cliff became slooped as small foot hills. My car was thrown with centrifical force into a four-foot deep lake. My car was stopped. I was so releived. I was alive. My car was parked in four feet of water. My headlight were still on and shown across the surface of the water. No water came into the car because Volkswagen are water tight. My engine was underwater; my headlights above water. After my eyes acclamated to the night sky, I could see how high was the cliff from the bottom view. I then became frightened when I saw how far I had come.
Police soon came with flashing lights and a huge crane parked at the top of the cliff. It lowered a large hook attached to a heavy cable. They put the hook onto my rear bumper and began to pull my car out of the lake from the top of the cliff. Once my car was on the beach, the Police captain, told me to exit the car in the usual police style as if I had done something wrong. He said: "How did you get down here?" I politely but humorously said: "I drove down here!" He said: "No one can come from that cliff and live." Then he told me about the taxicab driver who died in the same kind of accident two years ago. I said in dismay: "You mean someone died here and still you have not put up any guard rails or signs to indicate that the road just disappears without warning." He went silent after that. He knew that he would have been responsible and was responsible for my accident. He could have been the cause of muc more. But St. Raphael - a loving Angel and clever - had saved me. There was not a scratch on my car except for the 1/2 radius of a gauge in my rear bumper which the weight of the car pulled out 8 inches, having collapsed the inner reinforcement.
You may wonder, how did I know it was St. Raphael and not some other angel? Well, in a sense St. Raphael left his calling card. When I went to Church in downtown Louisville, I did not raise my eyes to God. I fell on my knees, kept my eyes close and thanked God for saving my life and that my mom did not have to get a telegram that her son had perished in a freak accident. As I stayed there on my knees with eyes shut in silent gratitude and awe over God loving rescue of me, I finally openned my eyes and saw a pamphlet in the seat directly below my eyes as my heard was bent low. It showed a picture of St. Raphael and said on it: "St. Raphael, Patron of Travelors, Pray for me.!" I almost was in tears....because St. Raphael was the one who lovingly saved my life and was not letting me know who he was just as he did to Tobias and Sarah: "I am Raphael, one of the seven who stand before the throne of God." That was such a moment....I keep a perfect detailed model of a yellowVolkswagon on my TV so that I see it several times a day, so that I am reminded many times of day of what St. Raphael had done for me. I am writing this with a heart that is expanded, with tears about to fall, and with a sureness that God not only exists, He loves me and has loving angels to do His bidding. God saw me going over the cliff and pointed His finger at Raphael and said: "Handle it...save him!"
St. Raphael was standing right before God and God just took the first Angel in sight! God sees all...every little detail in everyone life. He sends Angels to bring His love to us! St. Raphael! Thank You so much! I love you! Keep me safe always on the road and lead me safely home to Heaven one day! Amen!
Five months ago, I had to go to Ann Arbor and back - that is a 3 hour round trip. As I set out, I asked St. Raphael - who I am ever thick with - to get me there and back safely. Well, on my return trip and as I was only a mile from my New Baltimore/Algonac exit, I heard an inner voice tell me to get off one exit before my planned exit. I know that voice which was inner but still distinctive. I got off at 59 that empties out into Jefferson. I was doing abot 20 mph on Jefferson when I heard a big noise in my driver's wheel. I was not able to move the car but only a little just to get it on to the shoulder. It was not driveable. I left the car and was going to ask for a ride when people from my parish of Immaculate Conception saw me and took me home. It was late. The next day I called the wrecker who took me to my car. As we approached, he said: "I can see what the problem is. Look at your front wheel which was turned in a different direction than my other front wheel. My driver's wheel was nearly off. He said to me: "It was good that you were not on the expressway when this happened. You would have gone into an uncontrollable spin and been killed." Seems that St. Raphael knows about the parts of my car, saw that it was about to break and got me off the expressway just before it broke. I never go anywhere without first envoking St. Raphael whom I did not know had such mechanical knowledge!
Sts. Michael, Gabriel and Raphael - protect us, bring us Good News, and save us from injury and death -
we love you and thank you and honor you and thank God that He created you all, now and forever. Amen.
Father, thank you for all Your Archangels and for our dear Guadian Angels who ever behold Your face and who bring us Your Love. Amen.
Love, Pio
In Heavenly time, these angels were all given a test to be worthy of heaven. Not all passed that test. It is speculated that the test was a pre-image of Jesus Christ, God and man. Could they accept Him as their Lord? It is said that Lucifer (means "Lightbearer") protested because he thought that if God would take on a second nature, it should be an angelic nature not a lower human nature. But of course, The Word had to become man to redeem man. So, Lucifer was off base. Now we need to understand that angels when they make a decision it is irrevocable. Why? It is irrevocable because an angel sees totally clear what he is doing. They do not have second or third thoughts. They decide what they want to do and do it. Also, changeing one's mind would mean that they were wrong. Lucifer would not admit that. He was proud. He wanted to be like God and call the shots - to decide what is right and wrong. Interestingly, that was the exact temptation he made on Eve and Adam: for these humans to become independent of God and to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong. Lucifer deceived himself and now deceives the first humans in the exact same way. He appealed to the first couple's wanting to be like God in their wishing to decide for themselves what is sinful or not. Does this sound familiar? Hitler did the same thing. He made laws to change marriage. He gave the title of "Frau" to any woman who would bear and give birth to a child for the state. He had several mating camps - placing girls and boys together and encougeing them ingage in sex. He also made laws that is was ok to kill Jews because they were an inferior race. He also set out to conquor all of Europe including Russia. It did not matter to him that others wanted to have their own country. He wanted to rule the whole Euorpean continent. He changed all the laws of the state and tried to suppress and destroy the Catholic Church by especially occupying Poland - most Catholic Christian country in Europe - so that it would become a completely atheistic country. But he did not figure on Christ's words: "The gates of hell will never prevail against it." His killing of 6 million Poles and 6 million Jews did not put a dent in Catholics and Jews as to their Faith. Those 12 million only all the more strengthen the Faith of Catholics and Jews. Pope Pius XII did more than anyone in Europe to help and hide Jews. The Pope solicited the help from all the dioceses to aid and protect Jews. All those records are available in the Vatican archives including all Vatican Radio broadcasts to support Jews and renouce Nazism. Before becoming the Pope, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII) wrote an official letter denouncing Germany's ill treatment of Jews. Hitler got the message plain and simple and responded to that letter by killing 2300 priests in retaliation. Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli now knew what a monster was Hitler. The Cardinal worked to save Jews - focusing on them not Hitler.
The point in Lucifer refusal to adore God if He became man in Jesus and wanting to make the decisions as to what was right and wrong. His temptation to Adam and Eve - appealing to their pride - and His temptation of Hitler and Stalin (who killed 60 million of his own people) only shows that Lucifer - Satan - is still working to get human to refuse to obey God's 10 Commandments - especially the first and the fifth. First: "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me." And the Fifth: "Thou shalt not kill!" - but abortion alone has killed 60 million babies since 1973, Roe v Wade. We can see Lucifer's hand in all of this. There is a law that allows killing of babies up to 9 months gestation. We - in the United State - are even worst than Hitler whose laws allowed the killing of 6 million innocent Jews. We have killed 60 million innocent babies. Did you also know that because of Hitler's laws and "Final Solution" that 350 civilians volunteered to execute Jews by shooting them? "Final Solution" sounded so nice. "Pro-choice" sounds nice too; but the results of these words was and is Death to millions.
Because of Lucifer's rebellion, he and his followers - 1/3 of Heaven - were cast out by St. Michael the Archangel and his angelic hosts down to earth where they have been tempting mankind ever since. Even if they all landed eventually in hell, they are able to stimulate the imagination of humans to be inventive in evil. Abortion and wars are his biggest aces. He wants to kill as many humans as possible because they are all made in the image and likeness of God. If he kills humans, he kills off the images and likenesses of God. He is jealous of us taking his place in heaven. Some people do not believe in Satan and his devils; but by the fruits you shall know them: wars, abortion, murders, greed, lust, disrespect of people for one another - all these are victories of Satan. But Satan cannot cause us to do anything. He cannot change our wills. He can only stimulate our senses and imagination so as to present evil as a great good. He is so cleaver that he now has introduced successfully the concept of a woman's "abortion rights" even when the Constitution says we all have "inalienable rights endowed by the Creator to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness." So now not only is abortion legal, but there is a creation of "abortion rights" that are diametricially opposed to the baby's right to life. Do you not see something devilish in that? Let us not be fooled: the Satanic forces of hellish hosts are out for one thing: to hurt God by hurting His Creation - His creatures who are absolute reflections of God beauty - His image and likeness. Satan cannot hurt God; but he can hurt God's children...but only if we let him. Satan is powerless to do anything without our consent and cooperation. That is why we often say: "St Michael, defender in battle, ...pray for us and defend us!" St. Michael is the perfect one to appeal to against Satan because Michael prevailed over Satan and cast him out of heaven. St. Michael did not commit a sin of anger or arrogance or revenge on Lucifer. When they both had a confrontation, Michael strongly said to Lucifer: "May God correct you!" St. Michael used a prayer to defeat Satan. We should do the same. And St. Michael whose name means "who is like unto God" will help us.
There is still one more manifestation of Satan that I wanted to mention. He is the "accuser" of all accusers.
Satan - without mercy, forgiveness or hope - accuses us to God and to our very selves. During the trial of Jesus, accusations that had tinges of truth were hurled at Jesus. "He said if this temple were to be destroyed, he would re-build it in 3 days by himself." Whereas Jesus said: "(If you) Destroy this temple - (His Body), and I will raise it up in 3 days." Satan is the one who got Nero to accuse Christians of setting fire to Rome. Nero retaliated by using Christians a human torches in his garden and killing many in the arena - all to cover up his own crime in buring Rome to make room for his new construction of his pleasure palace.
But where Satan really triumps is his attacks on marriages. Especially when he gets wives to accuse their husbands of infidelity when there no substance to such an accusation. There are husbands who accuse their wives who work of have too close of friendships with co-workers - even having an affair with male co-workers. If a husband is on a business trip, his wife has more than suspicions of his infidelity, she accusing him as if her accusations were proof of his wrong doing. These accusation come from the devil in this sense. The devil is not in her; but the devil has stimulated her imagination to having images of him laying with another woman. She gets worried and her accusation are in a sense asking him for reassurance. But his reassurances of his fidelity to her all the more make her nervous and angry. His innocense angers her because she wants him to admit his infidelity so as to assure her of his perceptiveness and astuteness in seeing the clues of infidelity. She can even say to him: "Was she good - better than me?" "Is she in her twenties?" "Do you have more than one you are sleeping with?" All these accusations are not from God. They are from the evil the one who is building on her insecurities and lack of trust in others. In today's readings, in the Book of Revalation, it says that "Satan ever accuses (humanity) before God." Jesus never accuses those who come to him in repentance. To, the woman caught in adultery, he says, "Has any one condemned you? ...Neither will I condemn you. Go in peace and sin no more." Even when Peter sees Jesus after the Resurrection, Jesus does not tell Peter: "Told you so. Told you that you would deny me three times." No, Jesus does not accuse or even mention Peter's sins which have been wiped away in true sorrow with many tears. Jesus only wishes to re-astablish His relationship with Peter by giving Peter this question three times: "Peter, do you love me?"
In the end, Jesus and Peter are closer than they were before Peter's fall. That is how creative God is!
Once you have confessed a sin, God has to use that sin to bring about a greater good. That is why the Scripture says: "Where sin abounds, grace abounds more!" Adam and Eve sinned, but Jesus openned up Paradise for them by the great act of love - crucifixion - so that the whole world in the very end will be a better place and to God's greater glory than if Adam and Even never sinned in the first place. Only God can bring good out of evil because He is God. But God uses us and calls us to bring good out of evil with Him by following our vocations which are all oriented by the Holy Spirit to bring love from hate, life from death, generosity from selfishness, courage from cowardice, virtue from sinfullness, fidelity from infidelity, gentleness from harshness, kindness from cruelty, creative charity for others from destructive attacks on other's character and well being. The Holy Spirit needs out devotion to His inspirations to re-establish the Kingdon of God in this ungodly Nation that legally murders its own children in direct disobedience to the Fifth Commandment and the U.S. Constitution on human rights.
God does use us even when we are lowly. He said the humble will be exalted. This is true of angels as well. St. Michael is the highest angel in heaven. No one out ranks him. But remember in the ranking of angels you have the Ceraphim, Cheraphim, Powers, Archangels and angels. Archangels are second from the bottom. St. Michael was a lowly angel. Now he is number one! Why? Because God exalts the humble.
Today we also celebrate the Feast of St. Gabriel - whose name means "Power of God". He announces the Good News of the coming of the Savior. He is the messenger of God - the first in the New Testament to announce the Good News. We are called to do the same as Father Ray said in today's homily at St. Mary's during Mass. He said that "we are called to help others to know and love God which is the task of all angels": to help human beings to know and love God. If we do this, we will be like the angels and be immitating the virtures of the angels. Remember, every angel in Heaven is a Saint. Every one was humble enough to pledge their loyalty and worship of Jesus the God-man - even in the face of the fact that humans are below angels. All the angels in Heaven have the virtue of Humility to a heroic degree. They are all Saints and are therefore Holy. They annonced before and to God: "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory.." They can sing this with truth and meaning, love and praise because they, themselves, are holy!
St. Raphael's name means "God heals!" In the Book of Tobit, St. Raphael heals the eyes of Tobit through a medicine that his son, Tobias" is instructed by St. Raphael to apply to the eyes of his father. But St. Raphael does much more than that. He heals marriages. He brought Tobias and Sarah together and prevented the demon Amodeus from killiing Tobit as the demon had killed Sarah's husbands seven times. Each husband was slain on their wedding night because Amodeus was in love with Sarah. The demon had power over all these husbands because they lusted after Sarah and did not have true love for her. She prayed to God to release her from this shame. She asked for death. Also, Tobit who was blind asked for death. God sent St. Raphael to answer their prayers by his cleverness and goodness and guidance and love for humanity. Because of St. Raphael, Sarah's new husband, Tobias, survives the wedding night because St. Raphael told him to not have intercourse on the first night but rather pray for deleverance. After delieverance, then they could come together. St. Raphael took total commend of Amodeus and took him to upper Egypt and bound him there not be ever released. Thus Tobias and Sarah were delivered. They had many sons. They also both returned to Dad Tobit with a whole retinue of riches from Gabrelus - a fortune because Gabrelus was the Father of Sarah and so grateful that Tobit had rescued her from Shame and gave her happiness and him grandchildren. All was joy and happiness because St. Raphael had come and only at the very end identified himself. He said: "Praise God for all his blessing..I am Raphael, one of the Seven who stand before the Throne of God." May St. Raphael give us Joy and Peace and true love and Happiness with praise to God for everything.
I must in gratitude to St. Raphael to mention how he save my life - once when I was just 20 years old and once just months ago.
1) I was driving down a dirt road in Kentucky looking for a left turn opportunity to get back to the expressway because I only got off to make a U turn back to an interchange I had missed. The road ended without any signs or warning. I was doing nearly 40 mph when the road completed ended as I unknowingly sailed right off a cliff. The road did no turn but just ended with our guard rail. I later learned that a taxicab driver had done the same as I did but he was killed instantly. The cliff was high and there were rocks below. The police captain told me that it would be impossible to go off that cliff and survive. But he said that because he never met St. Raphael, patron of travelors from how he had guided Tobias over many miles to meet Sarah...and get home safely again. In fact there is a approved prayer that says: "St. Raphael, Patron of travelors - on land, air and sea - pray for me."
When I sailed off that cliff, I heard an audible voice - powerful, authoritive, loving, kind, assuring - which said to me: "Turn your wheels to the left!" That was the first and last time I would ever hear an audible angelic voice which not only conveyed the meaning of the word but the very emotions that the Angel Raphael wanted me to feel. He could communicate his very emotions and love so that I could feel everything. I was in the air already a few second maybe even 10 seconds. I was high up. I turned my wheels completely to the left. It was night and I could see nothing. I did have headlights on but they did me little good. They were pointing straight up not forward because my Volkswagon when going off the cliff up ended because the engine was in the back and made the Volkswagon to go verticle not horizontal. By turnig my wheels to the left they became perpendicular to the earth. I was falling backward with my head lights pointing to the sky!
Immediately after obeying St. Raphael, my front wheels now fully turned to the left, landed on the face of another cliff. I was in a V-shaped gorge and spanned the gorge from one cliff to another. I rolled backward on those two front wheels...until I got to the bottom of the cliff; then all four wheels were engaged. I was rolling on all four wheels and the bottom of the cliff became slooped as small foot hills. My car was thrown with centrifical force into a four-foot deep lake. My car was stopped. I was so releived. I was alive. My car was parked in four feet of water. My headlight were still on and shown across the surface of the water. No water came into the car because Volkswagen are water tight. My engine was underwater; my headlights above water. After my eyes acclamated to the night sky, I could see how high was the cliff from the bottom view. I then became frightened when I saw how far I had come.
Police soon came with flashing lights and a huge crane parked at the top of the cliff. It lowered a large hook attached to a heavy cable. They put the hook onto my rear bumper and began to pull my car out of the lake from the top of the cliff. Once my car was on the beach, the Police captain, told me to exit the car in the usual police style as if I had done something wrong. He said: "How did you get down here?" I politely but humorously said: "I drove down here!" He said: "No one can come from that cliff and live." Then he told me about the taxicab driver who died in the same kind of accident two years ago. I said in dismay: "You mean someone died here and still you have not put up any guard rails or signs to indicate that the road just disappears without warning." He went silent after that. He knew that he would have been responsible and was responsible for my accident. He could have been the cause of muc more. But St. Raphael - a loving Angel and clever - had saved me. There was not a scratch on my car except for the 1/2 radius of a gauge in my rear bumper which the weight of the car pulled out 8 inches, having collapsed the inner reinforcement.
You may wonder, how did I know it was St. Raphael and not some other angel? Well, in a sense St. Raphael left his calling card. When I went to Church in downtown Louisville, I did not raise my eyes to God. I fell on my knees, kept my eyes close and thanked God for saving my life and that my mom did not have to get a telegram that her son had perished in a freak accident. As I stayed there on my knees with eyes shut in silent gratitude and awe over God loving rescue of me, I finally openned my eyes and saw a pamphlet in the seat directly below my eyes as my heard was bent low. It showed a picture of St. Raphael and said on it: "St. Raphael, Patron of Travelors, Pray for me.!" I almost was in tears....because St. Raphael was the one who lovingly saved my life and was not letting me know who he was just as he did to Tobias and Sarah: "I am Raphael, one of the seven who stand before the throne of God." That was such a moment....I keep a perfect detailed model of a yellowVolkswagon on my TV so that I see it several times a day, so that I am reminded many times of day of what St. Raphael had done for me. I am writing this with a heart that is expanded, with tears about to fall, and with a sureness that God not only exists, He loves me and has loving angels to do His bidding. God saw me going over the cliff and pointed His finger at Raphael and said: "Handle it...save him!"
St. Raphael was standing right before God and God just took the first Angel in sight! God sees all...every little detail in everyone life. He sends Angels to bring His love to us! St. Raphael! Thank You so much! I love you! Keep me safe always on the road and lead me safely home to Heaven one day! Amen!
Five months ago, I had to go to Ann Arbor and back - that is a 3 hour round trip. As I set out, I asked St. Raphael - who I am ever thick with - to get me there and back safely. Well, on my return trip and as I was only a mile from my New Baltimore/Algonac exit, I heard an inner voice tell me to get off one exit before my planned exit. I know that voice which was inner but still distinctive. I got off at 59 that empties out into Jefferson. I was doing abot 20 mph on Jefferson when I heard a big noise in my driver's wheel. I was not able to move the car but only a little just to get it on to the shoulder. It was not driveable. I left the car and was going to ask for a ride when people from my parish of Immaculate Conception saw me and took me home. It was late. The next day I called the wrecker who took me to my car. As we approached, he said: "I can see what the problem is. Look at your front wheel which was turned in a different direction than my other front wheel. My driver's wheel was nearly off. He said to me: "It was good that you were not on the expressway when this happened. You would have gone into an uncontrollable spin and been killed." Seems that St. Raphael knows about the parts of my car, saw that it was about to break and got me off the expressway just before it broke. I never go anywhere without first envoking St. Raphael whom I did not know had such mechanical knowledge!
Sts. Michael, Gabriel and Raphael - protect us, bring us Good News, and save us from injury and death -
we love you and thank you and honor you and thank God that He created you all, now and forever. Amen.
Father, thank you for all Your Archangels and for our dear Guadian Angels who ever behold Your face and who bring us Your Love. Amen.
Love, Pio
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Pio's Proverb 120: WHY I LOVE ATHEISTS
God loves athiests. That is good enough for me. Why does He love them. He has at least 5 good reasons: Psychological, Social, Intellectual, Spiritual and Divine reasons:
1) Psychological:
God understands that psychologically many people are inhibited from believing because of childhood experiences or lack of childhood experiences. For example, if a child has a mean or distant father who always unaffirms and belittles the child, then it would be hard for that child now come to be an adult to envision a loving God as his or her Father. Also if a family member abused a child sexually and emotionally - especially if these abusers were known to believe in God, then the child would be turned off to a God who had not been able to protect her or him.
2) Social:
When a young adult sees or reads about Hitler's killing of 40 million people and Stalin's killing of 60 million of his own people, he wonders how a good God could allow such a thing. Social evils of all kinds prove to him or her in their m ind that a good God just cannot exist. But God draw tremendous good out of evil...some times more good than existed before the evil. God does not take back free will but knows how to bring a greater good out of evil such as when Maria Goretti gave her life instead of giving in to a young man, she was canonized a Saint and converted her assailant who became a lay Franciscan and lived in a monastery all his life after being released from prison. He and Maria's mother both attended the Canonization of Maria Goretti. She is the model of youth purity and love for God.
3) Intellectual:
Atheists really are seekers of Truth. They rely on the god of Reason as the soul foundation of human existence. They believe in what they can see and only what they feel is reasonable. They try to prove that Jesus did not exist and that God did not create the world; humans merely evolved. Yes, humans may have evolved, but the human soul that has free will must be a immediate Creation of God. Aristotle who is the Apostle of Reason believed in God and in the human soul as being indestructible. Aristotle said that man has a spiritual power to abstract and make universal definition which is a totally spiritual ability. He said the soul is a simple entity and does not have any parts but is a complete whole. It cannot fall apart. It is immortal. It had a beginning but will have no end. He said that the soul could live outside of the body when the body dies. He reasoned to all of this. So believing in God is actually very reasonable. God is the Creator of Reason. Reason tells us we have free will. Psychologist and Neurosurgians have explored the human brain to try and locate the area of the brain that controls free will. They admitted they never have found it. They cannot because free will is in one's immortal soul. Everpart of our body and all the faculties of our soul come from God Mind and Creative Love for us. One day - in this life or in the next - Atheists will realize that "without God Atheists would not exist." One day they will love God. God lovingly waits for them.
4) Spiritual:
Not every one prays. "Religion" means having a relationship with God. Talking to God for a believer is very normal behavior. Some children are not taught to pray. God can handle not getting a phone call from his children. He wishes they would check in from time to time so He can say to them: "I love you." But just as we parents love our kids if they call or not, so God loves us no matter what. He can wait. He knows that all His kids will see Him face to face after they leave this world. So, for all eternity they will know He exists. But the real question or issue is not God's Existence but rather God's Love for us. Knowing we are loved by God is the most important knowledge we can have in this world.
5) Divine:
This reason for the existence of God's pertains to God's reason to Create and Love us. There is a Latin phrase that answers the question "Why did God make us in the first place?" The Latin phase says: "Bonum est diffusivum sui." which means "Goodness has a tendency to go out of itself." God was perfectly happy. Then why would He create the Big Bang from nothing tha brought everything into existence? God was perfectly happy in Himself; but want to share life with others. Being God, He does things on a very grand scale. After billion of years, the earth was ready for the creation of human kind. He designed man and woman and told them to multiply. These humans had free will. He warned them not to eat of the fruit of good and evil because they would die. When they did freely sin, God did not punish them by giving them death. God only told them they would die if they ate of the fruit and He did not want them to eat of it. He knew that if they committed this great sin of disobedience that their souls would die as to their relattionship with God and that their souls - being so closely bound to their bodies - would effect death to thier bodies. It took Adam nearly a 1000 years to die because his body was so perfect. God's plan was to allow his children to enjoy this earth and learn to truly love and care for one another and then He would just take them to Heaven when they were ready and had loved much. His plan never had any death in it. We all have now inherited the fallen nature of Adam and Eve. But God told Adam and Eve that He would send a Savior to bring them back to Paradise. This is so true because on the cross, Jesus said to the repentant good thief: "This day you will be with me in Pardise."
So, then, why do I love Atheist? I love them because they just do not yet see God in nature and in their own bodies and in their ability to love. All the powers of body and soul are gifts from God. I feel there is Hope for every Atheist. Let me tell you a true story to illustrate my Hope for them:
In the 1920's there was an unusal married couple: a devout Catholic wife joined to her anti-Catholic atheistic husband. Eventhough there were totally opposites spiritually, they did still love each other very much. The wife saw her husband write and publish books against the Catholic Church and God. He was religious in his atheism. Of course, since God cannot be proven to not exist, he had to rely on his great faith in the non-existence of God. His wife waged her own spiritual war against his atheism by praying for him - not scolding or showing angry. Quite the contrary, she felt she would lead him to Christiantiy by her love and devotion and unconditional love for him. She decided to mirror God's love for him. So, she really loved him both romatically and spiritually. She loved him totally just as God loves us. Coming to the realization that it would take great suffering to be offered in atonement for his sins and to reinforce her prayers, she seriously asked God to send her a great suffering that she could offer up for him. She was becoming the embodiment of Jesus' words: "There is no greater love than this than to lay down one's life for one's friend."
In a matter of months her stange new pain allerted her husband to take her to the doctor. In the 1920's, there was no such thing as our modern "pain management". Her diagnosis was a great surprise to her husband but not at all to her. She had cancer and it was spreading rapidly. This was before the time of kemo or nutritional treatments. In a way that was good because Kemo is a poison and produces two others cancers - especially Lukemia. [My sister-in-law had ovarian cancer and was offered Kemo but was told of the risk of Lukemia. She felt she had little options. She took the Kemo, contracted Lukemia and died of it. Kemotherapy is an industry that kills the immunine system and can give additional cancers. It killed my beloved sister-in-law, Judy.]
Now that the husband was the reason for his wife's actual suffering which was added to her prayers, his hardness toward the Church and toward God was about to receive a mortal blow. She rapidly got worse and soon lay dying in much pain. She never wavered in her love for God or her husband. She was suffering to break through the walls of his mind and heart and soul. Before dying, she told him to come and put his ear near her mouth because she was too weak to speak loudly. She whispered into his ear this prediction: "I love you. After I die, you will become a Dominican priest." He said to her that he loved her so very much but that he hated God and the Catholic Church. But she protested that all her suffering offered up for his conversion cannot fail...could not be for nothing. With her words still ringing in his ears, she died in his arms.
On a business trip to Lourdes France, he was looking at the pilgrims with pity and stared at the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes that dominated this shrine that has seen the spiritual and physical cures of many. As he was gazing at the statue a miracle took place in his soul. He received the full and total gift of Faith! Suddenly he knew for certain that not only was there a God but God loved him so much as to give him this new spiritual sight to see Him!
He was so awed, excited and joyful that he started to run down the street. He kept running until he saw an open door way. He ran in right into the arms of a Dominican priest. "Father!" said the widower, "There is a God!" "I know," said the priest. The man said in reply: "No, Father, you do not understand. There really REALLY IS A GOD!" The priest then heard the whole story of his wife's suffering and her prediction. The priest said, "You have been through so much sorrow and now this miraculous experience. Why not stay with us a month or so to rest and just be peaceful and heal from the loss of your wife." The man agreed and moved in.
After more than a month had passed, the Dominican priest decided to take the widower to Rome to have him receive to humbly ask for and receive forgiveness for the many books he had published against the Church. The man was notorious just as St. Paul was before his conversion.
The Pope readily gave his forgiveness. Still the pontiff sadly expressed the fact that felt he was still very notorious - known to all as an a-theist ["against God"] and anti-Catholic. But the Domincan priest praised the man's repentance, new-found faith and now deep desire to become a priest. At first the Pope thought that it may be scandalous for him to become a priest because of his reputation in the theological world. But the Dominican priest humbly told the Pope that this man's vocation was authentic and deeply desired. There was absolutely no doubt in the man's mind that God wanted him to become a priest. The Pope said to the man: "I now give all my authority regarding you to this your Dominican priest who champions you. Whatever he askes for you to do, that is myself asking you to do it. Obey him as you would obey me."
With that interview completed, the widower entered the Dominican seminary and was so zealous to learn everything he could learn about God. He was soon ordained and was not assigned to a parish but to a Dominican Retreat House to give retreats to other priests! In every retreat that the new priest gave, he always included the story of his wife's love and sacrifice for him and how totally right she was about everything. One of the priests who made a retreat under him was Fr. Fulton J. Sheen who would become the Archbishop who would win an emmy for his series "Life is Worth Living" on Television. The Servant of God, Bishop Sheen, personally and with all his glorious style told the whole story of the new Dominican priest in a way even more beautifully than the new Dominican priest told it because Bishop Sheen knew the total significance of God's merciful love for Atheist.
But that was in the 1920's. Let's look at an current example that took place in 2011:
Jennifer Fulwiler has written a blog called "From Atheist to Catholic" [If you google her name or just "From Atheist to Catholic", you can get her whole story. But here at least a few quotes from her writing:
1) "I always thought it was obvious God did not exist"
2) "Thanks to meeting my husband, I learned that belief in God is not fundamentally unreasonable."
3) "I have always been a truth seeker, which is why I was an atheist."
4) "I approached life with much arrogance and pride. I now realize that pride is the most effective way to block out God so that one doesn't see him at all."
5) "Community, there is nothing like it in atheism. I never understood what people meant by memebership in the Catholic Church is being part of the Body of Christ; but now I readlly get it."
6) "By being part of the one, holy Catholic Chruch, there is a palpable connection I now have with other Catholics, even people I don't know."
7) "It is amazing to experience that connection and community!"
Given those two above stories of avowed athesit making there way home to the Catholic Church, I now really know why I do very much love atheists? I love them because God loves them!!
One last word to atheists who are reading this, do not be discouraged by your life before becoming open to God. Here is a quote Deacon Tony gave me today:
"I don't have to beat myself up over my mistakes. All I need to do is humble myself and ask for God's forgiveness in order to begin again becoming the person God wants me to be." Now is a good time to begin a new journey to God. His word says in Proverbs:
"My son, my daughter, with true humility have self esteem and prize yourself as you ought."
Let us pray:
Father please look upon every atheist and ignostic in the world - from sea to sea - with Your penetrating Love - Your Holy Spirit. Give them all comfort and assurance of Your Love and understanding. Please be patient with all of us, until we can get it right. Be a loving Dad who watches His play in the sandbox of this life. Help us to share our toys with each other generously. Help us to love each other.
Help all to understand that if one finds a true friend, one finds a treasure; and You Father are that Friend. As you let a man from atheism to becoming a Dominican priest through the love of his wife and a young lady to come from atheism to Catholicism through the love of her husband, please send every atheist and ignostic a great messenger of Love to lead them to peace of mind and all truth so that all atheists and ignostics and those who have lost their faith will come to realize how much You love them. Give them the surprise of Your Love and affirmation. Please send Your Providence to bring tham all the love they desparately need so that they can move from Human Love to Divine Love - which was Your very Plan in the first place! All this we ask in Jesus' Name. Amen.
Love, Pio
1) Psychological:
God understands that psychologically many people are inhibited from believing because of childhood experiences or lack of childhood experiences. For example, if a child has a mean or distant father who always unaffirms and belittles the child, then it would be hard for that child now come to be an adult to envision a loving God as his or her Father. Also if a family member abused a child sexually and emotionally - especially if these abusers were known to believe in God, then the child would be turned off to a God who had not been able to protect her or him.
2) Social:
When a young adult sees or reads about Hitler's killing of 40 million people and Stalin's killing of 60 million of his own people, he wonders how a good God could allow such a thing. Social evils of all kinds prove to him or her in their m ind that a good God just cannot exist. But God draw tremendous good out of evil...some times more good than existed before the evil. God does not take back free will but knows how to bring a greater good out of evil such as when Maria Goretti gave her life instead of giving in to a young man, she was canonized a Saint and converted her assailant who became a lay Franciscan and lived in a monastery all his life after being released from prison. He and Maria's mother both attended the Canonization of Maria Goretti. She is the model of youth purity and love for God.
3) Intellectual:
Atheists really are seekers of Truth. They rely on the god of Reason as the soul foundation of human existence. They believe in what they can see and only what they feel is reasonable. They try to prove that Jesus did not exist and that God did not create the world; humans merely evolved. Yes, humans may have evolved, but the human soul that has free will must be a immediate Creation of God. Aristotle who is the Apostle of Reason believed in God and in the human soul as being indestructible. Aristotle said that man has a spiritual power to abstract and make universal definition which is a totally spiritual ability. He said the soul is a simple entity and does not have any parts but is a complete whole. It cannot fall apart. It is immortal. It had a beginning but will have no end. He said that the soul could live outside of the body when the body dies. He reasoned to all of this. So believing in God is actually very reasonable. God is the Creator of Reason. Reason tells us we have free will. Psychologist and Neurosurgians have explored the human brain to try and locate the area of the brain that controls free will. They admitted they never have found it. They cannot because free will is in one's immortal soul. Everpart of our body and all the faculties of our soul come from God Mind and Creative Love for us. One day - in this life or in the next - Atheists will realize that "without God Atheists would not exist." One day they will love God. God lovingly waits for them.
4) Spiritual:
Not every one prays. "Religion" means having a relationship with God. Talking to God for a believer is very normal behavior. Some children are not taught to pray. God can handle not getting a phone call from his children. He wishes they would check in from time to time so He can say to them: "I love you." But just as we parents love our kids if they call or not, so God loves us no matter what. He can wait. He knows that all His kids will see Him face to face after they leave this world. So, for all eternity they will know He exists. But the real question or issue is not God's Existence but rather God's Love for us. Knowing we are loved by God is the most important knowledge we can have in this world.
5) Divine:
This reason for the existence of God's pertains to God's reason to Create and Love us. There is a Latin phrase that answers the question "Why did God make us in the first place?" The Latin phase says: "Bonum est diffusivum sui." which means "Goodness has a tendency to go out of itself." God was perfectly happy. Then why would He create the Big Bang from nothing tha brought everything into existence? God was perfectly happy in Himself; but want to share life with others. Being God, He does things on a very grand scale. After billion of years, the earth was ready for the creation of human kind. He designed man and woman and told them to multiply. These humans had free will. He warned them not to eat of the fruit of good and evil because they would die. When they did freely sin, God did not punish them by giving them death. God only told them they would die if they ate of the fruit and He did not want them to eat of it. He knew that if they committed this great sin of disobedience that their souls would die as to their relattionship with God and that their souls - being so closely bound to their bodies - would effect death to thier bodies. It took Adam nearly a 1000 years to die because his body was so perfect. God's plan was to allow his children to enjoy this earth and learn to truly love and care for one another and then He would just take them to Heaven when they were ready and had loved much. His plan never had any death in it. We all have now inherited the fallen nature of Adam and Eve. But God told Adam and Eve that He would send a Savior to bring them back to Paradise. This is so true because on the cross, Jesus said to the repentant good thief: "This day you will be with me in Pardise."
So, then, why do I love Atheist? I love them because they just do not yet see God in nature and in their own bodies and in their ability to love. All the powers of body and soul are gifts from God. I feel there is Hope for every Atheist. Let me tell you a true story to illustrate my Hope for them:
In the 1920's there was an unusal married couple: a devout Catholic wife joined to her anti-Catholic atheistic husband. Eventhough there were totally opposites spiritually, they did still love each other very much. The wife saw her husband write and publish books against the Catholic Church and God. He was religious in his atheism. Of course, since God cannot be proven to not exist, he had to rely on his great faith in the non-existence of God. His wife waged her own spiritual war against his atheism by praying for him - not scolding or showing angry. Quite the contrary, she felt she would lead him to Christiantiy by her love and devotion and unconditional love for him. She decided to mirror God's love for him. So, she really loved him both romatically and spiritually. She loved him totally just as God loves us. Coming to the realization that it would take great suffering to be offered in atonement for his sins and to reinforce her prayers, she seriously asked God to send her a great suffering that she could offer up for him. She was becoming the embodiment of Jesus' words: "There is no greater love than this than to lay down one's life for one's friend."
In a matter of months her stange new pain allerted her husband to take her to the doctor. In the 1920's, there was no such thing as our modern "pain management". Her diagnosis was a great surprise to her husband but not at all to her. She had cancer and it was spreading rapidly. This was before the time of kemo or nutritional treatments. In a way that was good because Kemo is a poison and produces two others cancers - especially Lukemia. [My sister-in-law had ovarian cancer and was offered Kemo but was told of the risk of Lukemia. She felt she had little options. She took the Kemo, contracted Lukemia and died of it. Kemotherapy is an industry that kills the immunine system and can give additional cancers. It killed my beloved sister-in-law, Judy.]
Now that the husband was the reason for his wife's actual suffering which was added to her prayers, his hardness toward the Church and toward God was about to receive a mortal blow. She rapidly got worse and soon lay dying in much pain. She never wavered in her love for God or her husband. She was suffering to break through the walls of his mind and heart and soul. Before dying, she told him to come and put his ear near her mouth because she was too weak to speak loudly. She whispered into his ear this prediction: "I love you. After I die, you will become a Dominican priest." He said to her that he loved her so very much but that he hated God and the Catholic Church. But she protested that all her suffering offered up for his conversion cannot fail...could not be for nothing. With her words still ringing in his ears, she died in his arms.
On a business trip to Lourdes France, he was looking at the pilgrims with pity and stared at the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes that dominated this shrine that has seen the spiritual and physical cures of many. As he was gazing at the statue a miracle took place in his soul. He received the full and total gift of Faith! Suddenly he knew for certain that not only was there a God but God loved him so much as to give him this new spiritual sight to see Him!
He was so awed, excited and joyful that he started to run down the street. He kept running until he saw an open door way. He ran in right into the arms of a Dominican priest. "Father!" said the widower, "There is a God!" "I know," said the priest. The man said in reply: "No, Father, you do not understand. There really REALLY IS A GOD!" The priest then heard the whole story of his wife's suffering and her prediction. The priest said, "You have been through so much sorrow and now this miraculous experience. Why not stay with us a month or so to rest and just be peaceful and heal from the loss of your wife." The man agreed and moved in.
After more than a month had passed, the Dominican priest decided to take the widower to Rome to have him receive to humbly ask for and receive forgiveness for the many books he had published against the Church. The man was notorious just as St. Paul was before his conversion.
The Pope readily gave his forgiveness. Still the pontiff sadly expressed the fact that felt he was still very notorious - known to all as an a-theist ["against God"] and anti-Catholic. But the Domincan priest praised the man's repentance, new-found faith and now deep desire to become a priest. At first the Pope thought that it may be scandalous for him to become a priest because of his reputation in the theological world. But the Dominican priest humbly told the Pope that this man's vocation was authentic and deeply desired. There was absolutely no doubt in the man's mind that God wanted him to become a priest. The Pope said to the man: "I now give all my authority regarding you to this your Dominican priest who champions you. Whatever he askes for you to do, that is myself asking you to do it. Obey him as you would obey me."
With that interview completed, the widower entered the Dominican seminary and was so zealous to learn everything he could learn about God. He was soon ordained and was not assigned to a parish but to a Dominican Retreat House to give retreats to other priests! In every retreat that the new priest gave, he always included the story of his wife's love and sacrifice for him and how totally right she was about everything. One of the priests who made a retreat under him was Fr. Fulton J. Sheen who would become the Archbishop who would win an emmy for his series "Life is Worth Living" on Television. The Servant of God, Bishop Sheen, personally and with all his glorious style told the whole story of the new Dominican priest in a way even more beautifully than the new Dominican priest told it because Bishop Sheen knew the total significance of God's merciful love for Atheist.
But that was in the 1920's. Let's look at an current example that took place in 2011:
Jennifer Fulwiler has written a blog called "From Atheist to Catholic" [If you google her name or just "From Atheist to Catholic", you can get her whole story. But here at least a few quotes from her writing:
1) "I always thought it was obvious God did not exist"
2) "Thanks to meeting my husband, I learned that belief in God is not fundamentally unreasonable."
3) "I have always been a truth seeker, which is why I was an atheist."
4) "I approached life with much arrogance and pride. I now realize that pride is the most effective way to block out God so that one doesn't see him at all."
5) "Community, there is nothing like it in atheism. I never understood what people meant by memebership in the Catholic Church is being part of the Body of Christ; but now I readlly get it."
6) "By being part of the one, holy Catholic Chruch, there is a palpable connection I now have with other Catholics, even people I don't know."
7) "It is amazing to experience that connection and community!"
Given those two above stories of avowed athesit making there way home to the Catholic Church, I now really know why I do very much love atheists? I love them because God loves them!!
One last word to atheists who are reading this, do not be discouraged by your life before becoming open to God. Here is a quote Deacon Tony gave me today:
"I don't have to beat myself up over my mistakes. All I need to do is humble myself and ask for God's forgiveness in order to begin again becoming the person God wants me to be." Now is a good time to begin a new journey to God. His word says in Proverbs:
"My son, my daughter, with true humility have self esteem and prize yourself as you ought."
Let us pray:
Father please look upon every atheist and ignostic in the world - from sea to sea - with Your penetrating Love - Your Holy Spirit. Give them all comfort and assurance of Your Love and understanding. Please be patient with all of us, until we can get it right. Be a loving Dad who watches His play in the sandbox of this life. Help us to share our toys with each other generously. Help us to love each other.
Help all to understand that if one finds a true friend, one finds a treasure; and You Father are that Friend. As you let a man from atheism to becoming a Dominican priest through the love of his wife and a young lady to come from atheism to Catholicism through the love of her husband, please send every atheist and ignostic a great messenger of Love to lead them to peace of mind and all truth so that all atheists and ignostics and those who have lost their faith will come to realize how much You love them. Give them the surprise of Your Love and affirmation. Please send Your Providence to bring tham all the love they desparately need so that they can move from Human Love to Divine Love - which was Your very Plan in the first place! All this we ask in Jesus' Name. Amen.
Love, Pio
Friday, September 23, 2011
Pio's Proverb 119: Feast of Saint Padre Pio: September 23, 2011
Today is the Feast Day of Padre Pio whom Blessed Pope John Paul II raised to the altars of the Church as a Canonized Saint. For 50 years, Saint Pio born the wounds of Jesus in his body - called the stigmata. Saint Pio was the only stigmatist priest in the history of the Church. St. Francis who was a stigmatist was a deacon in the Church not a priest. In the history of the Church, there were about 100 people who has the authentic stagmata. Saint Pio had visions of Christ since childhood; and one day as a priest, Jesus asked to him to be united to His passion. When Padre Pio got to his room, he noticed blood coming from his hands. These wounds would stay with him for the next 50 years. The Crucified Christ was sharing His passion with Padre Pio who became totally devoted to Jesus Passion and Death with the perfect charity to offer up all for the conversion and salvation of sinners. St. Paul's words for us: "to fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ" does not mean that Christ's sufferings were not enought. His sufferings saved all humankind. But St. Paul said that we are to unite our sufferings to those of Christ's for the conversion of sinners to come to the savation of Christ. Our sufferings united to Jesus' brings great graces to many.
As a confessor, Padre Pio could read hearts and tell penitents of sins they had forgotten or were hiding. He had the ability to see into the souls of his penitents even if he had not met them before. Padre Pio onced refused absolution to a man and told him to go and first break up with his mistress, then come back for absolution. The man did as Padre Pio had asked him to do.
The most startling of all his confession counsel was when he told a woman to think about her life and come back in three weeks. He said to her that her confession was not complete and that there was something more. She left and thought and thought about her life but returned in three weeks to tell Padre Pio that she had confessed all she knew of her sins and that she would kndly like his absolution. He said there was something more. She asked him why he thought that and what evidence did he possess that there was something more. He said to her: "When you came in for confession the first time, I saw your two grown children in hell because you neglected to correct them." [A note: Parents are responsible for the spiritual welfare of the souls of their children and are bound to correct them when they do evil. If the children do not heed, parents are exonerated; but if they do not correct, then the parents are guilty of grave sin.]
Padre Pio heard confessions sometimes 12 hours in one day. Padre Pio over the whole of his priesthood, heard 5 millions confessions. He was God's personal and priestly dispenser of His Mercy. Thus Padre Pio was dilently there for others - as was Jesus - to heal that spiritual needs of the penitent. But often he would heal them physically. There was a girl named Gemma who was born blind. She had no pupils; Padre Pio prayed for her and she regained her sight. She never had pupils; but still she could see. She could see with her soul. Our souls can see perfectly even without eyes. But this miracle was only one of Padre Pio's healings.
Padre Pio was loved by everyone because of his great tenderness and love for the people of God. He identified with those suffering bodily and built a hospital to take care of those who were not cured. This hospital has a bronze statute of Padre Pio heading the confession of a man to show that Padre Pio was first of all interested in the healing of souls. Today, this 200 bed hospital keeps being expanded and is the state of the art hsopital that extends Padre Pio's love to many. Love is the very stuff that Saints are made of: love for God and love for one's neighbor - which means everyone.
So, Saint Padre Pio was born on May 25, 1887 and was ordained a priest in 1910 and died after having said his last Mass on September 22. At 12:30 am on September 23, he asked a padre to hear his confession and asked his confessor to tell all the monks he was sorry for any offense against them. His confessor said he would do that and asked Padre Pio to bless all the monks and the sick. And Padre Pio did so. Padre Pio kept repeating the names of "Jesus" and "Mary" until he bowed his head and gave up his spirit about 3:00 am on September 23, 1968. A 100,000 people passed by his glass-covered coffin from Monday, September 23 to Thursday, September 26, 1968. That is why his Feast Day is today: September 23, 2011.
I have seen films of Padre Pio waving his handkerchief to a the crowd of hundreds of people who came out every night below his window to wave their handkerchiefs to say "Good Night". He was so loved!
Padre Pio's prescription for sanctity for all the laity was this:
1) Reading Scripture and meditation daily.
2) Particular examination of conscience each night.
3) Use of the Sacraments - especially daily Mass and Holy Communion.
4) Holy Confession once a week. He said that even if a room is not used, it still needs dusting once a week.
5) Complete devotion to Jesus, Our Savior, and to Mary, Our Mother as well as devotion to St. Michael and St. Francis. As mentioned above, for hours into his last evening and morning of his last day on earth, he lovingly said over and over again the names of "Jesus" and "Mary" right up to 3:00 am when he died on September 23, 1968. He was now able to see God the Father, Jesus, the Son of God with the Holy Spirit as well as his beloved Saints: Our Lady, St. Francis and holy Saint Michael - all for whom he had very special devotion and many, many conversations with on earth. He saw Our Lady and Saint Michael face to face on earth; how much more so would he see these beloved Saints in Heaven?
Let us pray:
Saint Padre Pio - my Patron Saint - pray for us and help us to make good confessions. Keep us holy and pure and faitful to Jesus and Mary. Amen.
Love, Pio
As a confessor, Padre Pio could read hearts and tell penitents of sins they had forgotten or were hiding. He had the ability to see into the souls of his penitents even if he had not met them before. Padre Pio onced refused absolution to a man and told him to go and first break up with his mistress, then come back for absolution. The man did as Padre Pio had asked him to do.
The most startling of all his confession counsel was when he told a woman to think about her life and come back in three weeks. He said to her that her confession was not complete and that there was something more. She left and thought and thought about her life but returned in three weeks to tell Padre Pio that she had confessed all she knew of her sins and that she would kndly like his absolution. He said there was something more. She asked him why he thought that and what evidence did he possess that there was something more. He said to her: "When you came in for confession the first time, I saw your two grown children in hell because you neglected to correct them." [A note: Parents are responsible for the spiritual welfare of the souls of their children and are bound to correct them when they do evil. If the children do not heed, parents are exonerated; but if they do not correct, then the parents are guilty of grave sin.]
Padre Pio heard confessions sometimes 12 hours in one day. Padre Pio over the whole of his priesthood, heard 5 millions confessions. He was God's personal and priestly dispenser of His Mercy. Thus Padre Pio was dilently there for others - as was Jesus - to heal that spiritual needs of the penitent. But often he would heal them physically. There was a girl named Gemma who was born blind. She had no pupils; Padre Pio prayed for her and she regained her sight. She never had pupils; but still she could see. She could see with her soul. Our souls can see perfectly even without eyes. But this miracle was only one of Padre Pio's healings.
Padre Pio was loved by everyone because of his great tenderness and love for the people of God. He identified with those suffering bodily and built a hospital to take care of those who were not cured. This hospital has a bronze statute of Padre Pio heading the confession of a man to show that Padre Pio was first of all interested in the healing of souls. Today, this 200 bed hospital keeps being expanded and is the state of the art hsopital that extends Padre Pio's love to many. Love is the very stuff that Saints are made of: love for God and love for one's neighbor - which means everyone.
So, Saint Padre Pio was born on May 25, 1887 and was ordained a priest in 1910 and died after having said his last Mass on September 22. At 12:30 am on September 23, he asked a padre to hear his confession and asked his confessor to tell all the monks he was sorry for any offense against them. His confessor said he would do that and asked Padre Pio to bless all the monks and the sick. And Padre Pio did so. Padre Pio kept repeating the names of "Jesus" and "Mary" until he bowed his head and gave up his spirit about 3:00 am on September 23, 1968. A 100,000 people passed by his glass-covered coffin from Monday, September 23 to Thursday, September 26, 1968. That is why his Feast Day is today: September 23, 2011.
I have seen films of Padre Pio waving his handkerchief to a the crowd of hundreds of people who came out every night below his window to wave their handkerchiefs to say "Good Night". He was so loved!
Padre Pio's prescription for sanctity for all the laity was this:
1) Reading Scripture and meditation daily.
2) Particular examination of conscience each night.
3) Use of the Sacraments - especially daily Mass and Holy Communion.
4) Holy Confession once a week. He said that even if a room is not used, it still needs dusting once a week.
5) Complete devotion to Jesus, Our Savior, and to Mary, Our Mother as well as devotion to St. Michael and St. Francis. As mentioned above, for hours into his last evening and morning of his last day on earth, he lovingly said over and over again the names of "Jesus" and "Mary" right up to 3:00 am when he died on September 23, 1968. He was now able to see God the Father, Jesus, the Son of God with the Holy Spirit as well as his beloved Saints: Our Lady, St. Francis and holy Saint Michael - all for whom he had very special devotion and many, many conversations with on earth. He saw Our Lady and Saint Michael face to face on earth; how much more so would he see these beloved Saints in Heaven?
Let us pray:
Saint Padre Pio - my Patron Saint - pray for us and help us to make good confessions. Keep us holy and pure and faitful to Jesus and Mary. Amen.
Love, Pio
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