"Walking in darkness means being overly pleased with ourselves, believing that we do not need salvation. That is darkness! When we continue on this road of darkness, it is not easy to turn back. Therefore, John continues, because this way of thinking made him reflect: 'If we say we are without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us'. Look to your sins, to our sins, we are all sinners, all of us ... This is the starting point. But if we confess our sins, He is faithful, He is so just He forgives us our sins, cleansing us from all unrighteousness…The Lord who is so good, so faithful, so just that He forgives. "
"When the Lord forgives us, He does justice" - continued the Pope - first to himself, "because He came to save and forgive", welcoming us with the tenderness of a Father for his children: "The Lord is tender towards those who fear, to those who come to Him "and with tenderness," He always understand us”. He wants to gift us the peace that only He gives. " "This is what happens in the Sacrament of Reconciliation" even though "many times we think that going to confession is like going to the dry cleaner" to clean the dirt from our clothes:
"But Jesus in the confessional is not a dry cleaner: it is an encounter with Jesus, but with this Jesus who waits for us, who waits for us just as we are. “But, Lord, look ... this is how I am”, we are often ashamed to tell the truth: 'I did this, I thought this'. But shame is a true Christian virtue, and even human ... the ability to be ashamed: I do not know if there is a similar saying in Italian, but in our country to those who are never ashamed are called “sin vergüenza’: this means ‘the unashamed ', because they are people who do not have the ability to be ashamed and to be ashamed is a virtue of the humble, of the man and the woman who are humble. "
Pope Francis continued: “ we must have trust, because when we sin we have an advocate with the Father, "Jesus Christ the righteous." And He "supports us before the Father" and defends us in front of our weaknesses. But you need to stand in front of the Lord "with our truth of sinners", "with confidence, even with joy, without masquerading... We must never masquerade before God." And shame is a virtue: "blessed shame." "This is the virtue that Jesus asks of us: humility and meekness".
"Humility and meekness are like the frame of a Christian life. A Christian must always be so, humble and meek. And Jesus waits for us to forgive us. We can ask Him a question: Is going to confession like to a torture session? No! It is going to praise God, because I, a sinner , have been saved by Him. And is He waiting for me to beat me? No, with tenderness to forgive me. And if tomorrow I do the same? Go again, and go and go and go .... He always waits for us. This tenderness of the Lord, this humility, this meekness .... "
Text from a page of the Vatican Radio website.
All during Lent, I talked about going to confession. I hope and pray that many of you did. However, lest you think that confession is just for Lent, let me remind you that confession is a sacrament all year ‘round. Every two weeks is a good rule of thumb. Remember that we don’t have to wait and commit a “really big one” before we go. We receive many graces each and every time we seek the Sacrament of Reconciliation. And, of course, if you haven’t gone in a long time, GO! On this wonderful topic the Pope just gave a beautiful homily. I have posted a part of it below and, whether you go weekly or have not been in a long time, it is well worth the read. Remember, we are ALL sinners.
0 Comments
One week from today we begin the Paschal Triduum. So no as we begin to wrap up Lent, where are you in your relationship with God? Have you gone to confession? If you have, GREAT! Go again. If you haven’t the GO TO CONFESSION!! Please don’t let this Lent end without celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Your heavenly Father is waiting for you to come home just like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son. So please, GO TO CONFESSION, it really isn’t as bad as you think it is. There isn’t anything that you can say that the priest hasn’t already heard. Confession is there to lift the weight from your shoulders, to allow you to be assured of forgiveness and so you can experience personally the mercy of God. So please, find your local church and just do it! You will be ever so glad you did.
GO TO CONFESSION
Here are some interesting facts: For one year in the United States according to the CDC (Center for Disease Control):
GO TO CONFESSION Why do I care you say. Note the heart disease number. This translates into heart attacks most of which are sudden and unexpected. Note the accident numbers which are unexpected. Note the stroke numbers which, like the heart attacks, are sudden and unexpected. That’s 6,762.84 people dying each day, 281.78 each hour and 4.69 each minute. So slightly less that 5 people in the United States are being called before the Judgment Seat of God every minute of every hour of every day. GO TO CONFESSION Are you ready to go? Is your soul ready to meet your maker? We will all receive God’s judgment whether we want it or not, but His MERCY is there for the ASKING. Why risk eternal damnation when all you have to do is GO TO CONFESSION!!! At some point in the past year, the United States experienced its 55 millionth legal abortion... That's 55 million creative minds, 55 million people that could be working, 55 million that could be contributing to society. To put the total of 55 million in perspective, the combined number of military deaths in all of America's wars –- from the Revolutionary War to the second Iraq war –- is 1.2 million. The loss is staggering. I am not a big fan of Time magazine as it seems to me to be just as liberal as most of the rest of the mainstream media. Yet today they surprised us with this cover. Have you seen it? They also ran a very good article on pro life. Below is the article and you can also view it in Time's magazine or on their website here. Pro-Life and Feminism Aren’t Mutually Exclusive From its early beginnings, feminism was a young women’s movement. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Charlotte Lozier and so many others began their suffragist work in their 20s. These women — the original feminists — understood that the rights of women cannot be built on the broken backs of unborn children. Anthony called abortion “child murder.” Paul, author of the original 1923 Equal Rights Amendment, said that “abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.” So the pro-life movement hasn’t changed the meaning of feminism, as has been suggested. It was the neo-feminists of the 1960s and ’70s who asked women to prize abortion as the pathway to equality. Marjorie Dannenfelser, along with a group of mostly Democratic women, started the Susan B. Anthony List in 1992, the so-called Year of the Woman, when numerous pro-choice women were elected to Congress. Dannenfelser, then in her mid-20s, saw a need to support more pro-life women running for elected office. Twenty years since the organization’s founding, we now have two pro-life women in the Senate, 17 in the House, four in governorships and hundreds more in state legislatures. Pro-life feminism has captivated a new generation of young women who reject the illusion that to be pro-woman is to be pro-choice. Gallup polling showed that among 18-to-29-year-olds, there was a 5% increase in those labeling themselves “pro-life” between 2007–08 and 2009–10. The past few years have seen the emergence of young leaders like Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America, who is responsible for organizing more than 675 pro-life groups on college campuses across the nation, and Lila Rose of Live Action, whose undercover video work has forced the abortion industry to confront and amend practices it cannot defend, as well as dozens of other future leaders who have assisted our organization as staff members and interns. During the past two summers we’ve had young female leaders join the SBA List from Stanford, Georgetown, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of California, Berkeley. These passionate defenders of women and unborn children return to their campuses ready to lead pro-life groups and educate their classmates on the tragedy of abortion. Not only does this young generation of pro-life women shun the notion that abortion somehow liberates women; it views abortion as the civil- and human-rights cause of our day. Abortion is an injustice that permeates our society. Forty years after Roe v. Wade, we realize that a third of our peers are not here to share our progress and our hopes. It is our loss as well as theirs. In his letter from a Birmingham, Ala., jail, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” It is in this same spirit of King and the original feminists that young pro-life women are rising up in increasing numbers to say abortion is a radical injustice that affects us all and must end. Achieving this will require more efforts to extend our understanding of the equal rights of the disabled unborn, prevent rape and make this crime against women a thing of the past, expand adoption and make the benefits of modern prenatal care and specialties like fetal surgery more available, so that even younger and sicker children can be spared an early death. Our fight transcends elections and legislative battles because our fight is in our hearts. This is why, 40 years after Roe, our movement is still growing. We won’t give up; we can’t give up. Our fight is for life. |
CommentsTo view or add comments, please click the "Comments" link in the upper right or lower left corner of the post. Thank you for leaving your thoughts.
AuthorI am a Roman Catholic Priest for the Diocese of Colorado Springs. I am currently assigned to St. Dominic Catholic Church in Security, CO. Follow me on Facebook by clicking on "Follow this blog" below.
Categories
All
Archives
February 2016
|