Spiritual Warfare: Know your enemy

The following comes from Aggie Catholics:

There is a spiritual battle that rages in places we cannot see with our eyes or hear with our ears. It rages in our hearts, our culture, and in our world.

In the Sacred Scriptures God continually warns His people to prepare for war. Yes, He is The victorious King who has entered the fray, but he calls you and I to take up our weapons and fight with Him against the enemy - Satan.

All of hell knows there is no hope of final victory, but out of spite, they fight to ruin whatever souls they can. The rest of creation cries out for salvation.

Our war will not be fought with weapons made of our own hands, but of the grace of God.

How have you prepared for war this day?
What are you doing to help others survive it?
Are you prepared to go into battle?
Whether you are or not, war is upon you.

Now is the time to fight. Now is the time to put on the armor of God and take up the sword.

If we fail to pick a side in the war, it means we have already chosen - "he who is not with me is against me."

Can you not hear the bombs falling and the guns firing? Pick up your cross - it is your weapon against the enemy - and follow The King of All into battle.

He will come again, but until that day - it is up to you and me to take up His cause and fight the enemy.

If you want to fight - here are a 9 strategies in fighting the war: 9 Ways to Overcome Temptation: 

1. Avoid and/or flee from it. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

“She caught him by his cloak and said, "Come to bed with me!" But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.” -Gen 39:12

2. Submit your thoughts to God. He knows better than we do what is good.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” -Phil 4:8

3. Overcome your selfishness. True Love doesn’t know selfishness. Because, if you love Jesus you don’t belong to yourself

“and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.” -1 Cor 3:23

4. Expect and be ready for temptation. We need to be prepared for Spiritual battle.

“Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” -Eph 6:13

5. Remind yourself of the consequences of sin.

“The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” -Gal5:19-21

6. Memorize God’s Word. Filling our minds with the thoughts of God and having them readily available to us is very wise.

“He replied, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” -Luke 11:28

7. Cultivate a sense of God’s presence But don’t just listen – obey.

“Go near and listen to all that the LORD our God says. Then tell us whatever the LORD our God tells you. We will listen and obey.” -Deut 5:27

8. Frequent confession heals us and we start over spiritually healthy.

“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” -James 5:16

9. Accountability helps us avoid sin. When we are accountable to both man and God it helps us overcome temptation.

“Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?" The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.” -Genesis 4:9-10

God’s Holiness Makes Us Uncomfortable

The following comes from the Catholic Exchange:

There is a third human reaction to God’s holiness. It is an evil reaction; it rises from man’s contradictory nature and consists of a feeling of discomfort, irritation, and rebelliousness. A strange manifestation! One is inclined to ask how this can come about if God is the moving Spirit and essence of the universe, and man is His creature — “For in Him we live, and move, and are.”

It is indeed difficult to understand; it springs from the mystery of evil. Sin, ultimately, is resistance to the holiness of God. It would be a mistake to think of this resistance merely as an open rebellion against, or as a denial of, God.

Potentially it is present in all of us — sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker; sometimes quite openly, sometimes in the guise of self-sufficient (rational) culture, or healthy common sense. When resistance, open or otherwise, gains the upper hand, prayer becomes impossible.

We must watch out for signs of it in ourselves; we must face it, try to resolve or still it, or overcome it with firm determination, whichever may be for us the most effective way of dealing with it. Let us leave this and return to the two fundamental motives of prayer already referred to.

Prayer’s first motive: a sense of our own sinfulness

The first motive for prayer springs from man’s awareness of his own unworthiness before the holiness of God. Man recognizes that he is selfish, unjust, deficient, and impure. He acknowledges his own wrongdoings and tries to assess them: not merely those of today or of yesterday, but of the whole of his life. Beyond this he tries to visualize the whole of the human condition with its shortcomings. He realizes sin as it is understood by the Scriptures, sin as it is active in himself. He recognizes that sin is transgression of the moral law and of the natural law.

But even more, he recognizes that sin is contumacy before God’s holiness, that it is, therefore, not only wicked but unholy. He admits it and sides with God against himself; he says, in the words of the Psalm: “For I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me. Against Thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before Thee: that Thou mayst be justified in Thy words, and mayst overcome when Thou art judged.”

We sometimes despair

A third form of evasion is caused by lack of courage. When man sees that he is constantly transgressing and that evil is deeply rooted in him, when he begins to feel that all is confusion and that there is no way out, he runs the risk of despairing of himself, especially when he is a person wanting in willpower and, perhaps, in logic. To hold out in these circumstances is most difficult because the mind seems to answer to all good intentions, “You’re not going to carry this through; you will do again what you have always done before.” There is only one remedy: to put aside all inner searchings and recriminations, to have done with all hesita­tions, and to put one’s absolute trust in God who “quickeneth the dead; and calleth those things that are not, as those that are.”

From this act of surrender to the Absolute, above and within us, will spring new resolve and new strength. We shall be able to say, “I will and shall, for God the omnipotent wills it.”

God’s forgiveness makes repentance possible

There is another mysterious aspect of God’s power which makes it possible for man to acknowledge his wrong and to admit and confess his sins. Man knows this intuitively, and the Scriptures have revealed it to us. God is not only the prime cause of the good and the fount of all justice; He is the all-renewer. He can give a new beginning to what appears final and He can undo all deeds. The words of St. Paul quoted above point to this mystery. God who is the supreme holiness, which by definition excludes all evil, is willing and able to forgive and to renew.

True forgiveness, the forgiveness which we are seeking and which alone is of benefit to us, is a great mystery. It implies not only that God decides to overlook what has happened and turns lovingly toward the sinner; this would not be sufficient. God’s forgiveness is creative: it makes him who has become guilty free of all guilt. God gathers the guilty man into His holiness, makes him partake of it, and gives him a new beginning. It is to this mystery that man appeals when he acknowledges his sins, repents of them, and seeks forgiveness. This is the first of those two motives of prayer which come into being before God’s holiness.

Editor’s note: This article has been adapted from Romano Guardini’s The Art of Praying, available from Sophia Institute Press. 

The Spirit Reveals Who We Are

The following comes from Fr.Jerry J. Pokorsky at the Catholic Thing: 

Pius XII and John Paul II both lamented our “loss of the sense of sin.” It’s an intriguing concept in the abstract; at a personal level, it’s haunting. But do we really understand the phenomenon? And are we free ourselves from the patterns that lead us to that loss? For my part, I’ve become increasingly aware of the continuing need for invoking the Holy Spirit, not only to provide guidance, but to reveal who we really are.

Prominent politicians and celebrities are often unashamed of their public views and private lives. So it only seems fair to point to their life patterns as a warning to others: the news stories of a wealthy and obscene pop star going through another bitter divorce and custody battle. And so forth.

For those of us in the business of conversion from sin, it’s easy to identify the fork in the road where such people chose the path to immorality. In one such case, a celebrity admitted she left the Catholic Church as a teenager when she found herself mocking the notion that someone could be condemned to Hell for a single, willful impure fantasy. The refusal to repent this attitude started her on a life of sexual debauchery. It comes as no surprise to anyone with a true Catholic mind: we become what we freely choose. But are we truly aware of what we have become?

We all have – to one extent or another – demanding personal and work schedules. A schedule may enhance our lives by directing our work (and recreation). In executing our activities according to a schedule, we often experience a healthy sense of accomplishment. But when pressed for time because of distractions, we often cut a few corners and rush things, although we are usually not impatient over the “big things” such as getting a large task done on time.

We find ourselves far more impatient over the “little things” – those unexpected obstacles that interrupt an “important” daily routine or agenda. So when we’re “ambushed” by interlopers (salesmen, broken water pipes, electrical outages, and the like) we feel robbed of valuable time, and impatience wells up within us.

Read the rest here!

The Deadly Sin of Pride

The following comes from Fr. Dwight Longenecker at Catholic Exchange:

There is a little poem by e.e.cummings which contains a line, “even on a sunday may I be wrong, for whenever men are right they are not young.” The poet is being paradoxically playful to make a point. When we are always right about everything we have not only lost the innocence of youth, but we are also guilty of the most basic sin of all, the deadly sin of pride. Pride is best understood as being right at all costs.

Some of the problems we think of as pride are really the symptoms of pride. We consider an arrogant person to be proud, but arrogance is one of the outward signs of pride. A person who displays his achievement or wealth, struts his good looks or brags about his victories is displaying the symptoms of pride, but pride is a much deeper problem and its symptoms can be seen in many other less obvious ways. A person who insists on arguing his point and will not listen to anyone else is proud. A person who simply assumes that he is right in his opinions is proud even though he may not strut or be arrogant. A person who can never be corrected, who is always defensive, who always has an excuse or always blames another person is proud because they cannot be wrong. Ever. At all.

In religious circles a person who is self righteous is proud. Now it gets tricky because a person who appears very humble and pious might, beneath the surface, be very proud of their piety and religious knowledge. At this point we have to laugh at ourselves. “What? You mean I am proud of being humble?” It’s true, some of the most incorrigibly proud people appear to be self effacing, obedient and pious souls.

This is why pride is so deadly, because it is the one sin that hides itself so effectively. The proud person, by very definition, does not realize he is proud. If he realized he was proud he would repent, but it is pride which keeps him from seeing that he is wrong or sinful in any way. Pride is a very difficult sin to do anything about because the proud person will even go so far as to admit that he is proud, and that makes him even more “right” than he was before!

What a subtle, lying, deceitful and insidious sin pride is! No wonder it is called “the first sin”. No wonder it is the first and most terrible sin of Satan who is the Father of Lies. Is pride deadly? Yes. It is deadly like a poisoned apple. It is deadly like a smiling murderer. Pride kills because the proud person cannot stand others who disagree. Not only does the proud person have to be right, but as their pride grows they must also destroy everyone else who is wrong. They cannot allow an enemy to remain. The proud person may not kill literally, but they kill reputations through gossip and detraction. They kill good will through hatred and recrimination. They kill charity through revenge and nursing a grudge. They kill friendship through arrogance, indifference to others and lack of compassion.

Humility counters pride. The word “humility” is derived from the same root as humor and “humus” which means “earth.” A humble person is down to earth. A humble person has a good sense of humor. Most of all, the humble person knows his failures, faults and foibles. He knows himself and can laugh at himself. e.e.cummings ends the poem by saying ruefully, “there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail, pulling all the sky over him with one smile.”

Vindication for the Broken

The following comes from the Catholic Exchange:

January 17, 2016
First Reading: Isaiah 62:1-5
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/011716.cfm

Breaking up stings. It is not just the pain of loss, but the embarrassment of having a relationship that we wanted taken away. It is embarrassing to tell your friends that you were the one rejected or that you got fired or that you got the raw end of a deal. The embarrassing pain of rejection cannot easily be reversed. It feels like a blot on one’s character, a permanent mark. Yet to allow the pain to become permanent involves losing hope, rejecting new possibilities, forgetting who you really are. Unfortunately, many of us import these ways of thinking into our relationship with God. We know we are sinners and have made many mistakes and even after repenting and receiving His forgiveness, we can hold on to our failures as if they define us and hang on to our losses as if they show us our true character. We can even find ourselves in a place of refusing to let God love us because we feel ourselves to be unworthy. This dark struggle with coming to accept oneself, receive God’s love, and allow our troublesome past to be forgotten in the light of his presence is what redemption is all about.

A Broken People

In this Sunday’s first reading from Isaiah 62, we see the prophet announcing a message of great hope to a broken, exiled and disappointed people. He addresses the people as “Zion,” the nickname for the capital city, Jerusalem. The latter half of Isaiah relates to a period when the Jews were exiled from their homeland. The Babylonians smashed and destroyed the city of Jerusalem before they exiled the Jews. Zion, the desolate, broken city, is now the center of the vindication of God’s people, the mouthpiece of her cause. They have been undergoing the dark struggle of rejection. They thought they were God’s people, but their homes were destroyed, the Temple was in ruins and they have been sent away from the land the Lord promised to their father Abraham. They were thoroughly embarrassed by their enemies. The Babylonians deposed their king and poked out his eyes (2 Kgs 25:7). The people of God were ashamed, downcast, humiliated.

Vindication

The prophet speaks up to announce their vindication—the restoration of their honor, “her vindication goes forth as brightness” (Isa 62:1 RSV). Vindication is hard to explain. It often means to be exonerated, to be cleared of wrongdoing, but in this case, it means something different. It means to defend the right of God’s people to be God’s people. Even though the people of God had been embarrassed and humiliated by their enemies, even though they had been punished for their sins, they were still God’s people and he would come to their aid and defend them. He would avenge their honor and claim them for himself.

A Reunited Couple

What would their restoration look like? The formerly exiled people would come back to their land. They would be restored to their home. Their enemies, the Babylonians, would themselves be crushed and humiliated by foreign armies. The Jews would reclaim their rightful place as God’s people, blessed and honored in the land he set aside for them. No longer would outsiders be able to scoff at the Jews as “Forsaken” or “Desolate,” but rather, the Jewish people would now be called Hephzibah, which means “my delight is in her”—an actual name in 1 Kings 21:1. Also, their land would be calledBeulah, which means “married.” The forsaken, desolate, embarrassed people who seemed to be without hope, lost in exile in a foreign land, will be reunited with their original “spouse.” The break-up would be over and a reunion would be in order.

Freedom from Shame

Sin embarrasses us. When we sin and fall away from God, we can fixate on our own mistakes of judgment and weaknesses of character. It is embarrassing to realize that your desires have a hold on you. Yet when God restores us to relationship with himself through Baptism and Confession, he frees us from that embarrassment. His forgiveness blots our ours sins and restores us to a place of honor. The dishonor of having failed, fallen and damaged our relationship with him is undone by God’s mercy. He releases us not only from the guilt of having sinned, but from the attending shame. He truly sets us free from the humiliation of sin and gives us an honored place in his presence. His gracevindicates us and restores our honor.

Finding Freedom in Knowing God’s Love

Fairytales end with the famous trope: “…and they lived happily ever after.” Here Isaiah’s portrait of God’s restored relationship with his people is similar:

For as a young man marries a virgin,
so shall your sons marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you.

(Isa 62:5 RSV)

While Isaiah had used the marriage metaphor before to explain the wrath of God against his people in terms of the anger of a betrayed spouse (Isa 5:1-7), now he builds on the idea he had introduced earlier of God taking back the wife that he had only temporarily abandoned (Isa 54:1-7). He returns to her, woos her, marries her, and rejoices over her. Marriage brings an end to the shame of rejection, loneliness and the nagging question at the back of one’s mind, “Does anyone really love me?” Here, Godmarries his people (imaged as the Jews “marrying” Jerusalem), bringing an end to their shame and an assurance of his love and fidelity to them. He has not abandoned them. Similarly, when we come to realize that an all-powerful, omniscient, eternal deity would deign to care about us, love us, seek us, redeem us, and yes, even marry us, we should be overwhelmed. His great love for us vanquishes all of our self-doubts. It cleanses us of our shame and guilt and frees us from embarrassment. God means to redeem us and to liberate us from our past sins, and let us finally rest in his presence and in the knowledge of his great love for us.

Benedict XVI: “The epidemic of the heart leads to corruption”

The following comes from the Vatican Insider:

“The truth, love and goodness that come from God, make man pure and truth, love and goodness come together in the Word which brings liberates a world that no longer thinks of God from ‘forgetfulness’.” This was at the heart of the homily which the Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI pronounced during a mass he presided over this morning in the Teutonic Cemetery church in the Vatican. The mass was attended by members of the Schuelerkreis (Ratzinger’s “student circle”) and the New Schuelerkreis, who gathered at Castel Gandolfo in recent days to reflect on the theme “How to speak to God today”. The priest and philosopher Tomas Halik also participated. The news was posted on the Ratzinger Foundation website.

Does not the evil that afflicts us come from the outside? This was the essence of the question posed by the Emeritus Pope in his German homily. We need to be cleansed of all the impurity that exists out there: “We could respond to the many illnesses and sometimes epidemics that threaten us, by maintaining an external cleanliness,” Benedict XVI said. It is important to care for our exterior in this way so that death does not prevail, the Emeritus Pope said. But this is not enough, he added, because there is also “the epidemic of the heart” to consider, that inner epidemic that “leads to corruption and other filth, the kind of filth that drives man to think only of himself and not of goodness.” So, aside from worship, ethos, “inner hygiene” in other words, also plays a decisive role: “What does a pure man do? What is the real power of purification? How does one come to have a cleansed heart?” Benedict XVI asked.

“In another passage of the Gospel,” he continued, “the Lord says to his people: ‘You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you’.” So we become pure by means of the Word: “The Word is Jesus Christ himself and we come across the Word even in those who reflect It, those who show us the face of God and reflect his meekness, his humble heart, his simplicity, his lovingness, his sincerity.”

The mass was followed by a ceremony for the inauguration of the “Pope Benedict-Joseph Ratzinger Hall”, which the Pope Emeritus blessed. The ceremony took place in the buildings adjacent to the Teutonic Cemetery. In his introductory speech, Mgr. Hans Peter Fischer, Rector of the Teutonic College, announced that a ceremony will be held on 18 November to mark the opening of the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Roman Library. The library is entirely dedicated to the works and life of Joseph Ratzinger as a scholar and a Pope and is housed inside the Library of the Teutonic College and of the Roman Institute of the Gorres Society in the Vatican.

Present at today’s ceremony – amongst others – were cardinals Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna and Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Prefect of the Papal Household and personal secretary to Benedict XVI.

Fr. Robert Barron: Seven Deadly Sins; Seven Lively Virtues

The Subtleties of Satan

The following comes from Fr. Dwight Longenecker:

Are demons and angels real?

There are an increasing numbers of new stories about exorcism and the reality of the demonic. I wrote recently on how the demonic may be manifested in many ways other than the obviously shocking stuff of the exorcism movies. The Devil in Ordinary told the story of a guy I met who was outwardly normal, but there was another quality to him which lurked beneath the surface which seemed diabolical.

As a Catholic priest I do not come across many instances of horrible demonic possession in the classic sense. However, I do come across many situations with very ordinary people where there is an irrational level of evil in their lives.

In many ways the classic examples of demonic possession are counter productive. They certainly make us aware that the devil is real, but they disguise the fact that the reality of evil is present in many other ways. If we are not careful we will conclude that the only time the devil is present is when a little girl’s head spins backward, she vomits nails, talks like Darth Vader and walks up the wall.

In my experience it is far more likely that the diabolical is insinuated into ordinary lives in far more subtle ways. Isn’t that what we would expect from the Father of Lies, the Great Serpent? What I mean is that Satan is more likely to control certain parts of our lives–claiming certain areas for his own which we have yielded to him. I envision him like a constrictor serpent wound tightly around certain parts of our lives–not letting go, hoping bit by bit to take control of our will completely until we are ruined.

Let me give you an example. I worked with a young man who had given in to pornography and sexual promiscuity. When we began to do some spiritual work, in this area he had a complete blind spot. He wanted to grow in grace, but really could not see the sin problem. When I insisted the rage emerged and it was extraordinary and frightening to see. He actually looked at me in a weird way. His eyes slanted and he exhaled through his teeth like a hiss. It only lasted for a moment, but something else was there.

Full scale exorcism was not necessary. Here was a man who went to confession and Mass regularly and seemed to be a good Christian. Nevertheless, something else was operating. There was a portion of his life that was not redeemed and a battle was going on for his soul.

This was not demonic possession as such, but what is sometimes called “obsession”. It is like the person has been infected with a virus that is working in the body as an alien agent and causing sickness, but not death.

I am convinced that this sort of demonic infection is very common and increasing. So what to do about it?

Regular unrelenting confession is the first remedy. Repentance and a complete and open examination of conscience. If this can be done with a spiritual director-priest even better. Secondly, I think we should consider what I called “self deliverance”. This is a way of using our prayer life to consciously name and expel the demonic influences. Reciting the Lord’s Prayer slowly with a focus on “deliver us from evil” is a powerful remedy. The use of holy water, scapulars, blessed candles, images and other sacramentals are useful. Finally, a real, conscious concentration on the presence of the Lord Jesus and his holy name in the Eucharist can help to drive out the demonic that exists in our ordinary lives.

I realize critics will sneer that my approach is medieval and superstitious and that I am seeing devils hiding under every bed. Not so. I am pretty down to earth about these matters. In fact, I am also prepared to accept that these influences are not objectively demonic. They might be. They might not.

It is practical good sense, however, to view them as demonic. It helps us to identify the problem, name it and cast it out. So, for example, a person may be struggling with alcoholism and they may call it “the demon drink”. The problem may have a demonic dimension or it may not. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the person sees the problem as a real objective problem and takes positive steps to expel the “demon.”

This would seem to put the whole matter into the realm of “practical ritual” and “useful symbolic language”–a mindset that denies the objective reality of the demonic. It needn’t. One can affirm the positive value of “practical ritual” and “symbolic language” while remaining agnostic about the objective reality of the demonic in particular cases.

The bottom line is that it is better to believe in the demonic and deal with pastoral cases as if it is real than not to.

It is better to remember that our adversary the devil is stalking about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour….

And to be on guard.

Impatience

Pope Francis: Why sinners go to Mass

Pope Francis: if you lose the sense of God's kingdom, you lose the sense of sin

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  "The greatest sin today is that people have lost the sense of sin" and therefore "the meaning of the kingdom of God" and in its place a "supernatural anthropological vision" has emerged according to which "I can do anything." This was the lesson that Pope Francis drew in his homily at Mass this morning at Casa Santa Marta from the biblical episode in which King David falls in love with Bathsheba and sends her husband, general Uriah, to fight in the front line and thus to certain death. It is in fact a murder.

As Vatican Radio reports, the Pope noted that "David is faced with a great sin, but he does not see it as a sin" says the Pope, "He doesn't even think of asking for forgiveness. Instead all he thinks about is: 'How can I resolve this?'".

"This can happen to us all. We are all sinners and we are all tempted and the temptation is our daily bread. If anyone ever said: 'I've never been tempted', either you are a cherub or a bit ' stupid, right? It's understandable ...its part of life's normal struggle, and the devil is never quiet, he wants his victory. But the problem - the most serious problem in this passage - is not so much temptation and sin against the ninth commandment, but David's behavoir. Here, David does not speak about sin, but about a problem that needs solving. This is a sign! When the Kingdom of God is forgotten, when the Kingdom of God diminishes, one of the signs is a lose of the sense of sin".

Every day, reciting the "Our Father", we ask God, "Thy kingdom come ...", which - says Pope Francis - means "that your Kingdom may grow". But when you lose the sense of sin, you also lose the "sense of the Kingdom of God" and in its place - the Pope said - there emerges an "anthropological vision" according to which "I can do anything".

"The power of man instead of God's glory! This is the daily bread. This is why we pray every day to God ' Thy kingdom come , Thy kingdom grow ', because salvation will not come from our cunning, our cleverness , our intelligence in doing business. Salvation comes from God's grace and how we train ever day of our Christian life for this grace".

Pope Francis quoted the famous phrase of Pope Pius XII: "The greatest sin today is that men have lost the sense of sin".  H then went on to look at Uriah the innocent man put to death because of his king's guilt. Uriah , the Pope says, becomes the emblem of all the victims of our inadmissible pride.

"I confess to you, when I see these injustices, this human pride, even when I see the danger that this will happen to me, the danger of losing the sense of sin, it makes me think of the many good Uriahs down through history, of the many Uriahs who today suffer our Christian mediocrity, when we lose the sense of sin, when we diminish God's kingdom ... These are the unrecognized martyrs of our sins. It would do us well to pray for ourselves today, that the Lord give us the grace to never loose the sense of sin, that His Kingdom is not diminished in us. We should also bring a spiritual flower to the graves of these contemporary Uriahs, who pay the bill for the feast of the secure, of those Christians who feel secure".

Ralph Martin on Pope Francis, the Devil, and Us

The following comes from Ralph Martin: 

The world’s press and the blogosphere have been abuzz for several months now with comments on how frequently Pope Francis talks about our enemy, the devil. Not only does he talk frequently about the devil, but he talks in such a way that indicates he actually believes in the devil’s existence and daily relevance to each of our lives — as should all faithful and well-formed Catholics.

There has been such an atmosphere of skepticism in the world, and in some places in the Church, about what could be called the “biblical world view” — what Jesus and the Apostles actually believed about the world — that Pope Francis’ frequent comments on the reality of the devil come across to many as shocking. But belief in the devil and his work to destroy souls is an integral part of the biblical revelation and is authoritatively taught by the Church (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, 391-395).


Why Pope Francis speaks about the devil with the frequency that he does perhaps can be traced to a few special factors. Pope Francis is a Jesuit, and an integral part of Jesuit formation is the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, where meditation on the reality of Satan and the need to discern and resist his works it plays an important role. Discerning the work of the evil one, the work of the human spirit, and the work of the Holy Spirit is foundational for Jesuit spirituality.

Perhaps another reason that Pope Francis speaks about the devil with such frequency is that he is discerning the devil’s work in the world today and in the lives of individuals and knows that unless we advert to this reality we won’t utilize the means necessary to defeat the devil’s work.

While still Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he discerned the hand of Satan behind the attack on marriage, an attack that is still being carried out with unusual hostility and rapidity in many countries today. When a law in favor of same-sex “marriage” was proposed in 2010 (and later passed) in Argentina, he said:

At stake is the total rejection of God’s law engraved in our hearts. Let us not be naive: this is not simply a political struggle, but it is an attempt to destroy God’s plan. It is not just a bill… but a move of the Father of Lies who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.

He also has identified the devil’s work in discouragement, hopelessness, in the profound deception of thinking one’s darkness is actually light, in the calumny that destroys people and reputations and in the hostility towards Christians which is producing in our time more martyrs than at any time in Christian history.

What then are the means that the Lord has given us to recognize and defeat the work of the devil in our own lives? Some of the most helpful biblical teaching on this is contained in Ephesians, where we are told that our battle is not just against flesh and blood but against the powers and principalities, the “world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.” Because this is the case we are told to “put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to resist on the evil day, and having done everything, to hold your ground.” (cf. Eph 6:10-20)

What is this armor that is needed to resist evil and hold our ground? It is truth; it is holiness; it is clarity about salvation; it is commitment to mission, to knowing and utilizing the Word of God. Not only to defend ourselves from the lies of the evil one but to speak words of truth that set other people free from demonic deception and bondage.

In this short article, though, there is one part of the spiritual armor, the “shield of faith,” that I would particularly like to comment on.

The shield of faith is given to us to “quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.” What are these flaming arrows? They are the temptations, the lies, the seductions of the demons intended to draw us away from God and the way that leads to salvation. Faith has a two-fold meaning. On the one hand faith is that complete trust and surrender to God which knows him to be all good and worthy of all our adoration and obedience — that friendship with Christ, that personal relationship, about which recent Popes have spoken so frequently. And a key to discerning what is from God and what is from the enemy is familiarity with the “voice” of the Lord through a relationship that grows in depth and intimacy through prayer, that “praying at all times in the Spirit,” that Ephesians urges us to. On the other hand faith is those truths revealed to us that are necessary for our salvation concerning, Christ, the Church, and the life of holiness that leads to the beatitude of heaven. These truths also contain clear and explicit warnings about what will exclude us from the kingdom. The devil is particularly interested in deceiving us in these areas which is why St. Paul so explicitly and repeatedly warns us in his First Letter to the Corinthians:

Do you not know that the immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor those who practice homosexuality nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor 6:9-10)

Similar lists are to be found in Galatians, Ephesians and Revelation.

Unfortunately, many of our fellow Catholics don’t know that a spiritual battle is being waged against them and haven’t availed themselves of the spiritual armor that can protect them and enable them to help set others free. Many of our fellow Catholics are drifting along with the culture, believing whatever they hear from the most foolish sources, moving along on that wide and easy path that leads to destruction (see Mt. 7: 13-14). The “flaming darts” of the enemy are entering many of our fellow Catholics, planting lies, sowing suspicion, stirring up disordered desires, and presenting rationalizations for sinful behavior.

While the primary foundation for engaging successfully in this spiritual warfare is contained in these texts we have just considered, Pope Francis has pointed out to us some additional special helps we have as Catholics that we need to have recourse to in these challenging times.

This past summer, Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI together consecrated the Vatican to St. Joseph and St. Michael the Archangel. Pope Francis asked for St. Joseph’s fatherly protection over each of us and over the whole Church, and he invoked the protection of St. Michael the Archangel against the “enemy par excellence, the devil,” asking St. Michael “to defend us from the evil one and banish him.”

How can we not think of that prayer to St. Michael the Archangel that Pope Leo XIII more than one hundred years ago asked us to pray for protections against the evil one, a prayer he was purported to have instituted in response to a vision of Satan’s rampage in which the evil one appeared as a “wild boar” ripping up the Lord’s vineyard?

And then Pope Francis has also asked us to avail ourselves of another, very special, spiritual weapon as a defense against the evil one: the intercession of Mary through praying the Rosary:

The Mother of Christ and of the Church is always with us… Mary struggles with us, sustains Christians in their fight against the forces of evil. Prayer with Mary, especially the rosary, has this “suffering dimension,” that is of struggle, a sustaining prayer in the battle against the evil one and his accomplices.

We are in a battle, as individuals and as a Church, but we have not been left orphans. The Lord himself is with us along with the whole heavenly court, and in a special way Mary and St. Michael the Archangel. But we need to do our part and put on the whole armor of God. If we do, we will not only be able to defend ourselves against the “wickedness and snares of the devil,” but we also will wield the “sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God,” and take our part in the New Evangelization.

Pope Francis: Beware of idolatry and hypocrisy

(Vatican Radio) Idolatry and hypocrisy do not spare even the Christian life. Pope Francis put us on guard against both these vices in his homily at this morning’s Mass at the Casa Santa Marta. In order not to give in to the dangers of these sins, he said, it is necessary to put into practice the commandments of love of God and love of neighbour.
Once again, the liturgy of the Mass elicits from Pope Francis a reflection on the traps that punctuate the life of faith: To become an apostle of one’s own ideas, or a devotee of one’s own well-being, rather than that of God; speaking ill about someone because he does not conform to certain formalities, forgetting that the “new” commandment of Christianity is love of neighbour without ifs and buts. From the words of St. Paul, the Pope goes on to condemn the sin of idolatry, that of people who – as the Apostle says – “for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give Him thanks” preferring to worship “the creature rather than the creator.” It is an idolatry, the Pope said, that “stifles the truth of the Faith” in which “is revealed the righteousness of God”:
“But since we all have need to worship – because we have the imprint of God within us – when we do not worship God, we worship creatures. And this is the passage from faith to idolatry. These people, idolaters, have no excuse: because having known God, they have neither glorified nor worshipped Him as God. And what is the way of idolatry? He says clearly: ‘they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened.’ The selfishness of their own thoughts, the omnipotent thought, that which I think is true: I think the truth, I make the truth with my thought.”
The critics of Saint Paul, two thousand years ago, went to the idolaters who prostrated themselves before reptiles, birds, and four-legged creatures. And here, Pope Francis immediately responds to the objection that this problem doesn’t arise, because no one goes around worshipping statues. It’s not so, the Pope replied: idolatry has found new forms and fashions:
“Even today, there are so many idols, and even today there are so many idolaters, so many who think they are wise. But even among us, among Christians, eh? I’m not speaking about them, I respect them, those who aren’t Christians. But among us – we’re speaking within the family – they think they’re wise, they know everything... They’ve become foolish and exchange the glory of the incorruptible God with an image: myself, my ideas, my comforts . . . Today, all of us – I go ahead, eh! It’s not only something historic – even today, along the way there are idols, even a step forward . . . We all have within ourselves some hidden idol. We can ask ourselves, in the sight of God: what is my hidden idol? What takes the place of God?”
If Saint Paul calls the idolaters foolish, in the day’s Gospel Jesus says the same thing about the hypocrites, in the person of the Pharisees who are scandalized because the Master hadn’t washed as was the norm before sitting down at table. “You Pharisees!” Jesus replied. “Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil.” And He adds, “But as to what is within, give alms, and behold, everything will be clean for you.”
“Jesus counsels: don’t look at appearances, go by the truth. The plate is the plate, but what is important is what’s on the plate: the meal. But if you are vain, if you are a careerist, if you are ambitious, if you are a person that always puts himself forward or likes to advance yourself, because you think you are perfect, give a little bit of alms and that will heal your hypocrisy. This is the way of the Lord: it is to worship God, to love God above all things and to love your neighbour. It’s so simple, but so difficult! This can only be done with grace. Let us ask for this grace”.

Pope Francis: Mary's faith unties the knots of sin

Catholicism: The Real Dark Night

Pope Francis: "There are 3 kinds of Christians: the saints, the sinners and the corrupt"

The following comes from Vatican Radio:

Sinners, the corrupt, and saints: Pope Francis focused on these three groups in his homily for Mass Monday morning in at the Casa Santa Marta. The Pope said the corrupt do great harm to the Church because they are worshipers of themselves; the saints, on the other hand, do great good, they are lights in the Church. 

What happens when we want to become the owners of the vineyard? The parable of the wicked tenants in Monday's Gospel reading provided the starting point for Pope Francis’ homily, which focused on “the three models of Christians in the Church: sinners, corrupt persons; and the saints.” The Pope noted that “there is no need to talk too much about sinners, because we are all sinners." "We recognize this from the inside,” he continued, “and we know what a sinner is. If any one of us does not feel that way, he should make a visit to a spiritual doctor” because “something is wrong.” The parable, however, presents us with another figure, the figure of those who want “to take possession of the vineyard, and who have lost the relationship with the Master of the vineyard,” a Master who, “has called us with love, who protects us, but who then gives us freedom.” Those who would take possession of the vineyard, “think they are strong, they think they are independent of God”:

“These, slowly, slipped on that autonomy, that independence in their relationship with God: ‘We don’t need that Master, who shouldn’t come and disturb us!’ And we go forward with this. These are the corrupt! These were sinners like all of us, but they have taken a step beyond that, as if they were confirmed in their sin: they don’t need God! But it only seems so, for in their genetic code there is this relationship with God. And since they can’t deny this, they make a special god: they themselves are god. They are corrupt.”
“This is a danger for us, too,” he added. In the “Christian communities,” he said, the corrupt think only of their own group: “Good, good. It’s about us - they think - but, in fact, ‘they are only out for themselves”:

“Judas [was the first]: from a greedy sinner, he ended in corruption. The road of autonomy is a dangerous road: the corrupt are very forgetful, have forgotten this love, with which the Lord made the vineyard, has made them! They severed the relationship with this love! And they become worshipers of themselves. How bad are the corrupt in the Christian community! May the Lord deliver us from sliding down this road of corruption.”

The Pope spoke also of the saints, remembering that today is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Bd Pope John XXIII, “a model of holiness.” In the day's Gospel, he added, the saints are those who “go to collect the rent” on the vineyard. “They know what is expected of them, but they must do it, and they do their duty”:

“The saints are those who obey the Lord, those who worship the Lord, those who have not lost the memory of the love with which the Lord has made the vineyard: the saints in the Church. Just as the corrupt do so much harm to the Church, the saints do so much good. The apostle John says of the corrupt that they are the antichrist, that they are among us, but they are not of us. About the saints, the Word of God tells us they are like light, ‘that they will be before the throne of God in adoration.’ Today we ask the Lord for the grace to understand that we are sinners, but truly sinners, not sinners broadly, but sinners with regard to this, that, and the other thing, concrete sins, with the concreteness of sin. The grace to not become corrupt: sinners, yes; corrupt, no! And the grace to walk in the paths of holiness. So be it.”
Cardinal Angelo Amato, the head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, concelebrated the Mass, which was attended by a group of priests and collaborators from the Congregation, as well as a group of Gentlemen of His Holiness.

Admonishing Sinners

Beware the Ides of March

Fr. Robert Barron on the Seven Deadly Sins

Fr. Barron speaks about the Seven Deadly Sins, those great spiritual blocks that inhibit our flourishing in relationship with God and one another. Based on Dantes writings, the seven deadly sins correspond to the seven stories of Dantes Mt. Purgatory. Pride, envy, anger, sloth, gluttony, avarice and lust are all presented as patterns of dysfunction within us that lead to unhappiness. Father Robert Barron tells us how to counteract these seven sinful patterns through a conscious process of opposition, which are the Seven Lively Virtues. The Seven Lively Virtues offer antidotes to each sin and help set us on the right path to healing and happiness.

Hat tip to Catholic Fire on this!

Men of Valor/Woman of Virtue

The following comes from the CNA:

Think of the church as a hospital, a Franciscan University professor told some 1,000 Christians at a conference on the evils of pornography. “We are all here not as doctors and nurses, but as patients,” said Catholic theologian Scott Hahn. “We all need intensive care.”

Hahn and his wife, Kimberly, were the keynote Catholic speakers at the annual twin Men of Valor/Women of Virtue conferences in Olathe, Kan. Co-sponsored by the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph and the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, the conferences are also mainly sponsored by the inter-denomination, anti-pornography National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, founded by Jerry Kirk, Kimberly Hahn’s father.

As it has for years, the conferences drew more than 1,000 Christians from both sides of the state line to learn more about raising faith-filled children in a culture saturated by sexual promiscuity. The Men of Valor Conference was held Jan. 30 at Mid-America Nazarene University, while a separate women’s conference the same day was held at Prince of Peace Catholic Church, both in Olathe, Kan.

Participants in both conferences gathered together on the college campus on the evening of Jan. 29 to hear all four keynoters — Mark Laaser of Faithful and True Ministries, and Dannah Gresh of Pure Freedom as well as the Hahns.

In his keynote, Scott Hahn stressed the “Theology of the Body” teachings of the late Pope John Paul II that sex reserved for a monogamous, sacramental marriage between one man and one woman is God’s greatest gift to humanity.

“When we enter into a marriage covenant, your body is saying (to a spouse), ‘I’m yours, and only yours,’ so that God’s life-giving love can be expressed through us,” Hahn said.

“It’s not about sacrifice,” he said. “It’s about sanctification.”

Citing the Bible that says that man and woman become one flesh, Hahn said that “the one flesh we become is so real, that nine months later, we have to give it a name.”

Hahn said that the commandments are not the product of a controlling God, but of a loving God.

“The commandments are a description of who we are and what we need,” he said. “God loves us more than we are ever capable of understanding. That’s why sin isn’t just about broken laws. Sin is about broken lives and broken hearts.”

Hahn said that Christians must continually fortify themselves against sin.

“This world is not a playground. It’s a battlefield,” he said.

“We face spiritual warfare, and we all know failure, and beginning over again and again,” Hahn said.

“This is what it means to get to heaven. We will be carrying these scars to God,” he said. “What we have to offer God is a humble and contrite heart.

“God is through all eternity a father,” he said. “We are here to internalize that, and to ask him to help us do what we cannot do alone.”

In her opening keynote, Kimberly Hahn told of how Noah’s wife immediately accepted God’s curious — to humans — command to her husband to build a huge ark, even without hearing it herself.

“Mrs. Noah believed the word of God through her husband,” she said. “There were no priests to go to, no pastors. She believed her husband and believed that God had spoken through him.”

And not just his wife, but his sons and their wives also believed Noah, “the spiritual head of the family.”

By believing they were all saved, even though the world ridiculed them.

“Men who head households, you must act for the salvation of your households,” Hahn said.

“The world isn’t going to change,” she said. “We are the ones who have to change.”

Speaking from the Protestant viewpoint, Laaser and Gresh both stressed that Satan is targeting marriages and families as the way to destroy the Christ’s church.

Gresh told of the societal pressures on the teen and pre-teen girls she works with, and how the sex-saturated culture is the opposite of God’s plan for their lives.

“When God looks down on earth in his quest to teach his passion for us, he sees a marriage bed, a pure and holy marriage bed. That’s the passion,” she said.

“If your relationship with your kids, with your wife has the potential to be the picture of Christ and his church, how motivated is Satan to destroy that image?” Gresh said.

“This weekend, we want to equip and motivate you to stomp on his head."

Laaser, without naming names, said he has counseled some of the world’s wealthiest and most famous people through sexual addictions.

One Hollywood star — “a name you would all know” — once confessed to having sex with more than 3,000 women.

“He told me that it was never enough. He always wanted more,” Laaser said.

“Sexual things are never enough to satisfy our souls,” he said.

Laaser said the famous star had no idea what he was hungering and thirsting for, he said quoting the Bible: “Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be filled.”

Instead, the star and all others seeking satisfaction through promiscuity are trapped in a selfish, narcissistic lifestyle.

“How do I get selfless?” Laaser asked. Then answering with more questions, he said, “What are we willing to die for? Would you die for your spouse?”

Speaking directly to the men, Laaser said, “Then I would say to you, when you look at pornography or lust after another woman, you are killing your wife’s spirit.

“Can you turn to a life of purity?” Laaser asked. “If you are a man of valor, you are willing to die for those who love you.

“Tonight, are you willing not to die, but to die to yourself?” he asked. “If you are, then the resurrecting love of Jesus Christ will be made manifest in your life.”