Powerful Presentation by Father Jim Blount - Must Watch

Follow the Science

Harold Gans is a retired Senior Cryptologic Mathematician with the U.S. Department of Defense. Mr Gans, citing equations concerning the probability of complexities and orderliness occurring in creation by chance, has concluded that the existence of a Creator is a mathematical certainty. You will be amazed!

The Warning! Illumination of Conscience! What is it?

I wanted to post this video of an interview with the author of The Warning, Christine Watkins, by Father Dan Rehill. Although Mrs. Watkins' book deals with private revelations, I found the concept of The Warning quite interesting. We all need to be made conscious of the gravity and far reaching effects of sin. An illumination of conscience would certainly help us achieve that knowledge and awareness!  

Watch the video and check out The Warning and see what you think.

"Do Not Let Me Trust What I Can Grasp Between My Fingers"

My Lord, I have no hope but in Your Cross. You, by Your humility, and sufferings and death, have delivered me from all vain hope. You have killed the vanity of the present life in Yourself, and have given me all that is eternal in rising from the dead.

Why should I want to be rich, when You were poor? Why should I desire to be famous and powerful in the eyes of men, when the sons of those who exalted the false prophets and stoned the true rejected You and nailed You to the Cross? Why should I cherish in my heart a hope that devours me-the hope for perfect happiness in this life-when such hope, doomed to frustration, is nothing but despair?

My hope is what the eye has never seen. Therefore, let me not trust in visible rewards. My hope is what the heart of man cannot feel. Therefore let me trust not in the feelings of my heart. My hope is what the hand of man has never touched. Do not let me trust what I can grasp between my fingers. Death will loosen my grasp and my vain hope will be gone.

Let my trust be in Your mercy, not in myself. Let my hope be in your love, not in health, or strength, or ability or human resources.

If I trust You, everything else will become, for me, strength, health, and support. Everything will bring me to heaven. If I do not trust You, everything will be my destruction. ~ Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, Part I, Ch. VII

 

Great Reflection from Thomas Merton

 

It is God’s love that warms me in the sun and

God’s love

That sends the cold rain. It is God’s love that

feeds me in the bread I eat,

and God that feeds me also by hunger and

fasting.

It is the love of God that sends the winter days

when I am cold and sick

and the hot summer when I labor and my

clothes are full of sweat:

but it is God Who breathes on me with light

winds off the river

and in the breezes out of the wood.

His love spreads the shade of the sycamore

over my head . . .

It is God’s love that speaks to me in the birds

and streams;

But also behind the clamor of the city God

speaks to me in His judgments,

and all these things are seeds sent to me from His will.

If these seeds would take root in my liberty,

and His will would grow from my freedom,

I would become the love that He is, and my

Harvest would be

His glory and my own joy. ~ Thomas Merton, (New Seeds of Contemplation, pp. 16-17)

 

A Word About Human Suffering and the Political, Cultural, and Religious Division of Our Time

It seems whenever there arise instances of human suffering, God is the first one to be blamed for not doing anything to eradicate it. People experience the atrocities of war, catastrophic illness, natural disasters, famine, and the like. We become angry at God for not intervening to stop the suffering or we stop believing in Him altogether unable to reconcile how a loving and all powerful God could allow His children to suffer so much.

The truth is that God never intended humanity to suffer and certainly did not create the circumstances by which suffering entered the world. We did! God created a perfect world full of everything we could ever need or want. God’s will for us was, and still is, perfect happiness and well-being. At the moment mankind strayed from His will,  the ingredients for every form of human suffering entered our world. What do I mean by this? Well let’s take a look at how different forms of sin attributed to human suffering.

With regard to the suffering created by war. Think of the sins that would cause us to impose our wills on the lives of others by force; thinking of others as less human because of race or ethnicity; to unlawfully take possession of the property of others by force; This is not God’s doing but the exercise of our free will choice not to love our neighbor the way God loves us. We act outside of His will! His fault? Not!

What about illnesses such as cancer? The resources God provided us with initially were pure and good for our health and well-being. The water and food provided by God was all we required to nourish and sustain us. It is when man fueled by greed and pride began to alter God’s perfect providence, not with the pure intention of benefiting mankind, but intending rather to benefit his bank account. Over time, harmful chemicals were introduced and other injurious farming techniques served to deplete nutrients from our food were introduced, many of which were driven by a desire to increase the profit margin and not the quality of the produce. We began to pollute our water sources and the food sources within them with the poison chemicals produced by greedy manufacturers while never giving much thought about the impact it would have on the health of humankind. Once again greed, power, and control. How was this God’s fault?

Think of the money, energy, and resources that have been spent on the proliferation of weapons and methods to annihilate one another rather than assist one another. How is this God’s fault? If the money, energy, and resources spent on destroying one another were applied to helping and loving one another, I dare say that the suffering caused by war, famine, and illness would be dramatically decreased. I don’t think one person on earth would ever have to go hungry, thirsty, or without health care or shelter!

Look at the cultural and political division of our time. Pride, greed, self-aggrandizement, and corruption are at the heart of the division we are experiencing, a division in which nothing can get accomplished to make the world a better place in which to live.

We can tremendously help to eliminate much human suffering and strife if we put our selfish, prideful agendas away and begin to work together for the common good. This is what God wills for mankind. Politicians and leaders of countries, do you hear what I am saying? Abandon your pride, humble yourself and repent. Ask God to help us work together for the common good. Ask for wisdom and all the virtue necessary to lead in a way that brings us together for the good of all mankind! This is God’s will and He will say yes to those prayers. God’s grace is always available to us. We only need cooperate with that grace!  

“if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14

A Reflection on Beatitude from Thomas Merton

"There are two levels of beatitude. One is the incomplete happiness which man can achieve on earth by his natural intelligence, contemplating and loving God after the manner of a philosopher. Perfect beatitude, which is foreshadowed in the obscure mystical contemplation of God on earth and is perfected in the light of glory, is the clear supernatural vision of the Divine Essence as it is in itself. This vision cannot be reached through any created medium, and therefore it consists in an immediate union of the glorified human spirit with the Divine Essence. This union is the only thing capable of finally satisfying man's desires for complete happiness and perfection." ~ Thomas Merton from his work, The Ascent to Truth

0

People reached

0

Engagements

–

Distribution score

Boost post

Like

Comment

Share