Forgotten Truths To Set Faith Afire!

 

 

" In the sacrament of Penance, God extends his forgiveness to us in a very personal way.   Through the ministry of the priest, we come to our loving Savior with the burden of our sins.   We confess that we have sinned against God and our neighbor.   We manifest our sorrow and ask pardon from the Lord. Then, through the priest, we hear Christ say to us: 'Your sins are forgiven' (Mark 2:5); 'Go, and do not sin again' (John 8:11).   Can we not also hear him say to us as we are filled with his saving grace: 'Extend to others seventy times seven, this same forgiveness and mercy?' " St. John Paul II 

 

Fasting is the soul of prayer; mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated.  If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So, if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others, you open God’s ear to yourself. St. Peter Chrysologus

 

As Christians, we should realize that life is the boot camp for eternity… while our goal should be eternity with God, those who reject this goal do not merely ‘go to jail’, they go to hell forever…Little time or monies is expended on our souls.   This disparity should cause us concern since our souls live for eternity, while our bodies will undergo corruption in the near future.   We seem to be foolishly investing in the material to the exclusion of the spiritual.  Mary Ann Budnik

  Now is the time of mercy; then, there will be only the time of justice. This is why we have to live in the present moment and transform it into the moment of God.  St. Thomas Aquinas

  The world is in need of many things…it is in great need of apostles who are holy, cheerful, loyal to the Church and eager to make Christ known.  Let us ask ourselves whether we reflect extreme joy in our daily life.  We have so many reasons to be happy: the wonder of divine filiation, the comfort of Divine Mercy, the knowledge that we are on the road to heaven…the joy of being able to receive communion so often!   Francis Fernandez

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) The more a soul has sorrow for its sins, the more it has peace, because confidence increases when repentance deepens.   The more pain he feels for having displeased God, the more the soul will hope that God will grant mercy and therein rests its joy.   The reason the number of saints is so small in the world today is that there are very few persons who have the courage to face up to their transgressions of God's law or are sufficiently confident to continue it long enough for it to prove effective.   The foundation of Christian perfection is humility, and humility can be acquired only by a deep knowledge of one's miseries, that is to say, of one's sins at their roots. Father Charles Hugo Doyle