Yet Another Alarm on Secularism

CNSNews.com reported that a book entitled Hating Jesus: American's Left War On Christianity  was written.  The author of the book said, "God's natural created order, His immutable, scientific and transcendent moral precepts, as well as the very lives and livelihoods of Christian Americans, are under vicious attack today at a level unprecedented in American history."  As a result, he "had to sound the alarm." [1]

In addition, he said, "[t]he secular left doesn't merely have a disagreement with Christianity.  These are not people with whom one may reason, compromise or even disagree.  They are dedicated to evil.  They demand nothing less than the abolition of the biblical worldview and the destruction of Christ's followers right along with it." [2]

It is important to note that CNSnews.com is Cybercast New Service [3] -- not Catholic News Service which is CNS [4]. This blogger mistook one for the other.  Having stumbled on the article quoted above, he has this observation:

The alarm on secularism had already gone off eight years earlier in April, 2008, when Pope Benedict XVI (now Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI) wrote and the Vatican published RESPONSES OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE QUESTIONS POSED BY THE BISHOPS [5].

The manner in which Pope Benedict XVI treated the subject matter was delicate, studied and eloquent.  In this blogger's opinion, his four paragraphs [6] are a work of art.  The Pope's polished writing style contrasts well with that of the book's author.

This blogger prefers the Pope's sophisticated approach rather than a more direct one, which is what this blogger resorts to using in his entries, for a learned scholar and a writer this blogger is not.

In a crude manner, this blogger had attempted to address secularism many times in the past.  He is fairly certain that he had not written his last entry on the subject matter and predicts with a smidgen of confidence that this book on secularism would not be the last of its kind, despite the fact that it is not selling all that well on amazon.com as of this date.


[1] http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/j-matt-barber/hating-jesus-liberals-declare-spiritual-warfare
[2] Ibid.
[3] http://www.cnsnews.com/history
[4] http://www.catholicnews.com/index.cfm
[5] https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2008/april/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080416_response-bishops.html
[6] Ibid:

1. The Holy Father is asked to give his assessment of the challenge of increasing secularism in public life and relativism in intellectual life, and his advice on how to confront these challenges pastorally and evangelize more effectively.

I touched upon this theme briefly in my address. It strikes me as significant that here in America, unlike many places in Europe, the secular mentality has not been intrinsically opposed to religion. Within the context of the separation of Church and State, American society has always been marked by a fundamental respect for religion and its public role, and, if polls are to be believed, the American people are deeply religious. But it is not enough to count on this traditional religiosity and go about business as usual, even as its foundations are being slowly undermined. A serious commitment to evangelization cannot prescind from a profound diagnosis of the real challenges the Gospel encounters in contemporary American culture.

Of course, what is essential is a correct understanding of the just autonomy of the secular order, an autonomy which cannot be divorced from God the Creator and his saving plan (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 36). Perhaps America’s brand of secularism poses a particular problem: it allows for professing belief in God, and respects the public role of religion and the Churches, but at the same time it can subtly reduce religious belief to a lowest common denominator. Faith becomes a passive acceptance that certain things “out there” are true, but without practical relevance for everyday life. The result is a growing separation of faith from life: living “as if God did not exist”. This is aggravated by an individualistic and eclectic approach to faith and religion: far from a Catholic approach to “thinking with the Church”, each person believes he or she has a right to pick and choose, maintaining external social bonds but without an integral, interior conversion to the law of Christ. Consequently, rather than being transformed and renewed in mind, Christians are easily tempted to conform themselves to the spirit of this age (cf. Rom 12:3). We have seen this emerge in an acute way in the scandal given by Catholics who promote an alleged right to abortion.

On a deeper level, secularism challenges the Church to reaffirm and to pursue more actively her mission in and to the world. As the Council made clear, the lay faithful have a particular responsibility in this regard. What is needed, I am convinced, is a greater sense of the intrinsic relationship between the Gospel and the natural law on the one hand, and, on the other, the pursuit of authentic human good, as embodied in civil law and in personal moral decisions. In a society that rightly values personal liberty, the Church needs to promote at every level of her teaching – in catechesis, preaching, seminary and university instruction – an apologetics aimed at affirming the truth of Christian revelation, the harmony of faith and reason, and a sound understanding of freedom, seen in positive terms as a liberation both from the limitations of sin and for an authentic and fulfilling life. In a word, the Gospel has to be preached and taught as an integral way of life, offering an attractive and true answer, intellectually and practically, to real human problems. The “dictatorship of relativism”, in the end, is nothing less than a threat to genuine human freedom, which only matures in generosity and fidelity to the truth.

Much more, of course, could be said on this subject: let me conclude, though, by saying that I believe that the Church in America, at this point in her history, is faced with the challenge of recapturing the Catholic vision of reality and presenting it, in an engaging and imaginative way, to a society which markets any number of recipes for human fulfillment. I think in particular of our need to speak to the hearts of young people, who, despite their constant exposure to messages contrary to the Gospel, continue to thirst for authenticity, goodness and truth. Much remains to be done, particularly on the level of preaching and catechesis in parishes and schools, if the new evangelization is to bear fruit for the renewal of ecclesial life in America.

Healing The Wounds Of Acedia (Sloth) - An Unexpected Conclusion

After spending some time making refinements to the last entry on acedia this morning, this blogger was so troubled that he did not quite know what to do with himself.  For the first time in months, he felt the urge to attend Mass, but instead of getting himself ready, he searched online for the next Mass.  By the time he was done, all of the morning Masses were over or in progress.  There was only one church that had a 1 p.m. Mass and a few with evening Masses.  This blogger ruled out all the evening Masses because he did not feel like attending one.  In the back of his mind, he knew that if he did not attend the 1 p.m. Mass, he would inadvertently miss all of the evening Masses.

His inexplicable inner turmoil drove him into action even as he thought that it was too early for him to take a first step in confronting his acedia, and that it was fine for him to miss the 1 p.m. Mass for there was always next Sunday.  The forces that compelled him to leave his home apparently had a different idea.  He was there about 20 minutes before Mass began, hoping to make a confession, but there was nobody in any of the six confessionals even though the church's website indicated that confessions were available prior to each Mass.

For a while he stood around and waited.  When it was clear to him that nobody was going to show up, he entered one of the pews and knelt down.  He reflected on what just happened, or rather what did not happen.  He did not enter the church with any sense of awe or any degree of reverence; he did not feel inner peace's welcoming and unconditional embrace; and nothing entered into his heart to heal the wounds of acedia.  He continued kneeling.  When his mind went blank, he sat down until Mass began.

When the priest reached the alter, he stood and announced to the congregation that today was the Feast of Corpus Christi but the name was changed to include not just the body of Christ but also the blood of Christ.  The new name is now the Feast of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. The priest told the congregants that on this special occasion, they can receive both the Body and  the Blood of Christ.

Upon hearing this announcement, this blogger knew why he was being pushed out the door by some invisible force -- the inexplicable inner turmoil -- to go to Mass this  Sunday, not next, for next Sunday he would have missed the Feast Day which the Blood of Christ was also dispensed along with the Body of Christ, and he would not have even known about it.

To partake in the Lord's Supper properly, one must have confessed one's sins.  Since no one was available for this blogger to confess to, he was hoping that the priest would have everyone say the Confiteor:

I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault; therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God. [1]

That did not happen, so this blogger said it in his heart because he had gone to Mass specifically to receive the healing Body of Christ; moreover, to be able to have the Blood of Christ on this special Sunday, the Feast of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, was particularly important to this blogger since his sins of sloth needed to be forgiven by the Most Holy Blood of Christ. [2]

If saying the Confiteor was an insufficient preparation for this blogger to receive the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, the tears that flowed down this blogger's cheeks when he joined in the singing of one of the hymns had sufficiently opened the wounds in his heart for healing and forgiveness to enter simultaneously.  Toward the end of the hymn when he was overcome by his urge to cry and could no longer sing, he felt cleansed and he felt whole, and that was before he received the Holy Communion and the Blood of Christ.

There are apparently many ways and many points in time for a healing to take place.  Today, in a very different way and at a very different time than expected, a healing took place. The one imagined by this blogger in his last entry did not work for him.  Something else did.  This evening, he is at peace.



[1] http://www.diocesefwsb.org/Data/Resources/6663dac75f6f855c122a9e90bdc5b35e-Article-3-Confiteor.pdf
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Matthew%2026%3A28

Healing The Wounds Of Acedia (Sloth)

Recalling a past dream in the last entry has brought to light an awareness of the dreamer's current tenuous spiritual connection with the Almighty One.  Although love is still present, it has lost part of its fervor.  When indifference begins to fill the cracks of a broken love, the relationship is no longer a fulfilling one.  As God retreats further and further into the distance, the emptiness within becomes more and more prominent.

Unfulfillment is a dreaded pain, and is often masked by denial, pretense, sarcasm, envy, jealousy and rage and the like on the one hand, and addictions to work, shopping, possessions, food, sex, drugs, alcohol, politics, amusements and myriad other forms of consumption on the other.  Living a cocktail of such actions seems to lead one to think that one is content but in actuality, the interior peace that comes with true fulfillment remains elusive to the soul.

A loss of connection between man and the Prince of Peace is often overlooked as the cause of upheavals in one's life and turmoils in the world.  As man assiduously looks for worldly means to quell stresses in his life and unrests in society, he is doing exactly what a sloth does spiritually--nothing.

In the words of Kathleen Norris, who was mentioned in an article written in the Los Angeles Times, "'We appear to be anything but slothful, yet that is exactly what we are, as we do more and care less, and feel pressured to do still more.'" [1]

Similarly, Catholic Online had this to say: "Sloth can masquerade as tolerance.  It can also be very busy, but the activity of the slothful leads nowhere, simply marking time in a life that has no ultimate purpose.  Many of the slothful end up in despair, a hopelessness that is distinct from clinical depression requiring medical attention." [2]

The Los Angeles Times article continued to quote Norris: "'I would suggest that while depression is an illness treatable by counseling and medication, acedia is a vice that is best countered by spiritual practice and the discipline of prayer."' [3]

Catholic Online agreed.  "The darkest side of sloth...is its distaste for worship and prayer.  Sometimes this aversion strikes at a very advanced stage of the spiritual life, but for most of us, it shows itself early on, after the euphoria of conversion or the sweetness of prayer wears off." [4]  Or, when ennui sets in from time to time in the way one's spiritual life ebbs and flows.

In order to overcome acedia, Catholic Online recommended "spend[ing] time in prayer, at least a half an hour every day." [5] And, "[a]bove all, do not skip Mass or forsake the Sacrament of Confession.  It is precisely these life-giving Sacraments that sloth most tempts us to abandon." [6]

This blogger agrees, and adds that acedia can be healed only when one is still in the flesh, and that the cure begins first in the mind where one's imagination resides.  To clear away the clutter that is clogging free-flowing channels to and from Heaven through which communication can be frequent and instantaneous, it is necessary to step back in time, not in the physical sense but in one's imagination.

Since every one's imagination is ageless, it is never too late to be young and innocent again.  All it takes is for one to want to start over, to walk into a church as if it were the first time every time  and re-live the moment of awe and reverence, and let go of the indifference and receive again inner peace's welcoming and unconditional embrace, leading in turn to the opening of the wounds of love for the living Christ in the Eucharist to enter, in that they can be healed for the love of God to once again thrive, and the fervor to love God in return to rekindle.

Knowing the formula to treat acedia does not mean it is simple to do.  If acedia can be eliminated this easily, it would not be classified as one of the seven deadly sins [7].  It is a deadly sin precisely because it cannot be excised without spiritual determination, persistence of prayer and divine assistance for Satan has already entered those who are slothful.  It will take a miracle for this blogger to be released from sloth's stranglehold except that the strength of the miracle needed is being slowly attenuated by the increasing distance sloth is placing between him and the Church, the confessional and the Eucharist. [8]


[1] http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-kathleen-norris21-2008sep21-story.html
[2] http://www.catholic.org/clife/lent/story.php?id=32656
[3] http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-kathleen-norris21-2008sep21-story.html
[4] http://www.catholic.org/clife/lent/story.php?id=32656
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] http://www.deadlysins.com/sloth/
[8] The hypocrisy of the Catholic church certainly does not make it easy for a sheep that has strayed to return to many of its similarly hypocritical shepherd priests.  In the interim, while this blogger struggles with his acedia, the recitation of the rosary will hopefully mitigate against its dreadful consequences.

A Modern Hell - A Personal Journey

This entry is a memory of a dream many years ago.  The images are as fresh today as they were back then.  The dream did not seem to have lasted long but it felt like "an endless or seemingly endless period of time." [1]

This blogger was asleep when he entered a dream state and found himself in a very bright universe that was refreshingly cool and without gravity, standing on a clean, white, unmotorized board that was slightly larger than the soles of his feet.  If he had taken more than a quarter step in any direction, he would have fallen off.  Where he would end up he did not know, but he made sure he kept his balance on the board he was put on, as if he were surfing.

All the while some mysterious force was pushing him forward.  At times, winds would pick up and he would be swept from one area to the next at immense speeds, throwing him off balance and nearly off the board.  At other times, the conditions would be calm and his speed of travel would slow considerably.

There were no signs anywhere along the way showing where he was headed, and there was no differentiation between one place and another.  All around was the same cool, brightly lit universe.  Continuously he kept going and going, afloat in space, in the same direction without a destination. First, he saw himself in shorts and sneakers.  Later, he saw himself barefoot wearing an off-white hoodless robe shaped similar to a Franciscan monk's brown hooded habit.

In the beginning it was fun, being able to ride the wind weightlessly at high speeds on a very small board.  For a freedom-lover who was an occasional speed demon in life, having the combination of speed and perceived freedom was like being in Heaven.

Heaven it was not.  When physical fatigue began to set in, there was no place to sit.  He had to keep standing, to keep himself balanced on the small board to avoid falling off. When he realized that he could not get off this ride, that his restful days where behind him and that he would be spending a very long time on this journey going nowhere, eternity was no longer to him a theological construct to be romanticized, but an inescapable reality to be confronted.

Physical strain was the first of his torments.  Emotional distress came next.  After the full extent of his bodily pain had set in, he started to look around to see if anyone else shared in his suffering.  All he saw were empty boards.  That was the moment he knew he was all alone in this vast nondescript space, and that nobody was ever there before him and no one was going to be there in the future.  Not even the most hardened loner on earth was able to comprehend and share vicariously the depth of his loneliness, his desperation for company and his interminable anguish.

Unable to cope, he reached out to God.  He thought that if he could be on his knees, put his hands together and pray, God would come to his aid.  Repeatedly he tried but there was too much turbulence to steady himself long enough to kneel down, even on one knee, without almost falling off his tiny board.  So he cried out to Heaven while standing as he sped through the air, but his cries were like silent screams that fell on deaf ears.  The absence of God was his most agonizing torment.  As spiritual emptiness expanded within him, his heart where God resided became smaller and smaller, until there was no trace of it left.

Eons passed.  Still his physical, emotional and spiritual pains remained fresh.  Still he was being propelled forward alone by an invisible force in a timeless continuum of unpredictable cool winds.  As usual, he sped past an unchanging airscape of small, white unoccupied boards suspended all around him when unexpectedly, out of nowhere, he noticed another entity some distance away, clothed just like him in an unhooded off-white robe, passing him by at a slightly higher altitude, like an arrow traveling through vacuum, unaffected by the familiar violent wind gusts that tossed him about.  He yelled out as loud as he possibly could but he heard no response in return, nor did he notice any movement, except for the billowing robe, as if the entity had been calcified and glued onto a board that was headed somewhere for a purpose.

For eons after the encounter, he continued to look all around, turning his head back every so often hoping for a chance to find another entity, who would become his companion on this endless journey to nowhere and commiserate about their miserable destinies, but that chance never came.

This blogger was still alone in this modern hell when he fell back asleep.  Until now, nobody knew of his dream. [2]

[1] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/eternity
[2] Could this be the dreamer's personal Hell?  It is no fun recounting it and is downright scary.  He hopes that with the Blessed Virgin Mary's unceasing intercessions, that this is not his Hell but his Purgatory where his soul gets purified and that the Holy Spirit will return to him a pure and wholesome heart where the love of God will reign forever.

A Snapshot Of Hell

This blogger's images of Hell ranges from the traditional (see Dante's Inferno [1]), to the modern (a memory of a dream that is yet to be jotted down and posted), to the theoretical (this entry): imagine a Hell where souls are not tormented by demons but by the cruelty, wrath and deceit of those they know best -- a figment of their own selves when they were in the flesh.


[1] https://archive.org/stream/inferno00dant_2/inferno00dant_2_djvu.txt

Transgender Individuals: Unconditional Love's Mystery

Far be it from this blogger to expound on unconditional love, since he has repeatedly admitted that he does not even know what ordinary love is, but he will in this entry.  As usual, he is unashamed of delving into subjects he knows nothing about and opining on them.  Transgenderism is one.

Transgender is an adjective defined as "[d]enoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex." [1]

First, this blogger is uninformed about the mental challenges of someone who is transgender.  Does transgenderism or gender dysphoria cause some kind of emotional pain so intense that one is incapable of functioning as a person?

From what this blogger has read [2], [3]. [4], transgenderism is not a life-threatening condition, a terminal disease or even a mental illness. [5]  In this blogger's opinion, those who are afflicted with gender dysphoria are challenged in ways similar to those who hate their skin color and ethnicity [6] for are they, too, are subject to stereotyping, discrimination in social and occupational settings and depression.

He is also of the opinion that those who hate their gender is an internal hate that is developed without an abundance of external influences whereas those who hate their skin color and ethnicity is a hate that is largely the result of external factors.

Everyone wants to be accepted by others, but due to prejudices and xenophobia, not everyone is treated with fairness and respect.  This is a societal problem.  When one does not accept oneself, that is a personal problem.

Not every problem has a solution and not every sickness has a cure.  Love of neighbor can cancel out prejudice and xenophobia, but when one has no love for one's own biological identity, there is no real cure.  A sex-change operation is in this blogger's opinion not a cure, but a surgical mutilation of one's natural external form, and not an effective treatment for self-hating transgender people, for no biological man can ever be fully a woman, and no biological woman can ever be fully a man.

This continuous dissatisfaction in the mind of a self-hating transgender being is the least of its problems.  Hating one's own gender is the same as hating God's gift of being and hating God.  Without God there can be no unconditional love, and the place without unconditional love is called Hell. Nobody wants to end up in Hell, and that includes self-hating transgender beings.

Even though God is unconditional love, unconditional love is not always predicated upon the actual presence of God.  The assertion just made is as much a speculation as it is a contradiction.  It is within this contradiction that unconditional love can exist without God's presence and becomes a mystery.  The fundamental meaning of unconditional love is loving without exceptions and contingencies, including loving transgender beings who find God's "misassignment" of gender a gift [9], as well as those who find God's assignment of gender a mistake.



[1] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/transgender
[2] http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/clinical-updates/psychiatry-psychology/mayo-provides-integrated-care-for-people-with-gender-dysphoria
[3] http://psychcentral.com/disorders/gender-dysphoria-symptoms/
[4] http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Gender-dysphoria/Pages/Introduction.aspx
[5] Ibid.
[6] http://hubpages.com/politics/People-Who-Hate-Their-Own-Skin-Color-And-Race
[7] http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency
[8] http://www.gotquestions.org/hermaphrodites.html
[9] https://www.believeoutloud.com/latest/god-made-me-transgender-and-god-does-not-make-mistakes

Mother's Day

Man's first mother fell victim to Satan's temptation in the Garden of Eden.  Then came Mary, the Immaculate Conception (conceived without Original Sin) and the Mother of God, Who was born to show man the way back to God.

Sadly, the modern woman is not at all like the Blessed Virgin Mary, for she is not the humble daughter before God and the attentive mother to her children.  If every woman in the world raised her children in a family setting where she is not only the loving mother but also the supportive spouse who loves God and leads the entire family to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Her Son, Jesus, the world would be a better place.

However, many modern women would rather not assume the role of the supportive wife and the attentive mother of her children for she perceives that her place is not in the home but outside of it.  Society in certain respects is better off with women in the work force based on the reality that the family unit is no longer ideal, with an at-home mother, a working father, God at its center and children to raise.

One reason that has driven many women away from the home is the depreciation in the value of the role of the at-home mother, so central to raising children to become good citizens of the world, combined with the bitterness of fathers who are unable to conceive sons but only daughters, who then want their daughters to be like sons, to do what men traditionally do, to conduct business, to take up arms and defend against attackers and to participate in sports that are driven by masculinity and testosterone.

There is no doubt that these modern women do not have as their model the Blessed Virgin Mary Who is seemingly meek because She is obedient to God, supportive of Her earthly spouse Joseph and attentive to Her Divine Son, Jesus.

On the contrary, the Blessed Virgin Mary is not at all meek, for how many of the strongest is able to live a life of humility unaffected by Satan's temptations?

Granted that the Blessed Virgin Mary was as perfect a Mother as a mother can be because She was conceived without Original Sin.  In that sense, no woman is like Her, other than the fallen Eve, who was created by God without Original Sin.  Eve was truly the meek one, subservient to Satan and submissive to Its desire to ruin God's creation: herself and Adam.

Randomness And Purposeful Creation

Scientists have theories on how the universe began.  One Stephen Hawking posted a lecture entitled The Origin of the Universe  [1].  In the end, he was unable to answer the question as to how his own being came into existence.  What is the purpose of theorizing the beginning of the universe without acknowledging its Creator, God, when one has does not even have the slightest clue where one originates from?

There is none.

Anyone who is incapable of laying a foundation as to where the "self" came from can have no validity.  To have validity, there has to be a meaningful foundation, which can be scientific as well as  faith-based.  An existence without an established foundation is a random existence out of pure chance that has no meaning.  Following it will be another meaningless creature whose chance existence is also a result of randomness.  Out of randomness comes randomness in the way that a meaningless random existence gives rise to meaningless random thoughts and meaningless random theories.  They are worthless and a waste of time, for soon they will be replaced with other invalid, meaningless and short-lived random thoughts and theories.

Those who still think that out of nothing came something so logically sequenced, biologically balanced, naturally occurring and rhythmically repetitive that life on earth can continue from millennium to millennium ought to soften their ossified heart against God and allow their God-given intellect to roam freely, to acknowledge the possibility that a Creator exists and that all of creation is purposeful. [2]


[1] http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-origin-of-the-universe.html
[2] Even the creatures and plants that had been extinct for millennia existed for a purpose.  Are their remains not the earth's fossil fuel that everyone today consumes directly and indirectly? See https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/fossil_fuel.htm

The Rosary: Fifteen Promises Of Mary

"[The Blessed Virgin Mary] left for all Christians Fifteen Promises to those who recite the Holy Rosary." [1]  The promises are quoted below [2]:

1. Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall receive signal graces.
2. I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary.
3. The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies.
4. The Rosary will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire for eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means.
5. The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall not perish.
6. Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying himself to the consideration of its sacred mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune. God will not chastise him in His justice, he shall not perish by an unprovided death; if he be just he shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of eternal life.
7. Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the sacraments of the Church.
8. Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the [plenitude] of His graces; at the moment of death they shall participate in the merits of the saints in paradise.
9. I shall deliver from Purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary.
10. The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in Heaven.
11. You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary.
12. All those who propagate the Holy Rosary shall be aided by me in their necessities.
13. I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death.
14. All who recite the Rosary are my sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters of my only Son Jesus Christ.
15. Devotion of my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.

Below are a few thoughts:

A.  Promise #3 above indicates that "[t]he Rosary shall...decrease sin..."  That's a relief.  Even the Blessed Virgin Mary knows that sinners cannot repent away theirs sins no matter how often they confess and say the confessional prayer [3].  So long as the frequency of sin is being decreased, the Blessed Virgin Mary "shall deliver from Purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary." See promise #9.

B.  These fifteen promises hinges upon the operative words "devout" and its cousin "devote."  The words appears first in promise #6 as "devoutly," in promise #7 as "devotion," in promise #9 as "devoted," and again in promise #15 as "devotion." [4]

C.  Not only are the fifteen promises contingent on the devotion to the Rosary but also on faith and the faithful recitation of the Rosary.  The overarching first promise, comprising of three parts: (i) unwavering faith in the Blessed Virgin Mary; (ii) humble acceptance of Her advice; and (iii) recitation of the Rosary, is telling.  It also points to "signal graces" which are the 35 graces (more or less, depending on how one counts them) that follow, that will be received by anyone who "faithfully serve [with humility]" the Blessed Virgin Mary by "the recitation of the Rosary." [5], [6]

Life without the Blessed Virgin Mary's fifteen promises would be more difficult and Purgatory (assuming the soul reaches Purgatory) would be longer and more painful than with the promises.  The choice to avail oneself of the Blessed Virgin's Mary's blessed promises is one to make.



[1] http://www.themostholyrosary.com/15promises.htm
[2] Ibid.
[3] "O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who are all-good and deserving of all my love.  I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin." See http://www.catholic.org/prayers/prayer.php?p=43
[4] When the mind wanders during the recitation of the Rosary, then the devotion is not 100 percent.  This blogger fails to meet the devotion requirement repeatedly, but hopes that every small percentage that passes the devotion test would accumulate over time and count toward having the promises fulfilled in life and especially at death and beyond. Whether he is a devout Catholic is for God to judge, hopefully mercifully and not harshly.
[5] http://www.themostholyrosary.com/15promises.htm
[6] The unstated promise is this:  One who does not have faith in the Blessed Virgin Mary, or who proudly thinks that She is merely a vessel for the the Son of God and holds no special place in Heaven as the Mother of God, and that there is no need to pray the Rosary or to Her would not have the 35 or so "special graces."

Orationi Gaudium (The Joy Of Prayer)

Orationi Gaudium is this blogger's invention, two supposedly Latin words loosely translated to mean the Joy of Prayer. Unlike the 288-page Evangelii Gaudium [1], this is no exhortation of any kind on any level.  This is just another entry written by the ever-bored and boring dreamer, one that will not fill up a page (footnotes excepted).

Prayer is a language of the heart that every human with or without a religion knows, for before there was a spoken language or a religion, there was a man and a woman, both of God's creation, in communion with God, in the silence of their hearts.

Intellect is secondary, and unnecessary in the Garden of Eden, since God had provided Adam and Eve with everything they ever needed.  However, to complete them in the image of the Creator, they were each given a mind to think, an intellect independent of each other's, and Free Will that is intellect's companion.  As wonderful as intellect is and the Free Will that goes with it, God's creation can live without an intellect [2] (and Free Will) but cannot without a beating heart [3].

It is the beating heart that God listens to, when it is opened up under prayer to synchronize with the rhythm and sounds of Heaven.  It is the heart, not the intellect, that first knows when God is replying, when it is full of inexplicable joy and peace.  When the ecstasy in the heart is taking place, the intellect disappears, for God's concentrated love is so pure, intense and expansive that the intellect is pushed beyond its planes of existence. [4]

Only prayer with true love for God from within the heart can the joy of prayer be realized.  The prayer does not have to be long; it only has to be real.



[1] http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html
[2] "Alzheimer's is not a normal part of aging.  It is progressive and incurable, a debilitating condition that slowly destroys memory, intellect and personality."  See https://books.google.com/books?id=N3_QPjJVWMcC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=alzheimer%27s+destroys+the+intellect&source=bl&ots=Vg0wHfB6eK&sig=6USFP3P-qWIRME0eSJgRDih6gxc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjp_7OPrrrMAhUG8GMKHRoKBIkQ6AEILDAD#v=onepage&q=alzheimer's%20destroys%20the%20intellect&f=false
[3] A creature of man's creation, however, can exist without a heart, for a short time and not naturally.  "Every animal has a pulsatile heart, Dr. Cohn explained.  The problem with existing artificial hearts is that to do the same job, they have to beat 100,000 times a day, 35 million times a year.  They wear out, he explained.  With a car, you can change the oil and spark plugs -- with an artificial heart, it is not so easy to keep the device going."  See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2003956/Craig-Lewiss-beatless-heart-Texas-husband-lives-5-weeks-pulse.html  This blogger is no heart specialist, but believes that the heart is not just a non-stop pulsing machine; rather it is a living organism that does more than just pump blood: it is the life source of every other organ in the body and it can, in its own God-given way, think and know, not as the intellect thinks and knows.  The heart thinks and knows God's Truth whereas the intellect thinks and knows an altered truth, a rationalized truth, a truth that is very much tainted by Original Sin.
[4] Intellect is always secondary to love, on earth as it is in Heaven.  Love, wherever it exists, in its pure and undiluted form, the love that Jesus had reminded all to give, that He had given to all, at Golgotha, is not subject to analysis by the intellect because it is not something the intellect can comprehend.  Whenever pure love permeates an environment, the intellect lays dormant for there is only time for bliss and no time for questions.