Two Strangers Entering My Life

I call them strangers because we do not really know one another.  One of them is a young Japanese-German man who met me at the gym; another is a German lady who is one of my neighbors.  He is 24, she is 70.  I have had two conversations each with the young man and my neighbor.  Neither of them is religious [a] but both are spiritual, smart and articulate.

While it is normal for a first conversation to be light and casual, but then I am not a normal person.  Without telling them much of who I am for nothing that I am is interesting or important, I related to them some of the miracles that I encountered.  For some reason, I no longer feel uncomfortable talking to others about the miracles [1] for I am no longer ashamed of them and afraid what others might think.

Neither of them fled as a result of our talks.  Perhaps God brought us together.  If that is the case, I must have been given the courage to talk about the miracles.  Maybe they drew them out of me, or maybe I sensed that they had a need to hear them.  Rightly or wrongly, I decided that recounting my experiences would lead them to the Mother of God, so She could introduce them to Her Son, Jesus.

Perhaps this signals a new direction in my life, toward an evangelization stage, one that I have not asked for, for I am used to a semi-reclusive existence, and certainly not prepared to undertake, for my life's secular burdens continue to demand my time, exhaust my energy and create stress.  What is interesting is that my conversations did not exhaust me, stress me out and make me feel that time was wasted.  On the contrary, both strangers rejuvenated me, enriched my spirit and made me feel that my time was not wasted on things that are secular and temporal but rather invested in the holy and eternal.

If doing God's work can be so fun and rewarding, I would like to do it tirelessly -- I just need to find a way to end my secular responsibilities for good -- that will take a miracle.


[a] I found out today that the 24 year old was taken to be baptized Catholic by his maternal grandmother against his parents' wishes.  He is not practicing but is willing to attend Mass in Latin with me tomorrow, Sunday.  He actually spent a few minutes before the Blessed Sacrament today before he decided to pray before the Blessed Virgin Mary instead.  My neighbor will need a lot more time.  Only a miracle to some degree will be able to convince her.  I pray that it would happen.
[1] I am still not ready to share them on this blog.

"Miserere"

"Miserere"--a beautiful song [1] sung by voices from Heaven:

1. Andrea Bocelli and Zucchero at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_KVsJLFxz0
and by
2. Luciano Pavarotti, Zucchero and Andrea Bocelli at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYBHNLdwzbs

Some countries have given the world deadly diseases, others technologically advanced deadly weapons, yet others have focused on creating the best cuisine to bring joy to the dining experience and on cultivating talents that open hearts to the expansive sounds of Heaven.  Together, they occupy this planet along with others.  Lucky are those who live in places that are close to Heaven, not places that are deceivingly heavenly or like Hell.  Wherever one lives, a prayer [2], quoted below in Latin and in English, is appropriate:

Agnus Dei,
Qui tollis peccata mundi,
Miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei,
Qui tollis peccata mundi,
Miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei,
Qui tollis peccata mundi,
Dona nobis pacem.

The Lamb of God,
Who took the sins of the world,
Have mercy upon us.

The Lamb of God,
Who took the sins of the world,
Have mercy upon us.

The Lamb of God,
Who took the sins of the world,
Grant us peace.

[1] Translated by:

Roberta Locatelli

4 months ago

Have Mercy

Have mercy, have mercy,
Have mercy, poor me.
But I drink to life!

What a mistery is my life
What a mistery!
I'm a sinner of the year eighty thousand
A liar!
But, where am I? And what do I do?
How I live?
I live in the soul of the world
Lost in the depths of life!

Have mercy, poor me.
But I drink to life!

I'm the saint who betrayed you
When you were alone
And I live elsewhere and I look the world
from the sky
And I look the sea and the woods
I see me...
living in the soul of the world
Lost in the depths of life!

Have mercy, poor me.
But I drink to life!

If there was a night dark enought
to hide myself, hide myself
If there is a light, a hope
Gorgeous sun shining
inside me
Give me the joy of living
that isn't still here

Have mercy, have mercy,
That joy of living
that may be is not still here

 [2] http://lyricstranslate.com/en/agnus-dei-lamb-god.html-0

God's Children

Jews, Gentiles, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, believers of other religions [1] and non-believers are all God's children.  God speaks to each one individually and everyone is called to come home to Heaven [2].

Even though I would like everyone to be Catholic and holy, I am certain that the Catholic church is not the sole guardian of the key to Heaven even though many avenues within it are short-cuts for those whose believe in the Blessed Virgin Mary Who will lead them to Jesus, and through Jesus, the Son, they will meet God, the Father.  The Holy Spirit, the third and most mysterious part of the Holy Trinity, is also ready to bring anyone Heavenly fulfillment and peace when It is summoned with undiluted earnestness [3].

The Holy Trinity and the Blessed Virgin Mary are here for all.  Call on them.  They are ready to receive and embrace.


[1] http://www.religionfacts.com/big_religion_chart.htm
[2] Not everyone heeds the call of God.  Those who answer to Satan will end up in Hell.
[3] Praying for the Holy Spirit to enter one's interior takes more courage and concentration than one thinks, and the saying, "be careful what you wish for" applies.  The power of Holy Spirit is immense and limitless.

The Disturbingly Seductive Art Of Roberto Ferri

Below is an image of Michael the Archangel [1]:

The image of Archangel Michael above is not part of Roberto Ferri's work but I have inserted it here because I need to have Michael the Archangel above the next image below which is Lucifer.

The art of Roberto Ferri came across my search for an image of Lucifer.  When man is able to imagine it, it probably exists, for spirits can have many appearances and will appear to man's imagination to inspire or enslave him.  Roberto Ferri's image of Lucifer could be that of a male model but the gray gnarled foot, the blood-drained white finger nails and what I think is a metallic tail cannot be human, nor can the deformed bone structure with the round bumps below the knee.  Below is the image [2], [3]:

I do not know if Roberto Ferri has been inspired or enslaved by his God-given talents but to speculate on it is not the purpose of this entry.  The purpose of this entry is to introduce the beautiful work of Roberto Ferri, a modern-day Carravaggio [4] minus the Rembrandt-style theatrical spot lighting with dark backgrounds.

Besides Lucifer and other seductive but disturbing images, Roberto Ferri also painted Christ [5].  Perhaps the disturbingly seductive images are a glimpse of what Hell can look like.

Roberto Ferri is not the first fine artist to have imagined hellish images.  There are others, among them are Sandro Botticelli [6], Gustave Doré [7] and Salvatore Dali [8].

They each have different imaginations given the same subject matter, so I suppose that we, too, each have in our imagination our own Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, at least while we are on earth.  While Hell is usually far more interesting in man's imagination than Heaven [9], it is my hope that Hell is not so tantalizing in Its seduction that one overlooks Hell's disturbing and eternal sufferings and falls into It.


[1] Image from a search of images on Google: Archangel Michael
[2] http://www.robertoferri.net/gallery.php and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X2gKh_o6mc (video with music)
[3] Interview, in Italian, and many more artwork by Roberto Ferri: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcTTqwtkOsE
[4] http://www.caravaggio-foundation.org/
[5] https://www.pinterest.com/romanotje/jesus-christ-in-art/ and  http://wiki.cultured.com/people/Roberto_Ferri/
[6] http://www.worldofdante.org/gallery_botticelli.html
[7] http://www.worldofdante.org/gallery_dore.html
[8] http://www.openculture.com/2012/06 and http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/21/salvador-dali-dante-divine-comedy/
[9] Hell is apparently more entertaining too based on the popularity of the sinister and Godless movies produced by the entertainment industry.  See http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/

Beware The Desire For Justice

From the Gospel of Luke: "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven." [1]

From the Gospel of Matthew: " Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." [2]

These are words of God  They are simple to understand but difficult to live by.

[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+6%3A37&version=NIV
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%207:1-2

Waiting For What?

I went to get a haircut yesterday.  The barbershop owner in his forties observed that he was no longer young and lamented that he had lost his teenage good-looks.  Unexpectedly, he asked a ponderous question: waiting for what?  No one answered.  More than a day later in my mind, the question still lingers.

Why he asked the question I have no clue.  I suppose there is nothing exciting in his life to look forward to, for every day is mundane, working away to support his family.  I also suppose that he is not Christian or for that matter, a believer in any religion.

When life is taken for granted, when it is seen as a time spent in a vapid wasteland of recycled existence that leads nowhere, when it is lived without regular self-examinations of conscience in order to better oneself, to rest in God the hope of being a person of humility and charity, then life's future would surely be plain without meaning and hope, like a blank canvas with no image and no color that is as large as life is long placed before an uninspired artist with no talent and no imagination.

One does not want to own a canvas for life and be the artist without an iota of inspiration staring at it year after year waiting for something to happen because nothing will.

Thus the question, waiting for what, may have an answer after all: waiting for the rays of gratitude for the gift of life to emanate from within to shine upon one's canvas through the prism of a unique and irreplaceable existence that is each of us to cast upon it multidimensional images in a heavenly mixture of colors that changes continuously and varies from gloomy to spectacular, depending on the extent of one's of holiness at any given moment.

One must then ask: is it better to have a blank canvas at the end of life than one covered with stains of Sin of all kinds?

I would personally rather have a canvas stained with regretted sins than one unmarked by any acknowledgement of God and all the struggles between good and evil that one engaged in throughout life.  At the gates of Heaven and Hell, if I had no perfection to present, at least my battle scars would show, even if I had lost and evil had won.  With God's forgiveness, hopefully the Gate of Heaven will open.  That is what everyone is waiting for, whether anyone wants to admit it or not.

From Here To Holiness

A humanly unbridgeable wide and deep chasm separates the here and now from the somewhere up there and a time not yet here.  It is wide because of the countless permutations of Sin; it is deep because of the repetitive and the injurious nature of such sins.  In other words, the larger the variety of sins one commits, the wider the chasm, the more often one commits such sins and the more serious the harm that result from their commission, the deeper.

Man alone cannot bridge the chasm because he is naturally predisposed to Sin and all its variations.  Sin is like an opportunistic virus that seeks man as Its host, taking over his entire being when he is weak and unable to resist It.  Man is always defenseless against the lure of Sin.  Only when man attaches himself to God and prayer is he able to inoculate himself against Sin.  Like all inoculations, man's belief in God and prayer does not mean he will be free from the influence of Sin and will no longer suffer the consequences of Its manifestations--it merely lessens the intensity of his suffering when he contracts Sin.

For man to avoid Sin entirely, God has to intervene in an extraordinary way.  When God became man, Jesus was able to resist all temptations Sin had to offer because He was conceived by the Holy Spirit.  The Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, was made pure by God and led an undefiled and inviolate life.  No one else before Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary had anyone received the full grace of God to live a sinless life, and no one since.  Only by the extraordinary grace of God can one resist Sin and all Its manifestations.  Certainly, no one at present has it.

Indeed, many live their lives today in Sin and totally oblivious of the chasm between them and God.  They are smug--self-righteous without a scintilla of humility or charity.  Smugness itself is a sin and in my opinion, one of the very serious, for it is a self-ordained perfection that rests entirely on one's self-serving pride and flaunts the need for God, if God is even in the periphery.

For the smug ones, bridging their chasm will be difficult. Almost as challenging, albeit in a different way, will be for those who are scrupulous, for holiness is at the intersection of Truth and Perfection at a place somewhere up there that is not and cannot be found here.