‘Jesus answered them: “Amen, amen, I say unto you that whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.”‘ (John 8:34)
Sin is always an addiction of some kind, sometimes one that is universally recognised as such, involving drugs, alcohol, sex or money etc., or others less often regarded so, involving things like self-esteem, pride and power etc. The addiction can be caused by the internal drives that make us act against our better judgement, and also external factors like bad “friends” or powerful enemies.
I originally started writing to encourage people enslaved by sin, or people sypathetic to their plight, to pray the rosary to the Blessed Virgin Mary for help. I especially had in mind those helpless and hopeless people who allow themselves to be trapped, then escape again, only to allow themselves to become trapped again, so much so that they feel their family and friends and God and all of heaven must surely have lost patience with them by now.
In my life, one lifeline has been particularly helpful for me – a quote by Saint Maximillian Kolbe (incidentally, the patron saint of drug addicts and prisoners, among others) – “Do not give way to discouragement, even though you should fall frequently into mortal sin. An act of perfect love will purify you.” (The Crusade of Mary Immaculate) Many is the time that I’ve had to dig out my little booklet, just to check that this little phrase underlined on page 9 is really there, so I hope it’s helpful to some of you out there.
I continue to write due to Pope Benedict XVI’s recent calls for evangelising the “digital continent”. In my life I have come to realise that prayer is the most important thing any of us can do. Recent popes have called for a greater emphasis on praying the Mass, the Divine Office, Lectio Divina and the Rosary. It is these last two about which I think I can say something (useful?).
I think that it is possible for any person to come to know God purely through their own thinking, but only to a limited degree, like the Greek community that Saint Paul encountered with a temple dedicated to “an unknown God”. However, there are so many mistakes that we can make, that this open-mindedness of the afore-mentioned Greeks who were humble enough to admit their limits, is about as far as we can go. So God then gives us revelation of Himself through the community of the Church, which in turn hands down God’s Word in the Bible. A human intellect with access to this revelation and humbly setting itself in the direction indicated by the teaching authority of the Church can soar to great heights and come to know God more deeply. Without obedience a soul can just fly around in circles of speculation, but with obedience we can hope to truly get closer to God.
I hope and pray that my speculations will be kept within the safe bounds of Roman Catholic orthodoxy and yet be a springboard for renewed and deeper thought about God. While I feel supremely unqualified to offer anyone any spiritual guidance, being a sinner and all that, I have been encouraged by recently reading a passage from Saint Gregory the Great:
“Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give”
“You too, if you wish it, can deserve the exalted quality of the name of God’s angel. Each one of you, in so far as he can, in so far as he receives an inspiration from on high, if he recalls his neighbor from his wickedness, takes care to encourage him to do good, proclaims the eternal kingdom or eternal punishment to one astray – each one of you is truly an angel of Jesus’ holy words. No one should say, I am unable to give counsel, I am not qualified to encourage anyone. Do as much as you can, lest you be tormented for having badly kept what you received. He who was given only one talent was more eager to hide it than to distribute it (Mt 25,14f.)…
“Draw others as far as you consider you have advanced; desire to have comrades on your way toward God. If any of you, my friends, is going to the market, or perhaps to the public baths, he will invite someone whom he sees to have nothing else to do to come with him. That earthly kind of action is habitual among you. So, if you are going toward God, take care not to go to him alone. The one who has already received in his heart a word of heavenly love may also return to his neighbors an external word of encouragement.”
So there you have it. The quote above came from “Daily Gospel.org”, and the title about freely receiving and giving means that I do not claim to hold any copyright for the ideas I write down here. If anyone likes anything they see in my blog, they are free to copy, edit, whatever, with only the proviso of distributing freely again 🙂
More catholic blogs can be found at “Saint Blog’s Parish” and “Catholic Blog Directory“.
ROSARY and LECTIO DIVINA, Michael127 
Catholicism is counterfeit Christianity and you are completely deceived, believing in “another jesus and another gospel” per 2 Cor 11:4, which will never save you. For example, Boniface VIII proclaimed (circa 1300) that it was, “altogether necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff”.
Face it: THAT IS A LIE. You can jump up and down, stand on your head in Macy’s window and scream to the moon until you’re blue in the face trying to convince us, but it will never be true. Salvation is believing in the merits of Christ alone, period, end of story.
Indeed, Catholicism is a viperous theology that has bitten its members for far too long. Only the anti-venom of Scripture can cure her ills. But she refuses to take the antidote. We are flabbergasted that the laity refuse to wake up out of their spiritual coma and prefer to be lulled to sleep by all of the RCC’s unbiblical doctrines! Let’s take another example. The RCC has abrogated the original command to partake of BOTH bread and wine, and instead teach Jesus would be pleased we take either one!
WHAT?! NO WAY.
They even teach that the Savior never even OBLIGATED us to consume both elements. Listen to the madness of the Council of Trent: “This holy synod, taught by the Holy Spirit…declares that lay people…are not obliged by any divine command to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist under both kinds, and that it can in no way be doubted without injury to faith that Communion under either kind is sufficient to them for salvation. For although Christ the Lord at his last supper instituted this sacrament with the form of bread and wine…nevertheless that institution and tradition do not aim at this, that all believers in Christ are bound by the commandment of the Lord to receive both kinds. Neither is it rightly concluded [from the Last Supper or] from the discourse in John 6…that Communion under both kinds is commanded by the Lord” (“Concerning Communion Under Both Kinds”, ch 1).
To be sure, these are not the words of those under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but rather of MAD SCIENTISTS on the verge of an explosion in the laboratory. They have completely reversed and thrown under the bus our marching orders to partake of BOTH bread and wine, so it is inconceivable they have been divinely commissioned by Jesus Christ to break his own commandments! The Lord said the Scriptures cannot be broken (John 10:35), but the Council of Trent has indeed done just that! No reasons whatsoever, no matter how pious they may sound, can justify mutilating the Lord’s Supper down to the choice of either bread OR wine. Jesus did not give us that option! Consequently, since the magisterium is obviously of the devil, the belief that the Messiah was speaking LITERALLY in John 6 and the Last Supper (as it regards eating his flesh) cannot possibly be true. Instead, all the biblical evidence proves he was speaking metaphorically in those places, and oh….should you deny it, I dare you to invite me to debate the issue.
Thanks for your comment, which I include in the interests of free speech etc. You may have noticed that I have not posted anything for a long time now: this is due to family commitments (4 children, home education, family business – you probably get the idea), so please forgive me if I choose respectfully not to debate with you on this issue. Your comments are food for thought, and I benefitted from reading them. I must inform you that my stats for this blog are extremely low (I mean EXTREMELY low – less than 5 on any given day), so if you are hoping to reach a wider audience, this is not the place for you. Anyway, God bless and guide you and yours 🙂