Association Of Catholic Bloggers

What Jesus did for me, , Yongsung Kim. When we give up striving and trying to save ourselves with our own efforts, when we finally  get out of His way, God has a chance to save us from ourselves. . Sometimes God waits till we are almost drowning, exhausted by our own efforts to save ourselves  because He knows that this is the only time we will accept salvation on HIS terms. read more>

Samuel Clemens may have taken God seriously: but not his era's version of Christianity. His "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" include Huck's reactions to well-intentioned religious instruction by the Widow Douglas — and "pretty ornery preaching." " It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet. " ("Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Chapter XVIII , Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens (1885)) Called by God If I thought predestination meant that God had decided ahead of time whether I was heading for Heaven or Hell, I might feel hopeless or self-righteous. Robert Burns' Holy Willie dramatizes what can happen when

It is Holy Thursday. Tonight, churches around the entire globe will wait in  prayerful vigil, with lights dimmed, all images covered with the congregation in respectful, sombre silence. The Church is remembering the end of Jesus’s public life as a teacher and healer and walking with Him as He begins His most important work, the work of salvation in His passion, death and resurrection. Yet today’s Gospel takes us back to the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry. He has just emerged from the desert, filled by the power of the Holy Spirit, astonishing crowds with His words. As He stands on the podium in the synagogue to read from the book of Isiah, repeating the Old Testament reading which we have just heard minutes before, Jesus summarizes His entire ministry in a few short verses. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed

I have often thought that much of our life resembles  the life of an ant, a worker ant, not the queen. Ants scurry about, eyes trained on the ground in front of them, hauling loads of food that are bigger than they are. They are completely oblivious to the world around them, fixated solely their own tiny society. Often this narrow viewpoint leads to disastrous results, with whole colonies wiped out of existence when the macrocosm surrounding them crashes into their little world. Unfortunately, it is impossible to communicate with an ant, or to warn an ant of danger. Any offer of help frightens them because an ant perceives anything that intrudes into their microcosm as a threat. I cannot help an ant because I cannot communicate with him. I have often thought that much our life resembles the life of an ant. I run around busy with tasks, keeping my nose to the proverbial grindstone, oblivious to the realities of the rest of human society never mind the universe.  When nature

Surprised? An important part of our Christian duty is to fulfill our mandate to help Jesus save our brothers and sisters. Our Father gave His children a very important part to play in the redemption of their brothers and sisters. History is filled with amazing stories of conversion, where Jesus Christ uses the prayers of God’s children and applies them to what Christians call a “change of heart”. It’s true, I believe, that God gives every soul many chances to turn away from sin and accept His love for them.  So, why do some souls reject God’s attempts at drawing them to Himself? We are responsible, because we are not giving God what He needs to convert all the souls that reject Him.  The more we pray for conversions, the more Jesus can do to help lost souls. Christians are called by Jesus to help their brothers and sisters in many different ways. But none are as important as helping Jesus save souls; for this is the “bottom line” of a soul’s eternal existence.

I rarely dream, but last night I dreamt that I was worried that a room in a house might be on fire. The room belonged to someone I worried about a lot, who had been perplexing me. I was worried he would burn the whole house down. Instead, someone showed me what was really going on inside. There was a large cylinder filled with liquid. Sparks were coming out of it, like electricity, which had only looked like fire. Inside, there was an animated skeleton at a workbench building other skeletons out of bones. Usually in dreams, it helps to look at a "first feeling" and a "first association" in order to find out how the dream may speak to us. My first feeling was awe and happy surprise in the cleverness and originality. Also, relief that the "fire" was contained and no danger. My first association was of the "culture of death." Seems such a paradox- creative activity as the dead create more dead. Yet, this is what goes on in the ma

I had an odd response to the 2012 presidential election: I stopped watching the news. I also stopped reading the news on the Internet. In fact, not a single television show appealed to me and the blackened screen simply became a piece of ubiquitous furniture in the center of the room. At that point I had already abandoned social media such as Facebook and Twitter so I was left with a decent amount of time on my hands. My work as a Catholic publisher took on a new meaning. I was working on Jennifer Frank’s fiction title He Shall Be Peace and I found myself praying for it every moment of my work day. My desire to get solid, entertaining, faith-filled books into the hands of the lay faithful became an obsession. As did my own desire to read. My appetite for books was ravenous. In the month and a half following the election I read well over a dozen books. I read the entire Book of Revelation (Navarre Bible Study version) as well as the entire Gospel of Matthew (N

A demons whole job is to trick you.  There whole existence is to  deceive you into breaking the law of God and being with them in all eternity in Hell and Damnation.  We, as children of God need to be "wise as serpents and gentle as doves."  As such we must ALWAYS be on the lookout for the demons deceptions, for the evil one never sleeps.  When we die, there is the judgement.  We are taken before the throne of God and our life is presented to our Lord, our good and our bad.  And as we have served in life, so shall we serve after death.  For God is always good, and out of His love for us He will give us our hearts desires, so if our heart is evil then hell and the devil shall be our reward.  And if our hearts desire has been God and His goodness in our life, Our God, the Creator of the Universe shall be our reward.  For eye has not seen nor the mind perceived what God has in store for those that truly love Him. There are  a lot of shows now on ghosts, ghost hun