Association Of Catholic Bloggers

"The lack of faith is one of the greatest tasks that the devil seeks to accomplish in individuals… A lack of faith at any degree …” –Fr. Wade Menezes [Homily 10/9/2015] These words recently spoken by Fr. Wade led me to wonder… Just how lacking am I?  To what degree of deficiency could I be suffering from?  After all, with all the concern for vitamin & mineral deficiencies in our world of today — concern for the lack of sufficient nutrients needed for good health and life, and to fight against disease and that which robs us of being all we’re meant to be — could we be overlooking the most important deficiency of all? ... “We have to make an act of the will... Faith does not rely on the passions, emotions, and feelings..." >> Click Here to Read More at: The Way To Nourish For Life >>

Joan of Arc on Horseback Wikimedia Commons). Sometimes life is a war zone. So many things disturb our peace. The kids act defiantly. An important contract falls through at work. Our finances are in trouble. The phone rings during a serious conversation. These are all surface battles. The real war we fight is the war against ourselves. God created man in love and goodness. Adam and Eve sinned. Evil entered their hearts. Where once it had been easy to do God’s will, it became a struggle. They passed this struggle down to us, their children.   I want to do good, but I don’t St. Paul wrote, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members” (Romans 7...

Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. ~Apocalypse 13:10 My Peace I Give You by Dawn Eden is a much-needed spiritual resource for those recovering from any type of physical or emotional suffering brought on by the lust, crassness or cruelty of others. It took a long time to read because I had to stop and take time to ponder and absorb, reading several parts of it over again. Not only is Dawn's book well-written but every contention is backed up by solid references. With modesty and restraint, she confronts a topic uncomfortable to many. The misuse of the gift of life-giving sexuality has scourged multiple lives and institutions, not the least of which is our Holy Catholic Church. Too often amid the scandals, the wounded do not receive the treatment which they need in order to heal. This book, coming from the long and painful recovery of a survivor of abuse, will be a grace for many who are hurting from similar wounds. Hopefully, it will inspire all who read it to t...

  Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. ~John Adams We are in the middle of a war. It is a war which involves every man, woman and child because it is a war not only for our culture but for our souls. The main battlegrounds of this war appear to be the minds and hearts of women because it is women who make or break family life. Once family life is destroyed or corrupted then the state becomes supreme with each and every one of us as its puppets. When women are degraded then the entire society loses it dignity and heroism. Once a people lose their nobility of soul and sense of honor then there is nothing left to them but enslavement. We now waver at the brink but all is not lost for we have women who see things as they are and are not afraid to talk about it. Journalist and radio talk show host Teresa Tomeo is one such woman who assesses th...

The connection between the Carmelite Order and the Royal House of France originated in the Middle Ages, when St. Louis IX encountered the hermits on Mt. Carmel and brought them to France. When the Discalced Reform came to France from Spain in the early seventeenth century, the royal family assisted the nuns with their patronage. The French court was shaken in 1674 when Louise de la Vallière , the former mistress of Louis XIV, publicly begged the queen's forgiveness and entered a Carmelite monastery. In his book To Quell the Terror , William Bush details the many connections of the later Bourbons with Carmel, particularly the patronage of Queen Marie Lesczynska and her daughter Madame Louise . When Louise herself chose to become a Carmelite nun in 1770, it cemented the spiritual ties between those in the worldliness of Versailles and those in the austerity of the cloister. Marie-Antoinette of Austria married the Dauphin in the same year that Madame Louise entered the mo...

Let women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject, as also the law saith. But if they would learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church. ~I Corinthians 14: 34 This elusive verse, when not totally ignored, is a matter of controversy, as scholars and theologians try to explain it away. St. Paul, not caring a fig for political correctness, past or present, wanted it to be clear that women were not to usurp the functions of priests at the altar. On another level, the spiritual director at our Secular Carmelite meeting said that the verse is not to be seen as a negation of women but as a call, a call to silence, both interior and exterior. It is in the deep silence of the soul that spiritual warfare on behalf of the Church, her ministers and her people, is best waged. Many women have sought a life of prayer and have become prayer warriors, from the earliest days of the...

Last year I decided this needed to go: It's pretty, I know. But this beauty has an evil side; it has mad thorns that will rip your flesh with one wrong move. It grows like wildfire and you can't kill it. What began as a small potted gift from a friend had turned into a fiend that was destroying my fence, yard and innocent flowers. My husband doesn't let me use electrical tools in the garden because...well, because I've given him good reason not to. So-- I have been relegated to do whatever I'd like in the garden as long as I don't sever electrical wires or send myself to the emergency room. Every summer in the unrelenting Florida heat, I'd trim it back in tiny increments, but the more I trimmed the faster and thicker it grew... until it took over half of the backyard fence. It was so intricately entwined and out of control that as I stood with my clippers in hand I was at a loss for where to begin. One thing about me ... If I have enough determination to beg...