Friday, July 21, 2023
1 SAMUEL, Chapter 22, Verse 23
Stay
with me. Do not be AFRAID; whoever
seeks your life must seek my life also. You are under my protection.”
David
said this to Abiathar: the sole survivor of Eli’s
household which Saul killed for giving aid to David. David now has in his
service the only priest of the Lord left in the land and exclusive access to
the ephod for consulting the Lord. David later appoints Abiathar co-high priest
with Zadok in Jerusalem.
Yet,
when I read this verse, I hear the Lord saying this to us all-Stay with me-do
not be afraid. Today, go to the Blessed Sacrament and spend some time with the
Lord. There our Lord will pull us to Himself and transform us into warriors and
conquerors. Draw near to Him and He will transform your disenchantment with the
world and help you along the road to holiness and sainthood.
Our lives
are songs; God writes the words and we set them to music at pleasure; and the
song grows glad, or sweet or sad, as we choose to fashion the measure.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Novena
of St. Ann[1]
Daily Prayer to Saint Ann
O
glorious St. Ann, you are filled with compassion for those who invoke you and
with love for those who suffer! Heavily burdened with the weight of my troubles,
I cast myself at your feet and humbly beg of you to take the present intention
which I recommend to you in your special care.
Please recommend it to your daughter, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and place it
before the throne of Jesus, so that He may bring it to a happy issue. Continue
to intercede for me until my request is granted. But, above all, obtain for me
the grace one day to see my God face to face, and with you and Mary and all the
saints to praise and bless Him for all eternity. Amen.
Our Father, . . . Hail Mary . . .
O Jesus, Holy Mary, St. Ann, help me now and at
the hour of my death. Good St. Ann, intercede for me.
FIFTH
DAY
Hail, all-powerful Lady. By God’s special
favor, grant consolation to those who invoke you. Procure for them the eternal
riches of heaven, and like a good mother, success in their temporal affairs as
well.
Good St. Ann, obtain my deliverance from the
punishment which my sins deserve. Obtain for me success in my temporal affairs;
especially see to the salvation of my soul.
St. Ann, by your influence with Mary’s son
Jesus, you have won the gift of conversion for many sinners. Will you then
abandon me, who have chosen you as my mother? No, St. Ann. Your name alone,
which signifies grace, assures me of the help of your prayers, and these
prayers will surely procure pardon and mercy from Jesus. You will pray for me
now and at the hour of my death.
Fitness Friday-The 5 Switches
of Manliness: Legacy[2]
We started the last post in this
series with a surprising fact–that only about 33% of our ancestors were male.
We’ll begin this post the same way: When
the Titanic sunk, the survival rate for the rich, first-class men (34%), was
lower than that for the poor, third-class women (46%). Most people know that
the Titanic had less lifeboats than were needed for the number of passengers,
and that the richest passengers were given first dibs on those limited seats.
And yet, the numbers tell an interesting tale. What happened? Many of the
wealthy men decided to let the women, regardless of class, get on the lifeboats
first, choosing instead to go down with the ship themselves.
The Expendability of Men
The answer goes back to what we
discussed last time in the Switch of Challenge and can be traced to the
biological differences between men and women. A woman can only get pregnant by
one man (at a time) while one man can impregnate multiple women. A group with
five men and one woman is not going to be able to have as many babies as a
group of five woman and one man. This is why a woman’s eggs, and her womb, have
always been much more valuable than a man’s seed. And why, coupled with our
greater physical strength and propensity for risk, men have always been slotted
for society’s dirtiest and most dangerous jobs. Like hunting and war. This is
true from primitive times down until the present day. Societies had to protect
their women if they wanted to survive and thrive. We know what the practical
result of the greater expendability of men is–men have historically been called
upon to do society’s most dangerous jobs and have often lost their lives in
doing so.
When a woman had a baby, that in most
cases forced her to grow up. But a man needed an external push to propel him
into maturity, to keep him from wanting to slide back into infantile dependency.
And this is why the mark of a manhood, according to sociologist Steven L. Nock,
became whether or not he produced more than he consumed…did he do his part to
add value, power, and wealth to society? When he passed from the earth, would
he leave the tribe stronger than he came into it? Or was he a lazy leech? Did
he leave a Legacy?
The Chance for Immortality
Thus, every man should be a Johnny
Appleseed of sorts, scattering their seeds of creation wherever they go, and
being content to know that the seeds may not bear fruit until long after they
have moved on. It requires patience, and a sort of faith, a faith in the idea
that we have not lived in vain, that the world is a little different from our
being here.
And legacy comes not just from the
creation of physical and literary objects. A legacy can come from an idea, a
business, a tradition, a thought…anything that changes a person, the world,
just a little and gets passed on, anything that lasts.
There are lots of little ways to
create your legacy. A man never knows when an encouraging word given to another
may change the course of that person’s life, and in turn, alter the course of
history and add value to the world. Here are a few ways to create your legacy
every day:
·
Keep a journal.
·
Start a manliness club at your college or high
school.
·
Begin a new tradition at your fraternity.
·
Take steps to start your own business.
·
Start a blog.
·
Be a mentor–become a Big Brother, coach Little
League, take someone new at work under your wing, etc.
·
Share your ideas in a Master Mind Group
·
Start a Bible Study or small group at church.
·
Figure out new and better ways of doing things
at work.
·
Make a piece of furniture or another item that
you can pass on to your children, and they can pass on to their children.
·
Start a new program in your community–a rec
league, a recycling program, etc.
·
Tinker with an invention
· Become a priest or religious
Catechism of the Catholic Church
PART ONE: THE PROFESSION
OF FAITH
SECTION
TWO-I. THE CREEDS
CHAPTER THREE-I BELIEVE
IN THE HOLY SPIRIT
683 "No one can say 'Jesus
is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit." "God has sent the Spirit of
his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!"' This knowledge of
faith is possible only in the Holy Spirit: to be in touch with Christ, we must
first have been touched by the Holy Spirit. He comes to meet us and kindles
faith in us. By virtue of our Baptism, the first sacrament of the faith, the
Holy Spirit in the Church communicates to us, intimately and personally, the
life that originates in the Father and is offered to us in the Son.
Baptism
gives us the grace of new birth in God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy
Spirit. For those who bear God's Spirit are led to the Word, that is, to the
Son, and the Son presents them to the Father, and the Father confers
incorruptibility on them. and it is impossible to see God's Son without the
Spirit, and no one can approach the Father without the Son, for the knowledge
of the Father is the Son, and the knowledge of God's Son is obtained through
the Holy Spirit.
684 Through his grace, the Holy
Spirit is the first to awaken faith in us and to communicate to us the new
life, which is to "know the Father and the one whom he has sent, Jesus
Christ."4 But the Spirit is the last of the persons
of the Holy Trinity to be revealed. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, the Theologian,
explains this progression in terms of the pedagogy of divine
"condescension":
The Old Testament
proclaimed the Father clearly, but the Son more obscurely. the New Testament
revealed the Son and gave us a glimpse of the divinity of the Spirit. Now the
Spirit dwells among us and grants us a clearer vision of himself. It was not
prudent, when the divinity of the Father had not yet been confessed, to
proclaim the Son openly and, when the divinity of the Son was not yet admitted,
to add the Holy Spirit as an extra burden, to speak somewhat daringly.... By
advancing and progressing "from glory to glory," the light of the
Trinity will shine in ever more brilliant rays.
685 To believe in the Holy
Spirit is to profess that the Holy Spirit is one of the persons of the Holy
Trinity, consubstantial with the Father and the Son: "with the Father and
the Son he is worshipped and glorified." For this reason, the divine
mystery of the Holy Spirit was already treated in the context of Trinitarian
"theology." Here, however, we have to do with the Holy Spirit only in
the divine "economy."
686 The Holy Spirit is at work
with the Father and the Son from the beginning to the completion of the plan
for our salvation. But in these "end times," ushered in by the Son's
redeeming Incarnation, the Spirit is revealed and given, recognized and
welcomed as a person. Now can this divine plan, accomplished in Christ, the
firstborn and head of the new creation, be embodied in mankind by the
outpouring of the Spirit: as the Church, the communion of saints, the
forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
Daily
Devotions
·
Unite in the work of the Porters of St. Joseph by joining them
in fasting: For
the intercession of the angels and saints
·
Let
Freedom Ring Day 15 Freedom from Wastefulness
·
Litany of the Most Precious
Blood of Jesus
·
Offering to
the sacred heart of Jesus
·
Rosary
[1]Blessed Sacrament Fathers, ST. ANN’S SHRINE, Cleveland, Ohio
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