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February 11, 2016 Thursday after Ash Wednesday Reading 1 Dt 30:15-20 Moses said to the people:"Today I have set before youlife and prosperity, death and doom.If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God,which I enjoin on you today,loving him, and walking in his ways,and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees,you will live and grow numerous,and the LORD, your God,will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy.If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen,but are led astray and adore and serve other gods,I tell you now that you will certainly perish;you will...

http://www.armenhareyan.com/2016/02/11/how-to-patiently-wait-for-gods-timing-in-prayer/When you pray with faith and without doubt, God schedules the answer in His own time. He has a set time for it in the sense that “there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). The Lord sends the answer in His own time and it’s always on time. We need to learn to trust God’s timing because he knows what’s the best time for us to receive or not to receive what we are asking for. We don’t give everything, which our children ask from us, do we? We don’t...

Juggling things is not what I would have you do so inquire of me and recognize the sound of my voice through others with great humility for as David waited for the sound of my heavenly army through the trees truly I will sound out through the mighty oaks I have placed in the forest of your life. So listen to the rustling of my spirit's breath moving through this garden of your life and be drawn to my fruit for truly there is no other fruit that bears my eternal fragrance and life and you can eat the leaves...

There can be no disguising the fact that for Catholics serious about their faith the almost daily stream of ambiguous and dangerous words and actions emanating from this Papacy give good cause for alarm. Not that there was no cause for concern with previous post-Conciliar Popes. However, in these times, the revolution has moved up a gear with almost no pretence of disguising the ultimate goal of bringing "irreversible changes" to the Catholic Church in terms of attitudes to doctrine and universal disciplines intrinsically bound up with that doctrine. Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies in all of this is...

DAY 1: CLOSED! Abortion centers out of business February 10, 2016 https://40daysforlife.com/updates/It all starts today! Prayer, fasting, and peaceful vigil are powerful … and needed now more than ever in our culture.Right now, there are babies scheduled to be aborted close to where you live — and your peaceful presence could be the difference. Find your nearest vigil here:https://40daysforlife.com/browse-campaigns/Moms do turn around at the last moment. For the abortion industry, that means one thing — lost income.We start this 40 Days for Life campaign with good news … as we’re now aware of TWO more abortion facilities that have CLOSED...

Pope Francis has sent more than 1,000 priests on a global mission to forgive grave sins that normally only he, or a top Church official, may pardon. The Missionaries of Mercy, nicknamed the super-confessors, were given the special license for the Vatican's Jubilee year, which ends in November. Grave sins include defiling consecrated bread and wine, violating confessional secrecy, and plotting to kill a pope. ...

In this society following the Lenten requirements of our faith and fasting are not in fashion and are not encouraged. Neither the TV, nor the newspapers will encourage you to to fast during this season. The most they may do, is to report on the Ash Wednesday, and the Holy Week, culminating with Easter (i.e. the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ). What can you do, if you don't have the strong will to fast during the 40 days of Lent. There are various levels of fasting. The earliest Church fasts severely restricted all foods, but this gradually eased. Pope...

Change your bad habits by not giving in to urges. You think your urge is strong and has power. It is strong, but it doesn't have inherent power because the urge is armless and legless desire that, for example, forces you to run the red light. Do not focus on the strength of the urge because if you consider yourself as a child of God and call Him "Our Father," then know, that "the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world." (1 John. 4:4) These are just common ways the devil attacks you, especially...

Sports presenter Dan Walker has been announced as the new co-presenter of BBC Breakfast. He will replace Bill Turnbull who announced in September that, after 15 years, he was leaving the programme. The 38-year-old, who is the son of a Baptist preacher, has reportedly planned his career around his commitments as a Christian - including not working on Sundays. When he was younger, Walker dreamed of being a professional footballer, but turned down invitations from youth teams of major clubs because they played their matches on Sundays. And when he became a TV presenter, fronting various sporting events and hosting...

And the Lord said unto me, The backsliding Israel hath justified herself more than treacherous Judah. Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord; and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger for ever. Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed my voice, saith the Lord. Turn, O backsliding children, saith the...

Terrorist groups and lone wolves might make life very uncomfortable for us, but the thought of America turning into an Islamic society is difficult to entertain. But is it really so far fetched? (us.fotolia.com | morgan rauscher) Some places in Europe—Parisian suburbs, areas of Brussels, all of Sweden—are well on their way to Islamization. But the possibility that this could happen in America may seem remote. Our Muslim population is small, the Middle East is oceans away, our military is powerful, and our police are well-trained. Terrorist groups and lone wolves might make life very uncomfortable for us, but the...

An analysis of the Bible and the Quran has found that violence and destruction are discussed more frequently in Christian scripture than in the Islamic text. This Is What Happens When People Hear The Bible But See The Quran. In an effort to dispel the oft-mentioned argument that Islam is an "inherently violent religion", an American software engineer processed the Holy books in order to find out how frequently savagery is mentioned. Tom Anderson said: "The project was inspired by the ongoing public debate around whether or not terrorism connected with Islamic fundamentalism reflects something inherently and distinctly violent about...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible Paul (Paul's First Letter to The Corinthians) 12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body-whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free-and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15 Now if the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand,...

NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, has been accused of censoring religious speech among its Christian employees, including banning the name Jesus. "NASA has a long history of respecting the religious speech of their employees, including defending, in court, the astronauts who read the biblical account of creation while orbiting the moon. That tradition should continue here," said Liberty Institute Senior Counsel Jeremy Dys to The Christian Post in an interview Tuesday. Dys is alluding to the 1969 case O'Hair v. Payne, in which atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair sued NASA for allowing Apollo 8 astronauts to read Genesis...

Faith-based films with an overt Christian message have been making inroads in the nation's box offices. The film industry is responding to audiences who want Christian themes in their entertainment, and even more films that are Christian are coming to theaters in 2016. To date, most of the Christian films released to date have been low budget, independent affairs. This year sees a new faith-based film from America's leading film director, Martin Scorsese and a lavish Biblical picture about the resurrection, "Risen." According to Ryan Duncan on the Crosswalk blog, these five Christian films coming to theaters in 2016 are...

The upcoming meeting between Pope Francis and Russian Patriarch Kirill will not only be a historic religious event, but could also have major benefits to Christians around the world, the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche reported. In an attempt to defend Christians in the Middle East and other parts of the world where they're being persecuted, Pope Francis wants to ask Russian President Vladimir Putin for help. According to Pope Francis, Putin is "the only one with whom the Catholic Church can unite to defend Christians in the East." With the help of Putin, Pope Francis hopes to reach...

How Real Are Your Ashes? Five Meanings of the Ashes We Receive Today Msgr. Charles Pope • February 9, 2016 • Photo Credit: Jaclyn Lippelmann for the Catholic Standard.As a boy, I remember wondering why so many people liked to rush to Church to get ashes smudged on their foreheads. Frankly, I had some revulsion at the idea of having dirty ashes smeared on my forehead. I didn't like it at all and would secretly rub them off when no one was looking. Today, though I'll admit I still don't like it too much, I behave myself and don't...

Professors from universities across the country - from Stanford to North Carolina Central to the University of Nebraska to Harvard - signed a petition Tuesday calling on the Mount St. Mary's University administration to reinstate professors who had been fired. Within hours of being posted, the petition had more than 2,400 digital signatures, a symbol of the outrage from some in the campus community as well as in broader academic circles who viewed the terminations as retribution against faculty who had opposed the president. They also said the decisions threaten the academic freedom at the private Catholic university in Maryland...

A student is punished for refusing to "stomp on Jesus," a Christian baker faces a year in jail for refusing to cater faux marriages, two men are arrested for reading the Bible aloud near a government building, a school "purges" Christian works from its library. Critics asserting the existence of an institutional anti-Christian bias, and a resultant war on the faith, have often been labeled paranoid. But now two University of North Texas sociologists have produced research showing that just such an agenda exists — among America’s most powerful people. Professors George Yancey and David Williamson shared their findings in...