Fallujah prayer : A rosary hangs off the barrel of a machinegun mounted on a Bradley belonging to the 1st Cavalry Regiment 5th Battalion positioned on the outskirts of Fallujah. (AFP/Patrick Baz)
Posted on 11/08/2004 12:13:02 PM PST by Pyro7480
Fallujah prayer : A rosary hangs off the barrel of a machinegun mounted on a Bradley belonging to the 1st Cavalry Regiment 5th Battalion positioned on the outskirts of Fallujah. (AFP/Patrick Baz)
"The path of the righghteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.
Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."
Remember Lepanto!
IMO
Amen, wideawake!
I LOVE St. Michael. His name means "Who is like God?" and he's the patron saint of soldiers. Very appropriate prayer for this thread. Thank you and God bless and protect our soldiers!
Powerful photo... thanks for posting.
(Paraphrasing Pope Leo XIII for modern times):
Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our protection against the diabolical insanity of Islam. May God rebuke them; we humbly pray: and do thou O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust down to hell Satan and his seventh-century death cult that spreads like a virus through the world seeking the ruin of human civilization. Amen.
Fulton J. Sheen, "The World's First Love", p. 201, © 1952
"How can you shoot women and children???"
"Easy, you just don't lead them as much."
Wow, that's quite a quote. He's among the great prophets of the return of Islam, like Hiliare Belloc and John Rhys Davies' dad.
you nailed exactly what must be done. ALL OF THEM.
Like the Rosary itself, the prayer to St. Michael is an armament for spiritual warfare, not a talisman for human conflicts, especially those engineered by evil or deluded men to advance earthly utopias. My prayers are with the ordinary fighting men who seek comfort in Our Lady's protection -- but not for those who cynically exploit and misappropriate the faith of Christians.
Ephesians 6:12 For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
That's a foul thing to say.
Or has your opposition to the Iraq intervention put you into a permanent pique of self-righteousness?
The enemy our troops face at this hour is the same enemy Juan of Austria faced.
Kill all of these barbaric animals. Let God sort them out.
It's payback time for those four security contractors that they mutilated and hung from the bridge!
Have You Forgotten?
1. It's bad form to change the subject just because you've been shown to be wrong.
2. Accusations of self-righteousness are always spiritually dangerous to those who deal in them, because they insidiously invite the one who offers them into the role of Accuser.
3. No it isn't. Don Juan defended Europe from an unprovoked aggressor.
The subject was, originally, that the Rosary is a great help to our troops in the field, including my younger brother. You changed the subject to imply that our troops pray only as some kind of winning talisman without any attention to the spiritual aspects of warfare.
Accusations of self-righteousness are always spiritually dangerous to those who deal in them, because they insidiously invite the one who offers them into the role of Accuser.
A tautologous statement. You implied that you alone have sufficient discernment to understand the full scope of the prayer to St. Michael.
No it isn't. Don Juan defended Europe from an unprovoked aggressor.
And the US is defending Iraq from an unprovoked aggressor - unless it is your opinion that this Zarqawi character has some kind of justifiable grievance against our troops.
Let's brush up on the details of Lepanto - the Turk felt that he was provoked into war by the aggressive and disrespectful activities of the Venetians.
I'll add that Lepanto is right off the coast of Aetolia and was therefore well within the Turk's territory - taking the fight to the Turk in his own waters looks suspiciously like a preemptive act of aggression.
…the prayer to St. Michael. Which you posted in your first appearance on this thread, as response to the photo posted at the top of the thread. I found that a misappropriation, and said so.
I’ll be glad to include your brother in my prayers, but your rhetorical conceit of introducing him as an argumentum ad misericordiam is duly noted.
You …imply that our troops pray only as some kind of winning talisman…
Not at all. I imply that you seemed to endorse its use as such. I'm glad to know you were thinking of our soldiers purely in terms of spiritual warfare, though you chose an odd way to express it.
A tautologous statement…
I might have pointed a finger at you, but consciously chose instead to offer an indirect observation.
You implied that you alone have sufficient discernment to understand the full scope of the prayer to St. Michael.
Not at all, though I do believe you’ve misappropriated it for a secular purpose. What I did imply – what I said, actually – was that dealing in accusation is spiritually dangerous because it subverts conversion and reconciliation. It hardens the habitual sinner, but what’s even worse is that it puts the accuser in a “satanic” role. It’s – literally – diabolical. I think you understand what I mean.
the Turk felt that he was provoked into war by the aggressive and disrespectful activities of the Venetians…taking the fight to the Turk in his own waters looks suspiciously like a preemptive act of aggression.
The difference being that provoked or not, the Turk really was planning an attack on Europe, while Iraq was not.
In other words, then, I was not changing the subject when I challenged your analysis.
I’ll be glad to include your brother in my prayers, but your rhetorical conceit of introducing him as an argumentum ad misericordiam is duly noted.
Hardly a rhetorical conceit - instead empirical evidence that I know a soldier personally and I know how and why he prays, and what he prays for.
I'm glad to know you were thinking of our soldiers purely in terms of spiritual warfare, though you chose an odd way to express it.
No, I'm thinking in terms of the whole soldier, body and soul. His righteous desire for honorable victory over evil men and his desire to attain that victory without giving in to the spiritual enemy and adopting the satanic attitude and tactics of his adversary. His desire to remain whole and hale, while accepting any hardship, even death itself, if it is God's will.
His desire for the grace of conducting himself with honor, fortitude and mercy.
I might have pointed a finger at you, but consciously chose instead to offer an indirect observation.
Kudos.
Not at all, though I do believe you’ve misappropriated it for a secular purpose.
Well, that's clearly a conclusion you jumped to on the basis of zero evidence.
What I did imply – what I said, actually – was that dealing in accusation is spiritually dangerous because it subverts conversion and reconciliation. It hardens the habitual sinner, but what’s even worse is that it puts the accuser in a “satanic” role. It’s – literally – diabolical. I think you understand what I mean.
I do indeed.
The difference being that provoked or not, the Turk really was planning an attack on Europe, while Iraq was not.
All that was known for certain was that the Turk planned war on Venetian colonies which were asserting claims within his territory, and that he was prepared to carry the war to Venice itself if the Venetians did not comply with his requests.
In other words, the Turk was making war on his own subjects, subjects who believed they had a legitimate grievance.
Kind of like Kurds in northern Iraq.
The fact is, the Emperor did not care why the Turk had such large forces in the near vicinity of his allies and whether the Turk's intentions only pertained to internal security.
There was a chance to smash the Turk as a regional naval power and that chance was taken and it may well have saved Europe from much worse consequences.
Likewise, I think it did not matter that Hussein claimed to only be interested in his own borders while he was killing tens of thousands of his citizens, suggesting that he had WMD capability and that he regularly menaced the US' ally Israel.
There was a chance to smash Hussein as a regional military power and we took the chance.
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