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White Double of the First Class THIS IS A GREAT DAY, not only to man, but even to God himself; for it is the anniversary of the most solemn event that time has ever witnessed. On this day, the Divine Word, by which the Father created the world, made made flesh in the womb of a Virgin, and dwelt among us. We must spend it in joy. While we adore the Son of God who humbled himself by thus becoming Man, let us give thanks to the Father, who so loved the world, as to give his Only Begotten...

White Double of the Second Class THE FORTY DAYS of Mary’s Purification are now completed, and she must go up to the Temple, there to offer to God her Child Jesus. Before following the Son and his Mother in this their mysterious journey, let us spend our last few moments at Bethlehem, in lovingly pondering over the mysteries at which we are going to assist. The Law commanded that a woman who had given birth to a son should not approach the Tabernacle for the term of forty days, after which time she was to offer up a lamb...

THIS FEAST, which is now kept, not only throughout the whole of Spain, but in almost all the Churches of the Catholic world, owes its origin to the Bishops of the tenth Council of Toledo, in 656. These Prelates having thought that there was an incongruity in the ancient practice of celebrating the feast of the Annunciation on the twenty-fifth of March, inasmuch as this joy solemnity frequently occurs at the time when the Church is intent upon the Passion of our Lord, and is sometimes obliged to be transferred into Easter Time, with which it is out of...

White Greater Double THE PRESENTATION is one of the minor solemnities of our Lady, and was inscribed at a comparatively late date on the sacred Cycle; it seems to court the homage of our silent contemplation. The world, unknown to itself, is ruled by the secret prayers of the just; and the Queen of saints, in her hidden mysteries, wrought far more powerfully than the so-called great men, whose noisy achievements fill the annals of the human race. The East had been celebrating for seven centuries at least the entrance of the Mother of God into the temple of...

White Double of the Second Class IN the sixteenth century, even amidst their many divergences, the so-called Reformers agreed in utterly rejecting all the honors paid by the Catholic Church to the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the grounds that such veneration of the Mother detracted from the supreme worship due to her Divine Son. Four centuries have more than sufficed to show the result of so doing: the Son has followed the Mother! The descendants of those who refused to Mary the title and rights of Theotokos,—Mother of God—refuse to Jesus the title of Son of God in the...

Marine Corps Rules: ----------------------------- ----- 1. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one. 2. Decide to be aggressive enough, quickly enough. 3. Have a plan. 4. Have a back-up plan, because the first one probably won't work. 5. Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet. 6. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun whose caliber does not start with a '4.' 7. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive. 8. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral and diagonal preferred.) 9. Use cover...

“Your Blest Life Now” (Matthew 5:1-12) You’ve probably heard of a TV preacher by the name of Joel Osteen. He’s got a huge megachurch down in Houston, and he’s got a massive audience on television. He’s also written a number of best-selling books, the most famous of which is called “Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential.” What Mr. Osteen does that has made him so successful is to dish out some warmed-over self-help pabulum, and people are lapping it up. He says things like this: “Your best days are not behind you, they’re still...

Veteran actor Brian Blessed collapsed on stage with an apparent heart problem while playing King Lear. The 78-year-old had just started delivering his lines at the start of the Shakespearean tragedy when he fainted, toppled off a raised platform and fell heavily, his crown rolling to a halt at the front of the stage. Fellow actor Noel White, playing the Earl of Kent, announced quietly: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is not part of the play. Is there a doctor in the house?’ Indeed there was. A barely conscious Mr Blessed, flat on his back and surrounded by worried cast members...

CHAPTER VIIITHE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, MOTHER OF GOD IN THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST AND THE CHURCH I. Introduction 52. Wishing in His supreme goodness and wisdom to effect the redemption of the world, "when the fullness of time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman...that we might receive the adoption of sons".(283) "He for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary."(1*) This divine mystery of salvation is revealed to us and continued in the Church, which the Lord established as His body. Joined...

Archbishop Sheen preaches about the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Today, 21st October, is the Feast Day of the Blessed Charles (or Karl) of Austria, beatified in 2004 by the pope Saint John Paul the Great....While devout to be sure, the young Archduke Karl von Habsburg (1887-1922) was also endearingly earnest as he studied his every sequentially-bestowed dynastic honour as though he was a medieval knight-errant preparing to seek the Sacred Grail....Over fewer than two years in power, he outlawed brutal army punishments and stopped submarines from attacking civilian shipping. Inspired by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, he established sweeping domestic reforms including the world’s first governmental department of...

America the Beautiful, or so you used to be. Land of the Pilgrims' pride; I'm glad they'll never see. Babies piled in dumpsters, Abortion on demand, Oh, sweet land of liberty; your house is on the sand. Our children wander aimlessly poisoned by cocaine, Choosing to indulge their lusts, when God has said abstain. From sea to shining sea, our Nation turns away From the teaching of God's love and a need to always pray. We've kept God in our temples, how callous we have grown. When earth is but His footstool, and Heaven is His throne. We've voted...

There’s a dangerous tendency in America today to view disabilities of various kinds as insuperable barriers to productive and loving service. There is often an implicit, and sometimes explicit, disrespect of a basic feature of human dignity in the treatment of those with disabilities as merely passive recipients of government aid, the objects of public pity. The reality is that each one of us, created in the image of God, has the capacity to be a productive steward of some kind, and this reality has the potential to reshape... But what about those who cannot work? Perhaps it is because...

A liberal, a moderate and a conservative walk into a bar, and the bartender says, "Hello, Mitt!" — a joke from a Santorum campaign ad Romney is running to win the White House. Rick is running to win back the country. — Foster Friess, Santorum's biggest Super Pac supporter, on why he still contributes to Rick's cause Whether it's winning big in Louisiana or losing to the GOP bigwigs in Illinois, Rick Santorum continues to grab the headlines (and sound bites) if not always for the right reasons. As Mr. Friess (himself not a stranger to a controversial headline or...

IT is an interesting and important question in connection with the study of Prophetic Scriptures, to settle how much of the non-prophetic portions of God's word a Christian ought to know and believe before he can rightly divide the prophetic writings, and before he can hope to attain to any clear view of Scripture eschatology. That the solemn warnings of prophecy, or the gracious invitations found therein may be, and often have been, used for the conversion of souls no one doubts ; that saints of God have been and are continually strengthened and comforted by these Scriptures we all...

In the sermon descriptively entitled, “That Hearing and Keeping the Word of God Renders a Person More Blessed Than Any Other Privilege That Ever God Bestowed on Any of the Children of Men,” Jonathan Edwards writes: The hearing and keeping the word of God brings the happiness of a spiritual union and communion with God. ‘Tis a greater blessedness to have spiritual communion with God and to have a saving intercourse with him by the instances of his Spirit and by the exercise of true devotion than it is to converse with God externally, to see the visible representation and...

The Beatitudes April 7th, 2010 by Mark SheaOver Lent, we took a good long look at one of the legs of Catholic moral teaching: the Ten Commandments. Some people have the notion that the Ten Commandments are pretty much all you need for Catholic moral teaching. Hew to them and you’ll be a moral person—and being a moral person is what it’s all about, right?Actually, wrong. Morality is a good thing, but the Catholic faith does not call us to be merely moral. It demands something much greater: For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes...

A few months ago I decided to write my memoirs, a project I knew was going to bring me closer to an amazing turning point in my life. From the moment I wrote the first phrase I was sure the book was the tool that was going to help me free myself from things I was carrying within me for a long time. Things that were too heavy for me to keep inside. Writing this account of my life, I got very close to my truth. And thisis something worth celebrating. For many years, there has been only one place...

This video’s song is; Come and Dine, sung by my wife Cheryl! Jesus wants us to dine with Him through His Word the Holy Bible and Holy Spirit. Have Love for one another and always pray to our Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ His Son!

A Call To Prayer: This Lepanto Moment Politics/Elections Announcement Keywords: PRAYSource: EWTNAuthor: Bowie KuhnPosted on 11/16/2000 17:00:02 PST by big'ol_freeper This Lepanto Moment   A Call To Prayer:This Lepanto Moment  Let me take you back over 400 years ago.  The Ottoman Turks were off the coast of Greece. A powerful Ottoman armada advanced on a badly out manned and out gunned Christian navy. All that stood between the Ottomans and Western Civilization were a relatively few ships, a small number of valiant men and one Rosary. So the men knelt in prayer and invoked the intercession of their Heavenly...