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Happy New Year, everyone! The Church Year begins this week with the First Sunday of Advent, and we are back to reading cycle A in 2022. There is a very ancient tradition in the Church of reading the Book of Isaiah during Advent. In antiquity, both Jews and Christians considered the Book of Isaiah to be one extended prophesy of the “age to come,” the “latter days” when the Anointed One (Heb. “Meshiach,” =” Messiah”) would arrive. The First Readings for Sunday Mass and for weekday Masses, as well as the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours,...

(Daily readings from the USCCB)“Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.” Luke 21:34-35aThis is the last day of our liturgical year! And on this day, the Gospel reminds us of how easy it is to become lazy in our life of faith. It reminds us that our hearts can become drowsy from “carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life.” Let’s look at these temptations.First, we are warned against carousing and drunkenness. This certainly applies on a literal...

Why Serve a World that Hates You? A meditation on a teaching of St Cyprian’sAs we wrap up November and the traditional meditation we make on the four last things (death, judgement, heaven and hell), A classic meditation of St. Cyprian comes to us in the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of the Hours. It is a meditation on a fundamental human struggle to be free of undue attachment to this world and to truly have God, and the things waiting for us in heaven, as our highest priority.St. Cyprian Writes:The world hates Christians, so why give your love...

26th November 2022Saturday of Week 34 in Ordinary time Church of St Catherine of Alexandria, Bethlehelm, Israel Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green First readingApocalypse 22:1-7 ©The Lord God will shine on them; it will never be night againThe angel showed me, John, the river of life, rising from the throne of God and of the Lamb and flowing crystal-clear down the middle of the city street. On either side of the river were the trees of life, which bear twelve crops of fruit in a year, one in each month, and the leaves of which are the cure for the...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (1 John 5:14)Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

Cardinal Zen’s conviction shows that no one is safe in Hong KongCardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, the 90-year-old retired bishop of Hong Kong, has been convicted of failing to register a humanitarian relief fund and fined 4,000 Hong Kong dollars (about £400) after being punished for supporting pro-democracy demonstrators during the mass protests in Hong Kong. The fine may seem small, but this is Beijing’s way of saying that even a frail and saintly cleric who walks with the aid of a stick is not safe to endorse democracy. No one is.All Beijing has done is decided not to proceed with...

While LGBTQ candidates and their supporters celebrated several milestone victories around the nation in this year’s midterm elections, California quietly reached its own: At least 10% of its state lawmakers identify publicly as LGBTQ, believed to be a first for any U.S. legislature. The California legislators, all Democrats, are proud of their success but say it underscores the hard work that remains in their own state and elsewhere, such as handling the fallout from measures such as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bans some lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity, or laws in other states limiting transgender students’...

(CNSNews.com) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) went down to the House floor on Thursday to announce her farewell to the Democratic leadership and the American people. In her speech, Pelosi announced that she would not be seeking reelection to the Democratic congressional leadership in the upcoming Congress. In doing so, she described herself as a “devout Catholic” and a “patriotic American”

Moscow, November 23, Interfax - The ban on selling goods promoting LGBT will also apply to marketplaces, Russian State Duma Information Policy Committee head Alexander Khinshtein said. "This amendment prohibits the sale of goods, including imported, containing information for the dissemination of which administrative or criminal liability is envisaged, therefore, it, of course, will apply to marketplaces, to computer e-commerce," Khinshtein told a plenary session of the State Duma on Wednesday. "If we, for example, ban the sale of literature promoting non-traditional sexual relations in bookstores, but keep the possibility of buying them online, in that case our laws will...

One local mayor even complained that the punishment was ‘too light.’(LifeSiteNews) — An elderly priest at the head of 17 small parishes in the east of France has been barred from speaking in public by his diocesan superiors for four weeks because he declared that the worldwide number of victims of abortion was far higher than that of the First World War. Father François Schneider made the “controversial” statement while preaching during the commemorative Mass on Armistice Day on November 11 in the tiny village of Bertrimoutier (307 inhabitants), near Epinal in the Vosges Mountains. “Abortion has killed more people...

I wont post it, it is profane, it is a Jesus looking figure praying while standing behind a woman who is naked and has a twitter bird covering her with the label trump of the jesus figure

Luke 21:29-33 Friends, in today’s Gospel passage, Jesus speaks of the time when the plan of God will be fulfilled. Some philosophies defend a circular or cyclic understanding of time. They hold that time just continually circles back on itself, repeating like the cycles of the seasons. The modern philosopher Nietzsche spoke of the “eternal return of the same.” That’s a mythic consciousness, and it can be found all over the world.But the Jews had a very different sense of time, what we might call “linear.” They felt that time was moving somewhere, that it had, under God’s direction, a...

"And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." "So that we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure: "Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer." Luke, Chapter 7 1 Now when he had ended all his sayings in the audience of the people, he entered into Capernaum. 2 And a certain centurion's servant, who was dear unto him, was sick, and...

The world is entering a time unlike any we have ever seen. No, we are not just entering it, we are neck-deep in it. I have been watching, waiting, analyzing, and digging into prophetic studies for decades. But not everyone embraces this often weighty topic with joy; in fact, more and more, I get a reaction resembling fear and even panic. The ‘fear factor’ as it relates to prophecy is a very real condition, and I don’t want to make light of it because I don’t take it lightly. Prophetic passages can be very sobering in that human suffering will...

[Catholic Caucus] Coadjutor: Francis De Facto Sacks Providence BishopIn a surprise move, Francis appointed Rockville Centre Auxiliary Bishop Richard Henning, 58, as Coadjutor Bishop to Bishop Thomas Tobin, 74, of Providence, Rhode Island.A coadjutor automatically succeeds once the resignation of the diocesan bishop is accepted, therefore appointing a coadjutor turns a diocesan bishop into a lame duck. Tobin will turn 75 in April. He is one of the best bishops in the US.In August he challenged the rigidity of Francis' Traditionis Custodes. In December 2020, he questioned the Vatican's decision to "allow" bishops to prohibit the reception of Holy Communion...

(Daily readings from the USCCB)“…know that the Kingdom of God is near.” Luke 21:31bWe pray for this every time we pray the “Our Father” prayer. We pray that “Thy Kingdom come.” Do you mean it when you pray that?In this Gospel passage Jesus states that the Kingdom of God is near. It is near, yet so often it is also very far away. It is near in a twofold sense. First, it is near in that Jesus will be returning in all His splendor and glory and make all things new. Thus, His permanent Kingdom will come to be established.Second,...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (1 John 5:14) Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

25 November 2022Friday of week 34 in Ordinary Time St. Catherine of Alexandria Catholic Church Temecula, CA Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green. Year: C(II).First readingApocalypse 20:1-4,11-21:2 ©The book of life was opened, and the dead were judgedI, John, saw an angel come down from heaven with the key of the Abyss in his hand and an enormous chain. He overpowered the dragon, that primeval serpent which is the devil and Satan, and chained him up for a thousand years. He threw him into the Abyss, and shut the entrance and sealed it over him, to make sure he would not...

“‘Or have you not read in the Law, that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and are innocent? But I say to you that something greater than the temple is here’” (Matthew 12:5–6). Seldom would any Christian today, even the most fastidious and rule-oriented among us, consider preaching, teaching Sunday school, leading youth ministry, or other similar work as profaning the Lord’s Day. Yet these activities require much time and effort—on Sunday. Likewise, the most scrupulous of the Jewish leaders in Jesus’ time viewed the priests as innocent of any Sabbath breaking, even though such...

The Bible In Paintings ~ Encouragement for Appreciating and Applying God's Word ~ JESUS AND THE WOMAN AT THE WELL ֎ Featuring 29 Paintings, 1 Statue and 1 Window ֎ J O H N CHAPTER 4 The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground...