Immediately after death, after the soul leaves the body, a person is judged based on his or her life in the body. If the person dies in friendship with God, that means, in a state of sanctifying grace, which conveys the life of the Blessed Trinity to the believer, but not completely loving God, he or she is incapable of the vision of God and must undergo a purification of the person's love for God. This recalls the great remark of St. John of the Cross, "At the end you will be judged on your love. Strive to love as God desires to be loved and abandon your present state." God has indicated how He desires to be loved in the Great Commandment: You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength. The Book of Revelation 21:27 states: " Nothing impure will ever enter it…" it being the vision of God, known as the Beatific Vision.
READ MOREYou may have heard at funerals that a deceased is in heaven. Does that reflect Catholic teaching? The answer is no. The deceased may be in heaven but funerals are not canonizations and hence no one can say with certainty any deceased is in heaven except baptized infants and canonized saints. In the confusion following the close of the Second Vatican Council many Catholic teachings were ignored or denied especially those on death and what happens after death. Sadly some of the biggest offenders in this regard were clergy and religious, who often enough, after denying those teachings, left the priesthood or religious life. However it is still common today to hear clergy place people in heaven in funeral homilies. This crisis prompted a restatement of Catholic teaching in 1979. This restatement recalls Catholic teaching:
READ MOREIn the year 1720, during an outbreak of plague in France, our Lord Jesus Christ gave a promise to one Venerable Ana Magdalena Remuzat, saying that if the city would devote itself to His Sacred Heart and wear this sacramental, they would be spared from the disease. And by His divine promise and the faithful wearing of this shield, they were! Perfectly relevant for our time now when Corona-Virus is afflicting us. Let us devote ourselves to Jesus' Sacred Heart and the promise of resting in Him with confidence.
READ MOREWhen I was a child, a beautiful picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus hung in my parents’ bedroom. A warm, smiling Jesuslovingly pointed to His heart, pierced and crowned with thorns, in an eternal gesture of invitation. Whenever I looked at thatpicture, I felt good — embraced, loved, cared for — as if the Lord were inviting me to step into His joy and peace. My motherhad a great devotion to the Sacred Heart; every First Friday, we would consecrate our lives anew to His love and mercy.
READ MOREIntention: Reparation for all the sins committed against the Holy Eucharist
June 19, The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Read the encyclical letter of Pope Pius XI on the meaning of reparation here.
Let us all unite in making reparation in various ways, offering and participating in Holy Mass and Holy Hours of Adoration, offering Holy Communion in reparation, reciting the Holy Rosary, including the short prayers taught by the Angel of Portugal to the Children at Fatima, meditating on the Passion of the Lord, offering sacrifices and fasting. We also ask those who participate to recite the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus either privately or publicly and to renew the Act of Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus prescribed by Pope Leo XIII on June 11, 1899.
READ MOREA legion of publishers will attest that Father Stanley Jaki (1924-2009) did not suffer fools gladly, and under that category he filed virtually all editors. He wrote in perfect English but with a discernible Hungarian syntax so that his footnotes could be longer than the main text, and verbs often were fugitive. His patience with anyone who corrected the smallest iota was that of General Hunyadi dealing with a Turk. But like any remnant Magyar, his bloodline also breathed on occasion Liszt and Mindszenty.
READ MOREThe Chinese communist government is stamping out the last vestiges of democracy in Hong Kong, while this same government is demanding preaching patriotism as a condition for the reopening of churches after the corona-virus epidemic. While that may sound benign, Catholics in China remind is that what the Chinese communists mean by patriotism is the subservience of the Church to the communist government. Cardinal Zen has continually reminded the Vatican and the world of the persecution of and the desire to control the Catholic Church in China as a puppet of the government. You can read about these concerns and issues here and here.
Catholics are generally familiar with certain apparitions of the Blessed Virgin like Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima, Knock. Most Catholics, at least in the U.S., are not familiar with our Lady’s manifestation at Civitavecchia in Italy. This devotion and manifestation have been approved by the Church. On the one hand her message remains the same: the need for prayer, penance, the importance of the Rosary. On the other hand the apparitions speak to the particular crisis in the Church today and society. You can read about this here. A future post will be on the venerable and approved apparition of our Lady in Japan, Our Lady of Akita.