Catholic call in this life we live

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AveSantaMaria

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*Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. *

Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse. Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse. Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse.

What did the Immaculate Heart of Mary seek in life? When I read the stories of St. Padre Pio, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila, or Mother Theresa, sometimes I think that I cannot really comprehend them with my grossly limited understanding. It is hard for me to understand their purpose. Are they seeking only union with God, or are they seeking spiritual perfection, or are they seeking improvement of the world we live in on a secular level, or are they seeking a harvest of spiritual children? Is there any hope for this world that is passing away to improve on a human level: for racism, hatred, poverty, suffering, and disease to be mostly eliminiated? Do good Catholics care about these things or mostly only the salvation of souls? Is improvement of the secular world merely a side effect of following God or is it ever important in and of itself? Why did the Sacred Heart of Jesus remain as a humble carpenter with the Immaculate Heart of Mary for 30 years before his ministry?

Is the goal for us as Catholics, spiritual perfection, improvement of the world we live in, or a harvest of spiritual children? Or some combination of the above? As a second and somewhat unrelated question: Why is abortion such an important fight if innocent babies go to heaven anyways? Is it purely so that the sin of murder will not be on the family’s soul?

Is the command always “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men” or are we sometimes called to be like the Immaculate Heart of Mary and notice our neighbor St. Elizabeth in distress or the wedding guests running out of wine and direct our attention to helping them physically instead of seeking spiritual union with the Sacred Heart of Christ? Or are the two roads one and the same?

Thank you for your thoughts and your prayers!

May this post, this thread, and all who grace it be gifted by the Holy Spirit abundantly and be glories to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary!!

The road to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary:
True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin montfort.org.uk/Writings/TrueDev.html
Secret of the Rosary montfort.org.uk/Writings/Rosary.html
**Preparation for 33 day consecration to the Blessed Virgin **
saintlouisdemontfort.com/consecration.cfm

Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse. Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse. Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse.

*Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. *
 
Hi “Ave”. First of all… I would like to say, that I love your CAF name. It is a beautiful tribute… to the Mother of God.

This thread has a lot of interesting questions in it. I would like to comment on them, if I may. Forgive me for pasting. I haven’t yet figured out how to do the “quote” function, keeping the paragraphs separate. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. lol. Took me several months to get the portrait of Jesus in my signature. Also… please forgive me if I must post this in multiple parts.

One thing… maybe you can clarify for me. I’m not sure if you’re asking some of these questions to actually get answers for yourself?.. or if you’re asking, to give us “food for thought”? So… I hope that my own thoughts won’t come off as condescending, in any way.

Part I:

You asked: “What did the Immaculate Heart of Mary seek in life?”

My reply: To do only the Will of God. Our Lady sought only to serve Her Creator. Her entire life was one, big “YES” to God.

You asked: “When I read the stories of St. Padre Pio, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila, or Mother Theresa, sometimes I think that I cannot really comprehend them with my grossly limited understanding. It is hard for me to understand their purpose. Are they seeking only union with God, or are they seeking spiritual perfection, or are they seeking improvement of the world we live in on a secular level, or are they seeking a harvest of spiritual children?”

My reply: I understand how you feel about lack of comprehension. I share it with you. Perhaps it would help you (and I) to look at it more… as a feeling of awe… inspired by the lives of these great saints, which God… in His infinite goodness… has raised up, in His Church. They give us such hope… that even the most ordinary person… can become a saint!

As far as their purposes in life… I believe that to be the same as Our Blessed Mother’s. These holy people, the saints… lived to do God’s Will. God’s Will was always the “end” they sought. Granted, that each one of them… did so with a unique “charism”. But isn’t that one of the most thrilling things about God’s creation? That we are all so different and precious to Him. That is why the “Communion of Saints” is SUCH a treasure, in the Catholic Church! 🙂
 
Part II:

You asked: “Is there any hope for this world that is passing away to improve on a human level: for racism, hatred, poverty, suffering, and disease to be mostly eliminated? Do good Catholics care about these things or mostly only the salvation of souls?”

My reply: I would say that any person of good will… Catholic or otherwise, should indeed care about the above concerns. The Catholic Church has worked for many long centuries… and produced vast numbers of saints… who fought to make our world a better place.

But, we have to remember… that we’re in a very real spiritual battle. It is a spiritual warfare with the powers of evil. The evils you described above, are all the results of sin and a fallen world… and will probably plague us, to a more or less degree… till the Second Coming of Christ.

Is there a remedy? Yes! The Sacraments of the Catholic Church! Especially… the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. We get more strength than we know, from the Sacraments… for the fight against evil.

You asked: “Is improvement of the secular world merely a side effect of following God or is it ever important in and of itself? Why did the Sacred Heart of Jesus remain as a humble carpenter with the Immaculate Heart of Mary for 30 years before his ministry?”

My reply: First of all, the term “secular world” is very broad. I will make an assumption, that you refer to anything outside of the Catholic Church? Ok, now we can break the “secular world” down a bit more. We could say… our nation (you don’t specify your nation… but mine is the U.S.A.), our cities, our jobs, our schools… etc. might fall under this category.

Lets take the U.S.A. (as a highly visible example)… I would tend to say that much of the decay we’re seeing in regards to moral and ethical behavior… is simply BECAUSE God has been more or less “removed” from everything. From my own standpoint, I don’t see much overall improvement (maybe small pockets… here and there); but mostly, I see the reverse.

(In answer to the second part) I believe that Our dear Lord, remained for 30 years… in His “hidden life” with His Blessed Mother… to demonstrate to us the importance of our daily lives and vocations. Most of us lead “hidden” lives. To be a good Son, and to care for His Mother… was His “vocation”… until His public ministry began. What a great example of family love was given us, by the Hearts of Jesus and Mary… during those 30 years. They teach us the great value of Family. An important lesson… in an era when “the Family” is so under attack.

You asked: “Is the goal for us as Catholics, spiritual perfection, improvement of the world we live in, or a harvest of spiritual children? Or some combination of the above?”

My reply: I feel… all of the above. Yes.
 
Part III:

You asked: “As a second and somewhat unrelated question: Why is abortion such an important fight if innocent babies go to heaven anyways? Is it purely so that the sin of murder will not be on the family’s soul?”

My reply: I felt sorry that this question was sort of buried near the bottom of your thread. Because it is a very important question.

Abortion is a sin, which cries out to God. It is the murder of Holy Innocents. A great deception is taking place in the world today. That somehow, some sort of “good” can come out of the slaughter of innocent children. That is a LIE.

It’s not a question of where these murdered children will “end up”. Of course… we believe that in His infinite Mercy… God will provide for these Little Ones.

But God ALONE… is the Author of Life. God ALONE… determines when our lives begin and when they end.

When abortion is committed… as with ANY murder… the ultimate Right of God… as Creator and Author of Life… is violated. Man “plays God”. And commits a hideous, mortal sin.

If we continue to get the abortion issue WRONG… we will get everything else wrong, too. Because the Right to Life… is the absolute foundation to ALL other rights.

Look at it this way. Think of our lives as sky scrapers… reaching up to God. The RIGHT to live, once we are conceived… is the foundation. God WILLS us to LIVE. If we keep destroying that foundation… our “sky scrapers”… our civilization will crumble.

You asked: “Is the command always “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men” or are we sometimes called to be like the Immaculate Heart of Mary and notice our neighbor St. Elizabeth in distress or the wedding guests running out of wine and direct our attention to helping them physically instead of seeking spiritual union with the Sacred Heart of Christ? Or are the two roads one and the same?”

My response: Again, I would suggest that because all of us are different, unique and precious in the eyes of God… that this would imply different “charisms”. In other words, we are all given special gifts by God. And it’s up to each one of us… to discover those gifts, and to share them.

Some of us… might be called to be priests, nuns or religious brothers (fishers of men); some of us might be called to the vocation of family life… (homemakers, like our Blessed Mother); then again, some of us might be called to the single life… where we might have equal amounts of time for prayer and work in the world.

Aren’t Gods “Ways” magnificent! 🙂
 
*Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. *

Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse. Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse. Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse.

Thank you very very much MarieVeronica!! I think you are right, the purpose of one’s life is to say the “Fiat” to the will of God like the Immaculate Heart of Mary did…and to do so with one’s own unique charism. The next question that I think comes to mind is: how does one know the will of God for one’s own individual life? I think that I have often been wrong about God’s will though my limited human discernment. 😦

I was reading an article about St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, who received apparitions/revelations of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the article commented on how her understanding of the “will of God” was different from previous understandings. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (to the best of my imperfect knowledge: her revelations and her confessor’s comments) is here: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Devotion_to_the_Sacred_Heart_of_Jesus#FIRST_POINT._.E2.80.94_The_ardent_desire_Jesus_Christ_feels_to_be_with_us.

St. Francis de Sales vs. Abandonment to Divine Providence
Two tensions: “The Savoyard (St. Francis de Sales) had always taught “obedience” to God’s will. But he saw that will as having two expressions: (St. Francis de Sales): “the signified will” and the “will of God’s good pleasure.” The first referred to the divine will discerned through all the means of human discernment: prayer, scripture and tradition, consultation with spiritual advisors, the prick of conscience and so forth. De Sales applauded the exercise of human agency in the work of “Living Jesus.” The “will of God’s good pleasure” referred to those events and influences that happen to us and are outside our human control. These two are the manifestations of God’s will. But the true art was to live in the tension between the two wills. By the second half of the seventeenth century, that tension seems to have collapsed. Thus the Abandoment to Divine Providence, the work attributed to Pierre de Caussade, Jesuit advisor to a community of Visitandines in Nancy, could hold up abandonment as normative spiritual teaching. This teaching, which focuses almost exclusively on passive human acceptance of God’s will as expressed in the circumstances outside onself is I believe a truncated version of de Sales’ more complex notion of following the will of God. Muted is human agency. Absent is any Christian humanist optimism in the creature’s cooperation with the Creator’s grace. Submission to the Will of God’s Good Pleasure alone remains.” http://www.episcopalacademy.org/drum/trea/TREA5-06/Wrighttrea06a.pdf

I believe that Pierre de Caussade was a spiritual advisor to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. St. Francis of Assisi is another one who seems to have followed “Abandonment to Divine Providence.”

How do we understand the will of God, especially in light of the competing traditions, or is it simply one’s charism that determines the will of God for one’s own life?

Note: I also believe that extreme prayer has a role in living out the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary’s plan for one’s life!! Someone once said that some people were soaked with love while others were barely touched, and I am hopeful and convinced that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through Immaculate Heart of Mary, most especially through the Most Holy Rosary and True Devotion to Mary, helps to soak one with love.

Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse. Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse. Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse.

*Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. *
 
I truly believe, “Ave” that the way to find out what Our Lord’s Will is… for each of us, individually… is through Eucharistic Adoration. And if possible, daily Mass and Holy Communion.

If we seek to find His Will in our lives, we must spend time with Him… and listen to His Voice. It may take awhile… but that’s ok. Right? All things in God’s time.

God bless.
 
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