I'm not doing so good right now...again

[AveSantaMaria]

*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.

I want to remind you that St. Padre Pio, of deliverance counseling above, said “The Rosary is The WEAPON.” “Prayer is the best weapon we have; it is the key to God’s heart.” “Pray the Rosary frequently. It costs so little and it’s worth so much.” “The one who prays a lot saves himself. The one who prays little is in danger. The one who does not pray loses his soul.”

The devil used to appear to him in disguise to tempt him, and when that failed would throw and destroy objects and then beat him to a pulp. If you read his letters, he writes, “my whole body is bruised from the beatings that I have received to the present time by our enemies.” One he came to his confessional and was defeated because he vanished when St. Padre Pio told him to say, “Love live Jesus, long live Mary.” According to Fr.Thomas Euteneuer, President of Human Life International , St. Padre Pio would say as many as 90 rosaries in a day in a special form for which he received ecclesiastical permission. Here is the article that cites this: **The Rosary Batters the Gates of Hell ** hli.org/sl_2008-10-03.html

*The following text of Father Gabriel Amorth, chief exorcist of the Vatican, is taken from the March-April, 2003 issue of "Echo of Mary, Queen of Peace."http://www.michaeljournal.org/rosarypower.htm *
Faith as Trust and Joy-Evangelium
The recent Apostolic Letter of John Paul II, “Rosarium Virginis Mariae” (released last October 16) encourages all Christians to turn back to the prayer strongly recommended both by the latest Pontiffs and recent Marian apparitions. Paul VI called the rosary a compendium of the Gospel. To make it more complete, John Paul II added the ‘mysteries of light’ to cover Jesus’ public life. Padre Pio called the Rosary beads a weapon of extraordinary power against Satan.

One day a colleague of mine heard the devil say during an exorcism: "Every Hail Mary is like a blow on my head. If Christians knew how powerful the Rosary was, it would be my end. The secret that makes this prayer so effective is that the Rosary is both prayer and meditation. It is addressed to the Father, to the Blessed Vrigin, and to the Holy Trinity, and is a meditation centered on Christ.

Today more than ever, the world is in need of prayer and meditation. It is in need of prayer because people have forgotten God, and without God the world has put itself on the edge of a precipice. This is why in Her messages, Our Lady insists so much on prayer. Without God’s help, Satan wins. The world is also in need of meditation because if the great Christian truths are forgotten, souls become void. This void is grabbed up by the enemy, and he fills it with his lies. And today we see the results with widespread belief in superstitution and occultism.

The most obvious danger for our society today is the downfall of the family. The rhytmn of today’s world has broken the family unity. Little time is spent together, and even when the family is together, its members don’t speak because the television speaks. Where are the families which recite the Rosary together in the evenings? Pope Pius XII insisted in his own time: “If you pray the Rosary together, you will experience peace in your families; you will get on together.” “The family that prays together, stays together,” would say Father Petyton, the untiring apostle of the family Rosary. “Satan wants war,” Mary said one day in Medjugorje. Well, the Rosary is the weapon which is able to guarantee peace for the world, because it is a prayer and a form of meditation able to transform hearts and defeat the enemy.

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. *

Devoting oneself 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
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesusen.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.

 

[AveSantaMaria]

*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.

For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world!! Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal one, have Mercy on us and on the whole world!!

A lady at my church at daily mass told me that sometimes she wakes up tired, depressed, lonely, barely able to pray the Rosary or make it to mass. But if she persists in prayer, she sees that those feelings go away. That’s how she knows it is a spiritual attack. Because if it wasn’t a spiritual attack, then those feelings would stay. And she told me that those short little invocations are important because sometimes we won’t have the time to say the complicated prayers, and I have found that continuous prayer helps me to have prayers in my mind so that I start singing songs or praying without thinking about it at all at times.

In terms of believing in the mercy and love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, I recommend reading the book Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Father John Croiset, it really helps you understand the love of Jesus Christ, as well as helps to explain (in my possibly uninformed opinion) why the Sacred Heart of Jesus found it better to spend 30 years with the Immaculate Heart of Mary before his ministry, because love comes with presence. I, for one, find it easier to say the Rosaries in a Holy Hour with the Blessed Sacrament than at any other time. I can even read spiritual reading or the bible, say a decade, read more, say a decade, and pass hours there and finish multiple rosaries.

As for the Immaculate Heart of Mary, True Devotion to Mary and The Secret of the Rosary by St. Louis Mary de Montfort provides information on why the Rosary and the Immaculate Heart of Mary is at the heart of spiritual warfare.

May we be witnesses and glories to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary!!

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. *

Devoting oneself 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
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesusen.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.

 

[AveSantaMaria]

*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.

From True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin
51. ** It is chiefly in reference to these last wicked persecutions of the devil, daily increasing until the advent of the reign of anti-Christ, that we should understand that first and well-known prophecy and curse of God uttered against the serpent in the garden of paradise. It is opportune to explain it here for the glory of the Blessed Virgin, the salvation of her children and the confusion of the devil. “I will place enmities between you and the woman, between your race and her race, she will crush your head and you will lie in wait for her heel.” (Gen 3:15)**
**52. ** God has established only one enmity - but it is an irreconcilable one - which will last and even go on increasing to the end of time. That enmity is between Mary, his worthy Mother, and the devil, between the children and the servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and followers of Lucifer.

Thus the most fearful enemy that God has set up against the devil is Mary, his holy Mother. From the time of the earthly paradise, although she existed then only in his mind, he gave her such a hatred for his accursed enemy, such ingenuity in exposing the wickedness of the ancient serpent and such power to defeat, overthrow, and crush this proud rebel, that Satan fears her not only more than angels and men but in a certain sense more than God himself. ** This does not mean that the anger, hatred and power of God are not infinitely greater than the Blessed Virgin’s since her attributes are limited. It simply means that Satan, being so proud, suffers infinitely more in being vanquished and punished by a lowly and humble servant of God, for her humility humiliates him more than the power of God. ** Moreover, God has given Mary such great power over the evil spirits that, as they have often been forced unwillingly to admit through the lips of possessed persons, ** they fear one of her pleadings for a soul more than the prayers of all the saints **, and one of her threats more than all their other torments.

** 53. ** What Lucifer lost by pride Mary won by humility. What Eve ruined and lost by disobedience Mary saved by obedience. By obeying the serpent, Eve ruined her children as well as herself and delivered them up to him. Mary, by her perfect fidelity to God, saved her children with herself and consecrated them to his divine majesty.

**54. ** God has established not just one enmity but “enmities”, and not only between Mary and Satan but between her race and his race. That is, God has put enmities, anipathies and hatreds between the true children of the Blessed Virgin and the children and slaves of the devil. They have no love and no sympathy for each other. The children of Belial, the slaves of Satan, the friends of the world - for they are all one and the same - have always persecuted and will persecute more than ever in the future those who belong to the Blessed Virgin, just as Cain of old persecuted his brother Abel, and Esau his brother Jacob. These are the types of the wicked and of the just. But the humble Mary will always triumph over Satan, the proud one, and so great will be her victory that she will crush his head, the very seat of his pride. She will always unmask his serpent’s cunning and expose his wicked plots. She will scatter to the winds his devilish plans and to the end of time keep her faithful servants from his cruel claws.

But Mary’s power over the evil spirits will especially shine forth in the latter times, when Satan will lie in wait for her heel, that is, for her humble servants and her poor children whom she will rouse to fight against him. In the eyes of the world they will be little and poor, and like the heel, lowly in the eyes of all, downtrodden and crushed, as is the heel by the other parts of the body. **But in compensation for this they will be rich in God’s graces, which will be abundantly bestowed on them by Mary. They will be superior to all creatures by their great zeal and so strongly will they be supported by divine assistance that, in union with Mary, they will crush the head of Satan with their heel, that is, their humility, and bring victory to Jesus Christ. **

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. *

 

[onmyknees]

Hi Epistemes,
I remember replying to your post a while back and if you can remember I had similar issues. First, I do agree with what you said about the need to forgive and confessing your sins. I also have the problem of feeling like I''m never going to be good enough (pride, sin, and the devil) for God. Sometimes just praying from my heart helps me more than the traditional prayers. The psalms help me a lot! My confessor, who is very orthodox, gives me them for my penances. He suggested getting the Ignatius Bible RSV (Catholic Edition) for the best and most beautiful translation. I love it. Try psalm 51 by King David for repentance and then psalm 139 on how much God loves you. You might know them already. Do you like music? It helps me to listen to holy songs that bring my mind and heart to God. One of my favorites is very soothing and hopeful just a few of the words go something like this, "Oh my soul, oh my soul, you never let go, you never let go, ever faithful, ever true, you never let go, when hope has flown, etc." Go to youtube by David Crowder band "Oh My Soul." Also" I want to be Holy, I am wholly yours" by David Crowder band is good too. Praying for you and will you pray for me too Epistemes?

 

[quiet52]

Try this.

Small Beads;

Sacred Heart of Jesus burning with love for us inflame our hearts with love of you.
Sacred Heart of Jesus burning with love for us inflame our hearts with love of you
Sacred Heart of Jesus burning with love for us inflame our hearts with love of you.
Sacred Heart of Jesus burning with love for us inflame our hearts with love of you
Sacred Heart of Jesus burning with love for us inflame our hearts with love of you.
Sacred Heart of Jesus burning with love for us inflame our hearts with love of you
Sacred Heart of Jesus burning with love for us inflame our hearts with love of you.
Sacred Heart of Jesus burning with love for us inflame our hearts with love of you
Sacred Heart of Jesus burning with love for us inflame our hearts with love of you.
Sacred Heart of Jesus burning with love for us inflame our hearts with love of you

Large Beads:

O thee I love oh thee I adore oh sacred heart of my dear Jesus, penetrated with grief I am at the numerous offenses I have hereto commited against you and the blessed sacrament of your altar. I offer you the merits of the Blessed Virgin and all the saints who have done your will throughout the ages in satisfaction there of.



Remember, that todays reading (or was it yesterday?) in the Daily Office tells us that Abraham, Jacob, and Isaac “after many trials” became Gods friends. Perseverence is a pre-requisit of christianity. Suffering or trials are a pre-requisite of perseverence.

Thank you for this – I will use this when I don’t have enough time to pray an entire traditional rosary, or if there are too many distractions.
I went to Mass early on Sunday to pray the rosary, but gave up after two decades because of the loud choir practice and people talking. I think this shorter devotion will be very helpful before Mass.

 

[PraRFLEsEkHm]

Hello,

I promised myself that I would never post another “negative” thread on CAF ever again after so many of you have done nothing but endured my spiritual trials as I’ve aired them out in public, but I feel particularly sorry for myself today.

I went to Mass this morning and tried praying, but my prayers are scatterbrained and multi-directional with sense of resolution or closure about them and I often end up despairing somewhere in the middle, lamenting how arrogant I am and how I’ll never be able to make any sense out of the spiritual life. During the Our Father, I kind’ve shrank away into obscurity as I imagined confronting the Father in my pitiable state.

I’m particularly sad because no matter what I read, no matter how hard I pray (or not), no matter how hard I try to “enjoy life,” no matter what my priest says, I just can’t seem to believe that Jesus is passionately in love with me. I, for my own part, don’t feel like I love Jesus. Lately, as I’ve been praying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the rosary, I’ve imagined, “What if I watched my Lord enduring these sufferings? What would I do?” And I find that I would shamefully stand amongst the crowd just looking and feeling sorry for myself that I’m such a coward to help him. And then he would give me that look – you know that look Jesus gives Judas when the soldiers knock him off the bridge in The Passion of the Christ? – and I would just crumble and run away.

Most of my prayer time is spent just saying, “I’m sorry,” but I don’t even know if I am sorry or what I’m so sorry for. It’s murdering my spirit which longs to love and be loved.

Please ask my new patron saint, St. Gemma, for her prayers for me. I don’t think anyone up there is listening to me lately.

Hang in there my friend. Out of irritations come Pearls. One day a lightbulb will go off :bluelite: and everything will make sense.

When we feel most alone is when He is closest, encouraging us, doing everything but willing us to walk just one more step so He may reveal Himself more fully to us and comfort us.

God loves you, God loves us all - so much so that He went of willingly to suffer and die for us. Apart from that, remember that His Patience is our Salvation. The fact that you are still breathing proves His Love for you, and for us for that matter.

Hang in there my friend. One day it will all make sense and you will feel closer to Him than ever.

Pray this Prayer - over and over…“Jesus, meek and Humble of heart - make my heart like unto thine.”

Peace

John

 

[PraRFLEsEkHm]

It would probably be helpful if I actually used it…

yeah, sometimes that approach works pretty good

Hang in there my friend. :console:

Victory will come :extrahappy:

Peace

John