No Cholesterol or Calories In Heaven

 I love the description of what the feast in heaven will be like.  Not just food, but rich food, and not just wine but choice wine.  There will be nothing but the best for the friends of God. I can't wait!   I don't have to wait because heaven begins here on earth and Jesus has already provided for us the richest food of all, His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the form of what gives every appearance to be simple ordinary bread and wine.  It's more than amazing, it is exciting!  Can you imagine, you and the God of the universe are as close as you can get.  It blows my mind.  Let's put this into perspective.  You are in London, you are outside Buckingham Palace. Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth wanders out into the street to greet some of the little people who are gathered there in the hope of just catching a glimpse of her.  She is walking towards you.  You seem to catch her eye and you see a twinkle in her eye and you know you and she have mystically connected. You jump the barrier and take two steps towards her and you suddenly find yourself kissing the black British asphalt with the muzzle of an automatic rifle touching your head with one of Her Majesty's bodyguards with his finger on the trigger and ready to give you a new part in your hair if even one of your muscles has a twitch!  See, you could not get close to the Queen of England because she is too important, much too dignified to spend time with someone as common as you.  But at mass, at the Eucharist, you and Jesus, the Person whose will allows Liz to live, breath, and wear those silly hats, comes into you physically and for a while, you and the God of the Universe are one, together.  Our God gives us examples all of the time of how we should be.  What the queen of England is lacking, our God has an infinite supply of and that is humility.  I will leave you on this autumn Sunday with just one question to think about:

JUST WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO ME IF WHAT JESUS SAID ABOUT THE EUCHARIST WAS TRUE? 

DID YOU KNOW, THAT YOU CAN OFFER ALL OF THE GRACES YOU RECEIVE WHEN RECEIVING HOLY COMMUNION TO THE POOR SOULS IN PURGATORY? 

A Deal is A Deal - even when we pray !

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Have you ever really sat down and taken the Our Father apart?  Jesus gave us this prayer as an example as to how we are to pray and what we are to pray for. I am not going to tear the prayer apart on this blog today.  I would recommend that sometime today that you find a quiet place and meditate on the prayer we call the "Our Father."

I do want to touch briefly on just one aspect of this prayer.  The words we say are so familiar to us and we pretty much say them by rote so we may miss some of the important things we are actually praying for.  

We do ask God to forgive us our sins, and He does, in the same measure that we forgive those who sin against us.  If you hold a grudge if you are unforgiving of someone who has hurt you, well, do the math, God will hold the same amount of guilt against you.  

But, how can this be?  God forgives our sins and casts them as far away as the east is from the west.  When we sin against God, we are hurting the infinite goodness and dignity of the creator of the universe. Yet, he is willing to forgive us our sins against his dignity provided we are willing to forgive those who have sinned against ours.   How can God demand this from us?  Doesn't He know what she did to me and how much it hurt?  Yes, He knows the pain of being betrayed, of being ignored, of being the subject of mockery, of being hated.  It happens to God all of the time, yet He forgives.  He asks that we imitate Him and see our way clear to forgive those who trespass against us and He for His part will forgive us the many sins He could hold against us.  Seems like a good deal to me.

Lent - Once Was Blind - Now I See

"Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, 

because I have rejected him.

Not as man sees does God see, 

because man sees the appearance 

but the LORD looks into the heart."

Our readings this Sunday are all about vision. First, we read about David being anointed the king of Israel.  One at a time Jesse's sons came before the prophet and while each of them made a splendid appearance, none of them was the one God had in mind. Finally, they called the youngest one in from the field.  David had been out tending the sheep. When David appeared before the prophet, God made it known that this was His chosen one and David was promptly anointed king of Israel. 

Our Gospel reading is the one about the man born blind and how Jesus made a paste of clay, rubbed it on the man's eyes and sent him to wash and the man born blind could see! 

God's vision is perfect. He does not look at the exterior of a person. He reads what is in their heart. How often do we judge others using our myopic human vision?  Often times our judgment is clouded by our prejudices. We have to learn to see others as God sees them. God loves every one of his children without exception.  When we apply our judgment we should err on the side of charity.  There is a story I read once about Brother Bernard who lives in a monastery. Whenever someone criticized someone else in his presence he would answer:

"Wouldn't it be funny if he is closer to God than we are?"

Mary and The The Last Days

Of all creation, Mary, the Mother of Jesus is second only to her Son in importance to mankind. She was chosen by the Father to be the physical earthly mother of Jesus. As such she was preserved from the moment of her conception from the stain of original sin. She still had free will and could choose to serve God or not, it was her choice.  Of course she did say yes to the angel Gabriel and her fiat, her "yes" started the final act in the redemption of mankind promised in the garden of Eden.  When the time came she delivered into this world Jesus who would go to the cross and save us from our sins. When her earthly life was finished she died as all of us will and displaying His great love for His mother Jesus caused her to be assumed body and soul into heaven.  

I do not think that anyone would disagree with me when I say that Jesus perfectly kept the ten commandments.  If He did not then He would have committed sin and we know that is not possible.  Since Jesus kept the commandments perfectly, that would mean he kept the fourth commandment perfectly and he honored his father and mother. So, we can see Mary is a very important person indeed. She is very close to her Son. Jesus even began his ministry early at the wedding feast at Cana when he changed water into the finest wine. 

It is important for us to realize the importance the Mother of God plays in the history of salvation.  To this very day some people believe she is interceding for the race of man and delivering urgent messages warning us of the coming of the end times or at the least a great chastisement because of the way we have strayed from the will of God. 

Mary, it is said, has appeared at various places in various times and has brought both requests for prayer and fasting and warnings of punishments that are to come upon the race of man. The Church classifies these appearances as private revelations and we are free to believe in them or not.  

Let's take a look at some of the apparitions and see what they were all about. 

 The first apparition is that which is called Our Lady of

Guadalupe.  This took place in Mexico in the year 1531 right after the city of Mexico had been pacified and the Catholic faith was starting to take hold.  A new bishop had just been appointed and had just taken up residence there.  Juan Diego, a typical peasant, was on his way to Mexico to attend Mass when he heard some beautiful singing. He topped the hill and was stopped by a beautiful woman whose garments shined like the sun. She identified herself as "the ever virgin Holy Mary, Mother of the True God"  She told him that he was to go to the bishop and tell him that he is to build a church in her honor on this spot.  Juan Diego went of and with some difficulty he was admitted to see the bishop. The Bishop was named Father Juan de Zumarraga, a Franciscan, listened to the peasant courteously and he told Juan basically. "I'll think about it." 

Juan left and was broken hearted because it appeared to him that he was not believed by the prelate. Mary appeared to him and Juan related with happened and told Mary that she had entrusted her mission to a nothing of a man.  Mary told him that she had many servants and he was one of them and she chose him for this mission. She sent him back telling him you come in my name and he should start the erection of the temple that I am asking for.  She said "Tell him that I, in person, the ever virgin Holy Mary, Mother of God, has sent you." 

So off he went and once again with much difficulty he was able to see the bishop. The bishop sent him away stating that he had to bring him a sign from heaven that what he said was true.  Juan immediately left. This time servants of the bishop followed him to see where he went and who he spoke to. When Juan reached the crest of the hill on which Our Lady appeared to him he vanished from their sight and they could not find him. They decided that if this churlish peasant ever darkened the door of the bishop again that they would punish him severely.  Juan told the Virgin what had happened and she told him to return the next day and that she would give him a sign of the bishop.  Juan returned home and found that his uncle was ill and near death. The next morning Juan set out to fetch a priest to hear his uncle's confession but the Virgin once again appeared to him. He told her of his uncle's sickness and she said not to worry, that his uncle was cured. He then sent him to the top of a hill where, once he arrived, he could not believe his eyes. Here it was in the chill of December and all around him were beautiful roses, they do not bloom in December.  They Virgin told him to gather them and she put them into his robe and told him that this is the sign the bishop needed to see and to show them to noone before the bishop saw them. 

Juan went off to the bishops house again.  True to their word the servants of the bishop gave Juan a hard time and refused to tell the bishop that he was there to see him.  But soon he was admitted to the presence of the bishop and he told him that the sign that the bishop wanted was in his robe.  The bishop opened the robe and the beautiful roses spilled on to the floor and inside the robe was a picture of the Blessed Virgin.  The bishop now believed and needless to say the church was built.  Juan Diego himself has been canonized as a saint.  

Okay. some peasant finds some flowers and paint a picture in his robe, big deal, cute, but not miraculous. It's not that simple, we cannot just throw away the possibility of the miraculous.  Let's talk about the robe, or as it properly called a "Tilma."  The tilma was a typical garment used by the natives in the 15th and 16th centuries. It is made of two pieces of coarse cloth fibers and is approximately 70 inches by 41 inches.  The normal life of this typical garment is approximately thirty years.  This tilma has been with us for almost 500 hundred years and in the early years it was handled by literally thousands of people, hung without any protection from insects, uv light and contamination of tens of thousands of candles that have been near it over the years and it has suffered no degeneration. 

In 1879 Dr. Jose Ignacio Bartolache had two copies of the image made by local artists placed them in identical conditions as the original and the copies disintegrated in twenty years. Further, human artists tried to embellish  the original by adding a crown around Mary's head and adding gold to the sun burst. All of these things faded away but the original remained perfectly preserved. 

Modern investigations have been made as well.  In 1936 a Noble Prize winner in chemistry examined the fabric and he was unable to tell how the pigments were made as they were from no known source, neith natural, animal, mineral, or vegetable. 

NASA has ascertained that the image floats above the surface of the tilma a distance of 1/100th of an inch without touching it! The Kodak Corporation in Mexico examined the image and says it bears more resemblance to a color photograph than a painting.

Microscopic examination of the eyes of the image reveal a most remarkable thing.  In the pupil of each eye can be seen miniscule image of a bearded man, Juan Diego!  Also, if a bright light is shined into the pupil, it reacts and the retina contracts and when the light stimulation is removed the retina returns to a dilated state, just as what happens to a living eye.  

Finally, one other miraculous occurrence bears mentioning.  On November 14, 1921 a bomb consisting of 29 sticks of dynamite was left near the tilma and the subsequent explosion broke the marble communion rail and windows up to 150 meters from the explosion but the tilma, housed in an ordinary frame covered with standard window glass was not damaged at all. A heavy brass crucifix near by was almost bent in half. 

So, given the facts above, I think we can say that the tilma is a very special piece of cloth that was left as an ongoing reminder of the love of the Blessed Virgin Mary for her children.  But what can we learn about the end times from this miraculous event that happened so very long ago.  About the end times, probably not a whole lot. But I believe that this visit of Mary to her Mexican people shows that she is a caring mother who will do what she needs to help her children.  And I think it also proves that Mary does appear on earth and that she uses the powerless of the world to get her message across.   We move next to a place called Fatima. 

(Thanks to Infallible Catholic which provided the facts quoted above. Please visit the blog by clicking on the link below. ) 

Infallible Catholic (Click Here)