LOVE URGES US TO LIVE MORE INTENSELY

Charity sanctifies every action, even the most trivial and indifferent, and confers upon it a value for eternal life. 'Love urges us to live more intensely for him who died for us and rose again'.

By living in this manner we carry out the divine plan for our soul, and reach that level of love that God expects of us and with which we shall love and glorify him for all eternity. (Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, as previously.)

WE SHALL BE ESTABLISHED FOREVER IN THE DEGREE OF LOVE WE REACH IN TIME

Last night, New Year’s Eve, I wrote my email with its ‘holy thought’ as usual, but not from the usual site (my desk). From my son’s kitchen table, where I sat party-sitting, it refused to budge and on my return home, at midnight, it had gone AWOL.  So belatedly, here it is:

 In eternity… time will be no more; we shall be established forever in the degree of love which we have reached now, in time.

If we have attained a high degree of love, we shall be fixed forever in that degree of love and glory; if we possess only a slight degree, that is all we shall have throughout eternity (Fr Gabriel, as previously).

WRESTLING OVER FREE SPEECH IN REGARD TO ABORTION (Letter to Dom Post, Dec 31)

‘Censorship slowly rots society’, argues Matthew Parris (Wrestle over free speech goes on, Dec 30). I absolutely agree. But censorship not of the media, but by the media, which he fails to mention, is a factor more putrefying than any other.

 

Parris wisely observes that ‘protecting people from harm has an emotive appeal that the defenders of free speech will always struggle to counter’. Even journalists apparently succumb to this emotive appeal.

 

Presumably it’s a natural inclination to protect women from painful reminders of their personal tragedies, the trauma of abortion, which explains the media’s persistent failure to allow pro-lifers freedom of speech - and as probably one in three women in New Zealand have suffered an abortion, to do so would certainly qualify as shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre. 

But the media’s raison d’etre is to inform, and in this instance, to inform women of the health risks of abortion. 

In the wrestle over free speech in regard to abortion, in which corner are New Zealand’s media, in particular The Dominion Post ?

GOD MADE MAN INTELLIGENT AND FREE (from my nightly family email)

God has made man intelligent and free; he offers him all the treasures of salvation and holiness contained in the infinite merits of Jesus Christ; man is free to accept or refuse.


From Divine Intimacy, by Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, OCD

FLOWERS NOT WASTING THEIR SWEETNESS ON THE DESERT AIR

For years now I've been sending my long-suffering children (all adult) a nightly collective email.

Events and encounters amusing and embarrassing, brilliant ideas and appeals to their better nature, several short paragraphs usually, all leading to the particular brilliant idea which inspired the venture.

That in turn was inspired by a few verses in the Divine Office which cut me to the quick:


Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which  I command you this day shall be upon your heart;and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise (Deuteronomy 6: 4-7).


I realised how far I’d fallen short of this ideal I'd fallen and thought, I know, I'll send them a line or two every night from whatever it is I'm currently reading – which apart from the daily rag (The Dominion Post) is exclusively what’s called 'spiritual reading' (such a rebarbative description for such utterly absorbing material. Once upon a time I devoured literary fiction, but no more. A friend who's HOD Speech and Drama at leading 'gels' ’ school says I don't know what I'm missing but I do, and that's exactly why I'm not missing it).

I suspect my kids skip the bit in italics at the end of my nightly message, and read only the come-on.

So not wanting to have my flowers wasting their sweetness on the desert air I thought, I know! I can post my nightly ‘holy thought’ on my blog.

So now you’re in for it.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL BELIEVES UNBORN CHILDREN AREN'T HUMAN (Letter published in Dom Post, Jan 4)

Grant Bayldon of Amnesty International says ‘human rights define the basic requirements we as humans have to be able to live our lives in a fair society’ (Never take human rights for granted, Dec 29). 

But hang on. Amnesty promotes abortion, which denies unborn children the basic requirement they ‘have to be able to live’, full stop.

 

Evidently Amnesty believes unborn children are not human. Can Bayldon please explain what they are, then?

THE FLAG DEBACLE SEEMS PRETTY EXPENSIVE (Letter published in Dom Post, Dec 23)

We’ve been told the $26m we coughed up to fund the flag debacle  - not to mention many millions more if we persist - is neither here nor there. A bagatelle. And I can see that to a Prime Minister and Cabinet who’ve just pocketed thousands more pay, it would seem like small beer. 

But a year’s supply of 33 types of fruit and veg for 110,000 school pupils (More kids to get free fruit in schools, Dec 21) will cost just $7.8m. To those kids and their parents the flag debate must seem pretty expensive.

NOT 'HEALTH' PROVIDERS, SICKNESS PROVIDERS (Letter to Dompost, December 18)

 

In Modern lifestyles cause 90pc of cancers (December 18), the threat of breast cancer posed by abortion is once again overlooked.

 

The causal link has been proved by studies in India, Iran, Japan, China et al. American breast surgeon Angela Lanfranchi says those most at risk are teenagers and women aged over 30. Research scientist Dr Joel Brind says an induced abortion will result in a woman’s higher long-term risk of developing breast cancer and insists on a woman’s right to informed consent.  

So next time you’re asked to wear a pink ribbon or buy pink cookies or wrap your balage in pink plastic, ask the fundraisers why the facts about breast cancer are not reported. Maybe because they don’t fit with the radical feminist agenda of freeing women from childbearing (which would explain the collusion of the media, run largely by women of the liberal left).  

Or could it have something to do with making money from terminations, surgery, oncology and the associated pharmacopoeia? Because it seems ‘health’ providers in this area might more accurately be described as sickness providers.

CHRISTIAN WOMEN ARE ANYTHING BUT 'CONFUSED, ANXIOUS AND BELITTLED' (Letter to Dom Post, Dec 17)

In Tips to help make the season jolly (Dec 17) Dr Cathy Stephenson advises planning good times with ‘helpful behaviours’.

 

The best Christmas times are had by forgetting oneself, giving generously to others, and going to church. In celebrating the birth of Christ, Christians rejoice in the intervention of the divine in human history, in the love and life of God shared with anyone who wants it. 

Christian women who live in that love are anything but ‘confused, anxious and belittled’, as Rosemary McLeod states in the same issue.

 

The advent of that child in Bethlehem offers all women their right to a real sense of purpose, peace of mind and potential to become other Christs.

THE CHURCH IS CHARGED BY CHRIST WITH PROCLAIMING THE TRUTH (First published in 'NZ Catholic, December 13)

‘Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long’, says Launcelot in The Merchant of Venice.

Shakespeare lived in a more innocent age. A Christian age. But now that legally speaking  abortion’ s not murder it’s been effectively hid a long time, with the result that the media are hiding not only abortion but the lucrative trade in fetal body parts.

In Ireland recently, sharing the dinner table at a B and B,  I realised just how easy it was for the Nazis to get away with murdering 6 million Jews. I waited till we’d finished eating before asking these Scandinavians and Canadians if they’d seen anything in the media about Planned Parenthood’s business of fetal tissue harvesting (including brains for transplantation into mice, but I didn’t spell that out).

There was a brief, stunned silence. Then a guy who’d said he’d spent three years in a Carmelite seminary said, ‘It isn’t happening.’

Now, the Nazis didn’t publish the statistics on the holocaust, but these days everyone’s informed about the abortion stats. The Nazis weren’t exposed online, but Planned Parenthood is. You’d think if the stats and pcs had been around in WWII, the holocaust couldn’t have happened.

Oh yes it could. If we’re not listening to Christ who ‘makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak’ (Mk 7, 37) we become spiritually deaf and mute. If the truth’s upsetting, we don’t want to hear or speak it. The human capacity for self-deception becomes boundless.

Consequently, New Zealand is now confronted with the spectre of euthanasia. A Protestant friend whose mother has Alzheimers’ says she’s asked ‘all the time’, when is she going to put her mother down. I was told recently by a prominent local citizen, a cradle Catholic, that he’d had friends in pain with cancer. ‘And they ‘did it’, he said. ‘If your dog had terminal disease you’d put it down. What’s the difference?’

‘The difference is, a dog doesn’t have a soul,’ I said. And he turned away.

At Mass now we’re given that truncated version of Matthew’s Gospel which ends soothingly with the sheep ushered into the Kingdom. What happens to the goats who didn’t care for ‘these least’: the frail, the elderly, the unborn and their mothers? We’re spared the reality, that ‘these will go into everlasting punishment’(Mt 25, 46).

Terrorism has filled the world with fear. Naturally, the Church doesn’t want to add to it. But supernaturally, the Church is charged by Christ with proclaiming the truth.

We hear and proclaim truth only by ‘the love of God which has been poured into our hearts’ (Rom 5,5). By ‘poured in’ St Paul means the love which is Truth itself, which is divinely infused by the Holy Spirit in contemplative prayer.

Vatican II spelt it out. In the official liturgy the Church prays for us all to be ‘fed with her (St Teresa’s) heavenly teaching’ and ‘imitate John (of the Cross) always.’

Contemplative prayer opens our ears, our hearts. And it’s for everyone.

 

 

ARE YOU A CANNIBAL? (Letter to Dom Post, December 7)

Imagine an ad showing an aborted human fetus in a glass of human milk and blood.

With aborted fetuses now supplied to the food industry, as flavour enhancers for example, this ad could pose the question, ‘Are you consuming human cruelty?’

Or to put it more bluntly, ‘Are you a cannibal?’

WHILE WE'RE ALL SHUDDERING ABOUT BOBBY CALVES ... (Letter to Dom Post, Dec 1)

While we’re all shuddering at the abuse of newborn male calves (Blanket condemnation of abuse of bobby calves, December 1), let’s think for a moment of the treatment meted out to babies killed in the womb.  

An investigation has ‘uncovered calves killed by farm workers thrown into piles’. How do we think the dismembered bodies of babies killed by medical professionals are treated? Except for organs which are saleable (eyes, brains and livers fetch a good price) they’re disposed of as so much rubbish. 

But we wait in vain for this ‘cruel and violent abuse’ to be similarly ‘uncovered’ by the media. Why?

 Because we don’t want to know. What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.