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Tuesday, May 9, 2017

“Let us receive the Holy Spirit with docility!” Pope Francis

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“Let us receive the Holy Spirit with docility!” Pope Francis

“Let us receive the Holy Spirit with docility!” This was Pope Francis’ message during his Tuesday morning homily during Mass celebrated in the Vatican’s Santa Marta residence.
Joining the Pope at Mass were the Sisters who work in the Santa Marta residence. They were celebrating the feast day of their founder, Saint Luisa di Marillac.
The Pope, continuing to develop the themes he had used in the previous day’s homily, reflected on the early Christians’ docility and openness to the Holy Spirit against the backdrop of the first persecutions of the Christians.


"In these past days we have talked about resistance to the Holy Spirit, for which Saint Stephen scolded the doctors of the law. Today the readings speak of an attitude which the opposite namely  for Christians to have docility towards the Holy Spirit” said Pope Francis.
He described how, after Saint Stephen was killed, a widespread persecution broke out against Christians and many of them fled to places like Cyprus, Phoenicia and Antioch. But this persecution gave new opportunities to the Christians, he added.  Noting that until this moment, they had only been preaching to the Jews, the Pope pointed out that some of those Christians who went to Antioch began to preach to the pagans, because they felt that the Holy Spirit was pushing them to do so.  This, he said, showed their docility towards the Spirit.
This docility is spoken about in the first letter of Saint James, where he exhorts believers to “Receive the word with docility.”  Pope Francis told the congregation that this means needing to have an open attitude that is not rigid.
“The first path in the journey of docility is therefore to receive the Word, which opens the heart. The second path is to know the Word, to know Jesus, who says ‘my sheep listen to my voice, I know them and they follow me’” said the Pope.
“Then there is a third path, familiarity with the Word. To always bring the Word with us. To read it, to open our hearts to the Lord, open our hearts to the Spirit who makes us understand the Word.  And the fruit of this, to receive the Word, to understand the Word, to take it with us, to have this familiarity with the Word, is a great fruit! A person who does this displays goodness, kindness, joy, peace, self -control and meekness.”
The Pope went on to explain  that this meekness is the attitude that gives us docility towards the Spirit.
“But I have to receive the Spirit which brings me the Word with docility. And this docility, by not resisting the Spirit, brings me this way of living, this way of acting. To receive the Word with docility, to know the Word and call to the Spirit to grant us the grace to understand and then to give space for this seed to sprout and grow into this attitude of goodness, meekness, gentleness , peace, charity and self-control.  All this shows  a  Christian attitude” he said.  
The Pope also pointed out that it was not the Apostles who preached to the pagans in Antioch, but others whose names we do not know. And when the Apostle Barnabas arrived in Antioch, he saw there the grace of God, resting in hearts that were faithful  to the Lord.
“There is the Spirit that guides us to do no wrong, but to receive with the spirit with docility, to know the Spirit in the Word and to live according to the Spirit. And this is the opposite of the resistance for which Stephen scolded the doctors of the law: ‘You always have resisted the Spirit!’ Do we resist the spirit? Do we create resistance? Or do we receive him? With docility: these are the words of James. ‘To receive with docility.’ Resistance is the opposite of docility. Let us call for this grace.”
The  Pope concluding his homily by noting that that it was in Antioch that the community of disciples was first given the name Christians.

....
Taken from: http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2017/05/09/%E2%80%9Clet_us_receive_the_holy_spirit_with_docility!%E2%80%9D_pope_francis/1310965

Monday, May 8, 2017

Fatima: “This is the finger of God”


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by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

‘Continue to come here every month. In October, I will tell you who I am and what I want, and I will perform a miracle for all to see and believe’.

 

Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima

 

 

Introduction

 

By now, the 100th anniversary of Fatima (1917-2017), all but a few of the Fatima prophecies have been fulfilled. On July 13, 1917, Our Lady of the Rosary had announced:

 

“The war will end soon …”. World War I ended the next year, 1918.

 

“but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI”. World War II was “a worse” war.

Pope “Pius XI” was the

 

Pope who turned his back on Hitler

 


 

this Hitler being an Antichrist:

 


 


 

“When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father”.

See my:

 

The Great Solar Miracle: Fatima October 13, 1917. Part Three: The ‘Unknown Light’ of 1938

 


 

It caused panic, as if “announcing the end of the world”:

 

In the streets there is panic. “Paris is on fire!” In several villages of the province firemen are mobilized...» «An immense blood-red glow was extending over the sky...»
The review then gives a great number of statements from its correspondents, both from France and from foreign countries. Here are some significant excerpts:

At the observatory of pic du Midi: «... The first impression was of a gigantic conflagration...»

At La Chapelle-Saint-Laud, in Maine-et-Loire, the teacher kept this description given by one of his students, aged ten: «Yesterday evening there was a great red cloud; it was like a sheet of blood, then the cloud grew larger, forming great red threads, which kept going up, and below that, white threads, like chalk lines.

In Oise, Mr. Henri Blain - at first believed that it was the grim reflection of a vast inferno... Many of the villagers, struck by the anomaly and intensity of the phenomenon, observed somewhat nervously from the window sills of their houses... These red glows were visible, then disappeared, and later on reappeared after a more or less lengthy period of time... These luminous manifestations sometimes went up very high in the sky, and in colour and luminosity they were absolutely comparable to the very vivid reflections of a violent, nearby inferno... The intensity of this extraordinary celestial spectacle, its splendid brightness, its enormous extent, its extreme rarity at this intensity especially in our regions, and even more so in this season of the year, seemed worthy to us of being pointed out to the Society immediately.

In Picardie: «At a quarter past five, noticed in the north-northwesterly direction a red glow which first attributed as being the result of a far-off inferno... Ten minutes later, the great purple spot was extending above our heads right up to Orion; other smaller and paler ones formed and disappeared in their turn. A few moments later, the blazing sky was being reflected in our faces; my wife, who was admiring the phenomenon at my side, appeared to me in a red reflection which seemed to me unreal. At a quarter to eight, the red glow reached its maximum intensity, almost the whole sky seemed to be on fire. A second drapery was quickly lit up, its luminosity was such that could tell the time on my watch. The spectacle was extraordinary. A brave peasant who had come near me to ask for news believed very seriously that it was announcing the end of the world!...

At the minor seminary of Caen, the students contemplated from their dorm a great red sheet, through which a few stars could be seen.

A witness from Vaucluse employs the same expression: «I was surprised to notice a great red sheet in the sky. For a moment it resembled a fire to me somewhere in the surrounding area, whose glowing light was reflected in the clouds… I observed that during the whole duration of the phenomenon the dogs in the village and surrounding area began barking and howling. They did not stop until about half past ten.

In North Africa this aurora borealis was so intense that an admiral whose ships were cruising near the coast ordered a destroyer to turn towards the left, towards the northwest, for he too believed that a fire was in the distance.

Another witness reports: This aurora was visible in almost all of Tunisia. It is a very rare phenomenon in our region since a similar one has not been recorded since 1891... In general it looked like a vast red or rose coloured glow, more or less streaked with white... The natives, who were very frightened, saw in it a warning of the divine wrath; the Europeans believed it was a huge, distant fire. The descriptions coming from various points in Tunisia always come back to the same expressions, which reveals that the phenomenon had an astonishing uniformity: «the sky turning red, a large reddish band which at first resembled a fire...», the «blazing sky», «a general blaze in the sky, the colour of a red brick, etc. The phenomenon was visible in all of North Africa.

In England: a witness spoke of moving pleats of a red velour coloured curtain. The curtain was drawn and filled the whole space. In Switzerland: a spring-like day had preceded the unprecedented, unforgettable phenomenon.»

The astronomical review gave some reports originating from Czechoslovakia and Romania:
Very frequent but brief conflagrations inflamed the sky right up to its zenith. It seemed that the fiery arch in the sky had come very low.

In Italy: A phenomenon extremely rare in our country.» It was visible at Pontevedra in Spain, In Portugal: Yesterday, for the first time in my life I observed a magnificent aurora borealis, a phenomenon very rare over here, which nobody can remember having seen for fifty years. At Lisbon and in all Portugal this phenomenon occasioned as much attention as surprise. Almost all the spectators believed that the sky was being lighted up by an enormous fire; and I myself believed the same thing at first. The apparition lasted almost two hours, from ten o’clock until midnight... Its colour was a more or less intense red.

In the United States, «this aurora was spectacular... Early in the evening my attention was drawn to the east by an enormous conflagration. Over a wide area the sky was alight with a red glow and I believed at first that a great fire was devouring Hampton Beach. The aurora was also observed in Canada.

The astronomer, Carl Stromer, reports that one of his correspondents in Norway, at the station of Njuke Mountain (Tuddal), signalled to him that he had heard noises «while the aurora was at its height and the sky seemed to be an ocean of flames... The observer and his assistant heard a curious sound coming from above them... which lasted about ten minutes, rose to a maximum and then vanished, following the fluctuations of the aurora’s intensity. This sound, which resembled the crackle of burning grass, was perceived in the same region, in the Tuddal valley, by Mr. Oysteim Reisjaa. Everything was perfectly calm on the mountain, and nothing could explain the production of this noise, neither the wind, which was not blowing, nor the telegraph lines, nor motors. Above the observatories, from all sides, there was not a murmur in the forest.

January 26 issue of Le Petit Dauphinois
Grenoble, January 25. – An atmospheric phenomenon of exceptional intensity was noticed this evening between seven-thirty and ten-thirty on the entire range of the Alps. This phenomenon manifested itself by an immense luminous trail which seemed to come from the sun, to unfold, fan-shaped, right up to its zenith. The breadth of the spectacle observed was such that the blazing sky resembled the brilliance of dawn. The people were astonished at first, then admired this celestial manifestation, which is rarely seen in these latitudes; then, as the phenomenon prolonged itself, they grew disturbed. Some curious scenes – especially in our countryside – were witnessed as the horizon remained purple. A thousand controversies swirled around this strange vision, which was believed to be a vast fire in the mountains, or gigantic military manoeuvres with searchlights; it was even believed – and this was the almost unanimous and not the least interesting observation – that the sun was going to rise...

 

“To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer …”.

 

(Communion of Reparation)

“On December 10, 1925, the Most Holy Virgin appeared to [Sister Lucia], and by Her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was the Child Jesus. The Most Holy Virgin rested Her hand on her shoulder, and as She did so, She showed her a heart encircled by thorns, which She was holding in Her other hand.

At the same time, the Child said: “Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce It at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.”

Then the Most Holy Virgin said: “Look My daughter, at My Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console Me and announce in My name that I promise to assist at the moment of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep Me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to Me.”


 

(Consecration of Russia)

June 13, 1929
Our Lady fulfills her promise, asking "for the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart, promising its conversion through this means and the hindering of the propagation of its errors."2

 

Sister Lucy received the order for the Consecration of Russia in June 1929, in a time in which Stalinist terror ruled over Russia. …. in August 1931, the secret judgments of God were illuminated thus:

 

"Make My ministers understand, given that they follow the example of the King of France in delaying the execution of My command, they also will follow him into misfortune. It is never too late to have recourse to Jesus and Mary."

 

Jesus is making reference to the well-known case in the history of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in which the "King of France" does not fulfill the desires of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, transmitted through Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. And she is afraid that the same thing will happen with this request of Heaven concerning the Consecration of Russia.


 

Sister Lucia (1935): "The Holy Father ... Pray much for the Holy Father. He will make it (the consecration) but it will be late”.

And “late” it was, the Consecration of Russia being only successfully achieved - after various attempts by popes - on the 25th of March 1984, by Pope John Paul II, more than half a century after it had been asked for (in 1929).

 

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Meanwhile Russia communism had long “spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church”.

It was only after the Consecration had finally been achieved that the Soviet Union collapsed.

Today, we live in a world saturated with “errors” at every single level.

Foolishly, Jesus Christ’s

 


 


 

has been rejected by most and has been substituted by expediency and transitory power.

Hence, we cannot now reasonably expect Heaven’s conditional: “If my requests are heeded … there will be peace …”, to be what prevails, but rather its: “If not …”, leading to all manner of disasters.

The kinds of disasters, in fact, that have rent this world of ours for decade upon decade.

Nor can we now reasonably expect to avoid that yet unfulfilled and most terrifying prophecy: If not … various nations will be annihilated …”, the fulfillment of which is looking more and more imminent.   

 

And the final outcome?

Heaven always wins: “ … in the end my Immaculate Heart shall triumph … and some time of peace will be given to the world.”

 

 

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‘No, father Abraham’, he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent’.

[Abraham] said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead’.

 

Luke 16:30-31

 

 

 

Introduction

 

Nor will “they … be convinced”, apparently, if Heaven should “perform a miracle for all to see and believe” that, several months in advance, was foretold to the very day:

 

13 July 1917

 

‘I want you to come here on the 13th of next month, to continue to pray the Rosary every day in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war, because only she can help you’.

 

‘Continue to come here every month. In October, I will tell you who I am and what I want, and I will perform a miracle for all to see and believe’.


 

This was yet another of those Fatima predictions that was fulfilled - and spectacularly so.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker has written about it as follows (https://cruxnow.com/commentary/2017/05/08/fatima-and-the-atheists/

 

Fatima and the Atheists


….

May 8, 2017

CRUX_CONTRIBUTOR

 

Fr. Dwight Longenecker says the Miracle of the Sun happened in Fatima on October 13, 1917. We have documentary, eyewitness, and photographic evidence that 70,000 people ‘saw’ the sun spin, felt it was yanked from the sky and that it plunged to earth. Everyone said they saw the same thing. Everyone was so frightened they screamed and ran for their lives. Clearly something happened, what was it? The answer given by believers is more rational than the answer given by atheists.

 


Commentary


 


Atheists love to mock miracles, and the miracle of the sun at Fatima is one of their favorite objects of derision.

 

The high priest of the atheists, Richard Dawkins dismisses the miracle of the sun as a mass hallucination.

 

He writes in The God Delusion:

 

“On the face of it, mass visions, such as the report that seventy thousand pilgrims at Fatima in Portugal in 1917 saw the sun ‘tear itself from the heavens and come crashing down upon the multitude,’ are harder to write off…It is not easy to explain how seventy thousand people could share the same hallucination. But it is even harder to accept that it really happened without the rest of the world, outside Fatima, seeing it too — and not just seeing it, but feeling it as the catastrophic destruction of the solar system, including acceleration forces sufficient to hurl everybody into space. Obviously the sun did not dance and plunge to the earth. We know the sun is billions of times bigger than the earth. If the sun plunged to the earth there would be no earth. Clearly there was no miracle of the sun at Fatima…”

 

Dawkins is relying on the Scottish philosopher David Hume’s pithy test for a miracle. Hume wrote, “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.”

Hume’s test applied to Fatima would be to observe that it is very improbable that 70,000 people could simultaneously be deluded, or simultaneously collude in a mass lie. It is also very improbable that 70,000 people experienced the same hallucination.

However, all of those improbabilities are far more probable than the alternative: That the Sun was suddenly yanked sideways in its orbit, spun around and crashed to the Earth destroying the balance of the whole solar system with nobody outside Fatima noticing.

This is typical of the dull literalistic “reasoning” of the atheists. We who believe in the miracle of the sun have also taken science classes. We do understand that the sun is much bigger than the earth.

We also know that if the sun were really spinning that everyone on earth should be able to see it. We also know that if the sun plunged to earth we would all be toast.

Yet we believe in the miracle of the sun.

Scientists are supposed to objectively and rationally examine the evidence. At Fatima we have documentary, eyewitness, and photographic evidence that 70,000 people ‘saw’ the sun spin, felt it was yanked from the sky and that it plunged to earth.

Everyone said they saw the same thing. Everyone was so frightened they screamed and ran for their lives. Clearly something happened, what was it?

Obviously the sun didn’t literally fall to the earth. But 70,000 people saw it fall to the earth. The miracle therefore occurred somewhere within the process of perception.

We see with our eyes, but what do we see? Whatever we see is transferred to the brain and the brain interprets what we see. It is well known that if we do not have the mental capacity to “see” certain things they are invisible to us.

Likewise we may “see” certain things, and without the capacity or mental vocabulary to process what we have seen they will remain a mystery to us, for we all process what we see in terms of what we know.

Therefore do we conclude that the miracle of the sun at Fatima was a miracle that occurred within the minds of 70,000 witnesses.

Does this mean “It was only in their mind?” Or that “They had merely imagined it”? How did they all imagine the same thing? Was that the miracle? Did the event manipulate their minds and powers of perception in some way? Was it therefore a very unusual kind of mass hallucination?

No. They really did see the sun spinning, being yanked from the sky and plunging to earth, but the way they “saw” it was with some other capability than the usual kind of ‘seeing.’ They “saw” something in the same way that the visionaries “see” the Blessed Virgin who is not there in a normally physical way. Yet, the visionaries report that the characters they “see” seem to be physical and solid.

The seeming reality of what they see means this was not an ordinary hallucination. Furthermore, the miracle could not only have taken place within the perception of the witnesses because the phenomena was witnessed elsewhere.

Marian researcher Donal Foley records, that the poet Alfonso Lopes Vieira who lived over 30 miles away from Fatima witnessed the phenomenon. He wrote, “On that day, 13th October, 1917, without remembering the predictions of the children, I was enchanted by a remarkable spectacle in the sky of a kind I had never seen before.”

Foley tells the story of a young boy, Inacio Lourenco, who was a schoolchild of nine when he saw the miracle at a village about 12 miles from Fatima. He described how the children and their teachers were attracted outside by a commotion in front of the school to see the miracle of the sun. He tells of how he could look at the sun, which looked like “a ball of snow revolving on itself,” before it suddenly came down in a zigzag toward the Earth.

As he says, “During those long moments of the solar prodigy objects around us turned all the colors of the rainbow. We saw ourselves blue, yellow, red, etc. All these strange phenomena increased the fear of the people. After about ten minutes the sun, now dull and pallid, returned to its place. When the people realized that the danger was now over there was an explosion of joy and everyone joined in thanksgiving and praise of our Lady.”

The miracle was also seen by sailors on a British ship off the coast of Portugal. Foley recounts an experience in England. He gave a presentation on Fatima at a college in England and was told by one of the teachers that her grandfather saw the miracle from his ship and wrote about it to his wife — “without obviously understanding what it meant or its significance.”

And finally, what most convincingly shows that the miracle was not only in the minds and perception of the witnesses is the fact that the crowd at Fatima felt the heat of the sun as it approached them, and their clothes and the ground — which had been soaked by torrential rain — were dry at the end of the miracle.

Believers and atheists agree that the sun did not literally and physically crash to earth. Some atheists will continue to propose a mass hallucination. Others are honest enough to be mystified by the events at Fatima, and admit that it was some sort of psychic phenomena for which we do not yet have an explanation.

Believers will ask, “Why not accept the most obvious explanation: A power greater than nature interrupted the natural order. The term for a power greater than nature is God, and the term for such an interruption is ‘miracle’.”

[End of quote]

 

Also against the idea of ‘mass hallucination’ is that the Miracle of the Sun did not occur at the time expected, at 12 noon when the apparitions had customarily occurred, but two hours later – at midday solar time – since this was a miracle intended for the whole world, that all might believe.

 

 

 

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