The confession loophole

It's none of my business what my boy has confessed to God during his private confession, so I'm not allowed to ask him what he's damaged or broken and I have yet to find the source of his guilt. Once Christ extends his mercy, forgiveness, and grace upon the penitent, i.e., the boy, I'm not allowed to even reprimand or punish him further, if, and when, I find out he's keyed my car, painted the back of the vinyl siding or shaved our cats. Though the boy is unaware of this little loophole about confession which favors the penitent, if I mention anything further about any future discoveries of his now confessed sins, or if I feel the anger rise within me from discovering his bad behavior, "I" will then be the one in-snared by the confession loophole.

Sup God?

In the next four to six weeks we're gonna find out if Saint Malachy was either full of crap or indeed prophetic. If he is incorrect we Catholics will all breath a collective sigh of relief, if on the other hand the next pope is named Peter the Roman, the entire Catholic church will collectively have a coronary hemorrhage...

What a waste

I don't believe that God minds being worshiped in a way that a particular congregation finds acceptable, depending upon the religion and the wealth of the community. Opulence isn't out of place when worshiping God, though personal luxury for the religious people who serve him, I find unacceptable and offensive. Our worship environment is supposed to be a place which promotes devotion and awe for God, and his glory.

Christs own disciples were upset with Mary Magdalene for anointing Christ with an expensive alabastron bottle of perfume, worth a years wage. Judas, the betrayer, commented indignity to Christ that the perfume should have been sold, and the money used to feed the poor, but Christ replied, " “Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to Me. “For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me.“For when she poured this perfume on My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial."

***

We are called to feed the poor among us, but at the same time, we worship God in a way that is appropriate, right and just.. befitting of our creator.

In my opinion, for the most part, mankind has caused the famines, starvation and deaths of the poor. Consider government embargo's which have kept stockpiled food from getting to people who've needed it. North Korea doesn't have a problem with letting their people die from starvation, or from anything else for that matter. This has been the case for certain regions in Africa too.

God has put enough food on this planet for every person. Examine yourselves, look in the backs of your pantry, is there food that has been in there for years? Have you eaten more than your fair share of food today, yesterday? Do you ever go meatless for a day or two? Do you ever fast? Are you overweight ? Do you eat for recreation, or out of boredom or stress ? Do you waste food - straight from the refrigerator, pantry, or plate? Do you pick up food from local restaurants or grocery stores at the end of the day to take to shelters or soup kitchens? Do you donate or work in soup kitchens? Do you gamble your grocery money, or buy drugs with it instead?  Do you ever make do, and eat those crummy leftovers in the frig?

Anyway, if your going to blame God ,why not blame Satan instead because if one exists then so must the other.
 I suppose blaming ourselves isn't part of the picture.

*For my facebook friend who doesn't believe in God though his daughter is an Anton LaVey follower.

- To my daughter, whom I'm frustrated with.

How can we become saints if we refuse to forgive even the smallest infractions against us? Clinging to our pain while saying, "It's not fair," does not justify our refusal to forgive, because with forgiveness we have no "rights".

  Christ commands us to forgive and without being asked to forgive first and without a conditional apology or a sign of remorse from our offenders. Don't even waste the priests time in the confessional by expecting forgiveness for yourself, when you refuse to extend it to others.

When we forgive, we let things go and try to forget about the past sins against us and we don't rehash hurtful scenarios in our mind, in essence- picking at our emotional scabs. When we forgive and forget, we allow Christ to step in to heal our wounds.

When you forgive someone, it doesn't negate any sort of justice from God. Our  God of the ten commandments will still demand justice and an accounting from each and every one of us but for now, while we are living, we step back and let God have our hurt and anger and we  do the things which we've been called to do. In other words, you go to confession and work on making yourself a better person and let God work on your offenders.

The business of forgiveness is a serious matter, it's one of the things your eternal life will be judged upon.

Ephesians 4:32

 And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.

Matthew 6:14-15

 "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. {15} "But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

 

“My Jesus, let my sacrifice burn before Your throne in all silence, but with the full force of love, as I beg You to have mercy on souls. - Sister Faustina

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I love her.
Just think, she could of prayed, "Please God save me, save MEEEE" but she didn't and even at a risk to her own spiritual well being by praying for others instead of herself. Though salvation without Christ is impossible, it's when your concerned and preoccupied for the redemption and salvation of other souls that you in fact, seal the fate of your own.

My son told me he's afraid of people with electrical body parts so naturally I started doing the
 "Robot"- though very poorly and as usual he didn't get my joke.

Come to think of it, I'm scared of people with electrical body parts too.

Let's say, I  wanna make a disaster movie and I begin my story with a huge earth quake, then I add a tsunami, where I make cars swirl around like toddler toys in the bottom of a bathtub drain.  I would create a nuke explosion , and then another , and yet another followed by some nuke snow but not before a volcano eruption - for good measure and all the while I would have throngs of  helpless people waiting for aid and news of missing loved ones.  In this horror movie I would watch and wait for the food and water to deplete while disease loomed large as people came to terms with being blown back to the stone age - without electricity or housing and with a chill in the air.  I would tank the NIKKEI and make Japanese goods undesirable because of possible radioactive contamination and so would go their economy. What a movie that would make but then who would believe it?
I wouldn't -  not in a million years.

  Lord, how much worse will  the real Armageddon be?

I'm praying hard  and like I mean it. Please God, make this nightmare stop and heal the people of Japan.

*These photos are old stereo cards of Japan, which I do not own.

Please, Please pray for our daughter Elizabeth who is stranded beside a highway with a broken car right  at this very moment. Her dad - my blog administrator has called for a tow truck and has arranged for it to be serviced. I'm so very worried. I can't stand the thought of my child- well she's 27 standing beside the road in a broken car, six states away and upset. She's probably stuck in Watts and she's a very pasty white girl with really red hair... She doesn't blend in very well at all. I'm so worried!



She's on the far left. Did I mention that I'm really worried?

Christ waits and he waits for you alone.

Have you ever wondered if God keeps some of the things you've made on his  refrigerator?

Here's whats on my fridge.

Our daughter Grace is working on a set of drawings for our Priest at his request, but this is only a rough sketch.

After I dreamt and prayed  for families who have lost their homes in foreclosures, I dreamt that Ryan O'Neal   has grown twitchy and anxious since Farrah's passing and with good reason. She's been working hard on his conversion. Her tenacious, determined and unwavering spirit made me laugh as I watched her go after him (Spiritually speaking of course) while he was trying to sleep. I saw him  in bed nodding off with a light on and after being awakened by her, he sat up and yelled, "WHO'S THERE, WHO'S THERE?! - all anxious and upset-Yeah, he was sure twitchy alright.

 I love how The Holy Spirit gains a lot of lost ground during the night when it's quiet and we're alone with our thoughts. In my opinion, (Which BTW doesn't matter very much) that's when the most souls are won.

Saints make me laugh especially as we watch them going about the Holy will of God ,they're people who wont  take no for an answer and they're not easily dismissed.

*****

*My blog has not been approved by the  Holy Catholic church nor by any low level employee within the entire structure of the organization -which BTW I dearly love.
9/16/10

 Steven Hawking does not exist.

and I've listed a few reasons to prove my theory.

1)  Steven isn't tangible- I've never met, nor personally seen him.
2)  Steven's never given me anything or done anything for me, nor made my life better in any way. 
3) I'm too smart to believe in him.
4)  Steven could not exist because then who would have made Steven?
5)  Steven has never alleviated any of the worlds pain and suffering.  Besides I don't believe in pain and suffering and  if Steven did exist,  I would then have to reject him on the idea of suffering alone.
6)  Steven's never answered a single one of my prayers.
7)  I don't believe Steven has ever produced a  miracle.
8)  If Steven does exist I might have to change some of the things I think about and the way that I think about them and I'd really rather not have to think that hard and I'm not changing anything about myself -  Steven would have to accept me for who I am, sins and all  - If he existed.
9)  Stevens are  relative.  Who says one brainaic Steven is better than any other random Steve.

*Steven Hawking-"It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value."
-  To which I would reply , "No kidding  Einstein." Brilliance gets you no where in the next world.

*"The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired."
Stephen Hawking

For your consideration.

Perhaps a number of you (All 3 of my readers who check out my blog -like about 8 times a day ;) could  stop over at Vincenzo's place and tell him what an AWESOME job he had done with my new blog header.  I think it's perfect and maybe you might want to  consider sending some contract computer work over his way so that he can continue to afford the up keep of his squabbling pet gerbils -Tina, and Ike in the standard of comfort they're grown accustomed to.  Responsible pet ownership is something that Vince takes seriously.

Here's the last thing I do with my very last breath. - It's the sign language sign for "Catholic" and I"m having touble uploading it. Even so we can learn it together : )

My blog administrator said,"Well, no one will know what your doing, the paramedics wont know." I said, "It doesn't matter, the angels will know."

My five favorite devotions Meme:  A little game of spiritual tag with Mr.Terry -over at the Abbey.  

My spiritual resume doesn't look very snazzy on paper but I've never claimed to be anything other than a struggling mom/housekeeper anyway so here goes.

I have two seasons of spiritual life.. One is for when the kids are in school and the other for when they're at home . I don't know if the relationship I have with God is normal or not. I tend to think it probably isn't. I think of myself as a pin ball and I bounce around from this to that believing that I land where God wills and that's where my work lies. I don't pray on a schedule- I pray where I land.

My summer schedule when our children are home goes like this.
1 ) I go to Mass usually around twice a week but more if I can swing it. I prefer to go when the least amount of people will be there for reasons of social anxiety and because there are less distractions. I try to go to confession before mass and that's usually at least twice a month unless I've lost my temper for some reason, then I'll go more. I'm terrified by the thought of dying with unconfused/unrepentant sins and I pray that I die before I'm old and feeble or rendered unfit to drive myself to confession or mass.

2) If I run into you in my daily life (in any way) I consider it a sign that God wants me to pray for you. I don't believe in coincidences (but I don't go overboard with this line of thought either) so then my grocery store trip turns into a prayer and devotion to God as I worship God by the way I treat the people I encounter.... Which means sometimes I treat him badly - then it's back to Devotion #1

3) I think of myself as pulling up the rear in Catholicism and I worship God by taking care of other people and there are a million little things you can do- all day long, day after day to accomplish this task

4) I imagine spiritual communion and adoration often when I can't actually do those things.

5) I say "Jesus help me to do the things  I've been called to do" hundreds of times a day. (It helps with anxiety) and I also ask  the Holy Spirit to help me to not be deceived. At the end of the day I review my sins/ failures/ disappointments and I offer up all of my work that I had done for the day as a gift (- although crappy as it might have been) to Christ. Then I pray for souls as I sleep. Whether pretend or not -someones getting prayed for and when I wake up it's my favorite time of the day - conversing with God then my day's downhill from there.

Winter - in addition to most of the summer activities.
1) I say the rosary when I'm in the car, and I will often say divine mercy- and like I mean it.
2) I work out at the gym figuring it's good penance and I can offer it up for souls meanwhile praying for people while I'm there.
3) I _____ the ____ at least once a week and I ________ at _____  ______ to work off my purgatory time but every time I try to do something nice for God and his people he blesses me so I cant seem to make any headway on my accumulated purgatory time.
4) I do some sort of penances during the winter but only when the stress level from my children goes waaaay down. I ____ .
5) I participate in all Catholic seasonal activities, Lent, Easter, St Pats day- hahaha, seriously anything and everything Catholic- I'm there, just don't make me chit-chat.

I was at the Salvation army (The Salvanians) thrift store looking for some cake plates and a dress that screams, "I'm from the 1960's" when I ran across a lid that I thought might work for one of my crock pots so as I picked up the lid an older woman said, "Don't do it, it may not fit properly and you will have wasted your money."  I said, "Yeah, I know but it's only $1.49 and I'm pretty sure it will fit." I began to measure  the lid against the length of my arm and she corrected me and said, "That wont work, that's not how you do it." As she started sifting through her purse she pulled out a tape measure and  measured the lid and said,  "It's 11 -1/4" (Geese, I use to always carry a tape measure with me , I've become such a slacker.) I said to her, "Thank you so much that was sweet of you. Thanks for your advice , your terrific and I was sincere." Then she said, "I ain't nothing." I said, "Well God doesn't feel that way." Then she said, "I ain't nobody" and again I said, "No that's now true,  Jesus doesn't feel that way at all , he loves you more than you could imagine", then I walked away sad.

What I don't understand is that if there are so many Christians in America how is it that any person in this day and age wouldn't know at the very least that Jesus loves them? Where I live, preachers are on 4 television  channels 24 hours a day 7 days a week and they're preaching about the easy stuff. Nothing too complicated or taxing, so how can people still not know? I thought the Jesus campaign was pretty thorough.