The two most difficult challenges to our faith today are: God’s laws in regard to human sexuality and the gift of Jesus Christ Himself in the Holy Eucharist. Both are essentially faith issues of the utmost importance in our daily moral lives. No other doctrines are questioned more, even by those who call themselves Catholic.
Pornography, promiscuity, infidelity, contraception, invalid marriages and homosexual activity have contaminated much of Christian life. Some people are not aware of the malice of these sins. They persist in this immoral behavior without any seeming repentance, with no reception of the Sacrament of Penance, or any firm purpose of amendment. The live in sin. They have rationalized their guilt away. Their lust has become a form of idolatry. They will find no lasting happiness therein.
In some places the Church has been de-Eucharisticized. The Blessed Sacrament is the best-kept secret in those neighborhoods. The Holy Eucharist has been minimalized, marginalized, trivialized, casualized, and in some places, even ostracized. Watch the behavior of our people in church at Holy Mass. Look how they dress for the Sunday Liturgy. The atmosphere is often profane without any seeming reverence. Can they really believe without a sense of the sacred?
If our people really believed in the Presence of the Risen Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, how could 75% of them fail to show up for Sunday Mass? How could they leave the Catholic Church and give their faith away? Ex-Catholics are the biggest denomination in the United States of America today. The pools tell us that fewer than 30% of the United States Catholics actually believe what the Church teaches about the Holy Eucharist.
St. Padre Pio would assure us that the Holy Eucharist is the greatest deterrent for the pestiferous influences of our culture. He was convinced that the world could sooner live without the sun than it could live without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. What makes the chaste life possible, bearable, fruitful, and dare say, even joyful, is the grace of Holy Communion. Without the Holy Eucharist, we are headed for failure and destruction.
Any suffering, like loneliness, sandwiched between two receptions of the Holy Eucharist, make it doable, bearable, and swallowable. The words of Consecration that make our God so available as to make Him edible still contain the solution for all the problems of the world, including our own. A chaste life is possible when it feeds upon the Bread of angels. Our God has provided for the challenges of our time, but only if we believe.
This is needed more and more today! If people practiced this way our country would be great again!
I think one of the main reasons for this is lack of devotion to The Holy Spirit in The Church as a whole.
– So often we treat The Holy Spirit as the poor relation
– When Mary and the first disciples had profound devotion to The Holy Spirit
– As Fulton Sheen brilliantly explains in his video on The Holy Spirit, The Holy Spirit REVEALS CHRIST TO US (like The Son reveals The Father). This DYNAMITE.
– As Sheen explains, The Holy Spirit RELEASES the spiritual blessings won by Christ on The Cross.
– The Holy Spirit is essential in the life of The Sacraments.
– We need to remind people again and again that The Holy Spirit is GOD. EQUAL to The Father and The Son.
– That The Holy Spirit is like The Soul of The Church
– That The Holy Spirit fills us with encouragement, consolation, peace, joy and love (but we have to ask Him again and again)
– The Holy Spirit gives us His 7 Special Gifts
– The Holy Spirit actually gives us The Gift of Himself
– The First Novena in The Church was to The Holy Spirit
– The Novena to The Holy Spirit was made at the direction of Christ Himself
– The Novena to The Holy Spirit is the only Novena prescribed by The Church
I challenge the Friars to really try and do their bit to raise devotion to The Holy Spirit in The Church. Firstly, just to HONOUR The Holy Spirit (and when we do this, we’re also honouring The Father, The Son and The Blessed Trinity). And secondly for our NEEDS as a individuals in the Church and as a Church as a whole.
Dear Holy Spirit, we worship You. Please bless us.
Dear Blessed Mother, please pray for Catholics that we increase our devotion to The Holy Spirit. May we take example of your devotion to The Holy Spirit – in particular at Pentecost but in general, too.
Dear St Francis of Assisi, please pray for Catholics that we increase our devotion to The Holy Spirit
Also, the more we worship The Holy Spirit, the closer we come to The Father and The Son and The Blessed Trinity, and the closer we come to The Father and The Son and The Blessed Trinity, the closer we come to The Holy Spirit – and things devotion to God just soars and soars and soars.
As Catholics we should have special devotion to Christ (for various theological reasons related to salvation, please God) but not far behind (in sense of time and effort and focus) should be devotion to The Father, to The Holy Spirit and to The Blessed Trinity (which we must do anyway just because God is God and Three Person / One God but also for our needs and also because this will bring us closer to Christ anyway – for God wants our prayer not just to be deep to God but comprehensive in terms of offering it to The Father and to The Son and to The Holy Spirit and to The Blessed Trinity.
This is just so, so important – and I pray that the Church really, really begins to focus on this more and more – firstly because of the devotion owed to God anyway but also to resolve our problems in the Church and fill us with the love and vigour we need to evangelise the world, please God.
I think probably biggest problem in Catholic Church today is lack of devotion to The Holy Spirit who we treat like the poor relation – compared to how Mary and the first disciples treated The Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
The Devil wants to quash our devotion to The Holy Spirit as The Holy Spirit is key in our salvation (please God) and sanctification (please God). The Devil wants to stop Catholics encouraging others to increase devotion to The Holy Spirit.
As Fulton Sheen says in his great vid on The Holy Spirit, The Holy Spirit reveals The Son (just as The Son reveals The Father). This is Dynamite. And that The Holy Spirit releases the spiritual blessings Christ won on the Cross for us. And of course The Holy Spirit gives us His special 7 gifts, as well as encouragement, joy, sense of beauty about life, peace, love and Himself.
And The Holy Spirit prepares us for The Sacraments.
We don’t have to join some charismatic movement. We just how to increase our devotion to The Holy Spirit so that we no longer treat Him as the poor relation (and that we give more devotion to The Father – there is no time set apart for Him during the year, and for The Blessed Trinity Who gets scant focus compared to God at Christmas, say).
The focus of our devotion should be to Christ (and Christ in Eucharist) – for profound theological reasons. But we, The Catholic Church, are still a Trinitarian Church, not a unitarian one, and devotion to The Holy Spirit (and to The Father and to The Blessed Trinity is also key).