@Truth_matters20@catholicpat Matthew 5:48 is Jesus commanding you to be perfect. Can’t achieve that by not doing anything. You are burying the talent God gave you, and you will front up to meet Him empty handed. He is an exacting God and expects much from you, in proportion to the grace He gives you.
@BillArnoldTeach@Truth_matters20 I admire your patience with this guy…it seems like all he does is attack Catholics for engagement. I pray the scales fall from his eyes. Keep up the good fight brother 🤜🏽🤛🏽
Coming from an evangelical background, I always thought the Augustinian tradition on sexuality—and Humanae Vitae in particular—was prudish, overly restrictive, and out of touch. It seemed like the Church was policing something that didn't need policing.
Then I spent years prosecuting sex crimes.
What I saw was the full downstream consequences of a culture that had systematically detached sexuality from its proper context, from permanence, from fidelity, from openness to life, from the dignity of the other person. The people I prosecuted weren't monsters who appeared from nowhere. They were the products of a logic that, followed to its end, produces exactly what Paul VI warned it would produce in 1968: the reduction of the human person to an object of use.
Humanae Vitae reads differently when you've seen what it's describing. The document isn't prudish; it's prophetic.
“No amount of argument can overcome the evidence for the fact that apart from Rome there only exist national churches such as the Armenian or the Greek church, state churches such as the Russian or Anglican, or else sects founded by individuals such as the Lutherans, the Calvinists, the Irvingites, and so forth.
The Roman Catholic Church is the only church that is neither a national church, nor a state church, nor a sect founded by a man; it is the only church in the world which maintains and asserts the principle of universal social unity against individual egoism and national particularism; it is the only church which maintains and asserts the freedom of the spiritual power against the absolutism of the state; in a word, it is the only church against which the gates of Hades have not prevailed.”
Vladimir Soloviev, “The Russian Church and the Papacy” (1889)
@Catholic_bro Praise God for the opportunity to suffer as His son suffered on the cross…completely desolate of all consolation. This enables detachment from consolation when Our Lord does pour it abundantly on you and protects from spiritual avarice. I’ll pray for your strength to endure.
@BorisJohnson Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi requires a central operator promising returns and paying early investors with funds from later ones. Bitcoin has no issuer, no promoter, and no guaranteed return—just an open, decentralized monetary network driven by code and market demand.
The Miraculous Story Behind the Shoulder Wound of Jesus🇻🇦🩸
In His Passion, Jesus Christ suffered greatly for the sins of man. He wore the crown of thorns, was scourged at the pillar, and had the Five Holy Wounds inflicted upon Him. While most Catholics know of these, few are familiar with the shoulder wound of Jesus, and the miraculous story behind its devotion.
Tradition says as Jesus walked the three miles from Pontius Pilate’s courtyard to His Crucifixion at Calvary, the Cross dug through His shoulder ripping flesh from bone. According to a pious legend, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux prayed and asked of Christ what was his greatest unknown suffering, and what wound suffered in His Passion was most painful. Christ replied to him:
“I had on My Shoulder while I bore My Cross on the Way of Sorrows, a grievous Wound which was more painful than the others, and which is not recorded by men.”
Christ asked that Saint Bernard and other members of the Faithful keep a devotion to his shoulder wound, and that those who do will receive God’s grace.
“Honor this Wound with thy devotion, and I will grant thee whatsoever thou dost ask through its virtue and merit. And in regard to all those who shall venerate this Wound, I will remit to them all their venial sins, and will no longer remember their mortal sins.”
Saint Bernard heeded Christ’s call, composing a beautiful devotional prayer to honor the shoulder wound of Our Savior:
“O Loving Jesus, Meek Lamb of God, I, a miserable sinner, salute and worship the most Sacred Wound of Thy Shoulder on which Thou didst bear Thy heavy Cross, which so tore Thy Flesh and laid bare Thy Bones as to inflict on Thee an anguish greater than any other wound of Thy Most Blessed Body. I adore Thee, O Jesus most sorrowful; I praise and glorify Thee and give Thee thanks for this most sacred and painful Wound, beseeching Thee by that exceeding pain and by the crushing burden of Thy heavy Cross, to be merciful to me, a sinner, to forgive me all my mortal and venial sins and to lead me on towards Heaven along the Way of Thy Cross. Amen.”
While Saint Bernard was the first to venerate the shoulder wound, he was not the last. Saint Padre Pio kept a devotion and also suffered the same wound himself as a stigmata. When Pope Saint John Paul II was still a priest he visited Padre Pio and asked him which wound was his most painful. Father Wojtyła expected that it was his chest wound, but the saint replied:
“It is my shoulder wound, which no one knows about and has never been cured or treated.”
Prior to his death, Padre Pio confided to Brother Modestino Fucci at his friary in San Giovanni Rotondo that his greatest pains happened when took off his shirt. At the time, Fucci believed it to be his chest wounds much like John Paul II. When he was later assigned the task of inventorying all the items inside the cell of the late Padre Pio, he noticed his undershirts had blood stains on the right shoulder.
That night, Brother Fucci prayed asking Padre Pio for a sign if he truly bore the shoulder wound of Christ. At 1 A.M., he awoke with an excruciating pain in his right shoulder and the room was filled the aroma of flowers, the sign Padre Pio’s spiritual presence, and he heard a voice call out: “This is what I had to suffer!”
This is probably the best answer I've ever heard to the question, "Why did God create evil?"
A professor at the university asked his students the following question:
“Everything that exists was created by God?”
One student bravely answered:
“Yes, it was created by God.”
The professor asked :
“If God created everything, then God created evil, since it exists. And according to the principle that our deeds define ourselves, then God is evil.”
The student became silent after hearing such an answer. The professor was very pleased with himself. He boasted to students for proving once again that faith in God is a myth.
Another student raised his hand and said:
“Can I ask you a question, professor?”
"Of course," replied the professor.
“Professor, is cold a thing?”
“What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you ever been cold?”
Students laughed at the young man's question.
The young man answered:
“Actually, sir, cold doesn't exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is actually the absence of heat. A person or object can be studied on whether it has or transmits energy.
Absolute zero (-460 degrees Fahrenheit) is a complete absence of heat. All matter becomes inert and unable to react at this temperature. Cold does not exist. We created this word to describe what we feel in the absence of heat.”
The student continued:
“Professor, does darkness exist?”
“Of course it exists.” said the professor.
“You're wrong again, sir. Darkness also does not exist. Darkness is actually the absence of light. We can study the light but not the darkness. We can use Newton's prism to spread white light across multiple colors and explore the different wavelengths of each color. You can't measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into the world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you tell how dark a certain space is? You measure how much light is presented. Isn't it so? Darkness is a term man uses to describe what happens in the absence of light.”
In the end, the young man asked the professor:
“Sir, does evil exist?”
This time it was uncertain, the professor answered:
“Of course, as I said before. We see him every day. Cruelty, numerous crimes and violence throughout the world. These examples are nothing but a manifestation of evil.”
To this, the student answered:
“Evil does not exist, sir, or at least it does not exist for itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is like darkness and cold—a man-made word to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not faith or love, which exist as light and warmth. Evil is the result of the absence of Divine love in the human heart. It’s the kind of cold that comes when there is no heat, or the kind of darkness that comes when there’s no light.”
🙏🏻❤️🙏🏻
Blessed be God.
Blessed be His Holy Name.
Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.
Blessed be the Name of Jesus.
Blessed be His Most Sacred Heart.
Blessed be His Most Precious Blood.
Blessed be Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
Blessed be the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete.
Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most Holy.
Blessed be her Holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her Glorious Assumption.
Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
Blessed be St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
Blessed be God in His Angels and in His Saints. Amen.
May the heart of Jesus, in the Most Blessed Sacrament, be praised, adored, and loved with grateful affection, at every moment, in all the tabernacles of the world, even to the end of time. Amen🇻🇦