Matt

Spent 5 years discerning Trappist life. Married with 5 kids. Built the prayer app I needed.

[Matt @MattProia]

Strictness is not the same as succession. A man can imitate his father's severity without being his father's heir. The question of which Church is the One True Church is not settled by which one refuses ecumenism, it is settled by which one stands in unbroken apostolic succession, holds the fullness of the deposit of faith, and retains the primacy Christ gave to Peter.

[Matt @MattProia]

@speedwhistler @elonmusk I was just trying to be funny. Sorry I thought it seemed obvious. I love Elon!

[Matt @MattProia]

@nora_mindnotes This hit so hard.
It’s easy to only show up when things hurt , I’ve been trying to build the habit of quiet gratitude and actual conversation on the good days too. Built a small app for exactly that.
If it ever feels useful: https://t.co/jORQH6u7gy Grateful for this reminder 🙏

[Matt @MattProia]

Enough. The scripture is evident. It is sufficient enough to say ok I understand. That's it.
In heaven the saints already participate in this mutual care: the twenty-four elders hold “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints” (Revelation 5:8), and an angel offers “the prayers of all the saints” before God’s throne (Revelation 8:3–4). We are “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1)

[Matt @MattProia]

Joseph is not Jesus’ biological father, that’s the whole point of the virgin birth (Luke 1:35).
But in Jewish law and custom of the time, legal paternity and inheritance ran through the husband/father. Joseph, a descendant of David (Matt 1), formally took Jesus as his son. That’s why both Matthew and Luke still give Davidic genealogies: one through Joseph (legal line), and the other traditionally understood through Mary (blood line).
The apostles weren’t proving biological descent from Joseph; they were showing Jesus meets the messianic requirement of being ‘Son of David’ under the categories that actually mattered.”

[Matt @MattProia]

The Holy Spirit. As the angel told Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35) It was a miracle of divine power, not a physical act like human conception.

[Matt @MattProia]

Being from the line of David speaks to His full humanity, not against His divinity. Christians hold that Jesus is fully God and fully man , two natures in one Person. The apostles clearly confessed His divinity:
Thomas: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28)
John opens his Gospel with “the Word was God” and “the Word became flesh.”
Paul writes that in Him “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9).The early Jewish believers saw no contradiction between the Davidic Messiah and the divine Son. Try reading Fully Human Fully Divine by Michael Casey.

[Matt @MattProia]

Jesus did teach us to pray directly to the Father — and Catholics do that constantly (Our Father, Mass, personal prayer, examination of conscience, etc.).Asking the saints to intercede is the same as asking a friend on earth to pray for you. It doesn’t replace going straight to God; it simply joins our prayer to theirs. Scripture shows the saints in heaven offering the prayers of the faithful to God (Rev 5:8).Both/and, not either/or.

[Matt @MattProia]

@chrisdcath @StephenJMZ Are they reading cross-eyed? Is that what’s going on?? Someone needs to figure this out asap. It’s right there!!

[Matt @MattProia]

You are carrying something that is not weakness -- it is the weight of a threshold you have never crossed, and the fact that you are standing at the door at all says something true about who you are. Here is what the Church actually teaches, and it is gentler than the anxiety makes it feel: confession is not an inventory of every fault since childhood. The Church asks you to confess mortal sins -- those grave offenses you are aware of and have not yet brought to God through the sacrament. Venial sins, like a child's stolen frosting, may be brought to confession and it is good to do so, but they are not what the sacrament requires you to carry in . St. John Vianney, who heard confession for hours each day for decades, said the confessional is not a courtroom. It is a place where a Father runs toward you. You are not walking into a trial. You are walking into an embrace that has been waiting for you. Your mother gave you something real -- the habit of turning toward God in prayer, of speaking to Him about your failures. That instinct was true. What the sacrament adds is not a correction of her love for you. It is the specific authority Christ gave to His Church: to speak absolution not as a symbol, but as the actual voice of God saying, in time and flesh and sound, you are forgiven (John 20:22–23). The sacrament makes the answer audible. -Deeper

[Matt @MattProia]

I had an instance where I was looking for my wallet all week. I was getting in the shower and it occurred to me that I hadn't asked Saint Anthony, so I asked and instantly I seen in my mind where it was. In the passenger side of my vehicle stuck between the seat and the door. There it was. All Glory to God, if he wants to glorify his saints by us asking so be it. We share in His glory in heaven.

[Matt @MattProia]

Abba Isaac wrote that the soul is like an eye, when it is clear of passion, it sees far; when clouded by self-will and disorder, even what is near becomes distorted. He did not say the clever man sees truly, but the *pure* man.
And yet the fathers also warned of a subtler danger: that a man newly polished in virtue might trust his sharpened vision too quickly, and so fall by pride into a different blindness , one harder to name. The eye that sees most clearly, they said, is the one that has learned to distrust itself. - The Companion

[Matt @MattProia]

Thank you, the Companion feature really gives great perspective, and you're right about the contrast. Two fixes coming in the next update: the conversation text gets brighter by default, and there's a new "Larger, Brighter Text" option in Settings for exactly this. Readability shouldn't be the price of atmosphere. Grateful you told me. I have an iOS update currently in processing that adds the rosary, and it will be followed up with this new update. The webapp will be updated later today.

[Matt @MattProia]

@LadyKellDiva @Nickisbackbaby My school was charismatic, the songs, the fact that everyone sang their heart out at mass which was always packed by the way (3x a day.) I think it was more charismatic though before I got there, like in the 80s.

[Matt @MattProia]

The Saint of the Day follows the current General Calendar, so Pius X today. The traditional calendar has St. Jane Frances de Chantal, and you're right that the rest of the app leans old — Douay-Rheims, monastic Office. A 1962 calendar option is on my list.

Still is a long project for me, not a finished product. The vision runs deeper than what's shipped — things like bringing the Abbey Psalter itself into the Office someday, the Genesee calligraphy, the psalter as a work of art. Public domain got Still this far; the right things are worth paying for, and I'll build toward them as the app can carry it.

And questions like yours shape the order I build in. That's how I want this to work.

[Matt @MattProia]

@dannkky @elonmusk Eventually I am going to grab my daughter and start replying to all of these with her replies.

[Matt @MattProia]

So why do you say we pray to dead people? The saints and martyrs are ALIVE. This is my point.

It doesn’t matter what you say in response they insist we believe things that just aren’t true. Otherwise their whole world collapses. I’m just worried about all their slander, poor souls.

The other choice is to say ooh that makes sense I just don't choose to practice that because we do it a different way. That's a good step for you I think.