“If certain thoughts bother you, it is the devil who causes you to worry, and not God, Who, being the spirit of peace, grants you tranquility.” -St. Padre Pio
@RexChillguy28 You can google “chi-rho text symbol” and there are several different websites where you can copy it from. Or you can copy and paste this one
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"At every Mass, heaven is opened, the angels descend in adoration, and graces flow in abundance upon the Church and upon the entire world. No one can measure the immense benefits that come from a single Mass." - St. Lawrence of Brindisi
@SaltyGuy117 It’s an every day battle, brother. Lately when facing temptation I try to remind myself just how awful and guilty I felt the last time I fell to temptation and the gut wrenching feeling of failing the Lord once again. I am beyond thankful for the sacrament of reconciliation
In 1401, the cathedral chapter of Seville met to decide what to build on the ruins of the city's mosque. According to tradition, this is what they agreed:
"Let us build a church so beautiful and so great that those who see it finished will think we were mad."
It took more than a century, and when it was finished it was the largest cathedral on earth, and it is still the largest Gothic cathedral in the world...
The minaret of the old mosque was left standing and turned into the bell tower, the Giralda. It has no staircase. Inside are thirty-five wide ramps, built so the muezzin could ride a horse to the top to call the city to prayer. People have been climbing them for hundreds of years.
And inside the cathedral stands what its own archives call the largest altarpiece in Christendom: a wall of carved wood and gold nearly thirty metres high, telling the life of Christ. The Flemish sculptor who began it, Pieter Dancart, worked on it until he died. It took almost a hundred years to finish.
Not one of the men who said that sentence in 1401 lived to see the building completed...
We can build anything we want now, but as poet Heinrich Heine once said: "In those days men had convictions, we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral."
St. Francis of Assisi’s “A Prayer Before a Crucifix”:
“Most High glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart. Give me right faith, sure hope and perfect charity. Fill me with understanding and knowledge that I may fulfill your command.”
Judas, unlike many, realized his sin. He repented bitterly, went to the high priests, threw the money at them, and said, "I have sinned; I have betrayed innocent blood." Everything was almost like a proper confession: awareness, confession, and even a refusal of gain. Yet, one detail was missing—the very one that is often missing after we have recounted our sins to the anointed one.
This detail was faith that God's love is greater than his fall.
Peter denied Christ three times. It was terrible, done with a vow before a simple servant. But he found in himself the courage not only to weep, but also to return to the apostles and wait for the Resurrection, knowing that Christ was alive and merciful.
Judas' despair is the blemish of pride.
It is the inability to accept oneself as forgiven, the inability to believe that you can still be loved after what you have done.
Often we go to confession and do not feel relief because we continue to punish ourselves.
But this is a rebellion against God! If the Lord forgives, who are we to cancel His decision?
Self-flagellation is not humility, but a refined passion.
Let us learn to weep bitterly like the apostle Peter, but to look not at the noose, but into the eyes of the Risen Saviour, who asks us not about the depth of our sin, but about the measure of our love.