🇯🇵 Without Japan, the world would have no instant ramen, karaoke, bullet trains, QR codes, emojis, blue LEDs, lithium-ion batteries, or a huge chunk of modern gaming and anime.
Without Islam, the world would have no terrorism.
Not all cultures are the same.
Imagina sair de algum buraco na África e ir para a Europa.
Chegando lá, você recebe moradia e auxílios diversos.
Literalmente não precisa fazer nada para viver dezenas de vezes melhor do que jamais imaginou.
E a única coisa que você consegue pensar em fazer é roubar e destruir.
E a esquerda ainda quer convencer as pessoas de que o problema é a falta de oportunidade.
Um judeu fala para um amigo que seu filho saiu de casa e se converteu ao cristianismo… O amigo responde:
- É engraçado você dizer isso, meu filho fez a mesma coisa.
Então, ambos foram até o rabino para pedir orientação. Ao contarem suas histórias, o rabino disse:
- É engraçado vocês dizerem isso. Meu filho fez a mesma coisa. Vamos orar e pedir a Deus por orientação divina.
Eles começaram a orar quando, de repente, ouviram a voz de Deus dizendo:
- É engraçado vocês dizerem isso...
Sola Scriptura é uma heresia que nasceu do coração do demônio.
É uma heresia que se utiliza da soberba e do narcisismo de todo aquele que carrega a marca do pecado original.
Melchizedek offered bread and wine to God in Genesis 14, and almost nobody asks the one question that passage demands: what kind of sacrifice is that?
Most Protestants assume sacrifice in Scripture always means blood and death. Burnt animals. Altars. Slaughter.
But Genesis 14:18 records a priest of God Most High offering bread and wine, and Scripture calls it a priestly act. The Psalms then declare the Messiah a priest "after the order of Melchizedek" (Psalm 110:4). A priesthood whose defining recorded offering was unbloody.
Hebrews 5-7 confirms Christ holds this exact priesthood, not the Levitical one. The Levitical priests offered animals. Melchizedek offered bread and wine.
So the question writes itself: if Christ is a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, what does his priesthood offer?
A priest without an offering is a contradiction in terms. And the offering of his order, established in the first mention of a priest in the entire Bible, is bread and wine.
That is the Mass. Not a symbol borrowed from paganism. A priesthood older than Aaron, offering what Melchizedek offered, now transformed into the Body and Blood of the One who said "this is my body."
The early Fathers saw this connection immediately. So did the author of Hebrews, who spends three chapters on it.
If the Lord's Supper is only a memorial, then Christ's Melchizedekian priesthood has no visible offering at all. What is a priest who never sacrifices?
Most Protestants are taught that Christ's suffering is finished in a way that leaves nothing for the Christian to do but receive it.
Then Paul says this: "That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death." (Philippians 3:10)
Fellowship. Conformity. Participation.
Not "remembering" his death. Being conformed to it.
Paul says the same thing to Corinth: "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body." (2 Corinthians 4:10)
Notice what Paul does not say. He does not say Christ's death is incomplete. He says Christ's death is so real, so bodily, that it continues to be carried in the bodies of Christians.
The early Church understood this immediately. Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to martyrdom in the early second century, called himself "God's wheat," to be ground by the beasts so that he might be found "pure bread of Christ." He did not think his death added merit to the Cross. He thought his death made the Cross visible.
That is the Catholic distinction Protestant polemics usually miss. The sacrifice of Calvary is once, for all, and sufficient. But Scripture speaks of that one sacrifice being applied, extended, and manifested through the members of Christ's Body until the end of time.
Head without members is incomplete. Not in merit, but in manifestation.
If Paul could speak of fellowship with Christ's sufferings, why does modern Christianity treat suffering as something merely to endure rather than something to offer?
Unfortunately, her comments have been disabled due to offensive commentary, but this is what I was hoping to share with her:
Your experience reminds me of something that happened when I was still working outside the home. During a staff meeting, a fairly new coworker, a non-denominational Christian whom I had recently befriended, sat next to me. We started talking about human suffering and what it means to place all our faith and trust in God.
She received my perspective so warmly as I shared the Church’s teaching on redemptive suffering, and she was genuinely fascinated by it and wanted to know more. Then she asked, “Which church do you go to?”
I will never forget the look on her face when I answered, “St. Mary’s Catholic Church.”
“You’re Catholic?” she asked.
It was a quiet realization for me that my insights on the Christian life were welcome only as long as I wasn’t Catholic; she loved the beauty of Catholic truth right up until she learned where it came from. Sigh.
So, for now (and I could be gravely mistaken), maybe your approach of quietly sharing the richness of the faith without leading with labels is exactly the seed that needs to be planted.
God bless you and peace be with you ❤️🕯️
What if the part of your life that feels the least holy is exactly where God is asking you to become a saint?... ⤵️
Most Catholics know what happened at Fatima in 1917. But for Sister Lucia, the story did not end when the apparitions stopped.
Lucia was the oldest of the three children. Her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta, died young. But Lucia lived for decades afterward.
Therefore, while their earthly mission ended early, hers continued.
She entered religious life, and over the years she reported more encounters with Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary. These did not add a new teaching to the Catholic faith. Instead, they kept pulling her back to the same message of the Gospel:
→ repent, pray, make reparation, obey God, and become holy.
But here is where the message becomes uncomfortable.
A lot of us hear the word “sacrifice” and picture something extreme. Long fasts. Great suffering. Heroic acts only saints seem strong enough to do.
Lucia herself wrote that this way of thinking can make people discouraged.
Therefore, in 1943, she said Our Lord gave her a much simpler answer:
→ “The sacrifice required of every person is the fulfillment of his duties in life and the observance of My Law. This is the penance that I now seek and require.”
The work you are tired of doing. Caring for your family when you have nothing left. Staying faithful to your vocation. Keeping God’s commandments when temptation would be easier. Forgiving. Showing up. Praying when you feel nothing.
We can spend years waiting for some great chance to prove our love for God.
But what if the offering He wants is already sitting in front of us?
And Lucia’s reported encounters carried another urgent request.
On December 10, 1925, while she was in Pontevedra, Spain, Lucia said the Child Jesus appeared beside Our Lady, whose Immaculate Heart was surrounded by thorns.
The Child Jesus said:
→ “Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.”
“There is no one.”
Then Our Lady asked for what became known as the Five First Saturdays devotion:
→ for five consecutive first Saturdays, confession, Holy Communion, five decades of the Rosary, and fifteen minutes meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, all with the intention of making reparation.
But this is not superstition, and Mary does not replace Jesus.
Reparation means responding to sin with love, repentance, prayer, and deeper faithfulness to God. Mary’s Immaculate Heart always leads us to her Son.
And that brings the whole message back to you.
We often think holiness belongs to priests, nuns, missionaries, martyrs, or people who seem far more spiritual than we are.
But God may not be asking you to find some extraordinary sacrifice.
He may be asking you to stop running from the ordinary one He has already placed in your hands.
The diaper changed when you are exhausted. The job done honestly when no one notices. The temptation resisted again. The Rosary prayed when you would rather sleep. The person forgiven when your pride wants to hold on.
Nobody may applaud it. Nobody may even know.
But God sees it.
And sometimes simply continuing to love Him faithfully when life feels painfully ordinary becomes the sacrifice itself.
💬 What ordinary duty in your life could become an offering to God if you started doing it with more love?
Remember St. Joseph’s forgotten role at Fatima’s Miracle of the Sun 109 years ago today.
During the final apparition he appeared holding the Child Jesus and, with Him, traced the Sign of the Cross three times over the world.
Pray for his intercession to bless and protect the Church.
https://t.co/yHmfc5JVz1
🇵🇹☀️𝐋𝐞 𝟏𝟑 𝐨𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐫𝐞 𝟏𝟗𝟏𝟕, 𝐚̀ 𝐅𝐚́𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐚, 𝐥𝐚 𝐕𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐢̂𝐭 𝐩𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐚 𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐞̀𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐢𝐬 𝐚̀ 𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐞, 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜̧𝐨𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐭 𝐉𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐞.
Elle révèle son nom : « Je suis Notre-Dame du Rosaire. » Elle demande qu'on récite le chapelet chaque jour et qu'on cesse d'offenser Dieu, déjà tant offensé.
Puis, devant 70 000 personnes trempées par la pluie, le soleil se met à danser dans le ciel. C'est le signe promis trois mois plus tôt.
Un siècle plus tard, le message n'a pas changé : prière, pénitence, conversion des pécheurs.
Notre-Dame de Fátima, priez pour nous. 🙏🏼
If God's OT standards on capital punishment are "repeated" and eternal and Rome contradicts God by restricting it - why aren't YOU stoning adulterers, homosexuals, Sabbath-breakers, disobedient sons, and fortune-tellers?
God commanded death penalty for all of those in Leviticus 20 and Deut 21. You don't enforce them. By your own logic, you contradict God.
You already admit: OT judicial death penalty laws were not eternal moral law, they were civil law for Israel and their application can develop.
That's exactly what Rome says.
1. Gen 9:6 and Rom 13:4 teach state CAN use sword - Catholic Church still teaches that principle. Trent, Aquinas, Pius XII never said death penalty is intrinsically evil.
2. What Francis says in 2267 and what Leo recently said is prudential: TODAY with secure prisons, we can protect society without killing, and modern understanding of dignity makes it inadmissible to do so.
That's not "God vs Pope." The same move God does Himself: "You have heard it said an eye for an eye... but I say to you..."
If the Vicar can't apply mercy and restrict bloodshed in light of the Gospel, then Jesus contradicted God too.
And your last line destroys Sola Scriptura: You say "believe God's voice over man" - but you only know Gen 9:6 IS God's voice because the Catholic Church told you which books are Scripture at Carthage/Hippo. If Rome has no authority to preserve faith, you have no Bible to quote.
You can't use Rome's Bible to prove Rome apostatized for not killing people enough.