Category Archives: Grace

Mother Angelica is as helpful and inspiring today as she was decades ago

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 I couldn’t this morning decide what to watch on TV during the time I set aside for that before ‘beginning my day.’ Old reruns of “Sliders?” How about “Farscape?” “Babylon 5?” Maybe pick up where I left off during an interrupted binging of the original “Quantum Leap?” No, no, no, and no. I was restless in my indecision. Then I felt a tiny inspiration to watch classic Mother Angelica episodes on EWTN. And so I did!

Am I ever glad! 

I am, as usual, ‘going through stuff’ and I am awaiting a decision on a job application I made yesterday. And so I binged on Mother Angelica videos on EWTN and later YouTube for about 3 hours. Several were on fear, anxiety, and inner peace. I split my time between “Mother Angelica Live Classics” and “From the Heart with Mother Angelica” an older show I don’t think I’ve seen before.

I feel I’m being prepped for failure (I won’t get the job) or success (I’ll get it and properly cope with new job anxieties.) 

Either way, whatever happens, I feel like I received a grace today to cope with stuff. If the prayer is answered in the way that I hope it will, (I get the job) then “Yay!” If it gets answered ‘the other way,’ (I don’t get the job) then I’ll assume that God has other plans for me. I hope he lets me know what they are soon!

I cannot recommend watching Mother Angelica enough. I watched her programming quite a lot way back when, and I have read all the books she’s written and the ones edited or written by her biographer (Raymond Arroyo.) If you’re down, afraid, consumed with fear and anxiety, or are depressed, if you’re confused about anything: please go to the links I posted a few paragraphs above and just scroll through the offerings. If you’re suicidal, she has kind and loving things to say to you. She is a lifeline. She will help you pull back from the abyss.

“Mother Angelica Live Classics” is also available as audio-only. EWTN also has an audio-only version of  her EWTN call-in show, “Mother Angelica Answering the Call.” It’s about:

“Father Joseph Mary Wolfe and Doug Keck mine decades of viewer phone calls answered by Mother Angelica. Mother dishes out teaching, advice, laughter and plenty of prayers as she takes calls from her “Family”. No subject is off limits and no problem too big for the wisdom and compassion of the one and only, Mother Angelica!

I  listen to clips of this program on my local Catholic radio station (which is available to you on iCatholicRadio (available for the desktop or an iOS or Android app.) I may start listening to entire episodes: I need more Mother!

Mother Angelica is a balm, a healing remedy for these strange times which have gotten much worse since her shows aired. I kept thinking to myself “Imagine what she’d be saying nowadays!” She was four years younger than my Mom, but she’s always come across as a wise (-cracking) and loving Grandma who really cares about her family (all several million of us.)

I wish those folks down in Alabama would get started on her cause for beatification and canonization. If there was ever a woman who led a life of heroic virtue and who had a major, positive impact on millions of people worldwide, it’s Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary: the Alliance of the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Part 13

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Today is December 8th, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It’s also Friday, meaning it’s time for my weekly Sacred Heart Friday post! 

The fact that today’s feast falls on a Friday this time around helped me to come up with the post. I wrote this back in August or September, but realized it would be perfect for today and thus kept it in the local drafts folder.

It isn’t explicit or all that implicit in the Bible; you’d have to ponder certain events and extrapolate from them quite a ways to arrive at the following (which is why non-Catholic theologians never come up with anywhere near the things Catholic ones have, who are guided by the right use of human reason and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And, throw in a fair number of approved Marian Apparitions and private revelations….)

Many medieval and faithful contemporary theologians agree that God created Mary for the sole purpose of being the Mother of Jesus. She wasn’t just some random girl that God picked out to be the Mother of His Son. The idea is laughable. The single most important event in the history of humanity, the Incarnation, would not have a single element in it that was a ‘causal’ or ‘happenstance’ decision. Everything, and I mean, E V E R Y T H I N G that is a sequence in God’s decision-making process (to use our manner of speaking because God, being omniscient and omnipotent, doesn’t need to employ a ‘process’ to arrive at things, He gets it all instantaneously) is tremendously important. God’s Will is how the Universe is run. How He accomplishes things and how they are accomplished is important. And if He wanted His Divine Son to be born of a woman, then you’d better believe that that woman is not going to be just any ordinary female picked at random. Any act of God, no matter how seemingly trivial, is vitally important and contains lessons. The Mother of God would be created specifically to bear God’s Son and therefore accorded all the privileges, benefits, and advantages that such a woman deserves. 

The Church Fathers and theologians through the Medieval era developed the belief that God planned Mary’s creation from all eternity. When she was conceived she was gifted with being “full of grace,” that is, so full of the plenitude of God’s free gifts of supernatural help that she lacked Original Sin from the moment of her conception. As a result of this, she lacked the hindrances that arose from Original Sin. Before the Fall, Adam and Eve were perfect. They were genetically perfect, lived in harmony with God’s Will, and benefitted from that union, which probably included superior knowledge of things (except for the knowledge of Good and Evil, which was the carrot used by Satan to tempt them and wasn’t needed by them since they didn’t naturally do evil because they didn’t have to, given their relationship with God. Except for that one time when their Free Will was corrupted by Satan and all Hell broke loose.)

Mary, lacking Original Sin, was in the state Adam and Eve were in before the Fall. Therefore, she was in perfect harmony and union with God and from her conception grew in the love and knowledge of God. The Church Fathers and Medieval theologians also taught that she possessed full use of reason, which was likely true given her Immaculate state. (You have to ponder and meditate on what was lost by our First Parents through Original Sin. The implications of the Fall are glossed over because we’ve read Genesis 3 too often and it’s frequently not taken seriously because of the imagery of a snake tempting a woman with an apple. The profundity is missed.) 

OK, now to connect this with the topic of this post. Mary lived in perfect harmony with God while in the womb. She loved Him, and possessing the use of reason, knew Him. As we read in Scripture, sometimes something happened and Mary ‘pondered it in her heart.’ This was mentioned more than once so we can infer it was a natural part of her personality and behavior. She was the perfect contemplative. There’s no reason why this did not occur while she was in the womb. In her love and knowledge of God, she pondered Him in her heart. 

God, being a Trinity, and so where One member is the other Two also are, when Mary loved and pondered God the Father, she also was doing so for the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word that was yet to be made flesh and dwell within her. Whether she knew that the Word was to be born in her is open to conjecture. (‘No,’ in the approved private revelation of the Blessed Mother to the Venerable Mary of Agreda in the epic “Mystical City of God.”) However, through her participation (according to our way of speaking) in the hypostatic union, her heart also beat in union with the Word’s. (But the Word wasn’t made flesh yet, how can there be a heart? Easy. The Word still loved. St. Maximilian Kolbe focused often on the fact that the Holy Spirit is the intense love that the Father and the Son have for each other. It is so intense that it manifests from all eternity as the Third Person of the Trinity (my language may be a tad imprecise, but I’m just an armchair theologian. 😉 )

And so there you have it. Mary’s heart, by virtue of her Immaculate Conception, was linked to Jesus’ while he was still dwelling solely with the Father and the Spirit in Heaven. 

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

On the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

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Today is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Church rightly teaches that Mary was conceived without the stain of Original Sin, based upon the anticipated merits of the passion, death, and resurrection of her Son, Jesus Christ.

In 1854, Pope Pius XI proclaimed in Ineffabilis Deus the following:

We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.

This makes sense on many different levels.

  • God exists outside of time and is not restricted by the chronological sequence of events that occur within time. 
  • The Holy Spirit could not have ‘overshadowed’ Mary to form Jesus in her womb if she was in the state of Original Sin. Mary’s union with the Holy Spirit is a spousal union. “What God had joined, let none rend asunder.” This is an important point that helped me finally understand more solidly the whole ‘Immaculate Conception’ thing. Her spousal union with the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s ‘overshadowing’ Mary required her to be sinless. Not just preserved from Original Sin, but also the stain it leaves behind (concupiscence.). Sin blocks grace from the soul; mortal sin is deadly and separates us from God, while venial sin distances us from God. Mary’s spousal union with the Spirit would have been ruptured if she was capable of sinning. Remember: “What God had joined, let none rend asunder.”  If she was in any state of sin, the Holy Spirit could not have joined with her in the first place. 
  • Therefore, how can the Holy Spirit’s spousal union with Mary be maintained at all if she had concupiscence? It couldn’t. Therefore, Mary could not have Original Sin, and by not being subjected to it or having its stain on her soul, she was incapable of committing venial and mortal sins. This is where all other humans differ from Mary. Although by Baptism we’ve had Original Sin removed, its stain remains, and by this concupiscence, we sin. With Mary, since the stain was removed concupiscence was never a part of her being. But while Christians have received the Holy Spirit in Baptism, our union with the Spirit is not to the same degree as Mary’s. Ours is not a spousal union; sin can rupture it. Hence we need the Sacraments to repair the rupture.
  • Since she bore Him in her womb for nine months, she could not even commit venial and mortal sins during this period as this would place Jesus under the domain of Satan, since a fetus is physically a part of the mother. (While not culpable for the mother’s sins, nor capable of sinning itself, a fetus would still be affected by them.) Her sinless behavior obviously would have continued after Jesus’ birth. This is the basis for the teachings of Sts. Lous de Montfort and Maximilian Kolbe when they wrote that Mary’s will was always in conformity with God’s will. Kolbe especially emphasized this. 
  • So, the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception has the effect also of rendering the rubrics of administering the sacraments more meaningful, given the role of the Holy Spirit in everything. The Spirit joined with Mary because she was without sin. We are baptized and Original Sin is removed and then the Holy Spirit enters our soul and later we can receive the remaining sacraments. 
  • Some critics point out that St. Paul said somewhere in his letters that “all have sinned.” Well, this cannot possibly mean ‘all’ as in ‘everyone;’ for would this ‘all’ include Jesus? I think Paul meant  ‘all born of women’ in the normal manner of birthing. If someone is still going to make the point that ‘all’ inherit Original Sin, and then Mary would still need redeeming, then we go back to the original declaration of the dogma of her immaculate conception that she was redeemed by the anticipated merits of Jesus Christ and so was prevented from having the stain of Original Sin in the first place. (please refer to the first bullet for any chronological objections.

    I brought up this point in an older post:

  • “…wouldn’t God, Who knew from all Eternity His plan of Salvation, and decided that His Son would be born of a woman rather than Incarnate as a mighty king and lord fully grown, wouldn’t He have taken great pains to decide upon the formation of she who would bear His Son? If YOU had the opportunity to design your own mother, wouldn’t YOU insist that she the among the most beautiful, intelligent, and talented of all? One of the Ten Commandments holds that we should “Honor our Father and Mother,” well, wouldn’t God also follow that? Even one was to declare that He is not subject to His own Commandments and laws, why wouldn’t He follow that one at least, to provide an example?” An addendum to this point is that if YOU could make your own mother, and could also make her perfectly pure and holy, wouldn’t you?

    In an even older post I said:

  • “…One could argue then that why couldn’t Jesus have been conceived immaculately? He could have, but the difficulty in that would be that He still would be in Mary’s womb, and what would be the barrier between Him and Original Sin? His own sacrifice on the cross, decades later? He is divine and sinless, so His own death was not for Himself, He died for humanity. So Mary, by sharing her body and blood with Jesus in her womb, would benefit from the eventual sacrifice of Jesus. Mary is the physical barrier between Jesus and her ancestral line, caught in Original Sin like the rest of humanity. The physical barrier protecting Mary from her mother’s state of Original Sin was Jesus, operating from the fullness of time, as God dwells in Eternity.”

So, there it is! See how it all connects? Remove Original Sin and the free operation of the Holy Spirit can begin in souls. With Mary, it required her to be preserved from all sin so the Holy Spirit could join her in an eternal spousal union so that Jesus could be formed in her womb (and later so that Mary could participate in the distribution of graces from the Holy Spirit; but that’s a whole ’nother topic.) With us, it required us to be Baptized so the Holy Spirit could join us in a sacramental union so that we could be formed into the Mystical Body of Christ (and receive the graces from which the Holy Spirit is the source. Whoops, ’nother topic!) 

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

October 13th: the Alliance of the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary! Part 12

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Today is October 13th, the day we recall the “Miracle of the Sun” event at Fatima in 1917. This was intended to be a warning. Our Lady said at Fatima, ‘War is punishment for sin.” World War I was raging at the time and among her warnings was that a worse war would take place if her warnings went unheeded. They were and it did. What were her warnings? One was that the Pope and all the bishops in union with him would consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart. Although consecrations did take place, they were either too late or improperly done. The consecration request finally was done properly in 1984 with Pope (now Saint) John Paul II. There were other warnings, such as the increasingly offensive fashion styles (conservative and almost modest by today’s standards) and about sexual sin being the chief cause of why souls go to Hell.

Those are also being ignored. You wonder how much longer Heaven will tolerate being ignored. 

As we’ve already seen with several of these “Alliance of the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary” posts, the Immaculate Heart of Mary is intimately united with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. On this Sacred Heart Friday, I would like to remind readers of this duality and how it can be used to at the personal level, increase your spiritual growth, and at a larger level, help combat evil in the world.

The personal level: recall the Fatima Message of prayer, penance, and especially reparation for sins. Now, combine that with the Sacred Heart devotion which essentially calls for the same thing. We return God’s love for us with prayer and acts of sacrifice in reparation for our and others’ sins. This increases the flow of grace into our souls, helps us beat back the attacks of the Devil and its minions, and sensitizes us to the sufferings of others (a natural side effect of concern for others sinning and the Hellish consequences of that.) We begin to become more aware of the humanity of other people; even those who do us harm. We see them as sick and broken. The wounded harm others when their wounds are not dressed.

The larger level: essentially an extension of the first. We become the change we wish to see in others and in reforming our own lives we can serve as examples for others. They want what we have. There is also the transformation at the spiritual level: our acts of prayer and repentance in some manner affect change in others. It calls grace down from Heaven and Mary distributes it to whom she wills.

So, I suppose one benefit of these “Alliance of the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary” posts is the reminder to remember the Message of Fatima and the need to live it.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Scruples

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Today is Sacred Heart Friday; it was also the First Friday of the month but due to health issues I missed going to Mass. I have no idea what number Friday I was on, having done nine consecutive First Friday’s numerous times over the past few years. So, I’ll just “start over” next month. 

It’s important not to get too legalistic or scrupulous about devotions. If something happens and you fail to meet the requirements, trust that God understands. You may still get the graces and such like promised, given the circumstances. God is not a lawyer or an accountant, counting up merits and demerits. Scrupulousness may harken back to our drinking days when we just had to make sure we ‘had enough’ for the weekend; calculating from a number of factors: availability of funds, liquor store hours and so forth.

Anyway, it’s October, the month dedicated to the Holy Rosary. Expect a few posts on that over the next few weeks (including an ANNOUNCEMENT.)

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

St. Maximilian Kolbe. August 14, 1941

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St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe was executed in the Nazi German concentration camp at Auschwitz eighty-twoyears ago today for being a Catholic priest.

He was a Conventual Franciscan friar and Guardian (leader, administrator) of Niepokalanow, then the world’s largest friary and a major Catholic media center. It is located some distance west of Warsaw, Poland.

He was canonized a saint by the Church in October 1982.

In late July 1941 a prisoner escaped and as was Nazi policy, ten men from that cell block were randomly selected to be sentenced to a starvation bunker until the escapee was found (dead or alive.) In reality, the ten condemned wouldn’t be released at all, regardless of the escapee’s status.

Death by starvation and dehydration is a very slow and very painful way to die. The ten were stripped naked and placed in a cell that measured three meters by three meters (that’s about 9 feet on a side.)

One of the ten was a Polish Army sergeant by the name of Franciszek Gajowniczek, who, upon being selected, wailed that he was a husband and father and bemoaned the fate of his family. Upon hearing this, Fr. Kolbe stepped out of line, went forward to the commander and offered to take the sergeant’s place.

The Nazi officer was duly astounded. Perhaps taken aback and confused by this act of selfless sacrifice, he accepted Kolbe’s offer and the Gajowniczek was excused. He survived the war.

Over the course of the next few weeks, the ten died, one-by-one. Every day an attendant would go into the cell to retrieve the dead.

Prison guards and camp survivors reported that while there would typically be sounds or rage and anger, of wailing and crying and begging, during the two weeks that Fr. Kolbe was imprisoned in the cell with the others, the sounds were quite different. Hymns were sung. Rosaries said. It was as if Fr. Kolbe had turned the bunker into a chapel. On August 14th, seeing that he was still alive, the Nazis got impatient that he wasn’t dying fast enough and had him injected with carbolic acid.

When he volunteered to take the sergeant’s place, the Nazi asked Fr. Kolbe who he was. His answer?

“I am a Catholic priest.” This was his identity, it was who he was. He died for being a priest; he died being a priest, ministering to his fellow condemned

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(Image via MI Canada)

Being a priest was enough to have him targeted by the Nazis; however there was more to him than that. For nearly twenty years he published “Knight of the Immaculata,” a monthly magazine dedicated to being the voice of the Militia of the Immaculata movement he founded in 1917 (more on that, later.) This publishing venture, begun in 1922, gradually expanded over the 1920s and ‘30s to include other periodicals and a daily newspaper. Circulation was amongst the largest in pre-WW2 Poland (and significant amongst global circulations, too.) Fr. Kolbe had already launched a shortwave radio station, although it was limited at first to just being on the Amateur bands. He also had plans for a TV station. Expansion of the radio station to non-amateur broadcasting and the TV enterprise were halted by the Nazi and Soviet invasion of September 1939. Fr. Kolbe also had plans for a motion picture studio.

He was “New Evangelization” before anyone else thought of it. If you wish to get the gist of what he did and also what he planned, what Mother Angelica did in Alabama 50 years later is essentially that.

Here are some links:

Militia of the Immaculata in the USA The global Militia “Niepokalanow” another official Niepokalanow site

NOTE: This is reposted from earlier, older versions.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

The Alliance of the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary! Part 5

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It’s Sacred Heart Friday time and this week I’m getting all mystical.

The Alliance of the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary began when Jesus dwelt within the womb of Mary. Like all children when they are living within their Momma’s womb, He shared the body of Mary and thus she became the tabernacle for the Ark of the New Covenant that is Him.

Mary’s Immaculate Heart pumped the Precious Blood that flowed through His veins and arteries; she powered His Sacred Heart.

This union of the Two Hearts was far more intimate than any other. We all have heard of stories about pregnant women and how they marvel at the the movements of their unborn child; the kicks and wriggles and so forth. How much greater this must have been for Mary and Jesus. Mystical writings and approved private revelations tell that Jesus was fully aware from His conception in the womb. How? Unknown, but given that He is God and therefore would never have lost His Omniscience regardless of His form, He was fully in possession of His faculties. Some of the revelations also tell us that Jesus and Mary were in close communion with each other throughout her pregnancy. This makes sense. Jesus would obviously obey the Commandment to “Honor thy Father and thy Mother,” given His proximity to Mary while in her womb, it seems obvious that He would honor her in a way impossible for anyone else to do for their mother. He is God, omniscient, and in His mother’s womb. How do you think He would honor her? What feelings of love would He bestow upon Mary? What graces and blessings winkled He petition the Father to give her? 

Love returns love; what would Mary do for Him in return? She, who ‘kept all these things in her heart and pondered them’ could only return His love for her in kind. Mary, the daughter of God the Father, mother of God the Son, and Spouse of God the Holy Spirit….. what feelings of love and awe and wonder could she have given Him? 

It renders our attempts at worship and adoration paltry by comparison. This makes it reasonable for us to honor the recommendation of many saints, especially St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Louis de Montfort and others, to ‘go to Jesus through Mary.’ She can take our feeble and pathetic attempt to worship and adore Him and unite it to her own since her Heart is still united to His. 

The Union, or Alliance, of the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary makes sense of all this. We can go directly to Jesus without Mary, but why would you in light of the above? There is much to ponder here; you cannot do it justice by rejecting ‘to Jesus through Mary’ out of hand when you realize the possibilities of their history together and the obvious truths entailed. 

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Gratitude




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Back in the day when I typically attended AA meetings I loathed discussions on ‘“gratitude.” Primarily because a sharer would just run through a laundry list of what they are grateful for. That’s nice, at times, but often I’d be bored out of my gourd.

I have come to realize that gratitude is an essential tool in recovery, for it helps curtail “addictive thinking” elsewhere.

 It is not enough to just maintain sobriety, one also has to express gratitude for it, but for everything else one has in life. If you are truly grateful for what you have, and your needs are consistently supplied, then you will have little desire for the “wants,” as they are rarely what you “need.”

 Focusing on your “wants” is an addictive thought process: it means you are not satisfied with just your needs, and you want more. Just as “one drink” was never enough, whatever you have in life now may not be enough, even though it adequately supplies your needs.

Today is my 21st sober anniversary. Because of this post, I will be spending the day working on some Sober Catholic Book projects (yes, you heard that correctly. After all this time there will be a few new books to add to the Stations of the Cross and Rosary books!) as well as going through some old ‘to do’ lists.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

33 day Consecration to Mary can begin this Friday!

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You can tell I’ve been reading St. Louis de Montfort.

I discovered that the Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary still exists, and still is managed by the Dominicans just like back in the days of St. Dominic and Bl. Alan de la Roche! (Should I have known that?) This association was mentioned quite often in a book by St. Louis de Monfort I read this past week. (I’ll tell you which one at the end. Which “ones” actually.)

Because of this I may start another 33 day Montfortian consecration thingy this Friday April 28th. It’s de Montfort’s feast day. It’ll end just in time for May 31st which is the Feast of the Visitation on the new calendar 1970 calendar; it’s the Feast of the Queenship of Mary on the old 1962 calendar.

My wife and I already did it once before, leading up to our wedding day. We may do it again, together, as a renewal. 

Gabi of the GabiAfterHours YouTube Channel is also doing it beginning this Friday (just found that out.)

You can look into his effort here: Gabi After Hours Community posting on 33 day consecration to Mary.

I bring Gabi up because he’s uploaded several very important videos over the past few months or so.  He posted this one quite recently on several books that are must reads:

This one: 

…and this one:

…started me on saying the entire Rosary daily. Gabi got the idea from one of the de Montfort books he recommends in the first video above. Those are the one’s that I’ve read this week (numbers 1 and 2 on Gabi’s list.) “The Secret of Mary” and “The Secret of the Rosary.” They’re wonderful, inspiring reads. De Montfort writes in a style similar to that of St. Alphonse Liguori. (His “The Glories of Mary” is number 4 on Gabi’s list.)

This is a new one:

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Marian Consecration and the Guarantee of Eternal life

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Many saints have said that those who are consecrated to the Blessed Virgin Mary are never lost. Sts. Louis deMontfort, Alphonsus de Liguori, and Maximilian Kolbe have all declared at one time or another that those souls who become ‘the property’ of Our Lady will never suffer eternal damnation.

This may seem to some as a kind of overconfidence and even the mortal sin of presuming upon God’s Mercy. This post will try to explain why it is not.

I have many friends (or know of people online) who are consecrated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, either through the method of Total Consecration by St. Louis deMontfort or that of St. Maximilian Kolbe. And yet I’ve heard them express some doubt as to their salvation! I know why they say this: they are fearful of presuming upon God’s Mercy or of acting with pride. They mean well, but I think they’re wrong.

Here’s why I think this way. If you believe that consecrating yourself to the Blessed Mother safeguards your soul from eternal damnation, then still being concerned over its final destiny, as if you could still be damned, is—I think—a sign of mistrust in Our Lady’s promises (as known in private revelations) and of the judgment of saints.

Now I’m not declaring that you should consecrate yourself to Our Lady and then think that you can just go ‘Lah-dih-dah!!!Look at me! I belong to Mary! I’m saved! I’m gonna now go drinkin’ and druggin’ and whorin’ and do all sorts of stuff because I won’t go to Hell!” That’s kind of like a Catholic variant of the ‘Once Saved; Always Saved’ heresy.

I liken it to a relationship. Let’s say you’re married. This means that your relationship with someone has gotten to the point where you cannot live without them and that you wish to dedicate your life to them. You have the conviction that This Person is The One and Only and so you forsake all others. You remain faithful and married for the rest of your life. You’ve grown in maturity and wisdom and realize this person is It and you get married.

Same with Marian Consecration. You’ve grown in holiness and spirituality and now you feel that as a Catholic you must take your relationship with Mary ‘to the next level.’ You’ve heard of Marian Consecration through all this and you go ahead and do it.

So, after that, you’re the same person as before? No! If you’ve reached this level in your relationship with Mary, and therefore, with Jesus (since all authentic Marian devotion leads to Him,) then you have little desire to offend them and the rupture the relationship!

It is not that you won’t sin. We are all sinners and we will still sin after Consecration. But I believe that Consecration enables us to become more sensitive to the state of our souls; that we rise up more easily after every fall and offer prayers of repentance and contrition (plus a resolution to go to Confession as soon as possible.) In fact, I think it is Consecration which makes it easier for me to go to Confession once a month or more.

So, that is what I believe: that when you do Total Consecration to Our Lady your relationship is at a deeper level of trust and love and while you won’t stop sinning, you’ll make yourself more available to the sacraments and other means of obtaining the grace of repentance and amendment. And quite possibly the Blessed Mother, who is the channel by which graces come to us from the Lord, will help you achieve these graces, and thus ensure your salvation. You still may spend time in Purgatory; that’s OK. It’s better than Hell.

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