Tomorrow begins a "Second" Lent!

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Tomorrow, August 6th, is the Feast of the Transfiguration.

Luke 9: 28b-36: “Jesus took Peter, John, and James
and went up a mountain to pray.
While he was praying his face changed in appearance
and his clothing became dazzling white.
And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah,
who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus
that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.
Peter and his companions had been overcome by sleep,
but becoming fully awake,
they saw his glory and the two men standing with him.
As they were about to part from him, Peter said to Jesus,
‘Master, it is good that we are here;
let us make three tents,
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’
But he did not know what he was saying.
While he was still speaking,
a cloud came and cast a shadow over them,
and they became frightened when they entered the cloud.
Then from the cloud came a voice that said,
‘This is my chosen Son; listen to him.’
After the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone.
They fell silent and did not at that time
tell anyone what they had seen.”

(Via USCCB.)

The Catholic Church in Her wisdom probably intended it this way as Transfiguration is also 40 days before the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross on September 14th.

Both Feast days mark a beginning and ending of the Passion of Jesus.

Moses and Elijah spoke to Jesus during His Transfiguration of what was to happen to Him in Jerusalem. The Triumph of the Cross is the victory of His Resurrection. The fact that these days were placed 40 days apart on the liturgical calendar affords us the opportunity to practice “another Lent.” We mark the season of His Passion, starting with the “spiritual courage” of the Transfiguration and culminating in His victory over sin and death by His Crucifixion and Resurrection.

Don’t miss this opportunity for spiritual development. This is an excellent time for prayer and introspection geared towards ridding oneself of character defects. Perhaps you can take your Bible and read daily from the four Gospels all of the accounts of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus. Just a few minutes each day. Even re-reading them can help you pull greater meaning from the passages.

So, if your Lenten pilgrimage this year wasn’t satisfying, take advantage of this “do-over.” We belong to a Church of Second Chances.

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 Novena Reminder

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Just a reminder to all readers that tomorrow I’ll be posting a novena to St. Maximilian Kolbe for alcoholics and addicts. This is an annual event, and the only one I give advance notice about.

The novena runs from August 6th through August 14th.

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. Dymphna, the Church and Mental Illness

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I chanced upon an interesting article on St. Dympha, traditionally the patron saint of the mentally ill: St. Dymphna: Out of the Shadows of Mental Illness

(Via Patheos.)

There are several parts to the article. The beginning details a man’s history with mental illness, his treatments and how he ultimately discovered the strength of the Catholic Church in helping to deal with it.

One quote: “In time, he found a way to manage his illness. He started a family and returned to the faith he had abandoned, finding new peace and unexpected strength in the Church… ‘Prayer, faith, the Church, the Eucharist: all those things kind of gave me a floor that I could stand on.'”

As a part of his reliance on the Church to help him with his illness, he discovered St. Dymphna. The rest of the article is an overview of St. Dymphna’s life and legends, followed with a testimony of his growing prayer life and developing faith.

St. Dymphna had been critical in his spiritual development. I highly recommend this piece.

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!!)

Venerable Matt Talbot Resource Center: A New "Official" Matt Talbot Website Forthcoming

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John Blair, over at the Venerable Matt Talbot Resource Center has written that the “Official” website of Matt Talbot may be online once again. You can read about it here:

A New “Official” Matt Talbot Website Forthcoming

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!!)

Catholic Recovery is now Recovery for Christ

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This is just an announcement that the old Catholic Recovery Social Network is now moved over to its new web location, the new site can be found at:

Recovery for Christ

(or http://www.recoveryforchrist.com if you’re having trouble seeing the link).

I successfully transferred all the CR site info such as member accounts, Groups and Forums to the new RfC site. So, if you were a member of CR, you’re now also a member of RfC. All you have to do is claim your account, which can be done in this manner:

Go to RfC. Then attempt to login using your login username from CR. This would be your username or email address that you used for CR. (I am not sure which one RfC recognizes as valid, it handles things differently. Try both.) Anyway, you might fail in your attempt to log in, as there was an error of some sort when the site went live. If this happens, then please use the Password Recovery option. To do that, do this:

Just below the login fields where it displays the place for the username and password, there is a linked question that says “Lost your Password?” Click on it. Type in your email address that you used for CR. You will get an email very shortly. When it arrives, click on the link in it. This confirms the email address is a valid one, and another email will be sent to you. This one contains a new temporary password. Go back to RfC and login with your username and this password. Then see the bar at the top? Click on “My Account”, then in the drop down menu click on “Settings”. Change your password there. You can also change you username here, too.

So far, I do not know if you can upload photos and videos. The importer couldn’t handle them. I have them all archived, so they’re not lost. This is something I will investigate. RfC uses “BuddyPress”, so if any reader knows how media can be uploaded, email me or post a comment.

Another difference is that the old discussion forums are now Groups. Unlike CR, there were discussion forums apart from Groups, on the new site all discussion forums were made into Groups. This is how BuddyPress handles things. This is not a problem, an easy change to get used to. If you started a discussion or replied to one on CR, I think you are automatically now a member of the corresponding RfC Group.

There is a possibility that posts might be missing. Although the importer said everything successfully transferred, I am not sure if everything did.

Other than that, you can do on RfC basically everything you did on CR. I set up a Private Group called “Catholic Recovery Reunion Group” which you can use to seek out old friends from CR. You can also do a member search if you remember their username. CR will still be available until August 19/20 (or 20/21 depending on time zone, I think), so you can visit it and your Page and look up things. (Friendship connections also didn’t transfer over, so you’ll have to search for and “refriend” people.)

I think that’s it for now. I have the next few days off from work to tend to the new site, I also have most of next week off, so I should be around Recovery for Christ quite often.

If you were a member of CR before, sign up again and claim your account. If you weren’t, the please, join up at the new “Recovery for Christ”!

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!!)

How can you discern God's Will?

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Quite often in 12 Step meetings the topic of “God’s Will” is brought up. How do you know God’s will?

The following is a nearly 6 minute long homily that helps to answer this question.

Magnificat Anima Mea Domino: “The Sign that Contains all Others”

(Via Fr. Samuel Medley PodBean.)

In short, the ability to discern God’s will is tied to your humility. You need to purify your heart of its selfish intentions and humbly submit by listening to the voice of God. Do not test God by scripting your prayer requests to reflect your desires.

Ask for help in doing so. The Blessed Virgin Mary is excellent in aiding those who seek God’s will as she “wrote the book” in humbly submitting to the Lord’s will. Her submission opened the gates of Heaven to all of humanity, perhaps a similar wonder can bless your life by simply opening your heart and listening.

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!!)

Catholic Recovery will move the week of July 25, 2010

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Just a message to all that Catholic Recovery will be moving to its new location during the week of July 25th.

I will actually try and transfer everything on Tuesday, July 27th. I have Tuesday through Saturday off from work, and except for some out-of-town guests visiting, I can devote those 5 days to making the move and doing whatever follow-up is necessary. This is just in case anything goes wrong or members need someone around to answer questions.

I also have planned another 5 days off the week of August 1st (again, Tuesday through Saturday). My vacation for that week hasn’t been approved as of yet, but probably will. So there will be another almost full week to devote to tending to the new home.

Hope to see you all there next week!

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!!)

Catholic Recovery will be moving

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This is the contents of an email sent out to all members of Catholic Recovery

“This is for all who are member of the Catholic Recovery social network:

Catholic Recovery is undergoing some changes.

The Network is moving to a new location and will have a new name. The move is because Ning, the current host, is eliminating all free networks as of August 20th and is starting to charge fees.

Our network did have plans in place to continue, however, due the the state of the economy affecting myself and the other members who offered to support the site, remaining on Ning is no longer an option. Perhaps this is God’s will as in fact a much better situation fortuitously became available.

A CR member and good friend of mine has his own hosting account that he is sharing with me for some projects that we are working on. He suggested that I move CR to this new host, and as a result, I am.

The site will have a new name: “Recovery for Christ”. While the old name “Catholic Recovery” was nice, and described its purposes, the new name better identifies who we recover for, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We ultimately recover for Him, to be the persons we were created to be. It is also more in line with the Matt Talbot Way of recovery, in which you transfer your love for alcohol or other addictions onto a love for Jesus.

In addition, “Catholic Recovery” or “Recovering Catholics” is too often used by people who feel they need “recovering” from Catholicism. Hence, a name change. It will still be the same site, just a new name.

I am in the process of moving all of the current site content to the new site. I do not know how long that process is. So hopefully all the old forums, blogs, photos, videos and Groups will be soon available at the new location. Just in case the migration doesn’t go as planned, if there is any content such as videos and photos, or forum postings that are of interest, you may want to download or copy-and paste sometime before August 20th. After that date, Catholic Recovery will be gone from its current location.

As a part of this process, you should receive another email with activation instructions for your account at Recovery for Christ. Part of the migration process involves the sending out of account activation emails. If you get this, then you’ll know that things went well and the new site is up and running. There may be a few things to sort out afterward, but all the familiar stuff should be there. Just click on the link in the email and you’ll be taken to the new site.

If that doesn’t work, you’ll get an invitation from me.

With that, I hope to see you soon over there!”

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!!)

Purge of Untruth

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Spirit Daily has another excellent article on spiritual progression to consider:
IT’S PRIME TIME TO DIG DEEP AND ASK GOD TO CLEANSE YOU OF UNTRUTHS — HIDDEN OR OTHER

The author puts forth the notion that summertime is a prime time for spiritual cleansing, just getting rid of the gunk in our inner lives.

Through prayer, especially the Rosary, and petitions to the Holy Spirit for help in discerning truth from lies, we can clear out the garbage polluting our spiritual lives.

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!!)

Matt Talbot portrait

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Terry Nelson over at Abbey-Roads has created a wonderful original painting of Matt Talbot. He also wrote a nice short piece on the virtue of temperance and the need to adjust one’s lifestyle. Never an easy task, and it is often referred to as “spiritual combat,” for there are people and forces opposed to anyone altering their lifestyle to be virtuous.

You can see his artwork in this post:

Abbey-Roads: Fortitude and Temperance

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!!)