being ready always to satisfy every one that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you. But with modesty and fear, having a good conscience:[1 Pt 3:15-16]
The next meeting will be held at Saint Mark Catholic Church, 7960 Northview, Boise, Idaho, on Saturday, October 19 at 8:00AM.
There may be a retreat at St Benedict Lodge in Oregon during 2019. Further notice as plans are made.
St Benedict Lodge is a retreat facility in the Cascades that is owned and operated by the Dominican Friars of the Western Province.
It makes no sense that we grant the use of unrestricted lethal force to a citizen with no judicial oversight, and simultaneously claim that the state has no right to the use of restricted lethal force with full judicial oversight.
"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It's wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
- John Adams, 2nd US president, Oct 11, 1798
The child, who does not think about so serious a thing as health, dreams of meals that are made up of desserts. Men and women, who do not think about so serious a thing as living, dream of a life that consists only of sweetness, soft music and rest to the echo of applause and gently sympathetic understanding. But meals are never like that; neither is life. In the same vein, our modern men and women dream of God as a being of whom no one could ever be afraid, a gentle, stupid god who would allow men and women to ruin themselves and then admire them for the work they had done in destroying his masterpiece. You see they never really think about God, for God is not like that.
Walter Farrell, O.P., A Companion to the Summa, Volume III CHAPTER I -- FREEDOM FOR THE MIND (Q. 1-9)
For there must be also heresies: that they also,
who are approved may be made manifest among you. [1 Cor 11:19]
"You seek me", St. Augustine comments, "for the flesh, not for the spirit. How many seek Jesus for no other purpose than that He may do them good in this present life! [...] Scarcely ever is Jesus sought for Jesus' sake" ("In Ioann. Evang.", 25, 10).
Man's whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this (divinely revealed) truth. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part I, first question, first answer
This, and nothing else, is the purpose of the Church: the salvation of individual souls Benedict XVI – Sao Paolo, Brazil, May 11, 2007
From the Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi:
ReplyDeleteCHAPTER XVII
OF HOLY OBEDIENCE
The more strictly a Religious holds himself bound by the yoke of holy obedience for the love of God, the more abundantly will he bear fruit unto God; the more entirely subject he is to his Superior for the glory of God, the freer and the purer shall he be from sin. The truly obedient Religious is like a knight well mounted and well armed, who fearlessly and securely makes his way through the ranks of the enemy, because none of them can harm him. But he who obeys with murmuring and unwillingness is like a soldier who, entering the battle unarmed and ill-mounted, is soon thrown to the ground and wounded by his enemies, and, it may be, made captive or slain.
The Religious who wishes to live according to his own will, shows that he desires to build his eternal abode in the lowest depths of hell. When the ox bows his head beneath the yoke, he ploughs the ground well, so that it will bring forth good fruit in due season; but when the ox strays about at his own pleasure, the land remains wild and uncultivated, and brings forth no fruit at the harvest. And so the Religious who bows his head beneath the yoke of holy obedience, bears much fruit in due season to the Lord his God; but he who obeys not his Superior from his heart, remains barren and wild and fruitless in his profession. Wise and magnanimous men bow their heads promptly, fearlessly and without hesitation beneath the yoke of holy obedience; but foolish and cowardly men struggle to withdraw their neck from the yoke, and refuse to obey any creature. I hold it to be greater perfection in a servant of God simply to obey his Superior for the reverence and love of God, than it would be to obey God himself were he to command him in his own Person; for he who is obedient to a Vicar of the Lord would assuredly be still more obedient to the Lord himself, were he to lay his commands upon him.
And so it seems to me that in the case of a man who has promised obedience to another, were he vouchsafed the grace of conversing with angels, and were he, whilst thus conversing, to be called to him to whom he has promised obedience, it would be his duty immediately to leave his communing with angels, and go to perform the obedience given him for the glory of God.
He who having placed his neck under the yoke of holy obedience desires to withdraw from that obedience, in order to follow a life of greater perfection, in that man, I say, if he be not already well established in the virtue of obedience, such a desire is but a sign of great pride and presumption lurking secretly within his soul. Obedience is the way to attain to every good and every virtue; and disobedience is the way to every evil and to every vice.
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These attitudes are not popular in our time and place....