Blogposts

Catholic Basics

03-27-2022Weekly Reflection

O Most Holy Trinity dwelling in my soul through Your grace, I adore You. O Most Holy Trinity dwelling through Your grace in my soul, grant that I may love You more and more. O Most Holy Trinity dwelling through Your grace in my soul more and more make me holy. Remain with me Lord. Be my true joy. Another Prayer All-powerful Father, help my weakness and snatch me from the depth of my distress. Wisdom of the Son, direct all my thoughts, words, and actions. Love of the Holy Spirit be the beginning of all the activity of my understanding and free will ever conformed to what pleases the Lord God.

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Primer on the Devil

03-20-2022Weekly Reflection

The Church teaches that the devil at first was a good angel created by God: the devil and the other demons were created naturally-good by God, but they became evil by their own doing. Catechism of the Catholic Church #392

The devil exists and acts in people and society. His activity is mysterious, but real and effective. Some people are inclined towards a superficial optimism and think evil is merely an incidental imperfection in a world which is continually evolving towards better days. Nevertheless the history of mankind has been adversely affected by the devil’s influence. We find in our day all the features of an intense evil which cannot be explained in terms of human behavior alone.

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Note On the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

03-16-2022From the desk of Fr. Villa

Pope Francis intends to consecrate Russia and the Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Some background: In the past it was claimed this consecration was already done by Pope John Paul II in 1984. Years ago, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, claimed that Sister Lucia told him in a letter and in an interview the consecration was done in 1984 by Pope John Paul II. The problem with this is that Pope John Paul did not specifically mention Russia. Moreover no one has seen the alleged letter of Sister Lucia. Others thought that the fall of communism in Russia in 1989 was a sign of the consecration yet the Virgin of Fatima asked for the consecration of Russia and communism was not mentioned, but simply that Russia would spread her errors and nations would be destroyed.

The Five First Saturdays

03-16-2022From the desk of Fr. Villa

The devotion of the Five First Saturdays was revealed to Sr. Lucia by the Virgin Mary. It exists to make reparation for the blasphemies* and ingratitude wounding the Heart of the Lord’s Mother. One five consecutive first Saturdays of the month: (1) Confess and receive Communion (2) Recite five decades of the Rosary (3) Keep the Virgin Mary company fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary (4) With the intention of making reparation to her Immaculate Heart. Note: the Confession may take place eight days before or after the First Saturday. The meditation may be on all the mysteries of the Rosary as a whole or to a few mysteries or even one by thinking of them before or after reciting a decade of the Rosary. *Blasphemy consists in uttering against God - inwardly or outwardly - words of hatred, reproach, or defiance; in speaking ill of God; in failing in respect toward him in one's speech; in misusing God's name.

Station Days/Station Churches

03-13-2022Weekly Reflection

Station days were days of fasting in the early Christian Church, associated with a procession to certain prescribed churches in Rome, where the Mass and Vespers would be celebrated to mark important days of the liturgical year. Although other cities also had similar practices, and the fasting is no longer prescribed, the Roman churches associated with the various station days are still the object of pilgrimage and ritual, especially in the season of Lent.

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The Church was already Catholic on the morning of Pentecost

03-06-2022Weekly Reflection

The Church which is “Jesus Christ spread abroad and communicated” completes—so far as it can be completed here below—the work of spiritual reunion which was made necessary by sin; that work which was begun at the Incarnation1 and was carried on up to Calvary. In one sense the Church is herself this reunion, for that is what is meant by the name of Catholic by which we find her called from the second century onward, and which in Latin and well as in Greek was for long bestowed upon her as a proper noun.

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Macaulay on the Catholic Church

03-02-2022From the desk of Fr. Villa

Thomas Babington Macaulay, unusual for an Evangelical Protestant , became fascinated by the Church of Rome in which he found many things to admire, and in his essay on Ranke's History of the Pope's in the 1840 Edinburgh Review he both argued that it had proved itself the most successful and long-lived of all Western institutions and it had done so because — and this would certainly have been a point particularly surprising to Victorian Protestants — it handled dissent far more positively than had those who broke away from it. — George P. Landow

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