Sunday, May 29, 2011

Why we wear a scapular:


My family members are all wearing the brown scapular. We've been asked what they're for; what they represent, why we wear them. Even a lot of other Catholics don't follow this practice! It is NOT mandatory to do this if you're Catholic; it is a personal practice following the request of Our Lady, and following the example of many saints who were dedicated to this.

The brown scapular "identifies us, like a habit identifies a religious, or a uniform identifies a person. The Scapular represents a life of prayer." - Fr. John Corapi.
The Scapular is actually a miniature form of a monk's habit by the same name which is a sleeveless outer garment falling from the shoulders to the feet.

It is a sign which stands for the decision to:
-follow Jesus like Mary
-be open to God and to His Will
-be guided by faith, hope and love
-to pray at all times
-to discover God's presence in all that happens around us

WE DO NOT BELIEVE THAT:The Brown Scapular is a magical charm to protect you; is an automatic guarantee of salvation or is an excuse for not living up to the demands of the Christian life.

It is NOT to make us feel like we are better or more holy than those who don't wear it; it is not to make those who don't follow this practice feel guilty.

The Scapular encourages us to live as authentic Christians in line with the teaching of the Gospel, to receive the sacraments, to profess our special devotion to the Blessed Virgin, which should be expressed each day, at least by saying the Hail Mary.

Saints devoted to the Brown Scapular:

St. Teresa of Avila
St. Simon Stock
St. John of the Cross
St. Alphonsus Liguori
St. Peter Claver
St. Robert Bellarmine, SJ
St. Claude de la Colombiere, SJ
St. Vincent Pallotti
St. John Vianney, Cure of Ars
St. Bernadette Soubirous, visionary of Lourdes
St. John Bosco
St. Maximilian Kolbe
St. Francis Xavier Cabrini
Pope St. Pius X
St. Conrad

Pretty darn good roles models, if you ask me!

The morning prayer to be said for those who wear the scapular:

O my God, in union with the Immaculate Heart of Mary (here kiss your Scapular as a sign of
your consecration; partial indulgence also), I offer Thee the Precious Blood of Jesus from all
the altars throughout the world, joining with It the offering of my every thought, word and action
of this day. O my Jesus, I desire today to gain every indulgence and merit I can and I offer them
together with myself, to Mary Immaculate, that she may best apply them in the interest of Thy
most Sacred Heart. Precious Blood of Jesus, save us! Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Hope this helps those who are curious understand a little more of a great tradition!

Saturday, May 21, 2011

WHY THERE WILL BE NO RAPTURE! (At least not yet, anyway!)

The following is an article that sums up EXACTLY what the truth is about the Rapture.... not my words (I once again found an absolutely perfect summary written by someone else - just can't find out who, unfortunately!) So.... I can't take the credit for writing this, just for sharing!

The Rapture. The name is Latin for “caught up”. It basically comes from one particular verse in the Bible, 1 Thessalonians 4:17:
“then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.”

The Rapture has inspired a whole series of fictional books called the “Left Behind” series. In it, the saved are “raptured” into heaven, while the unsaved are left behind to fend for themselves on earth.

The rapture is a mysterious disappearance of people, who leave their clothes here on earth. Cars which were driven by the saved are left unmanned. The folks left behind are in a quandary as to what happened. A great tribulation then comes upon the earth, and the anti-christ makes his appearance. The ones left behind then get a second chance at salvation, if they can withstand the forces of the world-uniting anti-christ. Then Jesus returns again to defeat the antichrist.

None of this, except for the overall premise of a rapture is biblical. Why? Well for starters, the Bible says in Revelation 1:7:
Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, every one who pierced him; and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.

In the Left Behind series, no eye sees Jesus. Everyone left behind is clueless as to what is going on. It’s plain that if they had seen Jesus, they would know what was going on.
The second problem with this series is that there are two “second comings” of Jesus. Once when the people mysteriously disappear, and then again when Jesus returns again and defeats the antichrist. The bible speaks of one and only one coming of Jesus Christ, not two. In 1 Thessalonians 4:15, it says the following:
“For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep.”
Notice St. Paul says “THE coming”, not “A Coming”. There is one and only one second coming of Jesus. And nowhere in the bible does it say that people will mysteriously disappear and leave their clothes behind. That is all made up fiction by the authors of the Left Behind series.
The third problem with these books is that the saved escape the tribulation on earth by being raptured. Matthew 24:21-22:
For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been shortened, no human being would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.
In the above verses, Jesus tells us about the great tribulation, and also explains that the days of this misery on earth will be shortened for the sake of the elect. That means that the elect, or God’s people, still have to be on earth when the tribulation occurs, and not yet raptured into heaven.
The fourth problem is that the people raptured in the Left Behind series sans clothes are not raptured on the last day of earth. In the novels, there are more days left for the antichrist to wreak havoc on the earth. We know from John 6:54 that the dead will be raised on the last day:
“he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day”
And we also know from Paul that the rapture will take place after the dead are raised. 1 Thessalonians 4:14- 17:
“For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep.
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.”
And what of the thousand year reign of Christ on earth? It is mentioned in Revelation 20:4:

“Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom judgment was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God, and who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life, and reigned with Christ a thousand years. “
Well, we know from the pen of Peter that a thousand years is as a day to the Lord, and a day is like a thousand years (2 Peter 3:1). St. John may have been trying to convey that Christ will reign for a very long time (eternity) by using the phrase “a thousand years”, just like we might say, “I told you a thousand times”, when we may have only told someone 4 or 5 times.
And what about the very premise of being “left behind”? The bible says in Matthew 24:37 - 41:
“As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of man. Then two men will be in the field; one is taken and one is left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one is taken and one is left.”
In the days of Noah, the saved were left behind on earth, Noah and his family. The unsaved were taken from this earth, and presumably didn’t make it to heaven. Therefore, if the end of the world is similar to those days, as the bible says, being left behind may mean that you will still be here on earth to be raptured later on. The ones taken may be like the flood victims in Noah’s time, and die.
One of the really big assumptions in the Left Behind series is that the saved will rise up to meet Jesus in the clouds, and then they and Jesus return to heaven to await the tribulation and the final judgment. But that isn’t biblical either. Nowhere in the bible does it say that Jesus will do a U-turn back into heaven at the rapture. Rather, the bible says that Jesus and his kingdom will descend to earth and become the new kingdom (Revelation 11:15 and Revelation 21:2). And the bible also says that we will be judged on that day, the last day, in John 12:48:
“He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day.”

So go ahead and read the Left Behind series if you must, but remember, hardly any of it is biblical. The learned and educated religious people of the Bible didn’t understand the first coming of Christ. Just so, a lot of learned and educated religious people today don’t understand the rapture any better than the Pharisees and the Sadducees did the first time. But, they sure make a lot of money by selling books about their personal opinion of the events surrounding the rapture.

So will the Rapture happen? YES, but it will be a one time event, on the last day of our earthly existence, after the dead have been raised, and it will be seen and witnessed by all.

Thursday, May 05, 2011

This is an awesome article that a good friend (yes, it was Cara!) sent me via email. Very much worth sharing. I am SO TIRED of the whining and complaining from the left about a "dirty campaign" and Harper's supposed "underhandedness" and whatnot. Talk about sore losers. A perfect example is Jim Maloway's refusal to acknowledge Lawrence Toet's win in the Elmwood-Transcona riding. He actually blamed the fact that the failure of the CHP to run a candidate in this riding was the reason that he lost - that the usual votes that go the the CHP went to the Conservatives instead. Wow. We won fair and square. It's called a democracy. Live with it.
Kudos to Margaret Wente.......

May 5, 2011
Here's why Stephen Harper really won
By MARGARET WENTE
From Thursday's Globe and Mail


A sad day for democracy? Nope, a great day for Canada Thanks to the central Canadian punditocracy, I now know why the Conservatives won an overwhelming election victory, and why the Liberals were pulverized. It was those nasty attack ads on TV.
So powerful were they that they persuaded millions of gullible voters to rise up against Michael Ignatieff and vote for someone else. Mr. Ignatieff himself blames them for his demise. Fellow Liberals think their leader was just too darn high-minded to strike back. "This is a blood sport," griped Jim Karygiannis, one of the last Liberal MPs standing. "There is no Mr. Nice in this business."
Liberal-minded opinion-mongers have been twisting themselves into pretzels to explain Stephen Harper's completely unexpected whopping victory. They're obsessed with the attack ads. Besides, they say, the Conservatives just got lucky. They reaped a windfall from the collapse of the Bloc Québécois and unexpected vote splits. Another reason is that Mr. Harper successfully appealed to "voter fatigue," "fear" and an uninformed electorate that's sadly oblivious to the destruction of democracy in Ottawa.
Anyway, they argue, it really wasn't such a victory after all. Mr. Harper, they say, failed to broaden his base (even though he conquered Fortress Toronto, where he'd always been shut out), and won only 40 per cent of the popular vote (just like Jean Chrétien and Bill Davis). One commentator compared his win to George W. Bush's "stolen" election of 2000.
If you want to understand why Mr. Harper loathes the mainstream media, look no further. But if you want to understand why he won, you'll have to look elsewhere. One problem is that the media demonize the very qualities that have made him a success. They hate him for his micro-managing, control-freak ways. But those same qualities have been crucial to his success. Without them, he'd never have survived five years in the bear pit of minority government.
In fact, the Conservatives won because they did the sorts of things the Liberals used to do. They built broad coalitions among disparate groups. Take the so-called ethnic vote. When the Liberals courted new Canadians, it was smart. When the Conservatives do it, it's sleazy. During the campaign, the CBC assembled countless panels of ethnic people to express their disgust at this condescending and divisive tactic. Amazingly, however, ethnic voters seemed glad to have important cabinet ministers show up in their ridings. They liked the focus on stability and a strong economy. Besides, the Liberals hadn't been around for years.
The Conservatives' years of efforts paid off spectacularly. To get results like that, you need a long-term strategy, passion, and someone willing to drink 15,000 cups of tea. The Liberals no longer have any of those things.
The Conservatives profited from vote splits. But they were also able to get out the vote where it mattered. They were focused and had ground troops who worked hard. For this, they're being accused of running a soulless and technocratic campaign. (When Liberals ran things this way, they were called "professional.") As for those attack ads, it was Jack Layton, not Stephen Harper, who dealt the crucial blow when he brought up Mr. Ignatieff's miserable attendance record in Parliament during the leaders debates. "If you are going to apply for a promotion, you at least ought to show up for the job," he cracked. It stuck. Iggy never recovered.
Plenty of Harper critics think that Monday was a sad day for democracy. Personally, I think it was a great day for Canada. The Bloc, which squatted in Ottawa like a toad for 20 years, is gone. Mr. Harper has forged a historic new alliance between the West and Ontario, and he didn't need Quebec to win. Quebeckers' mass infatuation with the NDP may not last longer than snow in April, but their ability to hold federal governments to ransom may be gone for good.
For the next four years, Canadians will enjoy a blissful reprieve from non-stop political theatrics and dysfunctional minorities. They will have a clear choice of competing political philosophies. Critics warn that our politics will become polarized between left and right. But if Mr. Harper aims to turn the Conservatives into the Natural Governing Party, he'll have to govern as a moderate. That's bad news for armies of political experts, CBC panelists, Margaret Atwood and the Toronto Star. I almost feel sorry for them.