Reflection from Fr.Danko ~ November 25, 2007

“Dear children! Today, when you celebrate Christ, the King of all that is created, I desire for Him to be the King of your lives. Only through giving, little children, can you comprehend the gift of Jesus´ sacrifice on the Cross for each of you. Little children, give time to God that He may transform you and fill you with His grace, so that you may be a grace for others. For you, little children, I am a gift of grace and love, which comes from God for this peaceless world. Thank you for having responded to my call.”
~ Message of November 25, 2007


Reflection from Fr.Danko Perutina on the Message from Novemer 25, 2007

"Spe salvi"

You can find Pope Benedict XVI NEW Encyclical "Spe Salvi" to all the Biships, Priests and Deacons men and women religious and all the lay faithful on Christian Hope.

" “SPE SALVI facti sumus”—in hope we were saved, says Saint Paul to the Romans, and likewise to us (Rom 8:24). According to the Christian faith, “redemption”—salvation—is not simply a given. Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey. Now the question immediately arises: what sort of hope could ever justify the statement that, on the basis of that hope and simply because it exists, we are redeemed? And what sort of certainty is involved here?"
~ Pope Benedict XVI "Spe salvi"

Words of Encouragement

1 Timothy 2:5-6
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, Who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony to which was borne at the proper time.
The saints are the hands of God reaching down to bear grace to us. Francis Gajowniczek came to know this. He was chosen at random by the commandant of Auschwitz to die along with several other prisoners in reprisal for an escape. His sentence was to perish in the starvation bunker without food or water in the middle of the blistering Polish summer of 1941. As he was about to be led away, there was a stir in the ranks of the assembled prisoners in the yard. A man stepped forward and volunteered to take Gajowniczek's place. He explained that he was old and a priest, of no use to anyone in the Nazi New Order of utility. The commandant, with brutal Nazi calculation, accepted the proposal -- and St. Maximilian Kolbe was led away as a ransom just as his Master had been. Most of us do not have to go to this extreme to ransom the captive. But there are other sorts of captives in our lives: captives to drugs, or alcohol, or despair or pain. We can ransom them with gifts of ourselves in various ways. Is there a captive in your life? How can you help him or her to get free?
Mark Shea is Senior Content Editor for Catholic Exchange and a weekly columnist for the National Catholic Register. You may visit his website at www.mark-shea.com check out his blog, Catholic and Enjoying It!, or purchase his books and tapes here.

Fr.Ciszek - - He Leadeth Me

"Continuing my mini-series on people who may be canonized that I’ve known, I turn my attention to an extremely great man Fr. Walter Ciszek, SJ who was a prisoner in Soviet Russia for twenty-five years. Fr. Ciszek wrote two very interesting books With God in Russia and He Leadeth Me both published by Doubleday. Many older people will remember when this priest, who was supposed to be dead, came back out of Russia released by the communist government. He had gone into Russia a quarter of a century earlier to try to work quietly as a missionary. He had spent most of his time in concentration camps and in Siberia. He was a man of outstanding faith and an utterly courageous person. I was privileged to know father in his old age. When you would meet him you would have a certain sense of awe in the presence of such a man, but he completely disarmed you by his informal ways. He was a deeply spiritual person following in the traditional path of Jesuit spirituality. I was very delighted when I was asked by Bishop Michael Dudik of the Ruthenian Diocese of Passaic to be the censor of the two books of Fr. Ciszek for the opening of his cause of beatification. Never did books need censorship less than these two books, and I was delighted to testify that they were of the most solid Catholic faith. Sometimes in our own lives we get discouraged by the difficulties surrounding life in the church. Even priests and bishops can get discouraged. The life of Fr. Ciszek and his great message He Leadeth Me is something that we all need to keep in mind."
~ Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR

This book is best described on Et tu blog . . . I am still in the middle of reading this book, however, it is one of the most remarkable books I have read, so I thought I would share it !!!

Feast of the Miraculous Medal

"O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee"

"These (gems on fingers with rays of light) are the symbols of the graces I shed upon those who ask for them. The gems from which rays do not fall are the graces for which souls forget to ask."

Fr.Slavko

Message of November 25, 2007

“Dear children! Today, when you celebrate Christ, the King of all that is created, I desire for Him to be the King of your lives. Only through giving, little children, can you comprehend the gift of Jesus´ sacrifice on the Cross for each of you. Little children, give time to God that He may transform you and fill you with His grace, so that you may be a grace for others. For you, little children, I am a gift of grace and love, which comes from God for this peaceless world. Thank you for having responded to my call.” ~ Message of November 25, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving

"Dear children! Today I invite you all to rejoice in the life which God gives you. Little children, rejoice in God, the Creator, because He has created you so wonderfully. Pray that your life be joyful thanksgiving which flows out of your heart like a river of joy. Little children, give thanks unceasingly for all that you possess, for each little gift which God has given you, so that a joyful blessing always comes down from God upon your life. Thank you for having responded to my call. ”
~ Aug 25, 1988

Sacred Scripture

"Sacred Scripture isn't merely a text written in the past, but rather the word of God that has within it a personal message directed to each individual Christian"
~ Pope Benedict XVI

The Journey

"For this cause, we also, since the day we heard this, don't cease praying and making requests for you, that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding..."
~ Colossians 1;9

Our journey is not our own it is all His. . . in the end He will always be there to welcome us at our last stop until then we must pray for wisdom and understanding so that we may continue on the right path towards His plan for us.

Addiction and Evil

"There's good and evil in life. The good on the right hand side of me, and the evil on the left side of me"

"Dear children! I still need your prayers. You wonder why all these prayers? Look around you, dear children, and you will see how greatly sin has dominated the world. Pray, therefore, that Jesus conquers. Thank you for having responded to my call."
~ September 13, 1984

God Acts Through the Sacraments

"When you think back to your own experience of the sacraments in your life, what did they mean then, what do they mean to you now? "
~Bishop W. Francis Malooly

Fr.Jozo's Oct 25, 2007 Reflection

"There must be those, who with their prayers, accompany the conversions, the confessors, and the confessions, so that every penitent may remove the old self and be clothed in the new- so that every penitent can return joyful to his family and community. Once again, we are called to be love and light to all those who have been overcome by darkness and sin. Imagine how cunningly Satan used a plastic Rosary as a target, saying that it has evil signs. Dear brothers and sisters, I am obliged to tell you the complete truth about this. Satanic signs and symbols exist. Those who belong to him and to his projects exist. His goal is always to destroy prayer and everything that is from God. There is no satanic Rosary or a factory that makes satanic Rosaries. Every Rosary that is blessed receives a blessing and becomes a certain sign in the hands of one who prays it. The right question in prayer is 'how we pray' and not on 'what kind of a Rosary we pray on or what material it is made of."
~Fr.Jozo

Message to Mirjana November 2, 2007

" Dear children, Today I call you to open your heart to the Holy Spirit and to permit Him to transform you. My children, God is the immeasurable good and therefore, as a mother, I implore you to pray, pray, pray, fast and hope that it is possible to attain that good, because love is born of that good. The Holy Spirit will reinforce that good in you and you will be able to call God your Father. Through this exhalted love, you will sincerely come to love all people and, through God, consider them brothers and sisters. Thank you."
~ Message to Mirjana Novemeber 2, 2007 ~

“All human beings are children of God, and everyone must become what they are, through the exacting journey towards freedom. God invites us all to belong to his holy people. The “Way” is Christ, the Son, the Holy of God: no-one reaches the Father if not through Him. "
~ Pope Benedict XVI

All Saint's Day

" Beloved:See what love the Father has bestowed on usthat we may be called the children of God.Yet so we are.The reason the world does not know usis that it did not know him.Beloved, we are God’s children now;what we shall be has not yet been revealed.We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him,for we shall see him as he is.Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure,as he is pure." ~ 1Jn 3:1-3

Commentary on Monthly Message from Medjugorje ~ Oct 25, 2007

" To be the light means to shine for the others, so they do not stumble and wander in the dark. We should be the light which Christ has ignited, so people can see the truth and the face of His heavenly Father, instead of wandering and stumbling in misconceptions." ~ Fr. Danko Perutina