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 !!!