A Rule of Life, by Saint John Bosco

Here below are five spiritual advices Saint John Bosco gave to his boys which he called “Counsels of the highest import”:

“1. Avoid idleness and idle people; work according to your state in life; when you are not busy, you are in great danger to fall into sin. Idleness teaches every kind of vice.
2. Spend your life in the greatest joy so long as you do not sin.
3. Do your utmost not to miss the sermon on feast days.
4. Choose a confessor whom you can trust, receive the sacraments of Confession and Communion. Saint Philip Neri, this great friend of the youth, exhorted young people to confess every eight days and to receive communion even more often depending on your confessor’s advice.
5. My son, you have only one soul; think of saving it. What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul. Blessed is the one who finds himself at the moment of death with a life full of good works.

Write, my son, in your heart my saying: the world is a deceiver, the only true friend is God.”

Saint John Bosco was writing for teenage boys! How far down have we gone since then as even Catholic adults would find difficult to follow these simple advices today! What a perfect programme for Lent it would have been! About Lent… as it is about to end, it is time to look back and consider what progress we have made since Ash Wednesday. How serious has our Lent been? Have we truly done our best to understand the Will of God better, to fight our defects and
deepen our relationship with Our Lord? Do we go to Mass with a greater understanding of the mystery that unfolds before our very eyes: the Son of God dying
again on the Cross for me, to blot away all my sins and to save me?

Do we realize a bit more that when we go to Mass we are already in Heaven being so close to the Divinity as we even receive it in our hearts and souls through Communion? With the Holy Week approaching let us renew our resolution to belong entirely to Jesus and Mary and participate in the Passion of Our Lord with the greatest fervour possible.

This post has been edited by yeeck: Mar 24 2015, 05:54 PM

Happy Feast of the Annunciation.



The Angelus prayer:

Latin
℣. Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae,
℟. Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto.

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. * Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

℣. Ecce ancilla Domini.
℟. Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. * Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

℣. Et Verbum caro factum est.
℟. Et habitavit in nobis.

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. * Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

℣. Ora pro nobis, Sancta Dei Genetrix.
℟. Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi.

Oremus. Gratiam tuam, quaesumus, Domine, mentibus nostris infunde; ut qui, Angelo nuntiante, Christi Filii tui incarnationem cognovimus, per passionem eius et crucem ad resurrectionis gloriam perducamur. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. ℟: Amen.

English
℣. The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary,
℟. And she conceived of the Holy Ghost.

Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with Thee: blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.* Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

℣. Behold the handmaid of the Lord.
℟. Be it done unto me according to thy word.

Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with Thee: blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.* Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

℣. And the Word was made flesh.
℟. And dwelt among us.

Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with Thee: blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.* Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

℣. Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God.
℟. That we might be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray,
Pour forth, we beseech Thee, Lord, Thy grace into our hearts; that, we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection. Through the same Christ our Lord.
℟. Amen.

7 more days to Holy Week. Preparations aren't easy. Was doing cabling work until 2am yesterday. Anyway, there's a Youth Rally thingy in STM this Saturday after mass. Heard that Fr Gregory Chan is gonna be there. Something for the young people.

Fr. Gregory is a really vibrant and engaging priest. I always love to hear him speak!

I've yet to meet or hear him but others who did have told me they were quite troubled with his gestures and mannerisms..lol.

This post has been edited by yeeck: Mar 26 2015, 05:54 PM

Yes, he is quite expressive and a very passionate speaker. It must be due to his training as a lawyer before he joined the priesthood ...

Palm Sunday






On March 29th 2015 will be the "Second Sunday of the Passion," is the memorial of Christ's "triumphant," but misunderstood, entry into Jerusalem, the day that begins Holy Week. This entry into Jerusalem is seen as the prophetic fulfillment of Zacharias 9:9-10 :
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion, shout for joy, O daughter of Jerusalem: BEHOLD THY KING will come to thee, the just and saviour: he is poor, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. And I will destroy the chariot out of Ephraim, and the horse out of Jerusalem, and the bow for war shall be broken: and he shall speak peace to the Gentiles, and his power shall be from sea to sea, and from the rivers even to the end of the earth.
Before the Mass is the Blessing of the Palms, which includes an Antiphon, Psalms, and Gospel reading. Then comes the Procession with hymns, when we carry the palms either around the church or outside, weather permitting, and then the Mass, during which there is a very long reading sung in 3 parts by 3 deacons (or priest and deacons such as the case may be) -- a long recitation of the Passion, including Matthew 26:36-75 and Matthew 27:1-60. Prepare for a very long Mass!

Carrying palms (or olive or willow branches, etc., if palms aren't available) in procession goes way back into the Old Testament, where it was not only approved but commanded by God at the very foundation of the Old Testament religion. In the fall of the year, after the harvest, when the people gathered for the Feast of Tabernacles God said in Leviticus 23:40:



And you shall take to you on the first day the fruits of the fairest tree, and branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook: And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God.
Again we read of palms in the II Machabees 10:6-8:

And they kept eight days with joy, after the manner of the feast of the tabernacles, remembering that not long before they had kept the feast of the tabernacles when they were in the mountains, and in dens like wild beasts. Therefore they now carried boughs and green branches and palms, for him that had given them good success in cleansing his place. And they ordained by a common statute, and decree, that all the nation of the Jews should keep those days every year.
And in the 7th chapter of the Apocalypse, we see that those who were "sealed" are seen by John carrying palms:

Apocalypse 7:9-10:
After this, I saw a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and in sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands. And they cried with a loud voice, saying: Salvation to our God, who sitteth upon the throne and to the Lamb.
The palms are blessed before the High Mass today. Vested in red cope and standing at the Epistle side of the Altar, the priest recites a short prayer, and then reads a lesson from the book of Exodus which tells of the children of Israel coming to Elim on their way to the Promised Land, where they found a fountain and seventy palm trees. It was at Elim that God sent them manna.



After a few verses from the New Testament, the priest reads the story of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem the Sunday before His death, and about how the people put palms in the Savior's path and sang hosannas because, ironically, they expected a temporal victory by the One they thought would be the great military leader who would conquer the Romans.

Then we pray, begging God that we may in the end go meet Christ, that we may enter with Him into the eternal Jerusalem. The following preface and prayers ask God to bless the palms, that they may be sanctified and may be a means of grace and divine protection to those who carry them and treasure them with faith.

The palms are distributed to the people at the Communion rail. The priest will press the palm against your lips so you can kiss it, and then kiss his hand. Alternatively, the palms may be handed out by the altar boys. In any case, Scripture and prayers follow, and then a procession of clergy, servers, and people through the church or outside around the church.


Customs

When Mass is finished, we take the palms home and hang them over crucifixes or holy pictures (I don't know how universal this is, but an Italian and French custom is to break off a piece of the palm and, while praying to St. Barbara for relief, burn it in times of great storms or natural disasters). Another custom is to shape the palm into Crosses before hanging them. The people of Italy and Mexico shape palms into extremely elaborate and beautiful figures. Also, men in some places will wear a piece of it in their hats or pin it to their lapels, and a piece should also be placed with one's sick call set.

Some of these same palm branches are saved and burned the next year to make the ashes for the next Ash Wednesday -- the palms, which symbolize triumph, and the ashes, which sympbolize death and penitence, forming a great symbolic connection between suffering and victory. The next year, when we get new palms, the old palms are burned and their ashes buried.

Now, this day has in the past sometimes been called "Fig Sunday" because just after Christ's entry into Jerusalem, He cursed the fig tree:

Mark 11:12-14
And the next day when they came out from Bethania, he was hungry. And when he had seen afar off a fig tree having leaves, he came if perhaps he might find any thing on it. And when he was come to it, he found nothing but leaves. For it was not the time for figs. And answering he said to it: May no man hereafter eat fruit of thee any more for ever. (also Matthew 21:18-19)
This cursing is undoubtedly a reference to what would happen to those of Israel who rejected the Messias, as revealed in this parable:

Luke 13:6-9
He spoke also this parable: A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it, and found none. And he said to the dresser of the vineyard: Behold, for these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it done therefore: why cumbereth it the ground? But he answering, said to him: Lord, let it alone this year also, until I dig about it, and dung it. And if happily it bear fruit: but if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.
Because of the cursing of the fig tree, the eating of figs is customary.

The Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday following Palm Sunday are another traditional time of cleaning. Just as the house is cleaned during Advent in preparation for Christmas, and just as Shrovetide is spent cleaning in preparation for Lent, these days are spent in preparation of the greatest Feast of the Church year: the Feast of Easter. By Wednesday night, the house should be spotless so that the days of the Sacred Triduum (Holy Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) can be devoted to Christ's Passion.



This post has been edited by yeeck: Mar 28 2015, 12:34 AM

"Once saved Always Saved" is a lie. Believing in Jesus is not enough, for even the demons recognized and believed Jesus to be the Son of God.



This post has been edited by yeeck: Mar 28 2015, 01:58 AM

One of the most well-known hymns for Palm Sunday:

All Glory, Laud and Honour
Words: Theodulph of Orleans, ca. 820. Music: Melchior Teschner, 1615

Refrain

All glory, laud and honor,
To Thee, Redeemer, King,
To whom the lips of children
Made sweet hosannas ring.

Thou art the king of Israel,
Thou David’s royal Son,
Who in the Lord’s name comest,
The King and Blessèd One.

Refrain

The company of angels
Are praising Thee on High,
And mortal men and all things
Created make reply.

Refrain

The people of the Hebrews
With palms before Thee went;
Our prayer and praise and anthems
Before Thee we present.

Refrain

To Thee, before Thy passion,
They sang their hymns of praise;
To Thee, now high exalted,
Our melody we raise.

Refrain

Thou didst accept their praises;
Accept the prayers we bring,
Who in all good delightest,
Thou good and gracious King.

Refrain

Does God really exist?

Since ancient times, Humanity has considered the problem of knowing whether a superior being exists. Atheism answers in the negative, the different religions answer in the affirmative, which is it truly?

What do we notice in the reality which surrounds us?

With the help of our external senses, it is easy for us to note the existence of a universe composed of the most diverse things: mineral, vegetal, animal, etc. Every science has an object specific to itself; astronomy studies the stars, botany studies the plants, zoology examines the animals, medicine tries to care for human beings, psychology seeks to explain mental phenomena, etc. Thanks to each of these sciences, one can easily reach the conclusion that everywhere laws exist which govern the whole universe: a stone once thrown cannot but finally fall; a kind of plant gives naturally the same kind of flower. Of course we do not know all these laws, the scholars and researchers spend all their strength and all their time to discover them. The scientists however note that a certain number of things exist which, repeated regularly, normally produce such and such a result. Everything has a precise place, a special function, an exact objective. Take for example the case of the human body; the heart makes the blood circulate, the legs cause it to move, the eye allows it to see. Without being a doctor, it is easy for us to establish that our body is an organised whole. Nature offers a multitude of examples of the same sort, the entire universe is filled with examples of organisation and precision. Everywhere one can find fine, delicate, complex mechanisms, and these concealed in the tiniest parts of plants, animals and human beings.

What is the origin of the order of the universe?

In looking at a car or a computer it would never occur to us that it was an ignorant person who had put them in working order. Only men of the standard of Peugeot or Apple engineers could invent or manufacture such things. Even the making of a dress requires the existence of a dressmaker, more or less well trained.

The story of Father Christmas, which one tells to children to explain to them why they receive presents on the 25th of December, cannot be of long duration. A time will come when the small child will want to know where did such a thing come from, who made it, what rules did it follow, etc. The entire universe from the planets to the insects, makes us put the same question: where does it come from? Who made it? Only a supreme intelligence could explain the order of the world. Because the more a thing is complex the more it requires the existence of a qualified and capable inventor. As the human being, on its own, could not concern the whole universe; he cannot even understand, at one go, the whole of its mechanisms. From this flows the necessity of admitting the existence of a supreme intelligence to explain the order of the world. Voltaire called it the great Watch-maker, Catholics call it God.

First Objection: Evolution and chance are sufficient to explain the order of the universe.

Reply: According to this opinion, life appears and perfects itself through an infinite number of favourable circumstances, thanks to a combination of blind forces, but which would coordinate and harmonize themselves to produce in the happiest way the precise movements of the planets or the beings which make up the world would, for example, be produced without a preconceived plan or order. Now it seems paradoxical that chance should be explanatory when it is a sign of disorder: try to explain to a visitor in the Boeing factory that the aeroplanes are built by chance, without the well thought out and organised intervention of innumerable engineers and qualified workers! It would be impossible; nobody would believe such a fairytale. In one word, it would be order achieved through incoherence, contradiction installed everywhere. Now, the universe is composed of mechanisms, all as precise as aeroplanes and this to a clearly greater scale. Moreover, before the creating of the order of the universe, the most infinitesimal of the elements of which it is composed, has its own internal laws proper to itself and which could not exist without the prior intervention of an intelligent organiser: to produce a seed or an embryo is no less marvellous than to produce a tree or a human being. The explanation attempted by evolution or chance is not even yet broached.

Second objection: Instead of admitting an intelligence outside of the universe, why not assume an in-dwelling intelligence, spread through all its parts, permitting it to construct itself and to direct itself all alone, and make its own way.

Reply: It is true that one can accept that the Divine Intelligence lives in the world in some sort of way by making it function, but It remains distinct from its work. It would be in fact false to accept the existence of a divinity called "Life" which would be an integral part of the whole universe while at the same time having conceived it and ruling it. The study of the natural mechanisms has not proven that human reason itself would be capable of controlling, in a well thought out way, the totality of the organisms of the human body themselves: the heart cannot take personal precaution against a heart attack nor the stomach against an ulcer. The existence of a superior, distinct and exterior intelligence is therefore the only acceptable answer.



Third objection: You acknowledge an order in the Universe, but does it really exist when one sees so many biological monsters, cataclysms and misfortunes?

Reply: These evils simply indicate the limitations of an order which is, none the less, real and which must be explained, because one cannot speak of disorders except by reference to an order. For example, a person is sick only in relation to the normal state which is health; shadows in a picture are only such in relation to the zones of light. The failing, illness and death are no snags in the laws of nature but, on the contrary, the regular functioning of these laws. A living being does not survive except by feeding itself i.e. by dissolving certain substances in order to incorporate them into itself; it destroys incessantly so as to build; that is its nature, its order, its law. To try to imagine an animal which lives without eating away some plant or without killing one of its kind is an idle fancy. This uninterrupted movement (cycle of assimilation and of disassimilation) is life itself. To stop it would quite simply stop life in the world.

In short, the universe was not designed by its creator as an immobile dead system but like a group of forces always in conflict, the good emerging from the evil. God could intervene miraculously to stop certain unfortunate effects but it would suspend the natural order by removing all activity and spontaneity: to save the grass from the tooth of the lamb is to favour the grass at the expense of the lamb. Every change has thus two forces, it is at the same time production and destruction, the advantage of one is the damage of the other.



Conclusion: Thus, these objections do not remove anything from the well formed thesis of an Intelligence organising the world. Analysed apart from the current preconceived scientific opinions, one discovers immediately that they are filled with difficulties and contain contradictions. Only one hypothesis can be developed with coherence and clarity: it is that which seeks the explanation of the universe above and beyond it, in a Supreme Spirit. To adopt it makes us therefore true to logic and to reason.

This is a sermon where a priest points out whole litany of reasons why Catholics should never participate in a Seder Meal, which is a Jewish passover meal that many Catholics have taken up as some kind of pious practice in association with this time of year. It’s a very bad idea. One should never get involved in one of these, and if you took part in one in the past in ignorance, I would counsel informing your confessor of the instances when this occurred and the circumstances surrounding those instances. That’s not condemnatory in the slightest, but if you listen I think you’ll understand that these Seder meals are not only obsolete in the New Law but are directly counter to it.

Great presentation of real facts ... Fides et Ratio!

Hi Yeeck, kindly advise uk9089 n tqvm

god does exist, a small pond without fish suddenly start have small fish then with big fish.

Khristos Anesti! Alithos Anesti!
Christus resurrexit! Resurrexit vere!
Christos Voskrese! Voistinu voskrese!
A blessed Easter to everyone!

For your listening pleasure and devotion on this most solemn feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord & Saviour Jesus Christ, here are the Benedictine monks of Fontgombault singing the Easter propers. Absolutely angelic.

You guys already got the 'priest shuffle' list? Looks like it's gonna be a new dawn for me.

This is what I received from WhatsApp. Don't know if it is real or not

New Appointments of Parish Priest:
Fr Lexon - cathedral
Fr Mitchel - assumption
Fr Albet - OLOG
Fr Clarence - Kkb
Fr William - st Anthony
Fr Frederick - Klang
Fr George Harison - S'remban
Fr Surain - Kajang
Fr Christhoper - Setapak
Fr Stan - Desa & selayang
Fr Gps - Sentul
Fr Mic Chua - Kepong
Fr Simon - Cdm
Fr David - Rawang
Fr Raymond Pereira - STM
Fr Paulino - St Anne, Pt Klang
Fr James G - Banting
Fr Patrick B - Kuantan
Fr Philip M - Tgganu
Fr Augustine Lee - Bentong
Fr. James - Banting
Fr. John - Cameron
Fr. Eugene - Mantin
Fr. Clarence - APC + KKB
Fr. Patrick Boudville - Kuantan
Fr. V A Michael - Mentakab
Fr Ferdinand OLF

Wow. Yours is more complete. I have only Klang Valley

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dre...igious-liberty/

Persecution is coming soon for those who uphold the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ. "Go and sin no more" will be perverted into "go and sin somemore and you'll still be fine and dandy, Hell does not exists but is only a state of mind...".

This post has been edited by yeeck: Apr 7 2015, 11:00 PM