Mother Elvira used to say, "If you want coffee, pray for it."

Mother Elvira used to tell the men in her drug addiction communities, "If you want coffee, pray for it."

I used to volunteer time on a weekly basis serving the sacramental needs of the community in Florida and came to know and befriend many of the addicts seeking help to find a life with God after they had destroyed their hope and faith seeking a life with drugs, alcohol and pornography.

You see, any money given to the Communita' Cenacolo was to be used for building materials and other supplies dedicated to their housing, chapels and other construction needs only. All the food they consumed had to be donated through the kind generosity of benefactors.

I am seeking the return of all absent family members to worship with us at Sunday Masses. In doing so I am going to take Mother Elvira's advice and pray for it if I truly desire it and invite our parishioners to do the same.

Beginning soon the entire parish will be invited to pray with me during the brief period of silence after the homily at weekend Masses that all absent family members of Catholic or any faith will weekly join their families in unity to worship God. Please intercede for the effectiveness of our prayers. Thank you for reading my note. God bless,

"I will die in bed": what Cardinal George really said

"I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history."

From Bishop Oster: no good to bend and twist Christ

It does no good to keep on collecting all and only those verses of the Gospel that might help a Church suffering from a loss of faith to bend and twist her Lord Jesus until he is so nice that he doesn't threaten those situations that the Scriptures continue to call sin. Yes, of course Jesus loves sinners, but He and His Father hate sin! And it does no good to eliminate or ignore those passages in which Jesus challenges us to assent to Him decisively, or those in which He appears as our Judge. Yes, Jesus loves us the way we are [...], but He does not want us to remain the way we are. [...] We too often forget that the revelation of the merciful Jesus did not simply abolish the law, but rather revealed that the giver of the law loves us with a love as deep as the abyss. And it is because He loves us that He challenges us with the at times rigorous demands of the law, so that we can learn to answer His love; just as a good father, precisely because he loves his children, sometimes has to be strict with them. [...] God wants to save us, all of us! But salvation is not automatic, and the constant witness of scripture is that we cannot be saved without conversion. As far as I can see, Bishop Bonny doesn't even mention conversion anymore. (Translation: Sacerdos Romanus)

do not therefore in fear and terror flee back from the way of salvation of which the beginning cannot but be a narrow entrance.

Prologue to the Rule of our Holy Father Benedict. Continued We have therefore to establish a school of the Lord’s service, in the institution of which we hope we are going to establish nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. But if, prompted by the desire to attain to equity, anything be set forth somewhat strictly for the correction of vice or the preservation of charity, do not therefore in fear and terror flee back from the way of salvation of which the beginning cannot but be a narrow entrance. For it is by progressing in the life of conversion and faith that, with heart enlarged and in ineffable sweetness of love, one runs in the way of God’s commandments, so that never deserting His discipleship but persevering until death in His doctrine within the monastery, we may partake by patience in the suffering of Christ and become worthy inheritors of His kingdom. Amen.