🧀The Cheese & Crackers = Quotes by Elder Paisios, St. Seraphim of Sarov, and St Ignatius
🌽The Veggies = My 2💰
🍟The Potatoes = “Catherine of Genoa”, By Fr. Benedict Groeschel, O.F.M. Cap. (Part 3 of 10)
🍗The Meat = Article: ” Exposing the St. Gallen Mafia: Exclusive Interview”, by Julia Meloni
🍰The Dessert = YouTube Video: “God’s Presence In Nature & Creation”, by Fr. Jacques Philippe (Part 8 of 8)
🥅 “When a man receives something Divine, in his heart he rejoices; but when he receives something diabolic, he is disturbed. The Christian heart, when it has received something Divine, does not demand anything else in order to convince it that this is precisely from the Lord; but by that very effect it is convinced that this is heavenly, for it senses within itself spiritual fruits: love, joy, peace, and the rest (cf. Gal. 5:22)." By St. Seraphim of Sarov
🏉 Do not seek or expect love from anyone. With all your might, seek and demand from yourself love and compassion for people." By
St. Ignatius
📖 Romans 8:24 “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees?”
2️⃣. Hope, it’s to realize that hope was given us by God, so we must sharpen that theological virtue. By doing so we honor God by believing in His goodness. We would not hope for an A+ on a test in physics if we had never studied that course. But our hope sails on troubled water because we know our hope in in God, our dear Father, He who is all powerful and loves us so much. In that light, it’s only the best that always awaits us.
3️⃣. Lighting another hope candle for Day three with the Meditation on hope, hope being like fuel. When you notice that the car is almost on empty and you’re trying to get to your destination, it’s to refuel So the journey can continue. Hope is priceless and vital for being able to cross the finish line. Hope helps buoy you up so that you can sail on and not sink in an ocean of despair.
4️⃣. The theme today in regards to hope, is to view it as an investment. How welcome the dividends will be, so worthy a cause to invest in. So mindful we ought to be in how and what we invest in. If done in a willy nilly way, or wrongly, then how disappointing will the returns be, if any at all. It’s very important to invest rightly, for the good, this translates into God’s Divine Will being done and His plans materializing. We place our hope in God, not in ourselves or the world, for all is passing away. God alone stands firm forever. Day by day if we are in Christ, we’re headed to a place where there are no tears to shed, no pain or sorrow anymore. Therefore, it is to hold fast, hold on,and hold out”
5️⃣. Spirits are raised when we sink the anchor of hope deep in our hearts. Why is that? The reason being that hope doesn’t disappoint. When we have faith in our hope and we kno God’s love, we’ll see that our hope in not in vain. That said, we’ll be assured that disappointment is not a part of the plan, we just have to be patient in the midst of not knowing the when, the where, or the how. No doubt but God will indeed come to our assistance, makin haste at the appointed hour to aid us.
📖Romans 5:5 “and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us”
6️⃣. The meditation on “Hope” today, the sixth day of Advent, is centered on “Hope”, referring to it as being a basket. It holds what is necessary for helping us to go around, above, under, or through obstacles. When we hold fast to confidence, hold on courageously, and calmly hold out, we experience the thrill of victory. For it is not about our way, but God’s way that nothing can come against that will not be working for good someway somehow. Mysterious are the ways of God, but every single thing is working out for our salvation.
7️⃣. It seems the appropriate meditation to conclude week one of Advent, is to end with He who is our beginning and our end. For Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega. Our hope placed in Jesus will never ever disappoint, that is, for those who will have it done to them according to the Word of God, His way, and not leaning on their own understanding or wanting things their own way. Bringing it home with this Scripture verse from Romans:
📖Romans 15:12 And again Isaiah says:“The root of Jesse shall come, raised up to rule the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles hope.”
“The total dedication to the poor and sick in Catherine presents a more complex problem. Those who are com pletely driven to the exclusive care of the unfortunate are often motivated by sublimation, a need to express their aggressiveness and egotism in a form that is socially admi rable and personally attractive. But frequently, social apostles are motivated by a complex amalgam of motives, ranging from genuine compassion and altruistic concern to sublimation and disguised aggression. If one accepts Jung's point of view, a gradual transformation toward higher motivation may take place in the process of
sublimation. The purity of motive of a person given totally to
charitable works as Catherine was can be discerned by two criteria: consistency, shown through perseverance in difficulty, a willingness to do the needed task, however inglorious and ego deflating; and integrity, or a total inte gration of the personality into the work at hand. To these two qualities one must add the demand of constant self criticism for a continual perfecting of motives. This de mand cannot be made on most people; when a person, however, appears totally dedicated to a cause, then these criteria conform to his altruism. This is what Leon Bloy meant when he wrote, "You know how much you love God by how you treat thankless beggars."
In Catherine's case we see her gradually growing into her role as servant of the sick poor. Without having planned it at the time of her conversion, she moved out into the city streets. This behavior was not as extraordi nary as it might appear in our time, when social service has become a distinct profession. She fitted in with other gentlewomen, "The Ladies of Mercy" who did such work. The great Pammatone Hospital where she lived for the last thirteen years of her life was itself built by a nobleman, Bartolomeo Bosco, as a work of mercy and functioned as a private charitable hospital until it was destroyed by American incendiary bombs in 1944. Thus, Catherine's total dedication to the sick poor was excep tional, but not eccentric. Throughout the years, Catherine fulfilled all tasks at the Pammatone Hospital from that of humblest volunteer to director. She held the latter post for six years (1490-1496), carrying out her administrative duties with exact ness and the same thorough financial care von Hiigel discerned in her various wills.
This quality of integrity can be observed in her work. She was noted for working "with the most fervent affection and universal solici tude," notwithstanding her interiority, because "she never was without the consciousness of her tender love nor again did she, because of this consciousness, fail in any practical matter concerning the hospital." This con sistency and integrity was the result of certain intuitive "rules" that had been given to Catherine in prayer and that it seems are the key to her activity and her consistent spiritual development. These rules, given early in the Life, provide us with the first insight into the unity and diversity of this re markable life. Catherine attributed these rules to Christ as He spoke to her from within: "Never say 'I will' or 'I will not.' Never say 'mine,' but always say 'our.' " "Never excuse thyself, but always be ready to accuse thyself."
These rules are the epitome of that self-criticism which is constantly necessary for spiritual growth. In an even more revealing passage, we read the following about her self-criticism. "At any one moment the love of that moment seems to me to have attained to its greatest possible perfection. But then in the course of time, my spiritual sight having become clearer, I saw that it had many imperfections. . . . Day by day I can see that motes had been removed, which this Pure Love casts out and eliminates. This work is done by God, and man is not aware of it at the time, and cannot see these imperfections; God indeed continuously allows man to see his momentary operation as though it were without imperfection, whilst all the time He, before whom the heavens are not pure, is not ceasing from removing imperfections from his soul."
This evidence reveals the motives behind a life of total yet peaceful dedication, driven, yet not driven in a fanatic sense. Self-criticism dispelled that bitter zeal and querulousness so common among social apostles, even the most admirable. As the narrative of her life continues, we shall see that this growing charity came to flower in the dramatic incidents of the plague and in the moving and affectionate care of friends and humble servant girls.
Continuation of Her Life From Her Move to the Hospital to Her Final Illness. In 1479, Catherine and Giuliano moved into two small rooms in the Pammatone and lived there working without pay and at their own expense. As has been men tioned, she became director (rettora) in 1490. During this time, in the early spring of 1493, the plague struck Genoa and raged until the end of August. Four-fifths of those who remained in the city died. Catherine transformed the open space behind the Pammatone into an outdoor hospital with a huge array of sailcloth tents. She spent months supervising the doctors, nurses, priests, and Franciscan tertiaries who cared for the spiritual and material needs of the dying.
One particular event of this time is a remarkable instance of sublimation. A woman tertiary lay dying of the plague, probably contracted while caring for other victims. In her agony, the woman could not speak. She moved her lips as if to invoke the Divine Name, and Catherine with great compassion kissed the lips of this poor soul tenderly and encouraged her to "call Jesus." As a result, Catherine contracted the fever. She recovered, however, and immediately went back to work. There is no indication in this account that Catherine followed this impulse out of any desire to suffer.
During the plague, Catherine made the acquaintance of a person almost as remarkable as herself. Ettore Vernazza was a wealthy notary and businessman only twenty-three years of age when the plague struck. He threw himself with zeal and courage into the care of the sick and dying, and fell victim to the contagious charity of the woman who would be his spiritual mother, becoming her spiritual son and support as well as the source for much of what we know about her. Ettore himself became the founder of several institutions for the care of the destitute in various parts of Italy, as well as the founder of the Oratory of Divine Love. His entire fortune went for the care of the poor and for the creation of a registry of poor persons in Genoa. Appropriately enough, this clos est disciple of Catherine's would himself die serving the sick in the plague of 1524.
Giuliano, Catherine's husband, had been gravely ill since the beginning of the year and died in early fall after Catherine in prayer had been assured of his salvation. Giuliano left his remaining fortune to Catherine to dis tribute to the poor "to provide the means for her continu ing to lead her quiet, peaceful and spiritual mode of life."
(Stay tuned for part 4 next week, if you please)
info from this site:
http://tandirection.tanbooks.com/enemies-of-salvation/exposing-the-st-gallen-mafia/
“In discussing my new book, The St. Gallen Mafia, certain questions frequently come up. Here are some of them.
📙What made you want to write this book?
I still remember the moment when I first became captivated with the St. Gallen mafia, the secret group of high-ranking churchmen who used to meet at or near St. Gallen, Switzerland to plot their opposition to then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. It was winter, it was night, and I was reading Henry Sire’s The Dictator Pope. When the first chapter turned to the mafia’s leader, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, I was arrested. I temporarily put down the book, downloaded Martini’s Night Conversations, and read late into the night. When I finished, I knew I had wandered into a detective story.
📙A detective story?
Yes. At the center stood Martini—the man hailed as the next pope by the media in the 1990s. It is said that the mafia at this time wanted Martini as pope, too—but then Martini got sick with Parkinson’s. So Martini’s dream mutated in order to survive. No longer the “next pope,” Martini began in Night Conversations to call himself the “ante-pope,” the mysterious forerunner to some future pope. But what exactly did it mean for Martini and his mafia to be precursors and preparers? As I researched these questions, I had a fundamental hunch about this book: namely, that since Martini had already produced the quasi-confessional Night Conversations and his friend Cardinal Godfried Danneels had already boasted in 2015 of being in a “mafia,” there would be a trail of other “confessions” about this group’s aims and workings.
📙What are some of these other confessions or half-confessions?
For instance, there was the time when I suddenly found out there was a photograph of mafia members meeting up before the 2005 conclave—a picture modestly entitled “A Visit Enjoyed by Friends.” I spent hours trying to find that elusive picture, to no avail, only to learn that the person who had leaked it in a small publication was none other than Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, a mafia member who apparently just had to confess. Then one August day, searching online books for information about a mafia member, I stumbled upon the mysterious 2007 French text Confession d’un Cardinal. It was the confession of an anonymous cardinal who presented himself as a good friend of several mafia members. As this mysterious cardinal described the “antagonistic” tendencies that separated Martini and his friends from Pope Benedict XVI; as he spoke of Cardinal Bergoglio’s second-place performance in the 2005 conclave that elected Benedict; as he said to keep that performance in mind in case Pope Benedict’s pontificate did not last long, pointing out that Bergoglio was not yet seventy years old—I felt my jaw drop. I felt I was in the presence of an intelligence that was part of the mafia itself. I felt, in short, like I was possibly listening to Silvestrini himself. In any case, the mafia and its allies had left a trail of clues about its aims and plans.
📙What was this mafia program?
There are numerous blueprints of this plan. The earliest one that my book discusses goes back to the man who might be described as the father of the St. Gallen mafia: Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J. In the early 1970s, he published The Shape of the Church to Come. It called for openness on, among other things, Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried, the ordination of married men and women, synodality, and voting for pro-abortion politicians. In the 1970s, various members of the St. Gallen mafia sprang into action and focused specifically on subverting priestly celibacy and the prohibition against Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried. Later, after the mafia began meeting around 1996, Martini gave a 1999 “dream” speech in which he listed a number of doctrinal and disciplinal “knots” that needed to be addressed. He spoke in somewhat coded terms, but he was referring to many of the same issues as Rahner: the ordination of married men, Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried, synodality, and so on.
📙How was this program pursued in the pontificate of Benedict XVI?
During the pontificate of Benedict XVI, the mafia led a multi-pronged war. Specifically, Martini kept alive the dream of another council or series of synods; Kasper clung to the hope of opening up Communion to the divorced and civilly remarried; and Danneels pushed for exceptions to the ban on condoms. But their agenda could only get so far. Then Benedict mysteriously abdicated. As my book explains, this enigmatic event happened in a curious context of activity from the mafia. Specifically, in early 2012 Martini told a confidante that he hoped Benedict would abdicate “soon,” and then, according to his confessor, in June 2012 Martini told Benedict to resign. Less than a year later, Martini was dead, Benedict was gone, and the quest to undo Benedict’s legacy began in earnest.
📙How does the pontificate of Pope Francis fit into this quest?
The pontificate of Pope Francis is reminiscent of that line from novelist William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Under Francis, this pontificate has been haunted by the ghosts of the St. Gallen mafia. Suddenly, Martini is back, seeing his dream of synodality move forward; suddenly, Cardinal Walter Kasper is back, seeing the triumph of his proposal for Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis seems to be obsessed with how “time is greater than space.” It’s an academic way of saying that what matters is using time—and patience—to accomplish things incrementally. So in Part II of the book we learn not only what this pontificate is trying to accomplish but also how it goes about doing it: slowly, step by step. “Time is greater than space” means that a pause in one’s plans is only temporary and what matters is where one ends up.
📙And where does this story end?
In the book, the last chapter, “Time,” in fact circles back in time to explore a mystery: How did then Cardinal Bergoglio arrive on time to become pope in 2013? So the structure is very circular. Another way to tell this story, though, is to go beyond the book to some of the pieces I have written for 1Peter5. The first article is on Traditionis Custodes, the papal text that severely restricts the Traditional Latin Mass, and it shows how there was in fact a St. Gallen backstory to the maneuver. The second article is on the synod on synodality, and it shows how this theme was in fact Martini’s dream. Together, these two articles form a kind of supplement to the book—a kind of Afterword. These articles also, in my opinion, have the mood of an endgame. If they were parts of the book, in fact, I’d use “Endgame” as their title. There’s an old saying about how “things accelerate toward the end.” I think that’s precisely what we’re seeing here, toward the presumable end of Francis’s pontificate. Things are accelerating toward the end.”
Video link: https://youtu.be/N6xeJf0wqKc