Spiritual Warfare - St. Joseph and Pro-life.

Pope John Paul II has proclaimed “A year of the Holy Eucharist” from October, 2004 to October, 2005. He has once again shown us a way to grow in true devotion to the Eucharistic Jesus, so that all who accept and receive Him can be formed and transformed. This is especially true in terms of pro-life formation. The Holy Eucharist is God with us, Emmanuel (Mt 1:23), the unique way Jesus chose to stay with us and to nourish us, His brothers and sisters. He is really present, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and remains with us in the Blessed Sacrament. The Holy Eucharist is the main weapon of strength and defense for pro-life disciples. He is present as daily food, preparing us for pro-life evangelization, enabling us to build a culture of life and love.

Pope Pius X left us a clear message, “Devotion to the Eucharist is the noblest of devotions, because it has God as its object”. Our work as pro-lifers is to present the Eucharist as a sacrament of life and love: a life and love that is crucified; a life and love that unites; a life and love that adores; a life and love that contemplates; a life and love that prays; a life and love that satisfies; a life and love that shares; a life and love that forgives; a life and love that heals.

God has truly given us all when He gave us the Eucharist. St. Augustine explains: “Although God is omnipotent, He is unable to give more; though supremely wise, He knows not how to give more; though vastly rich, He has not more to give” (Jesus, Our Eucharistic Love, p. 4). Whereas St. Bernard reminds us the Eucharist is love that surpasses all love in Heaven and on earth; St. Thomas emphasizes that the Eucharist signifies and produces love; St. Peter Eymard tells us that the Eucharist is the supreme proof of the love of Jesus.

Pope John Paul II challenges young people in his message for World Youth Day 2005: “Make courageous choices...come and worship Christ. He is the rock on which to build your future and a world of greater justice and solidarity” (Aug. 26, 2004).

To find the riches of the Eucharist involves exercising the mind, the heart and the will. We must exercise our minds by reflecting, praying, and pondering on the mystery of love before the Blessed Sacrament, the gift of God Himself. We must exercise our hearts with acts of mercy imitating the Immaculate Heart of Mary so that we will long for unity with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We must exercise our wills through acts of self sacrifice so as to become humble and self-effacing, imitating Christ’s Incarnation.

The value of the Holy Eucharist, the value of Holy Mass, is so great that even martyrdom pales in comparison. The Cure of Ars, St. John Vianney, helps us to understand by pointing out the infinite value of the Mass: “Martyrdom is nothing, in comparison with the Mass, because martyrdom is a sacrifice of man to God, whereas the Mass is the sacrifice of God for man” (Ibid, p. 18). St. Pio of Pietrelcina states that when one understands the unlimited value of the Mass, great effort will be made to attend and participate as often as possible. “If men were to understand the value of the Holy Mass, such crowds would come to church that police would be needed to keep order at every Mass” (Ibid. p. 19).

As pro-life disciples, let us make the Holy Eucharist a priority in our lives. There is no better way of formation than daily Mass and daily reception of Communion. In this way we will be prepared for whatever we have to do whenever we are called upon to defend and protect life and build a civilization of love. +

Footnote: Jesus our Eucharistic Love, Fr. Stefano M. Manelli, FI, pub. by Immaculate Mediatrix, New Bedford, MA, 1996, pp. 147.

PRIESTS FOR LIFE CANADA

BOARD MEMBERS UPDATE

Priests for Life Canada welcomes
Fr. Danny Wilson
as Chairman of the Board.

Fr. Danny Wilson is pastor of St. Dunstan’s Basilica, Charlottetown,

Prince Edward Island. He has taken on the position of

Chairman of the Board held by Fr. Paul Burchat,

a Priest of Madonna House. Fr. Paul will remain a

Member on the Board while he takes on

new duties at Madonna House. We thank Fr. Paul

for his dedicated service to Priests for Life Canada

as its founding Chairman. We welcome Fr. Danny

and pray that our ministry will continue to prosper and

grow under his leadership and direction.

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Patroness of the Americas

Would you like to learn more about Our Lady of Guadalupe and why she is the patroness of life?

click here.

http://www.sancta.org

T he Board would like to express to all the members and supporters of Priests for Life Canada its sincere gratitude for the tremendous support provided over the past year.

M ay the Peace of the Holy Family be with you and your loved ones during this most Holy Christmas Season. May you grow in devotion to the Holy Eucharist in this new year.

In Chastity Part 1 we considered why chastity is important for the pro-life movement, the benefits of a chaste lifestyle as well as a few of the more serious consequences of lust. .Now it is time to propose a concrete, practical set of guidelines for the attainment of chastity. But let us reflect on a few general principles before looking at the specifics.

First, we must be aware of the cultural climate in which we live. Our society is steeped in lust. The pendulum of sexual morality in our day has swung very far to the side of permissiveness. It may now have gone further in that direction than at any other time in history, with the possible exception of Sodom and Gomorrah. In other eras it tended towards the repressive side and at times it may have been more or less well balanced, but today anything goes and sexual expression knows no limits. The vast majority of people are so desensitized to this state of affairs that they see nothing wrong with it and are either indifferent to or enraged by the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, a teaching, which in fact, is healthy, sane, well-balanced, and holy. (If you do not appreciate what I have just said, then the rest of this article will make little if any sense).

Therefore, the first thing we must do if we are to live chastely is to accept the Church’s teaching on the nature of human sexuality; its purpose and what is morally acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. If we are not prepared to do this, then the struggle is lost before it begins. Fr. John Robinson makes this point in his book, Spiritual Combat Revisited , (Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2003) , when he says, “One of the greatest obstacles to establishing the virtue of chastity is the failure of any given individual to identify and assess the gravity of his own sexual sins” (p.137) .

So we must begin by accepting all that the Church has to say about this or we will eventually end by rejecting all of it. When it comes to chastity you either buy the whole package or you buy none of it. We cannot rationalize as being acceptable any unchaste tendencies we have. We may fall many times as we strive for chastity but we can never excuse these sins as being justified. If we choose to retain part of an unchaste way of life, then we are seriously deluding ourselves. It is much like the alcoholic who thinks it is alright to have the occasional drink or the cancer patient who believes it is fine for the surgeon to get only 99% of the tumour.

The greatest single mistake people make in this area of the spiritual life is to think that they only need to deal with the worst problems they have pertaining to chastity and that they can still continue to be unchaste in some other aspect of their life, be it in thought, word, or deed and that this will eventually lead to a happy, peaceful and satisfying life. Nothing could be further from the truth. The all or nothing principle must be applied to this area of our existence or our efforts will eventually be futile. If one is to develop a chaste lifestyle which is truly joyful and peaceful, then that person must be prepared to exercise a great deal of self-discipline with themselves in this area of their life, or they will never realize their goal of a genuinely happy and free existence when it comes to the pursuit of the virtue of chastity.

Now for the specifics:

Name of your MP, House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6

The Honourable Irwin Cotler, Minister of Justice and Attorney General
284 Wellington, Ottawa, ON K1A OH8

The Right Honourable Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada
House of Commons, Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
Email: pm@pm.gc.ca
----------------------------------------------------------

* Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II, May 1, 1991.
** Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II, March 25, 1995.

The Gospel today challenges us “TO BECOME GOOD GROUND, GOOD HEARTS” - to become saints. The fact is, God is always sowing the seeds of His grace in hearts that are ready to receive Him. St Augustine teaches that ‘God is a farmer and if he abandons man, man becomes a desert. Man is also a farmer and if he abandons God, he turns himself into a desert’. Man, in his quest for fulfillment, seeks for truth and from this search for truth, the culture of a nation derives its character. Pope John Paul II states: “For an adequate formation of a culture, the involvement of the whole man is required, whereby he exercises his creativity, intelligence, and knowledge of the world and of people. He displays his capacity for self-control, personal sacrifice, solidarity, and readiness to promote the common good. Thus the first and most important task is accomplished within man’s heart” (C.A. 51)*. Is your heart ready for the seeds of life? Is your heart ready for the seeds of divine promise that can heal our culture and build a civilization of love?

Much of our present civilization is like a desert, devoid of life, a Culture of Death. We are engaged in a war for souls, a war that attacks human life at all fronts: spiritual, moral, educational, social, and political. The main battle is spiritual. Our main weapon is sanctity. We will win because we wield the strongest force in the universe, the blood of Christ. Satan, with his minions, plants seeds of deception, destruction, and death, scheming to win souls for his kingdom of hell. His evil plots include a litany of atrocities: terrorism, drug traffic, gang warfare, contraception, abortion, sterilization, euthanasia, genocide, child molestation, and the abuse of women. His death dealing agenda includes deceptive reproductive technologies, cloning, aberrations of fetal experimentation, and embryonic stem cell experimentation. Marriage itself is under attack. Pope John Paul II recently warned Canadians about undermining our culture: “Same sex unions create a false understanding of the institution of marriage” (Speech, Sept. 4th).
The devil’s plan is to corrupt mankind and society “by reaching hearts through hormones” (Peter Kreeft). He begins by attacking the family, the heart of the culture of life. He seeks to destroy stable marriages, by attacking sexual fidelity through promoting a sexual revolution in the mass media. The unborn, the handicapped, the elderly, and the chronically ill are all under siege. His tactics are corruption of power, dividing to conquer, absolute relativism - denial of the devil, sin and the spiritual war.

Pope John Paul II has given us a prophetic pro-life vision. He restored to us responsibility before our neighbour, society, the world, and God. He took a firm stand on the centrality of man in history and in the world (E.V. 42f)**. He emphasized the sacred meaning of the human body and human sexuality; the great value attached to education and culture; the importance of the roles of the worker, the citizen, the nation, and the state (C.A. 50); the dignity of the woman (E.V. 99a); and the need to protect creation (C.A. 37).

Culture is the cultivation of the soil from which men grow. Christian culture is the cultivation of saints. The writing on the wall is clear - if we cease to cultivate saints, the Christian culture will rot and die. Pope John Paul II points out where our mission to transform our culture starts: “We need to begin with the renewal of a ‘Culture of Life’ within Christian communities themselves…to transform humanity from within and make it new” (E.V. 95).
The healing and restoration of Christian culture is the restoration of all things in Christ and especially the restoration of the Spirit of Christ: poverty of heart and fecundity. Being Christian costs everything, 100% (heart, time and life), totally committed to serve life in all its truth, giving God full permission to change what needs changing in our hearts, homes, lives and culture. We need to take advantage of this time of Divine Mercy as Sr. Faustina reminded us. We need true generosity, the mark of the Way of the Cross. We need social charity, solidarity to build a civilization of love. We need to have the heart of a martyr, like Maximilian Kolbe, to surrender all to Christ. We need to go the extra mile, love our enemy. We need to make a leap of faith and risk the death of loving, like Padre Pio, Patron of Perpetual Adoration. Newman put it this way: “If faith be the essence of Christian life, it follows that our duty lies in risking upon Christ’s word what we have, for what we have not”.

To be agents of cultural change, we should imitate our Lady’s Fiat, “Be it done to me according to your Word”, by consecration to Jesus through Mary. Pope John Paul II calls us to a New Commitment to a New Evangelization, under the mantle of our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of Life, the first evangelizer of the Americas, Mother and Queen of the Americas. What she did for the Aztecs she can do for the world: end this holocaust of human sacrifice and convert people to the truth. “Listen and be sure that I will protect you. Am I not here, I who am your Mother, and is not my help a refuge?” (to Juan Diego). Her intercession as Mediatrix of all graces, the action of her spouse, the Holy Spirit, the principal agent of evangelization and our communion with the angels and saints are crucial to Christian Cultural growth.

Evangelizing zeal springs from personal holiness of life, nourished by prayer and love of the Eucharist. Following the Year of the Rosary the Pope proclaimed Oct. 2004-Oct. 2005 as the ‘Year of the Holy Eucharist’. At every Mass we recall the death and Resurrection of Christ in such a way that through the Holy Eucharist, His sacrifice is a reality before us. His presence is real and total, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. When we hear the words: “This is My Body given up for you” and “This is the cup of My Blood…” we should, in our hearts, pray: “Take my body, take my blood, take my life, which I offer up out of love, with your Son, to you. Do with me what you will”. This is a personal powerful pledge to build a ‘Culture of Life’.
Certain cultural principles must be restored for our culture to survive. They include:

What is crucial is that by witnessing, promoting and defending these principles, we extend our beliefs about our personal lives into the domain of collective lives, and keep safe the future of our culture. The fact is that increasing material well-being and reliance on technology has caused us to overvalue the tangible and the material and undervalue the intangible and spiritual. The fact is that grounding a culture and policies in materialism presents an incomplete view of human dignity, destiny, and community.

Consider the concept of conjugal love. One issue of Time magazine presented it as a biological affair. Conjugal love, as in the sacrament of marriage, is a life-long commitment, which involves a covenant between a man and a woman and God. This means mutual love, openness to the transmission of life; procreation, and the promotion of the good of society. This commitment cannot be touched or viewed under a microscope. This lack of tangibility causes youth in many instances to view love in terms of emotion, self-pleasure or sexual appetite instead of in terms of commitment and community. The media’s exaltation of the individual as the unique source of one’s own rule of conduct, a relativistic morality, with no objective standards has led many away from the truth. Youth are bombarded with propaganda to utilize birth control pills and so called ‘safe sex’. The consequences of such a morality based on self-interest, utility, and pleasure is nothing less than self-destruction. John Paul II challenged youth at WYD to make a difference, choose life, to be the salt and light of the world, to live lives of chastity and abstinence, to become saints. In his message for WYD 2005, he calls youth to holiness: “Make courageous choices - come and Worship Christ. He is the rock on which to build your future and a world of greater justice and solidarity” (Aug. 26, 2004).

Consider the evils of contraception and abortion, resulting in the death of millions of unborn children, mutilated and sterilized women, and men, introducing moral wounds into the heart of the family and the heart of culture (250 million chemical deaths/yr, 55 million surgical deaths/yr).
The consequences of not heeding Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae surround us:

Many do not listen and ignore the magisterial teaching. Over 80% of Catholics practice contraception. They listen to the word of man rather than the Word of God. They follow Planned Parenthood’s false propaganda, exploiting sex, rather than choosing chastity, sanctity and Natural Family Planning. The responsibilities of human sexuality must not be abandoned to techniques or delegated to technicians. We must respect and protect the greatest gifts of marriage: new lives (children).

Consider the opposition to Pope John Paul II’s stand on the Church and Christian culture, those who support the totalitarian trend of liberalism. In his encyclical, Centesimus Annus, our Holy Father points out that they seek to undermine apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions. They seek the removal, a transfer of the magisterium. They seek a restoration of the rationalism of the enlightenment. They seek principles of discernment that welcome the values of modernism, which in turn leads to Atheism (C.A. 13). They seek the new, not the real, not the true, for the sake of the new. Christianity must seek Jesus for the sake of Jesus, The Way, the Truth, and the Life. Our culture must not be swayed by artificiality or sensationalism or the deliberate assertion of what is not true. The strongest reactionary force impeding cultural growth and healing is the cult of progress itself, a cutting off from our roots, making growth impossible and choice unnecessary. “Life is viewed as meaningless and one is considered free from responsibility in the way a scavenger is free” (John Senior, The Death of a Culture).

Pope John Paul II emphasizes that only faith in Jesus Christ can in all truth liberate man from the prisons of liberalism and modernism, which alienates man’s dignity (C.A. 26). Faith is the most dynamic factor for transforming society and opens man to practice religious liberty. Pope John Paul II gives clear directions to the world. He indicates that the future of Europe depends on reactivation of its faith, its spiritual patrimony (C.A. 41). In the developed western world, the obstacles to religious liberty are practical materialism, the lure of gain, enrichment, egotism, desire for power, concentration of money, merciless selection from which the weak suffer, with usefulness, and efficiency as ultimate reference points (C.A. 41).
This materialism is seen in the flood of pornography inflicted without the least restraint on youth. (C.A. 36) and in the concrete expression of Atheism that confines human existence to the closed horizon of death (C.A. 55). In the third world, the obstacles of religious liberty include misery, deprivation of food, lodging, education, and culture. When man becomes preoccupied with physical survival, he risks closing the self to the other and to God.
Religion and faith have been major factors of resistance to totalitarianism on the international scale as well as on the level of persons. This was evident in the countries of eastern and central Europe in the 20th century. Christian believers were present and engaged in a civil war which they won by perseverance in faith (C.A. 17). Communists thought they had exterminated the faithful, but Christians went against the current by attacking the structures of sin, opening the way to evangelize the structures. (e.g., the workers movement confronted poverty and injustice calling for reordering of the economic system (C.A. 26). Pope John Paul II’s teaching on the relationship between freedom and truth encouraged Polish leaders to denounce and expose the lies and corruption of totalitarian ideology, and liberalism, hidden by the media. “Obedience to the truth about God and man is the first condition of freedom, making it possible for a person to order his needs and desires and to choose the means of satisfying them according to a correct scale of values” (C.A. 41). Western believers can do likewise and reject the yokes of relativism and modernism.

It is no secret that world markets are essentially organized in service of the wealthy, a supernatural bureaucracy which seeks to absorb the state, to alienate couples, to dispose the family, and control nations. The Church states that underdevelopment and poverty have their origins in the injustices, the immorality, incompetence, lethargy, corruption, the imbalance, and concentration of wealth as well as bad organization. Pope John Paul II advocates that the principle of subsidiarity needs to be applied to these problems and he names the solutions: respect, justice, solidarity, love, and peace.

Many have forgotten Blessed Mother Teresa’s counsel: “If a mother can kill the child in her womb what is to stop us from killing each other?” Any country or culture which allows abortion will never have peace. The road to authentic liberation and restoration of Christian culture comes about by enlightening and nourishing the faith of God’s people, personal conversion, as well as building up the common good. In living their faith, the poor find Mother Theresa

the strength to resist oppression and take their destiny in their own hands. Christian culture needs to be healed for the salvation of the whole human community not for the profit of a few. This means above all the decisive choice to choose life, the Lord of the living (Mt 22:32), Who wants none to perish (Mt 18:14). We do not reach healing except through the intervention of others. This is especially true in the domain of conjugal spirituality. Here we see the importance of reactivating the theology of the Mystical Body. In making man grow in humanity, the Gospel brings its specific and decisive contribution to the development of human society. “There can be no genuine solution of the ‘social question’ apart from the Gospel” (C.A. 5). To work at ‘new evangelization’ is to work with the supra motivation that faith alone can provide. Christians must take a stand and do their part in the healing of culture. It means reactivating Christian faith and relearning the meaning of responsible work. It means reconstructing ruined societies and revamping educational systems. It means correcting ineffective administration and changing government policies. It means becoming prayer warriors, attending daily Mass when possible. It means implementing Perpetual Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. “Adoration is more powerful for construction than nuclear bombs are for destruction” (P. Kreeft).

It means Consecration - true devotion to Mary, and praying the Rosary. It means fasting, accepting, and embracing the cross we cannot change. It means following the magisterial teachings. It means fighting against alcoholism, AIDS, promoting chastity, and abstinence. It means awakening creativity and responsibility, becoming artisans of justice, truth, and peace. It means having an on-going active relationships with the angels and saints. It means striving to become saints.

In our time, in our culture we have seen the change from a ‘do no harm’ model established by Hippocrates toward a utilitarian system which in some cases includes the killing of the weakest and most defenceless among us. In our time, in our culture, we have seen objective truths often become passé and the concepts of right and wrong assaulted. We are like the proverbial frog slowly boiled to death in a pot. The frog does not perceive the water growing progressively hotter. The Steam of our Culture is rising. The temperature of the water is scalding. We thank God that unlike the frog, we can and must do more than simply cook and stew. We can feel the heat, sense the danger, and take the necessary steps for healing. We can do what has to be done, become good ground, become saints; make our hearts ready to receive the seeds of life and divine promise. We can by serving life, on the spiritual, moral, social, educational, and political levels heal our culture and build a civilization of love. We know the price paid for our lives - our souls. Mother Teresa’s words remind us of that fact: “Jesus showed His love for us by dying on the cross”. He continues to show His love for us in His Real Presence in the Sacred Host now. Peter Kreeft in his book, How to Win the Culture War, assures us of victory: “We will win because we are the body of Christ, and Christ is God, and God is love, and love never, never, never gives up”.

It remains for us to respond to the Mission entrusted to us by Pope John Paul II - to do our part with all our hearts, and build a Culture of Life and a Civilization of Love. +

Bibliography (Recommended reading)
1. Kreeft, Peter, How to Win the Culture War, Inter Varsity Press, 1989, pp. 120.
2. McCarthy, Donald, Edward Bayer, Handbook on Critical Life Issues, Pope John Paul Center, Braintree, Massachusetts, 1988, pp. 218.
3. Schooyans, Fr. Michael, The Totalitarian Trend of Liberalism, trans. by Fr. John Miller, C.S.C., revised edition, 1995, pp. 262.
4. Senior, John, The Death of Christian Culture, RC Books, Harrison, NY, 1994, pp. 207.
5. Spirtzer, Robert, S.J., et al, Healing the Culture, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2000, pp. 347.

In the past, mailings have been sent to supporters four times per year. In addition to the ‘Priests for Life, Canada’ newsletter, sample copies of both the ‘Catholic Life and Family’ and ‘The Facts for Life’ have been sent. In response to requests from members, and with the additional support provided by our new Ottawa Pro-Life Centre, mailings will now be increased to six times per year as follows:

Sixth Annual Priests for Life Canada Symposium to be held in Halifax, NS: Special Guest: Bishop Richard Smith, Bishop of Pembroke. Including guest speakers: Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J., Halifax; Fr. Jim Whalen, National Director of Priests for Life Canada; and fourth speaker to be announced. Saturday, October 22, 2005, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Priests for Life Canada is not responsible for the accuracy of information contained on linked sites. These are only provided for your further interest.

YEAR OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST

CULTURAL HEALING

CHASTITY

by Fr. Jim Whalen

PRIESTS FOR LIFE CANADA
5th ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM ON

CULTURAL HEALING AND PRO-LIFE ISSUES

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2004 - 9 a.m - 6 p.m.
Senhor Sancto Christo Church
1100 Kenaston Street, Ottawa, Ontario