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Dear friends,

Please keep Mr. Mike Boulware in your prayers, who has been very ill of late. Fr. Hewko asked for prayers for him in the beginning of today's sermon. Father spent several minutes talking about Mr. Boulware and what a good man he is. 

Thank you and God bless you all.

Quote:EXPLANATION. Having exhorted us to penance in the Introit of the Mass, the Church desires to indicate to us, by reading this epistle, the effort we should make to reach the kingdom of heaven by the narrow path (Matt. vii. 13.) of penance and mortification. This St. Paul illustrates by three different examples. By the example of those who in a race run to one point, or in a prize-fight practice and prepare themselves for the victor's reward by the strongest exercise, and by the strictest abstinence from everything that might weaken the physical powers. If to win a laurel- crown that passes away, these will subject themselves to the severest trials and deprivations, how much more should tor the sake of the heavenly crown of eternal happiness, abstain from those improper desires, by which the soul is weakened, and practice those holy virtues, such as prayer, love of God and our neighbor, patience to which the crown is promised.

Next, by his own example, bringing himself before them as one running a race, and fighting for an eternal crown, but not as one running blindly not knowing whither, or fighting as one who strikes not his antagonist, but the air; on the contrary, with his eyes firmly fixed on the eternal crown, certain to be his who lives by the precepts of the gospel, who chastises his spirit and' his body as a valiant champion, with a strong hand, that is, by severest mortification, by fasting, and prayer. If St. Paul, notwithstanding the extraordinary graces which he received, thought it necessary to chastise His body that he might not be cast away, how does the sinner expect to be saved, living an effeminate and luxurious lite without penance and mortification?

St. Paul's third example is that of the Jews who all perished on their journey to the Promised Land. even though God had granted them so many graces; He shielded them from their enemies by a cloud which served as a light to them ;it night, and a cooling shade by day: He divided the waters of the sea, thus preparing tor them a dry passage; lie caused manna to tall from the heaven to be their food, and water to gush from the rock for their drink. These temporal benefits which God bestowed upon the Jews in the wilderness had a spiritual meaning; the cloud and the sea was a figure ot baptism which en lightens the soul, tames the concupiscence of the flesh, and purifies from sin: the manna was a type of the most holy Sacrament of the Altar, the soul's true bread from heaven; the water from the rock, the blood Bowing from Christ's wound in the side; and yet with all these temporal benefits which God bestowed upon them, and with all the spiritual graces they were to receive by faith from the coming Redeemer, of the six hundred thousand men who left Egypt, only two, Joshua and Caleb, entered the Promised Land! Why? Because they were tickle, murmured so often against God, and desired the pleasures of the flesh. How much, then, have we need to tear lest we be excluded from the true, happy land. Heaven, if we do not continuously struggle for it, by penance and mortification !

ASPIRATION. Assist me, O Jesus, with Thy grace that, following St. Paul's example, I may be anxious, by the constant pious practice of virtue and prayer, to arrive at perfection and to enter heaven.

Quote:“When we look on anything, though it is present to us, it is not itself united to our eyes, but only sends out to them a certain representation or picture of itself, which is called its sensible species, by means of which we see. So also when we contemplate or understand anything, that which we understand is not united to our understanding otherwise than by another representation and most delicate spiritual image, which is called intelligible species. But further, these species, by how many windings and changes do they get to the understanding! They arrive at the exterior senses, thence pass to the interior, then to the imagination, then to the active understanding, and come at last to the passive understanding, to the end that passing through so many strainers and under so many files they may be purified, subtilized and perfected, and of sensible become intelligible.”[1]

Quote:“there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: And will turn away indeed their hearing from the truth but will be turned to fables?”(2 Tim. 4:3-4)

Quote:”If by mystery we mean nothing more than an object which is not entirely conceivable in its innermost essence, we need not seek very far to find mysteries. Such mysteries are found not only above us, but all around us, in us, under us. The real essence of all things is concealed from our eyes. The physicist will never fully plumb the laws of forces in the physico-chemical world and perfectly comprehend their effects; and the same is true of the physiologist with regard to the laws of organic nature, of the psychologist with regard to the soul, of the metaphysician with regard to the ultimate basis of being. Christianity is not alone in exhibiting mysteries in the above-mentioned sense. If its truths are inconceivable and unfathomable, so in greater part are the truths of reason.”

Quote:“to the desires of their heart, to uncleanness: to dishonor their own bodies among themselves. For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And in like manner the men also, leaving the natural use of the woman, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.”

Quote:“to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient, being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy. Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things are worthy of death: and not only those who do them, but they also who consent to them that do them” (Rom. 1:18 ff.)

Quote:“there are those so foolish and dull that they long only for the things of the present, saying such senseless things as, ‘Let me enjoy now what I have; later I shall think about what is not certain.’. . . They who say such things, in what way do they differ from goats and swine. . . who speak of such things as uncertain which are clearer than what the eye sees. . . . But you will say: who has ever come from hell and told us these things? Who has ever come from heaven and told us there is a God who has made all things? That we have a soul: whence was that made known to us? For if you only believe the things you see, you may then doubt about God and the angels, and about the mind and the soul, and in that way all teaching will be emptied of its truth. If you believe what you take in by your senses, then all the more should you believe in the invisible world rather than in the visible. And if what I say seems contradictory, it is nevertheless true and may without question be accepted by intelligent men. For our eyes are often deceived, not with regard to invisible things, for as to these they cannot judge, but in the things that men seem to see, their accuracy being disturbed by distance, by distractions, by anger, by care and countless other things. But the reflections of the soul, especially if it has received the light of the divine Scriptures, will arrive at a more accurate and certain judgment of things.” [2]

Quote:“added to nature,” says Fr. Scheeben, “as a new, higher reality, a reality that is neither included in nature, nor developed from it, nor in any way postulated by it. As God exhibits two kingdoms for us to contemplate, one plainly visible and one full of mystery, so, too, in the creature we discern two distinct kingdoms, as it were two worlds, which are erected one on top of the other, one visible and one invisible, one natural and the other supernatural. The profounder reaches of even the first of these worlds is unfathomable for purely natural reason; the second is unattainable and unsearchable in every respect, and is therefore mysterious in the absolute sense of the word.” [3]

Quote:“As the mirror contains not the thing we see in it but only the representation and species of it (which representation, stayed by the mirror, produces another in the beholding eye), so the word of faith does not contain the things which it announces, but only represents them, and this representation of divine things which is in the word of faith produces another representation of them, which our understanding, helped by God’s grace, accepts and receives as a representation of holy truth, and our will takes delight in it and embraces it as an honorable, profitable, lovely and excellent truth. Thus the truths signified in God’s word are by it represented to the understanding as things expressed in the mirror represented to the eye.” [4]

Quote:“In heaven – oh, my God, what a favor! ” exclaims St. Francis de Sales, “the Divinity will unite itself to our understanding without the mediation of any species or representation at all, but it will apply itself to our understanding, making itself in such sort present unto it, that the inward presence shall be instead of a representation or species.” [5]

Quote:“The undimmed splendor of baptismal grace is then according to her the first, the chief condition for the reception of the light of prophecy, for the developing of a faculty in man obscured by Adam’s fall: viz., capability of communicating with the world of spirit without interrupting the harmonies and natural relation of body and soul. Every man possesses this capability; but, if we may so speak, it is hidden in his soul; he cannot of himself overleap the barrier which separates the regions of sense from those beyond. God alone by the infusion of superior light can remove this barrier from the path of His elect; but seldom is such light granted, for few there are who rigorously fulfill the conditions exacted.”[6]

Quote:“He created in them the science of the spirit, he filled their heart with wisdom and showed them both good and evil. . . Moreover he gave them instructions and the law of life for an inheritance. . . And their eye saw the majesty of his glory and their ears heard his glorious voice, and he said to them: Beware of all iniquity!” (Ecclus. 17:5-11).

Quote:“It was only through sin that reason was thus imprisoned in the senses; once man also had a spiritual eye that did not need the senses in order to know God, but this has now been clouded and darkened by sin and can only be cleansed for contemplation by asceticism.”

Quote:“There remained to man his soul as such, with all its powers and faculties, though it was now constrained within the physical bounds of his body.” Believing that “the scholastic doctrine concerning the soul is the only one that provides a satisfactory solution for the problems of modern psychology and parapsychology,” he maintains that even now “the spirit soul can in certain circumstances partially withdraw itself and its body-bound part from the life of the senses and allow its activity to reach out beyond the body. From this there result phenomena such as we encounter in occultism and to some extent in the mystic life.” [7]

Quote:“The door to the unseen is connatural to integral nature as possessed by Adam, but filled up with lumber by original sin. But, in some souls there is a little light shining through, and if they blow out or shade their terrene candles and lamps [which is the work of Christian mortification], they begin to perceive this light. Once they use it, God can increase it and communicate with them in this new and higher way. Thus the door is a part of the perfection of human nature; the blocking of it is from the imperfection of our nature; the light through the door is supernatural, and all communication through it is from God – therefore a grace, a gift, and from the Holy Ghost.” [8]