Ten Commandments For A Husband And Father

Summary to add to reminders:

  1. Develop an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus, allowing Him to forgive you of your past, to talk to you, to heal you and to guide you.
  2. Get your priorities in order:  Jesus first, your wife second, your children third, your work fourth, etc.
  3. Realize that you are the “priest” of the home.
  4. Make sure you know what your children are being taught at school regarding morals and values.
  5. Pray with your wife and regularly so.
  6. Spend quality time with each child.  Treat each child in a unique and personal way.  The power of a father’s affirming love is tremendously overwhelming and something truly wonderful.
  7. Consecrate your home to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
  8. Do not let sports or outside activities become more important to you or to your children than Christ and family.
  9. Pray that each one of your children may answer the call to the vocation that Almighty God has chosen for him or her from all eternity.
  10. Ensure the frequenting of the Sacraments by your family members.

Original Source: http://www.courageouspriest.com/ten-commandments-husband-father

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Concepts, Methodology, Principles (revision 7)

Concepts and Methodology:

  • Start with Why
    • Beauty, Vision, Goals
    • Grace
    • Humility to see what God wants you to see; see yourself as God sees you, looking at the bigger picture
  • Focusing on the Human Person – 5 Love Languages
    • Concepts of completeness/Seeing the big picture – I want to give you the best, I want to give you my all
    • Knowing thyself
  • Wisdom – seeing God in everything, looking at the bigger picture and the meaning of real education
    • The Trinity is in everything
    • Since God is Love, the 5 Love Languages are in everything
    • Seeing Truth in everything – the value in cross-discipline principles
    • Deriving meaning from relationships
  • Learn from the experts yet know that since you can’t know everything, they cannot know everything either
  • Wheel of life
  • GTD – a system that allows you to be more in the present, free of “open loops”
    • Review
  • Mindsweeping
  • Mindmapping
  • Atomic transactions

Principles used to create this Manual:

  • Supernatural Ideas:
    • Humility
    • Truth
    • Love
    • Meekness
    • Trust
    • Beauty
    • Gratefulness
    • Joy
    • Faith, Hope, Charity
    • Magnanimity
    • Mary – wisdom is seeing everything in Love, should we not see everything in the eyes of Mary?  Mary, crown of God’s creation, model of whom we should desire to become
    • Time & the present
  • Supernatural and Natural Models:
    • Catholicism:
      • Jesus:
        • The Eucharist
        • The greatest 2 commandments
        • Love and the cross
        • Suffering
      • Dominican Order:
        • Dedication to the Truth
        • you cannot give what you don’t have
        • I assimilate truth though many sources using the principle “find truth where it exists” so while some sources are secular I consider them as an attempt by natural means do discover truth.  I believe the supernatural as described by the Catholic Church trumps systems derived though natural, humanistic means e.g. truths of the Catholic faith trump those attempts to discover truth through psychology.  Psychology can be an imperfect means to describe phenomenons.  There’s more humility in accepting that mysteries exist but it’s ok to attempt describing it and derive meaning.
      • Miles Christi:
        • The greater glory of God
        • Mediations:
      • Cursillo
      • Theology of the Body
    • Philosophy:
      • Logic
      • Socratic Method
      • The intellect, the passions, and the will
    • Leadership:
      • Leaders keep little promises
    • Psychology:
      • Boundaries
      • 12 Steps
      • Cross Generational Disease
      • Completeness
      • HALT
    • Theory vs Practice and the value of experience:
      • Wisdom vs Knowledge
      • My Experiences
    • Mathematics and Computer Science:
      • Agile methodologies
      • Optimization
      • Debugging
    • Martial Arts:
    • History:
      • Contemporary problems
  • Supernatural Means:
    • Prayer & Adoration, Meditations, Novenas, Sacramentals:
      • the importance of mystery
    • The Little Way:
      • My personal affirmations:
        • Let it be done to me according to your word
        • Fiat Voluntas Tua
        • Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
        • Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto thine
        • St Joseph, Light of Patriarchs, Terror of demons, Guardian of the Holy Family, protect me in all dangers
        • Mary, Most Pure, Mother of God, who makes the Love of Jesus real to me, show thyself to be my mother
        • All for Jesus, all through Mary, in imitation of you St Joseph
        • Jesus we adore you, Mary we implore you, Joseph Most Just, in you we place our trust
    • Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Anne

Guidelines:

  • Since the average human mind can only clearly hold 7 plus or minus 2 ideas in their mind, it seems to effectively apply the information learned, it needs to fit into 9 ideas
  • if we focus on each idea each with its own 9 ideas, the core of the information is a magic matrix of 81 points; it’s silly to think all the mystery and greatness of the universe can fit into 81 points but I’d like to think the system of how to live and organize your life can be communicated in 81 points
  • to leave room for mystery and engraining in our mind, sub points can be 12 points – a balance of what can be controlled (by cognitively fitting in our mind) and what cannot be controlled (at least in part due to us not being fully able to cognitively fit it in to our mind)
  • I’ll use Dunbar’s number to limit the number of references I’ll list so you can be more effective at practicing what I give you.  Holiness is not about knowing everything in the encyclopedia, on some level it is about practicing core points well
  • Everything should fit on on page that isn’t too long; there can be links but it should not be more than 3 levels deep
  • Everything is a gift from God, I’ll use the format of the Trinity to “re-gift” God’s gift: Piety (Heart, recognizing Mystery and Beauty), Study (Mind, diving deeper into why), Action (Body, infusing both into something practical and can touch people)
  • For the most part, I’ll avoid mentioning too much of the wisdom I’ve learned (I have my own set of principles, collections of my personal experiences, quotes, lessons I’ve learned, etc).  These are very special to me and I don’t want it to take away from my capacity to be intimate with you.  (see 7 levels of intimacy).  Be with me in person and I can share this with you.  These nuggets of wisdom are for you to discover from the foundation I provide.  I don’t want to take away from the grace and God’s plan for you


 

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Don’t get too comfortable

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.” – C. S. Lewis
If I look for truth, I may find comfort – but I may not. Life is not about being comfortable. It’s about pressing forward out of my comfort zone. It’s about getting up everyday and accepting whatever challenge I am faced with, staying faithful to the truth and searching for the meaning and value in the suffering I endure.
The Christian life is not the secret to success, but the shortcut to sainthood. It is not here to cure your pain so much as to keep you from wasting it.
We are obsessed with getting rid of pain. That’s often a good thing, but it’s not the most important thing. What’s more important is the soul that is forged in the fire of that pain. In this fire, we discover the truth about who we are.
We are reminded that we are small and weak and in need of help. That we have limits and are in need of a Limitless One. This is the truth. Too much comfort puts us in danger of forgetting it.
You weren’t made for this world, so don’t get too comfortable.

Source: http://theradicallife.org/dont-get-too-comfortable

 

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Beauty necessary to restore culture

Beauty must play a central role in our efforts for evangelization and cultural renewal, because it is a gift from God to lead us to him, Bishop James D. Conley said in an address at a recent apologetics conference.

“Our New Evangelization must work to make truth beautiful. By means both ancient and new, we must make use of beauty – to infuse Western culture, once more, with the spirit of the Gospel,” the Bishop of Lincoln said Sept. 28 in his keynote address at the Catholic Answers National Apologetics Conference in San Diego.

“By means of earthly beauty, we can help our contemporaries discover the truth of the Gospel. Then, they may come to know the eternal beauty of God.”

Bishop Conley told CNA on Oct. 1 that his decision to focus on beauty and culture at an apologetics conference was well-received, and that Catholic Answer’s development director, Christopher Check, “thought it was a real sort of game-changer,” because apologetics efforts can often be rejected by those with a relativistic mindset, who are not even open to entering into a standard apologetics discussion.

But to lead with beauty “opens (others) up to consider the argument” in a way they might not otherwise, the bishop reflected.

Bishop Conley opened the address by sharing a story of his first session of spiritual direction when he entered seminary. Spiritual direction typically involves a detailed discussion with a priest.

When he arrived for his first meeting, the priest, Fr. Anton Morganroth, who had fled Nazi Germany, was playing a Mozart sonata, and proceeded to finish it.

“After a few moments of silence, eager to get started,” Bishop Conley shared, “I broke the silence and said: ‘so are we going to have spiritual direction, father?’ Fr. Morganroth turned and stared right through me and said: ‘son, zat was your spiritual direction, you can go now.’”

This example of being caught up in beauty is a demonstration of how the transcendental can open minds and hearts to “the realities of the spiritual life,” the bishop said.

He emphasized that evangelization is concerned not only with individuals, but with transformation of culture as well.

“We’re starting to get a sense of our cultural mission,” Bishop Conley said. “Catholics are working to recover our traditions, and to build community … to foster a way of life that is true, good, and beautiful.”

He added that faith “is meant to be the basis of culture,” and explained how he was converted to the Catholic Church through the Integrated Humanities Program run by professor John Senior at the University of Kansas, which exposed students to the beauty of Christian culture.

This experience of beauty, he said, allowed him to be open to the great philosophers and theologians of the past, rather than assuming “that truth was found in the dictates of popular culture.”

“Senior was not an evangelist, in the traditional sense of the word: he did not preach from a pulpit, or write works of apologetics. His goal in the classroom was not to convert us, but to open our minds to truth, wherever it might be found. And he did that primarily through the imagination.”

Despite not being a traditional evangelist, the bishop said, Senior “was a remarkably gifted evangelist,” and through his sharing of the beauty of historic Catholic culture, hundreds of University of Kansas students became Catholic in the 1970s.

Their conversion “was not the result of proselytism in the classroom nor was it engaging in apologetics,” Bishop Conley said. “It occurred because we became lovers of beauty, and thus, seekers of truth. Beauty gave us ‘eyes to see’ and ‘ears to hear,’ when we encountered the Gospel and the Christian tradition.”

Senior and his colleagues “knew that students had to encounter beauty, and have their hearts and imaginations captured first by beauty, before they could pursue truth and goodness in a serious and worthy manner,” the bishop explained.

He observed that in the midst of intellectual and moral confusion, beauty can break through to hardened hearts, and that “every instance of real beauty points beyond itself” to God, who “invested this world with many forms of captivating beauty, so that created things would lead us to contemplate the transcendent glory of the Creator.”

While God “speaks to our souls through intellectual truth and moral goodness” in addition to beauty, “these forms of communication have become problematic. Many people, especially in modern Western culture, are too intellectually and morally confused to receive such a message.”

Because of this confusion, beauty may be the transcendental which “can get through, where other forms of divine communication may not,” the bishop taught.

“When we begin with beauty, this can then lead to a desire to want to know the truth of the thing that is drawing us, a desire to participate in it. And then the truth can inspire us to do the good, to strive after virtue.”

Bishop Conley said that “clearly, beauty has a major role to play in the New Evangelization” and enumerated three ways in which this can be done: through liturgy; appreciation of historic Christian culture; and openness to beauty in all its forms.

He called beauty in liturgy the “most essential” point, noting that “worship … is the basis of Christian culture” and pointing to examples of great converts who were struck by the solemn rites and extraordinary chants of the Catholic Church.

The bishop’s second recommendation was to become familiar with the beauty of historic Christian culture, such as Gregorian chant, in order to help others who appreciate it to understand the Christian beauty that inspired it.

Finally, he invited Catholics to “open our own minds to beauty, in all its manifestations” in both nature and culture, which will help us to understand beauty as “an earthly reflection of God’s glory.”

Concluding, Bishop Conley quoted famous Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who wrote in “The Idiot” that “beauty will save the world.”

“It will,” the bishop added. “When it points to God’s enduring love.”

“There are many souls to rescue, and a vast cultural wasteland to restore. Both tasks will require fluency in God’s language of beauty,” he said.

“To speak this language, we must first begin to listen. And to listen, we must have silence in our lives. I pray that God will open our eyes and ears to beauty, and help us use it in the service of the Truth.”

 

Source: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/beauty-necessary-to-restore-culture-says-bishop-conley/

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Love is war

“No, God is a lover who is a warrior. […] Love is at war with hate, betrayal, selfishness, and all love’s enemies. Love fights. Ask any parent. Yuppie-love, like puppy-love, may be merely “compassion” (the fashionable word today), but father-love and mother-love are war.”

(http://www.integratedcatholiclife.org/2011/11/dr-kreeft-how-to-win-the-culture-war)

Read the whole article; it’s well worth it.

I wanted to add: the enemy is within; it’s a spiritual warfare and it ties into the second greatest commandment – Love one another as you love yourself:

  • you can’t give what you don’t have
  • you can’t love what you don’t know, if you don’t know yourself, you don’t really love yourself
  • to what extent can you love others if you don’t know yourself?
  • always be free of mortal sins; you can’t be sure you are thinking clearly if you are not in the state of grace
  • find a good spiritual director and pray the rosary often
  • ask God to let you see yourself as He sees you because humility is seeking out the truth; let the Holy Spirit lead and work from there

Fight for Love, be not afraid to suffer for love!

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How to Win the Culture War

How to Win the Culture War

To win any war, the three most necessary things to know are: (1) that you are at war, (2) who your enemy is, and (3) what weapons or strategies can defeat him.

You cannot win a war (1) if you simply sew peace banners on a battlefield, (2) if you fight civil wars against your allies, or (3) if you use the wrong weapons.

Here is a three point checklist for the culture wars.

1. We Are at War

If you don’t know that our entire civilization is in crisis, I hope you had a nice vacation on the moon. Many minds do seem moonstruck, however, blissfully unaware of the crisis—especially the “intellectuals,” who are supposed to be the most on top of current events. I was dumbfounded to read a cover article in Time devoted to the question: Why is everything getting better? Why is life so good today? Why does everybody feel so satisfied about the quality of life? Time never questioned the assumption, it just wondered why the music on the Titanic sounded so nice.

It turned out, on reading the article, that every single aspect of life that was mentioned, every single reason for life getting better, was economic. People are richer. End of discussion.

Perhaps Time is just Playboy with clothes on. For one kind of playboy, the world is one great big whorehouse. For another kind, it’s one great big piggy bank. For both, things are getting better and better.

There is a scientific refutation of the Pig Philosophy: the statistical fact that suicide, the most in-your-face index of unhappiness, is directly proportionate to wealth. The richer you are, the richer your family is, and the richer your country is, the more likely it is that you will find life so good that you will choose to blow your brains apart.

Suicide among pre-adults has increased 5000% since the “happy days” of the ’50s. If suicide, especially among the coming generation, is not an index of crisis, nothing is. Night is falling. What Chuck Colson has labeled “a new Dark Ages” is looming. And its Brave New World proved to be only a Cowardly Old Dream. We can see this now, at the end of “the century of genocide” that was christened “the Christian century” at its birth.

We’ve had prophets who warned us: Kierkegaard, 150 years ago, in The Present Age; and Spengler, 100 years ago, in The Decline of the West; and Aldous Huxley, seventy years ago, in Brave New World; and C. S. Lewis, forty years ago, in The Abolition of Man; and above all our popes: Leo XIII and Pius IX and Pius X and above all John Paul the Great, the greatest man in the world, the greatest man of the worst century. He had even more chutzpah than Ronald Reagan, who dared to call Them “the evil empire”: He called Us “the culture of death.” That’s our culture, and his, including Italy, with the lowest birth rate in the world, and Poland, which now wants to share in the rest of the West’s abortion holocaust.

If the God of life does not respond to this culture of death with judgment, God is not God. If God does not honor the blood of the hundreds of millions of innocent victims then the God of the Bible, the God of Israel, the God of orphans and widows, the Defender of the defenseless, is a man-made myth, a fairy tale.

But is not God forgiving?

He is, but the unrepentant refuse forgiveness. How can forgiveness be received by a moral relativist who denies that there is anything to forgive except a lack of self-esteem, nothing to judge but “judgmentalism?” How can a Pharisee or a pop psychologist be saved?

But is not God compassionate?

He is not compassionate to Moloch and Baal and Ashtaroth, and to Caananites who do their work, who “cause their children to walk through the fire.” Perhaps your God is—the God of your dreams, the God of your “religious preference”—but not the God revealed in the Bible.

But is not the God of the Bible revealed most fully and finally in the New Testament rather than the Old? In sweet and gentle Jesus rather than wrathful and warlike Jehovah?

The opposition is heretical: the old Gnostic-Manichaean-Marcionite heresy, as immortal as the demons who inspired it. For “I and the Father are one.” The opposition between nice Jesus and nasty Jehovah denies the very essence of Christianity: Christ’s identity as the Son of God. Let’s remember our theology and our biology: like Father, like Son.

But is not God a lover rather than a warrior?

No, God is a lover who is a warrior. The question fails to understand what love is, what the love that God is, is. Love is at war with hate, betrayal, selfishness, and all love’s enemies. Love fights. Ask any parent. Yuppie-love, like puppy-love, may be merely “compassion” (the fashionable word today), but father-love and mother-love are war.

In fact, every page of the Bible bristles with spears, from Genesis 3 through Revelation 20. The road from Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained is soaked in blood. At the very center of the story is a cross, a symbol of conflict if there ever was one. The theme of spiritual warfare is never absent in scripture, and never absent in the life and writings of a single saint. But it is never present in the religious education of any of my “Catholic” students at Boston College. Whenever I speak of it, they are stunned and silent, as if they have suddenly entered another world. They have. They have gone past the warm fuzzies, the fur coats of psychology-disguised-as-religion, into a world where they meet Christ the King, not Christ the Kitten. Welcome back from the moon, kids.

Where is the culture of death coming from? Here. America is the center of the culture of death. America is the world’s one and only cultural superpower.

If I haven’t shocked you yet, I will now. Do you know what Muslims call us? They call us “The Great Satan.” And do you know what I call them? I call them right. But America has the most just, and moral, and wise, and biblical historical and constitutional foundation in all the world. America is one of the most religious countries in the world. The Church is big and rich and free in America.

Yes. Just like ancient Israel. And if God still loves his Church in America, he will soon make it small and poor and persecuted, as he did to ancient Israel, so that he can keep it alive. If he loves us, he will prune us, and we will bleed, and the blood of the martyrs will be the seed of the Church again, and a second spring will come—but not without blood. It never happens without blood, sacrifice, and suffering. The continuation of Christ’s work—if it is really Christ’s work and not a comfortable counterfeit—can never happen without the Cross.

I don’t mean merely that Western civilization will die. That’s a piece of trivia. I mean eternal souls will die. Billions of Ramons and Vladamirs and Janes and Tiffanies will go to Hell. That’s what’s at stake in this war: not just whether America will become a banana republic, or whether we’ll forget Shakespeare, or even whether some nuclear terrorist will incinerate half of humanity, but whether our children and our children’s children will see God forever. That’s what’s at stake in “Hollywood versus America.” That’s why we must wake up and smell the rotting souls. Knowing we are at war is the first requirement for winning it.  The next thing we must do to win a war is to know our enemy.

2. Our Enemy

Who is our enemy?

Not Protestants. For almost half a millennium, many of us thought our enemies were Protestant heretics, and addressed that problem by consigning their bodies to battlefields and their souls to Hell. (Echoes of this strategy can still be heard in Northern Ireland.) Gradually, the light dawned: Protestants are not our enemies, they are our “separated brethren.” They will fight with us.

Not Jews. For almost two millennia many of us thought that, and did such Christless things to our “fathers in the faith” that we made it almost impossible for the Jews to see their God—the true God—in us.

Not Muslims, who are often more loyal to their half-Christ than we are to our whole Christ, who often live more godly lives following their fallible scriptures and their fallible prophet than we do following our infallible scriptures and our infallible prophet.

The same is true of the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Quakers.

Our enemies are not “the liberals.” For one thing, the term is almost meaninglessly flexible. For another, it’s a political term, not a religious one. Whatever is good or bad about political liberalism, it’s neither the cause nor the cure of our present spiritual decay. Spiritual wars are not decided by whether welfare checks increase or decrease.

Our enemies are not anti-Catholic bigots who want to crucify us. They are the ones we’re trying to save. They are our patients, not our disease. Our word for them is Christ’s: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” We say this of the Chinese communist totalitarians who imprison and persecute Catholics, and to the Sudanese Muslim terrorists who enslave and murder Catholics. They are not our enemies, they are our patients. We are Christ’s nurses. The patients think the nurses are their enemies, but the nurses know better.

Our enemies are not even the media of the culture of death, not even Ted Turner or Larry Flynt or Howard Stern or Disney or Time-Warner. They too are victims, patients, though on a rampage against the hospital, poisoning other patients. But the poisoners are our patients too. So are homosexual activists, feminist witches, and abortionists. We go into gutters and pick up the spiritually dying and kiss those who spit at us, if we are cells in our Lord’s Body. If we do not physically go into gutters, we go into spiritual gutters, for we go where the need is.

Our enemies are not heretics within the Church, “cafeteria Catholics,” “Kennedy Catholics,” “I Did It My Way” Catholics. They are also our patients, though they are Quislings. They are the victims of our enemy, not our enemy.

Our enemies are not theologians in so-called Catholic theology departments who have sold their souls for thirty pieces of scholarship and prefer the plaudits of their peers to the praise of God. They are also our patients.

Our enemy is not even the few really bad priests and bishops, candidates for Christ’s Millstone of the Month Award, the modern Pharisees. They too are victims, in need of healing.

Who, then, is our enemy?

There are two answers. All the saints and popes throughout the Church’s history have given the same two answers, for these answers come from the Word of God on paper in the New Testament and the Word of God in flesh in Jesus Christ. Yet they are not well known. In fact, the first answer is almost never mentioned today. Not once in my life have I ever heard a homily on it, or a lecture by a Catholic theologian.

Our enemies are demons. Fallen angels. Evil spirits.

So says Jesus Christ: “Do not fear those who can kill the body and then has no more power over you. I will tell you whom to fear. Fear him who has power to destroy both body and soul in Hell.”

So says St. Peter, the first pope: “The Devil, like a roaring lion, is going through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Resist him, steadfast in the faith.” So says St. Paul: “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of wickedness in high places.”

So said Pope Leo the XIII, who received a vision of the 20th century that history has proved terrifyingly true. He saw Satan, at the beginning of time, allowed one century in which to do his worst work, and he chose the 20th. This pope with the name and heart of a lion was so overcome by the terror of this vision that he fell into a trance. When he awoke, he composed a prayer for the whole Church to use to get it through the 20th century. The prayer was widely known and prayed after every Mass—until the ’60s: exactly when the Church was struck with that incomparably swift disaster that we have not yet named (but which future historians will), the disaster that has destroyed a third of our priests, two-thirds of our nuns, and nine-tenths of our children’s theological knowledge; the disaster that has turned the faith of our fathers into the doubts of our dissenters, the wine of the Gospel into the water of psychobabble.

The restoration of the Church, and thus the world, might well begin with the restoration of the Lion’s prayer and the Lion’s vision, because this is the vision of all the popes and all the saints and our Lord himself: the vision of a real Hell, a real Satan, and real spiritual warfare.

I said there were two enemies. The second is even more terrifying than the first. There is one nightmare even more terrible than being chased and caught and tortured by the Devil. That is the nightmare of becoming a devil. The horror outside your soul is terrible enough; how can you bear to face the horror inside your soul?

What is the horror inside your soul? Sin. All sin is the Devil’s work, though he usually uses the flesh and the world as his instruments. Sin means inviting the Devil in. And we do it. That’s the only reason why he can do his awful work; God won’t let him do it without our free consent. And that’s why the Church is weak and the world is dying: because we are not saints.

3. The Weapon

And thus we have our third Necessary Thing: the weapon that will win the war and defeat our enemy. All it takes is saints.

Can you imagine what twelve more Mother Teresas would do for the world? Can you imagine what would happen if just twelve readers of this article offered Christ 100% of their hearts and held back nothing, absolutely nothing?

No, you can’t imagine it, any more than anyone could imagine how twelve nice Jewish boys could conquer the Roman Empire. You can’t imagine it, but you can do it. You can become a saint. Absolutely no one and nothing can stop you. It is your free choice. Here is one of the truest and most terrifying sentences I have ever read (from William Law’s Serious Call): “If you will look into your own heart in complete honesty, you must admit that there is one and only one reason why you are not a saint: you do not wholly want to be.”

That insight is terrifying because it is an indictment. But it is also thrillingly hopeful because it is an offer, an open door. Each of us can become a saint. We really can. What holds us back? Fear of paying the price.

What is the price? The answer is simple. T.S. Eliot defines the Christian life as: “A condition of complete simplicity/Costing not less than/Everything.” The price is everything: 100%. A worse martyrdom than the quick noose or stake: the martyrdom of dying daily, dying to all your desires and plans, including your plans about how to become a saint. A blank check to God. Complete submission, “islam,” “fiat”—Mary’s thing. Look what that simple Mary-thing did 2000 years ago: It brought God down and saved the world. It was meant to continue.

If we do that Mary-thing—and only if we do that—then all our apostolates will “work”: our missioning and catechizing and fathering and mothering and teaching and studying and nursing and businessing and priesting and bishoping—everything.

A bishop asked one of the priests of his diocese for recommendations on ways to increase vocations. The priest replied: The best way to attract men in this diocese to the priesthood, Your Excellency, would be your canonization.

Why not yours?

Source: http://www.integratedcatholiclife.org/2011/11/dr-kreeft-how-to-win-the-culture-war/

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Courageous Resolution

Here’s a commitment I think all men should make; it’s from the Courageous movie:

“”

I DO and solemnly resolve before God to take full responsibility for myself, my wife, and my children.

I WILL love them, protect them, serve them, and teach them the Word of God as the spiritual leader of my home.

I WILL be faithful to my wife, to love and honor her, and be willing to lay down my life for her as Jesus Christ did for me.

I WILL bless my children and teach them to love God with all their hearts, all of their minds, and all of their strength.

I WILL train them to honor authority and live responsibly.

I WILL confront evil, pursue justice, and love mercy.

I WILL pray for others and treat them with kindness, respect and compassion.

I WILL work diligently to provide for the needs of my family.

I WILL forgive those who have wronged me and reconcile with those I have wronged.

I WILL learn from my mistakes, repent of my sins, and walk with integrity as a man answerable to God.

I WILL seek to honor God, be faithful to His church, obey His Word and do His will.

I WILL courageously work with the strength God provides to fulfill this resolution for the rest of my life and for His glory.

“”

(http://www.courageousthemovie.com/)

 

The resolution above says “I WILL”, but I would replace that with “I DO”.

Men, we don’t have to wait until we’re married to do this.

Start NOW and become the strong men that our families need us to be!

ALL men are called to be Fathers.  Our wife is the the woman God created for us or the Church who is one with Love.  Our children are the beautiful images of God that God creates with our participation or the beautiful images of God we adopt spiritually.

Guys, our goal is to be fathers.  When we order our lives with God in the highest place and take responsibility for ourselves and others we become men.  When we are fathers to ourselves and for others, we are men of honor.

Saint Joseph, PRAY FOR US!

 

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