Tuesday, September 1, 2020

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

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THE GRACE OF GOD

“God has endowed us with wonderful corporal and spiritual gifts, creating us after His own image with powers of intellect and of will.
More than this, He has raised us to the supernatural order by communicating to us, His grace, which enables us to live His own life and to share in His divine nature, as His adopted sons.

Grace is the greatest gift which God has given us.
It enlightens our minds and moves our will to obey His commands and to perform actions which merit an everlasting reward.
It is an entirely supernatural and gratuitous gift.
For this reason, we cannot merit it but, we should continually pray for it because, it is absolutely necessary if we are to do good and to merit Heaven.
Our first ancestor, Adam, was endowed with this gift by our Creator.
Unfortunately, by original sin, he lost it for himself and for his descendants.

We cannot complain to God about this loss, since grace is an entirely supernatural gift which is in no way, due to our human nature.
For the same reason, we cannot merit it on our own.
But God, being infinitely good, as well as, infinitely just, sent His only-begotten Son to redeem us from sin and to grant us His friendship once more.

We should be very grateful to God for this extraordinary favour and should unite our efforts to the divine action of grace, in the performance of good works, which will enable us to merit everlasting life.”

Antonio Cardinal Bacci

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

MAKING LIFE EASIER AND NOT HARDER





We should always try to relieve others from whatever seems to weigh them down, just as Christ would have done in our place. 

Sometimes this will mean our doing some small act of service. At times it will mean giving a word of encouragement or of hope. at others we will help someone to glance up at the Master so that he comes to see his situation in a more positive light; it may be a situation which had seemed to overwhelm him simply because up till then he had felt he must face it alone.

We should think too of those aspects of our behaviour with which sometimes, without really meaning to, we make life a little harder for others ... our whims and fancies, our rash judgements, negative criticism, an lack of consideration for others, an unkind word ...