Per Christum

Here is a website worth looking at:
Purelove.com

“To defend his purity, Saint Francis of Assisi rolled in the snow, Saint Benedict threw himself into a thornbush, Saint Bernard plunged into an icy pond . . . You . . . what have you done?”
- St. Josemaria Escriva

(my compilation of what I like to hear on All Souls day)

“O death where is your victory? O death where is your sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law;

but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

May angels lead you into Paradise; may the martyrs receive you at your coming and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem. May a choir of angels receive you, along with Lazarus, who once was poor, may you have eternal rest.

-In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.

Mary, Mother of God, pray for them
Saint Michael, pray for them
Saint John the Baptist, pray for them
Saint Joseph, pray for them
Saint Peter, pray for them
Saint Paul, pray for them
Saint Andrew, pray for them
Saint Stephen, pray for them
Saint Ann, pray for them
Saint Teresa, pray for them
Saint Catherine, pray for them
Saint Frances Cabrini, pray for them
Saint Elizabeth Seton, pray for them
All holy men and women, pray for them

Christ, pardon all their faults

Christ, remember the good they have done

Christ, receive them into eternal life

Christ, comfort all those who mourn

Almighty God and Father, by the mystery of the cross, you have made us strong; by the sacrament of the resurrection you have sealed us as your own. Look kindly upon your servants, now freed from the bonds of mortality, and count them among your saints in heaven.

Sweet is the consolation of the dying man, who, conscious of imperfection, believes that there are others to make intercession for him, when his own time for merit has expired; soothing to the afflicted survivors the thought that they possess powerful means of relieving their friend. In the first moments of grief, this sentiment will often overpower religious prejudice, cast down the unbeliever on his knees beside the remains of his friend and snatch from him an unconscious prayer for rest; it is an impulse of nature which for the moment, aided by the analogies of revealed truth, seizes at once upon this consoling belief. But it is only a flitting and melancholy light, while the Catholic feeling, cheering though with solemn dimness, resembles the unfailing lamp, which the piety of the ancients is said to have hung before the sepulchres of their dead.
~Cardinal Wiseman

Sadly, I found out from Antonia’s World
That Dr.John Billings died….
Dr John Billings, world-renowned pioneer of natural fertility regulation, died last night aged 89 after a short illness.

John James Billings AM, KCSG, MD, FRCP, FRACP, was born in Melbourne on 5 March 1918 and educated at Xavier College and the University of Melbourne. Married to Dr Evelyn L Billings, nee Thomas in 1943, John saw service as an army doctor with the AIF during WWII in PNG. more here

I chose to study the Billings method for NFP about 6 months before I got married,(and use it now that I am married) after a friend loaned me her copy of “The Billings Method” book by Dr.Evelyn Billings. I had originally been studying NFP by Couple to Couple league, but since I was living in Australia at the time, it was easier to study something that most other couples I knew used. The Billings method is a form of Natural family planning that teaches a woman to interpret signs of fertility, and can be used to avoid or achieve pregnancy, using no drugs, devices or side effects.
Personally, I think it’s a great way for a woman to know how her body works and all the signs of change. It is scientifically proven too, no matter what stories are out there, if you use it properly it is effective.

So Dr.John Billings may have passed away, but has left women with a wonderful way, which allows us to manage our fertility without use of drugs and unnatural means.

Above is a picture of Dr.John Billings, meeting with John Paul II
The Billings Method

Mother Teresa is one of my favorites and always will be. I found her to be compassionate and loving among many other things.
Someone who can love a stranger the way she did is just amazing. She was a remarkable and compelling woman. We should also look at the lives of the Saints and find inspiration from their lives, and then try to use some of what they might have said or did, in our own lives somehow.
Here are some wonderful things she spoke about:

“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”

“Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.”

“Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. “

“I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.”

“I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God. “

“Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.”

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls. “

This last one, as short as it is, should speak loudly to a lot of us, and it taught me a lot about finding God in the still of it all. I hope you like these.

*cross posted and then re-edited from my blog.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is such a beautiful thing, the words contained in those pages are more exciting that unlocking fantasy secrets from fantasy Da Vinci codes, this is real and something to be explored by anyone who wants to unlock the “secrets” behind what the Catholic Church truly teaches.

One of my favorite gifts is my Catechism, here is an excerpt that I like and read this morning:

II. WAYS OF COMING TO KNOW GOD

31 Created in God’s image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of “converging and convincing arguments”, which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These “ways” of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical world, and the human person.
32 The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world’s order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.
As St. Paul says of the Gentiles: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.7
And St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: “See, we are beautiful.” Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change?8
33 The human person: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material”,9 can have its origin only in God.
34 The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality “that everyone calls God”.10
35 Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. The proofs of God’s existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.

cross posted at Winterr’s Words

I just wanted to share an article written by Ann Coulter titled “Abortion stops a bleeding heart”
In that, she writes:

“The Democrats are trying to “reframe” their message to make people think they believe abortion is wrong. I think this is going to be a hard sell if they plan to continue ferociously defending abortion-on-demand right up until the moment the baby’s head is through the birth canal.”


It was great to read about the March for life, in the USA, that was very impressive and I believe that the message was very strong.

To read Ann’s article click here

Being a pro-life Australian who will reside to the USA eventually, I like to keep up on what’s happening politically on both sides of the world.