Spiritual Exercises

Spiritual Exercises Day 5

 Exercises on The Punishment of Sin

See page entitled Spiritual Exercises.

Mormon? ... Jehovah Witness? ... Hindu? ...

 Today I asked a Protestant friend, 

“If someone said, they believed in God, but not in a Catholic God, what religion would they be?"
“Protestant.”  was the quick reply.

“Nope”  I said.  “This person wasn’t Protestant.”

“Muslim?” 

“Nope. Not Muslim.”

“em.... mmmm ... They said they believed in God but not in a Catholic God?”

“That’s right.”

“Mormon? ... Jehovah Witness? .... Hindu? ... Ok I give up. I hate riddles. What religion where they?”

“The Pope said it.”

Silence. 

Then: “Gosh.  What are you going to do?”

I just started laughing because I hadn't expected to have to do anything, about a Pope!

Sunday Sermon - A Call to Arms!

 Sunday Sermon Our Lady of The Rosary Church. Cork.  

Go to page:      Sermons From Cork

13th October 2013 -  21st Sunday after Pentecost. - vestment green

Spiritual Exercises Day 4

This is my living memory of the roots of my Catholic Faith.  My mother was reared in the middle one of the thatched cottages. Situated on the Dingle peninsula Co Kerry, it nestles at the foot of Mount Eagle and looks down to the chapel at Ard A Bhothair and the sea beyond.  Mama was born in 1925  in the reign of the Sovereign Pontiff, Pope Pius XI.  In that same year he instituted the feast of Christ the King.  Never stop thanking God for our parents and ancestors who passed on the authentic Catholic faith to us. "Give No Quarter" to anything less. 

Little tip: God created everything. Man makes loads of things using what God created and ONLY what God created.   Scientists never created anything ... ever.  God is creator - man is jigsaw maker. 

Exercises    Day 4

Creatures are from God

Creatures have the same origin as myself.  They, like me, have been taken from nothing, and He who drew them from nothing was God; but what difference between their creation and that of man!

Like me creatures occupied from all eternity the thoughts and heart of God; but they hald only the second place.  God loved me for Himself, because I was destined for His glory; He loved creatures for the sake of amn, because they were destined for the use of man, and because they only have reference to God distantly and through the medium of man.

Like me, they were created for the glory of God; but they have neither the understanding to know Him, nor the heart to love Him; they are incapable of possessing Him; they can only glorify Him in a very inferior and imperfect manner, that is, by the services which they render to His servants.  "Know O man thy dignity"  (St Leo).

Spiritual Exercises Day 3

little tip:  During these days while attending to everyday tasks, keep saying to yourself:  "I came from God, I belong to God, I am destined for God.

Third Truth:  I am destined for God

God is not only my creator and my master, He is also my last end.  A God infinitely wise must have proposed to Himself an end in creating me; a God infinitely perfect could only have created me for His glory; that is to say, to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him.  O my soul! dost thou wish for a proof of this great truth?

Ask thy faith; it will tell thee that God made all for Himself; "The Lord hath made all things for Himself" (Prov, xvi.4).  That He is the beginning and the end of all things:  "I am the beginning and the end."  (Aoc. 1.8)  That the greatest of the commandments is to adore, to love, and to serve God:  "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God;"  "Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve."  (Matt. xxii 37,iv.10)

Spiritual Exercises Day 2

Little tip:
While reading the words of the meditation imagine yourself on a long narrow road that stretches ahead and God is at the very end of it.

I Come From God; I belong to God; I will return to God.

Meditation: I belong to God:

I come from God; hence, I belong to God.  God is my creator; hence, He is my Lord and my master.  To deny this consequence would be to deny my reason.
The Lord enters into judgment with me, and deigns to argue His rights over His creature.  Is it not true that the master has a right to the services of his servants?  Is it not true that the king has a right to the obedience of his subjects?  The father to the submission as well as the respect of his children?  Is it not true that the workman has a right to dispose of his work as he chooses?  And I, the creature of God, do I not belong more to God than the slave to his master, than the subject to his sovereign, the child to his father, the picture to him who painted it, or the tree to him who planted it?   What is there in me that does not belong to God. 
“What have you that you have not received?” (1Cor.iv.7). What would remain to me if God took back all that He has given me? 
O my God! all I have comes from Thee;  it is just that all in me should belong to Thee.  “O Lord, just are thou, and glorious in Thy power, and no one can overcome Thee.  Let all creatures serve Thee; for Thou hast spoken and they were made; Thou didst send forth Thy Spirit, and they were created.”  (Jud. xvi.16.17)

Consider, O my soul:
Essential Dominion
It was not necessary that God should draw me from nothing.  But since God has created me, it is necessary that I should be His.  He would cease to be God if, being my creator, He ceased to be my sovereign and my master.

Spiritual Exercises Day 1

Find a quiet place.  Light a candle. Tell God in your own words how much you love Him.  Then begin the meditation. 

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I Come From God; I belong to God; I will return to God.

Meditation: I come from God:

Where was I a hundred years ago? I was nothing. If I look back a hundren years, I see the world with its empires, its cities, its inhabitants; I see the sun which shines to-day, the eart on which I dwell, the land which gave me birth, the family from which I sprung, the name by which I am known: but I, - what was I, and where was I? I was nothing, and it is amisdst nothingness I must be sought. Oh, how many ages passed during which no one thought of me! For how can nothing be the subject of thought? How many ages when even an insect or an atom was greater than I! For they possessed at least an existence.

But now I exist. I possess an intellect capable of knowing, a heart formed for loving, a body endowed with wonderful senses. And this existence, who gae it to me? Chance? Senseless word! - y parents! They answer in the words of the mother of the Machavees:

“No, it was not I who gave you mind and soul; it was the Creator of the world” (2Mach.vii.22) Lastly, was I the author of my own existence? But nothingness cannot be the cause of existence. It is to God, then, that I must turn as my first beginning.

“Thy hands, O Lord, have made me (Ps. Cxxxviii.5) “Thou hast taken me from the abyss of nothing.

Consider. O my soul, the circumstances of thy creation. (q) God created me out of His pure love. Had He any need of my existence, or could I be necessary to His happiness? “I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (jer.xxxi.3)

Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola