Universal Living Rosary Association of Saint Philomena (ULRA)

GLORY BE TO JESUS CHRIST!

Dear Apostles and Benefactors of the Living Rosary,

What joy is ours today as we share with you thoughts on the most important subjects of gratitude, sin and apostleship! The greatest evil on earth is sin and we see all about us the woeful effects it has upon Nations, Families and the Church. This is not a popular topic but it is a most important one. The five faces of man in mortal sin are seen by faith alone; they are ugly, horrible and repulsive. The world has made many sins seem respectable. It has drawn masks over the five ugly faces of the person who commits them. Christ did three things to rip off the masks of respectable sins and reveal the five faces that lie beneath them:

1. He defined mortal sin simply and clearly as a deliberate violation of a serious Law of God.

2. He used His divine authority to set up a Church to teach His Laws so that man can know exactly what he must do and must not do to preserve the face and character of God.

3. By His words, His actions, His life, His sufferings and His death, Christ explained so that all could see clearly the inner and complete meaning of a single mortal sin.

If you have committed one mortal sin or a thousand, these are the faces you have made your own! The face of a COWARD! God chose you to share in His own nature and be His companion in the delights of Heaven. You pledged to do so at Baptism, at Confirmation, at every Holy Communion and Confession. You defaulted on your pledges for fear of danger or for selfish gain, for 30 pieces of silver just as Judas did. You wear the face of a HYPOCRITE. A hypocrite is a man who publically professes love for and devotion to right and lofty ideals, but who secretly acts contrary to his public professions. A hypocrite is a traitor. What kind of a person can profess to be a lover of the Crucified Christ and, yet, secretly does one or many of the things explicitly forbidden by Christ and by His Church? INGRATITUDE is one of the hardest things to bear in human life. It begins with indifference, silence and coldness when given a gift and it can progress to despising, insulting and injuring the benefactor. Can anyone doubt there has to be a hell for those who throw God’s gifts back into His Face by unrepented mortal sins? CRUELTY is a horrible vice that makes men inflict suffering on others for no reason or for a selfish reason and then take joy at the sight of the pain and writhing they have caused to the other.

Every normal human being shudders when he hears or reads of the Communist savages tormenting their victims for hours on end and laughing at their cries of pain. And, so, the face of a cruel torturer is put on by every man and woman who deliberately commits a single mortal sin, no matter how harmless that sin may seem to be in respect to their fellow man.

The victim of the cruelty caused by mortal sin is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Christ suffered the scourging, crowning with thorns, the nailing of His Hands and Feet to the Cross, and the three hours agony because of mortal sin. The moment we commit a mortal sin, we take on the face of the cruelest man in the world. The last face we assume through mortal sin is that of a FOOL! A fool is one who does unnecessary things which will result in suffering for himself and others. The greatest folly in this world is mortal sin. It is the only thing that can deprive a person of the everlasting happiness of Heaven. It is the one thing in the world that can send him to hell for all eternity.

Hell is a place of fire, a place from which there is no escape, a place of eternal torments. A fool chooses this place of his own free will against the balance of a momentary delight, or a few quickly passing years of pleasure. Let us beg God to forgive us our trespasses against His august Majesty and Mercy, and forgive our cowardly selfishness and cruelty: For my cowardice, I will now fast. For my hypocrisy, I will now abstain. For my ingratitude, I will give generously to the poor. For my cruelty to Christ, I will accept bodily pain and mortify my flesh. For my folly, I will pray and meditate that I may never again renounce wisdom for the face of a fool.

Let us do all that we can while we can do it,
Right where we are with what we have been given!

Let us begin now to trust God, to love Him and to be grateful to him for the marvelous gift He has made of Himself to us. We must trust God and be obedient to His Will in our lives. This is the greatest gift of gratitude we can give Him. Through our example, God will allow us to preach the Gospel to all Nations. Those around us will catch a ray of our fire, our light and our love, and they, too, will find God.

During this month of October, we are remembering you and your loved ones, those suffering, alone and abandoned, in our daily Masses. We pray for your health, perseverance, courage and peace of soul each day as we ascend the Holy Altar. Peace be to you!

I impart to you all, my priestly blessing:

+ In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Fr. IVAN KOLODIY
Byzantine Rite, Greek-Catholic Church, UKRAINE

LUKEWARM CATHALOCISM
(by Father William Casey)

“… I know your works, I know that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish you were either cold or hot, but because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth, for you say I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything and yet you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, white garments to put on so that your shameful nakedness may not be exposed, and buy ointment to smear on your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise. Be earnest therefore and repent.” Book of Revelations Ch. 3:14

Before I begin, let me say this to you. Today, with the help of God’s Grace, I am going to try to speak with complete honesty. At times, I may be somewhat painfully and brutally frank. Some of you, may not like what I have to say. NO MATTER! Tough times demand tough talk and tough love. If I offend anyone, I apologize in advance, but there are certain things that I believe have got to be said, things that have for too long been left unsaid. At this point, I feel like we priests have nothing to lose. St. Paul wrote, “My brothers, have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?” (2 Cor.)

I believe, there is a sense of urgency that must prevail among men and women of faith if the Church in this country is to continue in any kind of effective way. If we are going to turn this evil around, one thing is for sure, it is not going to be easy. Unless you have been living on another planet for the past year, you know that the Church in America has been most gravely wounded by scandal. Archbishop Fulton Sheen used to compare the Church to Noah’s Ark: Carrying the remnant of the faithful to Salvation through the storms of life and the flood tides of evil in the world.

With all those animals within Noah’s Ark for all that time, you can bet there were times when the smell got pretty foul. So it is with the Church, things are smelling pretty bad right now with the kind of scandals that stink to high heaven. There is hardly any talk of evangelization because everyone is talking about scandal. These scandals of the most shocking and abominable kind are perpetrated by consecrated souls who incredibly carried them out with the full knowledge of Church authorities who simply chose to do nothing to stop them. May God have mercy on their souls! New evangelization is stopped dead in its tracks. It is stuck in the mire of corruption. We have instead of a new springtime in the Church, a cold winter of unbelief.

Saint Paul said, “Who is lead into sin and I am not indignant.” Something must be done about it. I am appalled by it all, but I am not surprised or shocked by it. Anyone who knew anything about what has been going on in the Church and the seminaries for the past 40 years could have seen this day coming long ago. It was entirely predictable and it was preventable! My patience is wearing thin with those who would minimize and trivialize the gravity, the enormity, and the devastating effects of these scandals on the Church. Some respond in a nonchalant way saying, “We always will have scandals; oh well, don’t worry about it, things will work out. It will all blow over soon enough, God will work it out. No big deal, business as usual.” The idea that there is nothing we need to do to correct this situation right now is abominable. Please don’t tell me that scandal, moral corruption, dissent, and depravity have got to be business as usual in the Church, the “NORM” for us Catholics. If we are going to sit back and accept this, there is something wrong with us! Let me use this analogy. Suppose you are at home one day with your family and all of a sudden the children come running into the living room shouting to you that your house is on fire. What would you do? How would you react to that? Would you sit there calmly and say, “O well, there have always been fires, don’t worry about it, somebody will put it out, God will put it out, eventually it will burn itself out.” Is that what you would say? How many of you would react that way if your home was on fire? Friends, the Church is our spiritual Home and our Home is in danger! Yes, Christ promised that the gates of Hell would never prevail against His Church but He did not promise it would survive here. Think of all the countries around the world, all those Nations that were once entirely Catholic and, now, the True Faith is dead. Think of North Africa and all the places in Asia Minor where St. Paul preached; think of Scandinavia, think of England, Scotland, Holland, Northern Germany: Don’t think it can’t happen here! I tell you it can! Scandal causes the loss of souls. This is the worst thing that can happen in the order of creation! Nothing you can name in the order of God’s creation is worse than the loss of souls.

– Scandal destroys the faith of weak souls.

– Scandal destroys the public image of the Church and priests in particular.

– Scandal makes the work of evangelization very, very difficult and, in many cases, impossible.

– Scandal undermines the moral authority of the Church.

– Scandal is like a neutron bomb that goes off on the Church.

The buildings may still be standing, the walls still may be erect, but there is a killer contamination inside. It is for this reason that the Saints and Doctors of the Church were in total agreement that scandal involving unchaste priests is the worst thing that can happen to the Church. What would Christ do? The Gospel shows us that Our Lord took a very, very hard line against scandal. Some of His most severe words in the Gospel were directed to those who cause scandal. Christ took a hard line and we must also. “But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh. And if thy hand or thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to go into life maimed or lame, than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. It is better for thee having one eye to enter into life, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.” (Matt. 18:6-9)

St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the lay faithful have the right, the absolute right to expect and to demand, not only sound doctrine, but good example on the part of the clergy and Church leaders. And if they don’t get it, they also have the right to press for the reform and the removal of corrupt elements. If we don’t do this, we deserve what we get. God will punish both the men who do evil and the good who do nothing to stop the evil. The scandals, the corruption, the unrelenting media coverage and the Church’s public disgrace lead to a purification. It is a purifying fire that, God willing, will bring about good but it is much, much more than just a purification. It is also a judgment. It is nothing less than the Hand of God upon the Church in this part of the world for 40 years of infidelity, corruption, disobedience, dissent, affluence and, I might add, arrogance. 40 years of lukewarm Catholicism! We are going to have to be very careful, lest God vomit us out of His mouth. God willing, the damage done by the scandals will purify the clergy, the seminaries and the universities from a certain amount of corruption. The Protestant revolt, the Reformation, had that type of effect. Historians are in total agreement that the primary cause of the Protestant schism was the corruption of the Catholic clergy. The Protestant movement ultimately forced the Catholic clergy to reform themselves, but still the damage was done. We live with the terrible effects of the Reformation every day of our lives. St. Robert Bellarmine back in the 16th Century said, “The Protestant revolt is a punishment from God because of the sins of priests.” St. John Eudes, apostle of the Holy Eucharist, said, “The most sure sign that God is thoroughly angry with His people, is when He allows them to fall into the hands of a corrupt clergy.”

My brothers and sisters in Christ, you must know that the priests who commit these abominations, and do things that would make prostitutes blush, are men who had long ago rejected True Catholicism. Long ago, they bought into the mind-set of the sexual revolution. They failed to hold to the Church’s timeless teaching of the sanctity of marriage, human life and sexuality. With the rejection of the 6th and 9th Commandments, the rejection of chastity, comes the mentality that one can simply follow his own conscience. Animal activity is accepted as normal. The Church’s timeless teaching against abortion is thrown out. Self satisfaction takes precedence over God’s Law, over life itself! How long has it been since you heard a good sermon on sexual morality? Many bishops and priests no longer believe in sexual sin. People are sick and tired of lukewarm watered down Catholicism. They are sick of superficial, boring, non-committal Catholic preaching. They are sick of being fed false doctrine, or no doctrine at all. They are sick of a lack of sound catechesis for our young people. They have had enough of the rotten sex education programs which do nothing but incite young people’s natural curiosity and tempt them to solve it by personal experience. They are sick of the lack of teaching about sin, virtue and vice, the Commandments, Confession, family life and sanctity. They are tired of leaders who won’t make moral judgments publically and stand up and defend the faith as they are obligated by Christ to do, who seem to fear everyone’s judgment but God’s! Moral authority is like muscle tissue. Muscle tissue, if never used, will atrophy and die. This is our present condition. Our people are tired of shepherds who seem to protect the wolves rather than the sheep! They have had enough of the modernist mush! New Age nonsense has been shoved down their throats in place of the true Faith. People are fed up with the superficial spirituality of butterflies, banners and balloons. They have had enough liturgical abuses and irreverence at Holy Mass.

The Counsel of Trent said, “Where there is irreverence, there will be corruption.” Scandal follows corruption, like night follows the day. There is not now nor has there ever been a New American Church. It is a sham and a lie. If we don’t put an end to it, God will, sooner or later, one way or the other! Call it anything you like. It comes in many different forms, by many different names, in many different disguises, call it lukewarm Catholicism, call it cafeteria Catholicism, call it theological modernism, call it liberal American Catholicism, call it rationalism or relativism, whatever you chose to call it, it is a fatal disease. IT IS A KILLER! Ultimately, it leads to paralysis of faith and the ruin of souls.

Lukewarm Catholicism, in all of its various forms, can be rooted in many things: weak faith, loss of faith, moral laxity, habitual sin, lack of prayer, pride, material prosperity, spiritual sloth, sheer laziness, worldliness, whatever, but it’s mindset seems to have permeated everywhere and almost everything in Catholic life today, in one degree or another. It has crept into Catholic Schools, Bible Studies, RCIA programs, Religious Ed programs, Chancery offices and liturgical preaching. If you recognize the signs of Lukewarm Catholicism, if you see some of the symptoms in yourself or your home, in your family or in your parish, wherever you may see it, please, my brothers and sisters in Christ, the time has come to do something about it. Make changes in your life. Rebuild your interior castle with the seven habits of sanctity. It is the work of a life-time and requires our determined effort and cooperation with God’s Sanctifying Grace through the Sacraments. If we are to have robust spiritual health, we must develop these seven daily habits: The Morning Offering, Spiritual Reading, the Rosary, Holy Communion, Mental Prayer, the Angelus and daily Examination of Conscience. These seven habits must take priority in our lives for they are more important than meals, sleep, work or recreation.

The Church is mortally wounded in this country. Friends, don’t put it off. Don’t count on others to do it for you. Our time may very well be short. Bishop Sheen use to say that before the Hand of God comes down upon the world, it always comes down upon the Church. Surely, the Hand of God is upon the Church today. What’s going to happen to the world, God only knows. I fear that it will not be pretty. What is wrong with the Church? Lets take a mirror and look into it. When you come right down to it, we are what is wrong with the Church. I am what is wrong with the Church. You are what is wrong with the Church. We failed to take seriously God’s call to holiness of life. And, now, all of us have got to light our candles and stop cursing the darkness and try to turn this evil around. The situation is critical! Just look around you. Do you need more evidence or proof to convince you that God is, in reality, a low priority in the lives of people, in your own life and in your family?

1. Is your daily life characterized by spiritual sloth, time wasted, addiction to technical gadgets, TV, I-pod, computer, toleration of habitual sin?

2. Is there in your life a lack of devotion, compromise with the world, silence in the face of sin, error and evil?

3. Is there lack of charity, foul language and gossip in your home?

4. Does your wardrobe reflect the standards of modesty given by the Church?

5. Does the best of your time, talents and energy always seem to be expanded on the chase after more money, more material possessions, honors, and recognition?

“SPORTS” is one of the great idols of modern times. In the Old Testament, God punished the Israelites when they turned to idols. They worshiped Baal. We don’t worship Baal any longer; now we worship the God of Ball: Baseball, football, basketball, etc…!

It is time to rebuild the Church. Let every man and every woman who loves the Church do everything in his or her power to rekindle the fire of the Holy Spirit where it has been snuffed out by lukewarm Catholicism. Christ said, “I came to cast a fire upon the earth, and long to see that flame enkindled.” Are you going to light that fire? Begin by making Christ once again King of your home. Then, start by restoring reverence in our churches. It can be done! Don’t say there is nothing that you can do. You can still pray! If the priests will not listen to you, pray, pray and pray more that God will change their hearts or remove them! It works!

Saint Thérèse, the Little Flower, said: “Prayer moves hearts far better than Words ever can. I know it by experience. Prayer is an Invincible Weapon!!!”

If we don’t believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, we might as well close down our churches and rent out the space. Much of the liturgical experiment has failed. We are not holier, we are not more Christ-centered, in fact, we are facing a generation of young people who have largely lost their faith because we have not given them the precious gift that is at the heart of Catholicism: the Real Presence of God in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Holy Mass has simply become a drama, a vehicle for whatever agenda is currently popular. The church building is no longer a place of encounter with God, but a social center, not a place of prayer, rather a place of chatter. We have lost the sense of the sacred which has always been the hallmark of Catholic worship. The behavior of many in the church is outrageous. When Mass is over, it is impossible to spend time in prayer. The noise level reaches a pitch that one would expect at a sports event. Christ is forgotten on the Altar, indeed, if He still resides there. We are teaching our children, by what we do and the way we are behaving, that there is nothing special about the Sacred Host. The dethronement of the Blessed Sacrament has resulted in the enthronement of the clergy. The Mass has become priest centered, and people centered.

I have lived with lukewarm Catholicism all my life. When I was growing up, I can’t remember ever hearing anything at Mass, or anything from the pulpit, to get me fired up about my Catholic Faith. There was nothing to make me want to love more, know more and pray more. It seemed to me dead, yet it was so rich, so incredibly sublime and beautiful. So many of us never knew that. I feel like we were cheated of the beauty, the majesty, the eternal truth of our Faith and the glory of our Sacred Worship. We must not repeat the mistakes of the past. Now is the time to get it right.

God said to the Prophet Jeremiah, “Cursed are those who do the work of the Lord halfheartedly.” If you say you love the Church and you can’t get fired up now, you never will. There is something wrong. I want to ask all of you to do everything in your power to defend Her; stand up, speak up, rise up to put an end to lukewarm Catholicism! St. Padre Pio said, “Be firm in your resolution, stay in the ship in which Christ has placed you. Let the storm and the hurricane come. Long live Christ! You will not perish. What is there to fear? Let the world turn up-side-down, let everything be in darkness, smoke and noise, GOD IS WITH US!”

Share Your Gift of Faith

For centuries, our cherished Catholic faith has been passed from person to person, parent to child, etc. Each of us carries in our heart a special memory of how God first graced us with the knowledge of the faith and how Our Blessed Mother, Saint Philomena, Venerable Pauline Jaricot and other saints changed our lives and brought us closer to Christ.

In our work in the Universal Living Rosary Association, we see first hand how millions of souls are currently living without that knowledge of God and are living outside of His grace. We have been given a beautiful opportunity to carry out Christ’s work and pass on our faith and blessings to others who would otherwise never be introduced to Our Lord, the Savior of all mankind. Just as we pray for the souls in Purgatory who have no one to pray for them, we should also make it a part of our life’s mission to pass on our faith to as many souls as possible who have no one else to pass it on to them, who don’t know Our Lord and His promise of salvation.

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