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Saturday 14 March 2015

Prayers needed for someone else and a salutary lesson


An acquaintance of mine, a man my age,is in critical condition in the hospital with complications of an operation. It is unlikely that he will live. He is a good Protestant and we have discussed Christ and the times in which we live. He did not expect, when he went in to the hospital, to be facing death.

Please pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet for him. Just use the phrase, "STM's person in hospital" as I do not want to share names.

Now, the salutary lesson is this. This person spent a great deal of time, energy and money chasing prophecies of the end times. He went to conferences and bought books on this subject, spent time on YouTube watching videos of his favorite Protestants who preach.

He did not pursue an interior disposition of quietude or contemplation. Now, in the land of the dying, he will see what is the one thing necessary for life--the pursuit of Christ in our daily lives, in us--and, like Catholics who pursue apparitions, that such knowledge does not save us.

Knowledge of things to come can be prophecies to make our daily prayer life more intense and urgent. But, none of us become holy by knowing the latest prophecy or the latest apparitions. None of us become holy following messages from Mary from unapproved visions, or worse, from condemned visionaries.

I know too many good people, who follow the Ten Commandments, but do not go "higher up and higher in." It we are not orthodox, we have a very small chance of salvation. One starts with the basics, believing in the Trinity, the Eucharist, and so on. Maybe if he had gone into Scripture more deeply instead of pursuing end-time prophecies and puzzles, he would have become a Catholic and received Christ in the Eucharist.

John 6:53New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

53 So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

God has called us all to become holy, to become perfect, in order to build the Church on earth and to be one with Him. Only the perfect see God which means most good people if they are saved, go to purgatory, a terrible place of punishment, loss, pain, regret and mortification.

Heaven is not assured to all, but to those who love God with their whole heart, soul, mind, body...There are not many ways to God, only one way.


Pray for my Protestant acquaintance.