Guns N' Rosaries Mission

Through fellowship, education and charitable acts we seek to reclaim our Christian baptismal inheritance as Priests, Prophets and Kings. Priests are known throughout Scripture for giving sacrifice, so we seek to sacrifice our lives for Christ through donating ourselves to others, particularly our families. Being a Prophet means to speak on God's behalf. Through educating ourselves in Holy Scripture and Catholic Tradition we aim to articulate Truth through the way that we live and speak about the faith to others. Kings have three primary tasks; (1) Lead his people into battle, (2) Look after widows and orphans, (3) Care for the poor. We participate in this kingship by picking up the daily fight against personal sin and in particular by caring for the poor through personal relationships and material help for those in need. In order to achieve this mission we invoke the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Joseph.

Friday, September 11, 2015

Pope’s Morning Homily: 'Accusing Yourself is The First Step in Avoiding Hypocrisy'

Pope’s Morning Homily: 'Accusing Yourself is The First Step in Avoiding Hypocrisy'

Reflects on the Generosity of Forgiveness and Mercy During Mass at Casa Santa Marta

Rome, (ZENIT.org) Junno Arocho Esteves | 290 hits



 
“Saint Paul teaches us to accuse ourselves. And the Lord, with that image of the speck that is in your brother’s eye and the beam in yours, teaches us the same.”
 
These were Pope Francis’ words during his homily this morning at Mass in Casa Santa Marta.
According to Vatican Radio, the Holy Father began by reflecting on today’s first reading from St. Paul’s 1st Letter to Timothy, in which the apostle praises God’s mercy on him despite his sins.
“I am grateful to him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because He considered me trustworthy in appointing me to the ministry. I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man, but I have been mercifully treated because I acted out of ignorance in my unbelief,” St. Paul says.
 
Commenting on the beauty of Paul’s words, the Holy Father explained that the first step in obtaining such humility is to accuse one’s self.
 
“The courage to accuse yourself, before accusing the others,” he said. “And Paul praises the Lord because He chose him and gives thanks ‘because He considered me trustworthy in appointing me to the ministry. I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man’. But there was mercy.”
Accusing Ourselves: The First to Magnanimity
 
Like the first reading, the 78 year old Pontiff noted that today’s Gospel also speaks on the importance of accusing ourselves.
 
“How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’ when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?” Jesus asks his disciples in Luke’s Gospel.
Jesus, the Holy Father explained, uses a specific word to describe those who are “two-faced”: hypocrite.
 
“The man and woman who do not learn to accuse themselves become hypocrites,” he said.
“Everyone, eh? Everyone. Beginning with the Pope all the way down: everyone. If one of us does not have the ability to accuse themselves and then says [...] things about others, they are not Christian, they do not enter into this beautiful work of reconciliation, of peace, of tenderness, of goodness, of forgiveness, of magnanimity, of mercy that Jesus Christ has brought to us.”
 
The Jesuit Pope called on the faithful to pray for the Lord’s grace of conversion and to pause before pointing out another’s defects. Recalling St. Paul’s words, the Pope said that first step to magnanimity is to save those comments about others and instead make comments about ourselves.
 
“The one who only knows how to look at the speck in another’s eye, ends up in pettiness: a petty soul, full of trivialities, full of gossip,” he warned.
Concluding his homily, Pope Francis exhorted the faithful to ask God for the grace to be generous in forgiveness and in mercy.

“To canonize a person,” he said, “there is a whole process, there is a need for a miracle and then the Church declares the person a saint. But, if a person who has never, never spoken ill of another is found, they can be canonized immediately.”

Monday, September 7, 2015

ANGELUS ADDRESS: On Restoring Communication

ANGELUS ADDRESS: On Restoring Communication

"His deafness expresses the inability to hear and to understand, not just the words of man, but also the Word of God"

Vatican City, (ZENIT.org) Staff Reporter | 1056 hits



Here is a ZENIT translation of the address Pope Francis gave today before and after praying the midday Angelus with those gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
* * *
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

The Gospel of today relates Jesus’ healing of a man who was deaf and unable to speak, an incredible event that shows how Jesus re-establishes the full communication of man with God and with other people. The miracle is set in the district of the Decapolis., that is, in completely pagan territory; thus, this deaf man who is brought before Jesus becomes the symbol of an unbeliever who completes a journey to faith. In effect, his deafness expresses the inability to hear and to understand, not just the words of man, but also the Word of God. And St. Paul reminds us that "faith comes from what is heard."

The first thing that Jesus does is take this man far from the crowd: He doesn’t want to give publicity to this action that he’s going to carry out, but he also doesn’t want his word to be lost in the din of voices and the chatter of those around. The Word of God that Christ brings us needs silence to be welcomed as the Word that heals, that reconciles and re-establishes communication.

Then we are told about two movements Jesus made. He touches the ears and the tongue of the deaf man. To re-establish the relationship with this man who is "blocked" in communication, he first seeks to re-establish contact. But the miracle is a gift that comes from on high, which Jesus implores from the Father. That’s why he raises his eyes to the heavens and orders, "Be opened." And the ears of the deaf man are opened, the knot of his tongue is untied and he begins to speak correctly.

The lesson we can take from this episode is that God is not closed in on himself, but instead he opens himself and places himself in communication with humanity. In his immense mercy, he overcomes the abyss of the infinite difference between Him and us, and comes to meet us. To bring about this communication with man, God becomes man. It is not enough for him to speak to us through the law and the prophets, but instead he makes himself present in the person of his Son, the Word made flesh. Jesus is the great "bridge-builder" who builds in himself the great bridge of full communion with the Father.

But this Gospel speaks to us also about ourselves: Often we are drawn up and closed in ourselves, and we create many inaccessible and inhospitable islands. Even the most basic human relationships can sometimes create realities incapable of reciprocal openness: the couple closed in, the family closed in, the group closed in, the parish closed in, the country closed in. And this is not of God. This is ours. This is our sin.

However, at the origin of our Christian life, in baptism, precisely that gesture and that word of Jesus are present: "Ephphatha!" "Be opened!" And the miracle has been worked. We have been healed of the deafness of egotism and the muteness of being closed in on ourselves, and of sin, and we have been inserted into the great family of the Church. We can hear God who speaks to us and communicates his Word to those who have never before heard it, or to the one who has forgotten it and buried it under the thorns of the anxieties and the traps of the world.

Let us ask the Virgin Mary, a woman of listening and of joyful testimony, that she sustains us in the commitment to profess our faith and to communicate the marvels of the Lord to those we find along our way.