Pray from the Heart
Our Lady is asking us to pray from the heart. By praying from our heart, the things that build up around the heart, creating a stone like heart, can be slowly chipped away leaving room to open our hearts to Jesus and feel the Love of God begin to reign in us.
During this Lenten season consider setting aside time to Pray from the heart.
God Bless
Jeff
Haitian and Chilean Earthquakes
"Why did this happen?"
Why did this happen?" How can our God who loves us allow such horrible evil in the world?
When natural disaster happen it is natural to ask the questions “Why did this happen?" God created the whole universe and the laws of nature. Most natural disasters are a result of these laws at work. The disaster causes many people to question God’s goodness. We know that God is love; and we cannot, it seems, reconcile a loving God with evil earthquakes that kill thousands. Could God prevent natural disasters? Yes! Does God sometimes cause natural disasters as a judgment against sin? Yes! Is every natural disaster a punishment from God? No!
Simple answers like “it is God’s will” and "Everything happens for a reason," can be incomplete. We may tend to make judgments from a short-sighted perspective.
We can often draw incorrect parallels between God’s justice and the evils of natural disasters. It is incorrect to assume for example, that the Haitian people alone committed sin which specifically brought God’s punishment upon them. We have all sinned. We all deserve punishment. It does not mean however, that because man deserves punishment that God has willfully inflicted every natural disaster upon him. When we gaze upon the Cross we begin to see the truth about God’s mercy and love.
In the Bible John 9 tells us: As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. 2 “Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?” “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him."
Such disasters events shake our confidence in this life and force us to think about eternity. Churches are usually filled after disasters as people realize how tenuous their lives really are and how life can be taken away in an instant. Many miracles occurred during the course of natural disasters that prevented even greater loss of life. Natural disasters cause millions of people to reevaluate their priorities in life. Hundreds of millions of dollars in aid is sent to help the people who are suffering. Christians have the opportunity to help, counsel, pray, and lead people to saving faith in Christ! God can, and does, bring great good out of terrible tragedies.
St. Augustine tells us, “For almighty God . . ., because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.”
Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life” (CCC No. 324). The Catechism of the Catholic Church acknowledges that only the Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to the question of evil. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil” (CCC No. 309).
From a Fox News Story: As desperate believers gathered to pray Sunday across the shattered capital, the Hatian Rev. Eric Toussaint told a congregation gathered outside the ruined cathedral that the earthquake "is a sign from God, saying that we must recognize his power."
As the Body of Christ Let us pray and offer aid for our Haitian and Chilean brothers and sisters that they may enter into the Love of God.
Humanitarian Aid:
Catholic Relief Services
Mercy Corp.
International Medical Corps
American Red Cross
World Vision
Sources: used to inspire this article:
The Bible
Trustful Surrender To Divine Providence: Tan publishing
US Catholic: Did God cause the earthquake in Haiti? by Meghan Murphy-Gill
Catholic Pathways: Did God Punish the Haitians? by F.K Bartels
Got Questions: Why does God allow natural disasters
Not The Relgios Type: Why Did God Allow Haiti's Earthquake?
Fox News: Religious Haitians Say Earthquake Was God Asking for Change
Wikipedia: 2010 Haiti earthquake
Photos: Wikipedia Commons
Photo: Portions of Reuters photo found on MailOnline World Nerws
Our mission is threefold:
- Foremost to help every soul on the planet to discover God’s Love.
- Secondly to educate you on a miraculous event that is happening right now in Medjugorje Bosnia and Herzegovina (ex Yugoslavia)
- Help spread the Gospel (the Good News) by offering high quality yet inexpensive recording services for Christian artist
God Bless
Jeff
"I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."
Matthew 17:20
"If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you.
Luke 17:6
"Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him.
Mark 11:23
And Jesus said to him, "'If You can?' All things are possible to him who believes.
Mark 9:23
"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches."
Matthew 13:31