Monthly Archives: Mar 2017

Interview with the devil? 

31 Fri Mar 2017

Posted by in All Posts, Evangelisation

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Recently I went to confession. It’s something that I do at least once a week for now almost ten years. 

I’m writing about an experience that I had recently as a warning and also to highlight the need to pray for priests while also to choose a good one to share your soul! 

Excitedly I got to confession and poured out my failings as best I could after which the priest asked me where I’m from in a tone of voice that indicated that he had no interest in what I’d just shared. 

Out of politeness I replied as He asked me the next string of questions such as what work I have, ‘real work’ He meant not this living on providence and trusting the Holy Spirit!! 

Eventually He came to my sins to which he said that he could see no reason to give me absolution. My outbursts of anger at times and other obvious sins were ‘natural’. We went onto discuss some other moral issues and of course He didn’t agree with Church teaching there either… 

God gave me the grace to stay calm and eventually I talked him into absolving me. I left disillusioned thinking of how sad it was and also of the desperate need to pray for priests. 

A few days later I met another priest with whom I’m good friends and my experience was the opposite. Full of the love, wisdom and compassion of the Holy Spirit He exercised His priestly ministry with skill! 

Lord Jesus have mercy on priests, Our Lady help the lost ones and bless and strengthen the many good ones. Mercy, mercy, mercy! 

Rocky Faith

26 Sun Mar 2017

Posted by in All Posts, Holy Spirit & Prayer

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For almost 10 years now God has asked me to trust him and to live on providence, meaning not being in paid work but God’s work. Yet right up to today I could say that this challenges me and even still causes me a certain amount of anxiety.


Many of us grew up with a false image of God, a very distant God who loved us and had nothing to do with us. He gave us brains and gifts and that was our lot. So you see we had a type of faith, an empty faith, a faithless faith. We were not told about the Holy Spirit and that Jesus desired to have a personal relationship with us all, we were not told of inner healing and of experiencing the love and power of God personally.

And so many of us experienced God’s love for the first time later in life and ever since we are fighting a battle between what we learned to be normal growing up and what we now know to be normal.

Consider how you learnt your native language! Effortlessly you picked it up and similarly when we grow up in a culture without live faith, the effects of this go deep into our very being and can be very difficult to get rid of!

Had we grown up in a born again environment then we might be very different. We’d certainly have more faith and wouldn’t need some much healing.

The good news is that Jesus will judge us all depending on what we got, just like the parabol with the talents. He is patient, loving and considerate and just asks us to do our best.

I for one have spent years being given angry with myself for doubting and not having more faith rather than accepting Jesus’ patience and progressive healing of my doubts.

So if today you are struggling with faith, be gentle on yourself, it’s part of your brokenness that Jesus wants to heal and all He desires is thar you come to him with all your doubts and that you allow Him to strengthen you and indeed that you do battle with your own doubts using the word of God and recalling all the great things Jesus has done for you up to now.

‘Lord, I believe, help my unbelief’

Justice of God

24 Fri Mar 2017

Posted by in All Posts, Holy Spirit & Prayer

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God’s justice was something that I was always very afraid of! I had the idea that God was a very angry God and that he was counting up every little sin I did so that he could punish me! Needless to say I wanted nothing to do with this ‘God’!

Saint Therese of the child Jesus gave me a far  better understanding of God’s justice! Saint Therese realised that justice was about being fair and that God being just was actually a good thing! Realising that she was very weak and broken and incapable of getting to heaven on her own because of the brokenness of her soul she realised that God’s justice had pity on her!

When Adam and Eve sinned we all inherited the effects of sin. We were conceived with sin before we ever did anything ourselves. God’s justice saw that this wasn’t fair and so in his mercy He sent Jesus.

God’s justice sees nowadays all the struggles we face. He sees the lack of faith in the word and even in the Church. He sees the widespread confusion, He sees the terrible pressures of the world….and so in His justice, He is even more merciful and considerate of our life situations and so pours out even more mercy on us when we turn to Him and say ‘help’.

God’s justice knows that change takes time, He knows that the alcoholic doesn’t usually give up the drink overnight, He knows that struggles with things like lust won’t just disappear overnight. He knows that it takes time to forgive and heal wounds when we have been deeply hurt. He knows that it takes time for us to actually trust him. All this is part of his justice, his sense of fair play!

So in summary, be not afraid of God’s justice but rather see it as a good thing that you have a loving heavenly father who understands all your weaknesses who is willing to work with you patiently!

Thanks for reading!

Michael

CBT, Hypnosis, Meditation… 

07 Tue Mar 2017

Posted by in All Posts, New age & Demons

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More and more people are suffering with emotional health problems such as stress, anxiety, depression and so are seeking help through all sorts of things. Some common techniques to help with these conditions include CBT or Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Hypnosis, Self Hypnosis and meditation. I have experienced all these things personally and so felt a call to write about it!
CBT is basically becoming aware of your thoughts and changing them. For example every time you start thinking of chocolate, become aware of it and then manually choose to think of something else.. Chips!!

This definitely has its merits and its limits. In the Bible we are asked to put on the mind of Christ and take our thoughts captive. However we are also asked to seek forgiveness from God and reconciliation with neighbour.

So if the God dimension was added into the CBT techniques then it could be very powerful.

Funnily the Church has already thought of this. The spiritual exercises of St Ignatious and his methods for discerning thoughts and spirits are worth Gold!
Hypnosis and self Hypnosis are also very common. But beware, in my life I went to 2 hypnotherapists. The first nearly killed me by putting me in a transe and through guided visualisation introducing me to a spirit guide without ever even telling me!! There are enormous dangers with these types of therapies and playing with the subconscious. Many hypnotherapists are also trained mediums and use spirits to help them in their work. What they may not know is that it’s demons that they are collaborating with.

Self Hypnosis may sound safer, after all you are in charge. So I thought I until I tried it and overnight I became an accidental medium and began seeing angels and demons and experiencing all sorts of unspeakable paranormal activity. My therapist told me that I should protect myself with crystals and that it was ‘great’. Needless to say she never mentioned to me the risk of this happening when I came to her for help with anxiety. No extra charge!!

To be avoided!!

Meditations! Many involve relaxing your body, closing your eyes, visualing a light or a heat and allowing it to calm you. Again what they don’t tell you is that they are harnessing your natural ability to visualise and connect with the spiritual to psychically connect you with ‘healing energy’ of the universe or alternatively know as Satan in disguise. There are Christian meditations that use the same techniques and call on Jesus and these can be excellent.

In summary there are many techniques out there in the name of healing but unfortunately most of the practitioners are not Christian. If you need help and you take your faith seriously then seek out reliable Christians who are skilled in both matters of the spirit and the mind!

Mindfulness 

04 Sat Mar 2017

Posted by in All Posts, New age & Demons

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Since coming back to ireland I’ve heard a lot of people talking about mindfulness. Wikipedia defines it as basically blanking your mind and not thinking about anything except your breathing for example.

Mental health ‘experts’ say that it has positive benefits on people’s mental health so there are more and more people doing it.

Of course a dummy could tell you that if you spend a few minutes not thinking about your worries that it’d be good for you. It’s called common sense. But what about this business of blanking your mind and focusing on your breath or on the top of your nose or on a bit of food that you are eating…. Being ‘present’?!!

In a terrible irony in the name of being present these people are totally absent!!Jesus is looking at them, inviting them to thinking about His love for them, something far more powerful and relaxing for both mind and body. But no, instead of opening to the healing love of God they are more conscious of a bit of tomato that they may be eating with bad breath . They are in fact totally absent!

Christianity offers many different types of meditation and prayer practices all with the aim of allowing people to experience the presence of God. People practising mindfulness are good people but unfortunately they have been short changed. May they experience the power of God and Christian meditation so that He may bring them the peace of mind that they are looking for!

The 15 secret tortures of Jesus

03 Fri Mar 2017

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As I walked into a little chapel with 24 hour Eucharistic adoration yesterday a little leaflet found me. The 15 secret tortures of Jesus were revealed to a catholic sister who was later made a saint (Sister Mary Magedalen of the Sancta Clara order)

Before listing them I think it’s important to say how these should be read! They should not be read in an attitude that makes you feel guilty ‘look at how much Jesus suffered what are you complaining about’ or makes you feel that you caused all these wounds to Jesus.

Rather these should be read with an attitude to receiving the grace and the love of Jesus. ‘Look how much Jesus loved me, look at how much He suffered to save me because He loves me.’ One should then turn to Him in prayer and remind oneself that He is not dead but RISEN and that the same Jesus that suffered all this is smiling at you now and waiting to talk to you, to love you, the comfort you, to strengthen you!

When we pray like this we allow His grace to hit us NOW. Grace washes away our hurts, our loneliness, our weaknesses and it heals and strengthens us in love!

  1. The fastened my feet with a  rope and dragged me over the stepping stones of the staircase, down into the filthy, nauseating cellar.
  2. They took off my clothing and stung my boy with iron joints.
  3. They attached a rope around my and pulled me along the ground, from end to end.
  4. They hanged me on a wooden piece with a slipknot until I slipped out and fell down. Overwhelmed by this torture, I wept bloody tears.
  5. They tied me to a post and pierced my body with various arms.
  6. They struck me with stones and burnt me with blazing embers and torches.
  7. They pierced me with awls, sharp spears tore my skin, flesh and arteries out of my body.
  8. They tied me to a post and made me stand, barefoot, on an incandescent metal sheet.
  9. They crowned me with an iron crown and wrapped my eyes with the dirties possible rags.
  10. They made me sit on a chair covered with sharp pointed nails, causing deep wounds in my body.
  11. They poured on my wounds liquid lead and resin and after this torture, they pressed me on the nailed chair so the nails went deeper and deeper into my flesh.
  12. For shame, and affliction, they drove needles into the holes of my uprooted beard. Then they tied my hands behind my back and led me walking out of prison with strikes and blows.
  13. They threw me upon a cross and attached me so tightly that I could hardly breathe anymore.
  14. They threw at my head as I lay on the earth, and they stepped on me, hurting my head.
  15. They poured into my mouth thee most immodest excretions, as they uttered the most infamous expressions about me.

Jesus asks that we honour these wounds and that we offer them to Him WITH LOVE. He then gave this prayer:

“My Lord and my God, it is my unchangeable will to honour you in these 15 secret torments when you shed your precious blood. As many times as there are grains of sand around the seas, as grains of wheat in fields, as blades of grass in the meadows, as fruits in the orchards, as leaves on the trees, as flowers in the gardens, as stars in the sky, as angels in heaven, as creatures on earth, so many thousand of times may you be glorified, praised and honoured. O most love-worthy Lord Jesus Christ- your holiest heart, your precious blood, your divine sacrifice for mankind, the holiest sacrament of the altar, the most holy virgin Mary, the 9 choirs of angels and the blessed Phalanx of the Saints, from myself and everyone, now and forever, and in the eternal ages”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spiritual Health

01 Wed Mar 2017

Posted by in All Posts, Healing

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Today is ash Wednesday, it is the first day of lent and so is a day that we may reflect on our spiritual well being and decide to make some special effort over the next 6 weeks to do a bit of a clean up! I gave this teaching before in Australia, looking at spiritual health by comparing it with something that we are all familiar with, our dental health!

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Often we hear about that perfect smile and when we look into our mouth we can pick out the areas where work is needed. Signs of problems include bad breath, yellow stains, black spots, build up of tartar, bleeding gums etc. while signs of health include fresh breath,, white teeth, strong healthy gums…

As we take a moment to think of our souls the Bible tells us what is unhealthy and what is healthy in Galatians Chapter 5!

 

good-teeth

 “The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”

 

church

 

Of course none of us are perfect but perhaps today would be  good day for us all to look into the mirrors of our souls and to do a little ‘examination’.

Now God in His love and mercy has blessed us with the equivalent of a dental surgery, the Church and many dental surgeons and nurses in the form of priests, pastors, lay ministers and others. He has not left us either without practical remedies to stay healthy!

 

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  • Toothbrush : just as we brush our teeth twice a day, the Church advises that we pray at least twice a day, morning in evening asking God to guide and protect us during the day!
  • Mouthwash: despite our best efforts a certain amount of bad stuff can attack our teeth, sugar or whatever! Similarly on any given day which one of us have not perhaps fallen into gossip or anger or whatever! Padre Pio recommended for this a daily examination of conscience and an act of contrition to God!
  • Dental Floss: What better dental floss that the rosary, as we lovingly pray the rosary with the eyes and ears of our hearts open to the Holy Spirit, Our Lady will not be long in weeding out any piece of meat that many have got stuck in our teeth!

 

dentist

 

  • Regular Check ups:  Just as we visit the dentist regularly for a check up and even more regularly.
  • Need a filling? : Bingo go to confession and  bring that pain to Jesus!
  • Root canal? : Some pains just don’t seem to go away, there are many priests and lay people with inner healing gifts and you may need a bit of specific deep healing prayer to heal that deep hurt!

And of course, healthy eating such as going to regular mass, Eucharistic adoration, reading spiritual books, attending Christian prayer groups, listening to Christian music and watching Christian films will go a long way in avoiding major problems! Needless to say watching pornography, listening to inappropriate music and watching inappropriate films will accelerate your health problems!!

 

prayer

Holiness in today’s world is a big challenge and God knows this, all He asks is that we do our best with the remedies that He has given to us and that when we fall short we run back to Him for help!

So this lent, what might you give up? or what perhaps might you take up?

God bless us all this lent, may He bring us closer to Him by taking away our desire for the pleasures of the world and filling us with zeal for things of the Spirit as we cooperate with His grace!

Blessings

Michael