LENT-Greatest Season of Grace!

J+M+J+A+J

WHAT DO YOU WANT OUT OF LENT?

Your answer should be:   “HEAVEN”.

Why did God make us and every ratio­nal being?  KLSO — God made us to: Know Him, Love Him, Serve Him, & Obey Him.

What do we get if we do so?  HEAVEN.

What is so great about Heav­en?  Since God Is The Only Being, Who makes us per­fect­ly hap­py, when we die and go to Heav­en, we see God, Face to face, and we enjoy per­fect peace, hap­pi­ness, and joy, not for just a few moments, but for all eter­ni­ty, which nev­er ends.

How does Lent help us to get to Heaven?

     Lent is the most impor­tant Sea­son of Grace all year.  Dur­ing Lent, we are to change, to imi­tate our Lord more close­ly, and, thus, become clos­er to Him.  When we repeat our Bap­tismal Vows at East­er, we will be able to actu­al­ly keep them.  If we live and die, doing so, we will receive our reward for a life lived with God here on earth:  a holy, hap­py death, which allows us to go straight to Heav­en with no stops along the way.

     We should fol­low a “M.A.P”. to the emp­ty Tomb, from whence our Lord tri­umphant­ly rose from the dead, at East­er.  Fill in the fol­low­ing lines with your Lenten objectives:

M   = Mor­ti­fi­ca­tion:  ____________________

A   = Alms­giv­ing:  ______________________

P   = (extra) Prayer:  ____________________

     M = detach our­selves from mate­r­i­al things and attach our­selves ever clos­er to God and to the things of God.  Mor­ti­fi­ca­tion, which means dying to the flesh, helps emp­ty us some­what of our mate­r­i­al desires and helps us to be more open to the whis­per­ings of The Holy Spir­it.  We are also try­ing to imi­tate Jesus Christ’s exam­ple when He fast­ed from food and water for 40 days before He began His Pub­lic Min­istry on earth.  He did not need to fast — He was per­fect­ly detached from all earth­ly things, but He Is The Way we are to live and die holily, so He gave us The Exam­ple to fol­low when He fast­ed.  We can abstain from more than one thing, which is not  absolute­ly nec­es­sary to eat or drink, for good health, and it can include smok­ing, as well.  We can begin any good habit or begin to get a han­dle on any bad habit, dur­ing Lent.  The more dif­fi­cult it is, the more The Lord will appre­ci­ate our sac­ri­fice and reward us for it.

     A = giv­ing alms/donations to or mak­ing acts of char­i­ty to our neigh­bors.  Our Lord Jesus Christ lived on donations/alms dur­ing His Pub­lic Min­istry, yet He still had the per­son, who con­trolled the purse, give mon­ey to oth­ers, who were poor or in need.  Our Lord did this, even though He did not have a home in which to live and often slept out­side on the ground.  This should show us that we all have some­thing we can give to our neigh­bors.  If we can­not give mon­ey or mate­r­i­al help, we can pray fer­vent­ly, dai­ly for those we meet and those we don’t even know, who are our neigh­bors.  One of the six Pre­cepts of The Church is to sup­port our parish, which includes mon­e­tary help.  Our neigh­bors are those, who are in need and who are our ene­mies.  Our Lord showed us how to treat our enemies/neighbors, when He said to The Father from The Cross:  “Father, for­give them, for they know not what they do.”  He for­gave those, who were tor­tur­ing Him, mur­der­ing Him, spit­ting upon Him, blas­phem­ing Him, even though they did not ask or want His For­give­ness.  If we do not show Mer­cy to or for­give those, who hurt us, God will not show Mer­cy or for­give us — as shown to us in the “Our Father”.

     P = If we do not pray, we can­not reach Heav­en.  Why not?  We can­not reach Heav­en on our own — we have to rely on help from God, often through His Saints, to reach Heav­en.  How do we obtain this help?  Well, nat­u­ral­ly, we want to do what we want to do, when we want to do it, and where we want to do it — that is our will — what we want and don’t want to do.  But, we can only get to Heav­en by doing God’s Will, so how do we find out what His Will for us is, and how do we get the pow­er to go against our wills to do God’s Will?  We learn our Faith — mem­o­rize The Ten Com­mand­ments, which are writ­ten on each person’s heart and are our ele­men­tary guide to a holy life.  When we have man­aged to keep, The Com­mand­ments, and go fre­quent­ly to Con­fes­sion — week­ly — to rec­on­cile our­selves to God when we fall, then, we try to live out the New Com­mand­ments of The New Testament/ Covenant — The Beat­i­tudes.  We can only live out well The Beat­i­tudes if we are drink­ing reg­u­lar­ly and fre­quent­ly from the well­springs of grace, which are the Sev­en Sacra­ments.  Through the Sacra­ments, which our Lord insti­tut­ed, we receive grace — the pow­er to do God’s Will – to imi­tate Him.

     Through Bap­tism, we become adopt­ed Chil­dren of God.  The heavy bur­den of Original/ Dead­ly Sin, which dark­ens our minds and weak­ens our wills, is lift­ed off of our souls, so that we can see what is right and wrong and choose to do the right more eas­i­ly.  Our Lord also gives us the the­o­log­i­cal virtues of Faith, Hope, and Char­i­ty – super­nat­ur­al gifts. 

     Accord­ing to Proverbs 24:16:  For a just man shall fall sev­en times and shall rise again…”  Thus, as our Lord knew that the major­i­ty of us would sin sev­er­al times a day, He want­ed to give us a means to make it up to Him for our betray­als and to become His close Friends again, so He gave us Con­fes­sion or Penance (St. John: 20:21–23).   This is an incred­i­ble gift, which noth­ing can buy — peace with God. 

     The Most Holy Eucharist is our dai­ly, spir­i­tu­al Food, our “dai­ly Bread” – Jesus-Look­ing-like-Bread and/or Jesus-look­ing-like-Wine, which strength­ens us spir­i­tu­al­ly, so that we can imi­tate God and become ever clos­er to Him, each time, we “com­mune” with Him. 

     Through Con­fir­ma­tion, God makes us sol­diers in Christ, and He gives us the Sev­en Gifts of The Holy Ghost:  Wis­dom, Under­stand­ing, Coun­sel, For­ti­tude (or Courage), Knowl­edge, Piety — Love of God — and Fear of The Lord. 

     Through Holy Orders, God gives us spir­i­tu­al fathers, called by God to con­se­crate their lives to lead­ing us to Heav­en:  Priests, to teach us, to gov­ern us, and to sanc­ti­fy us, to help us to become Saints.

     Through Holy Mat­ri­mo­ny, The Holy Ghost descends upon a valid­ly bap­tized man and woman, who are in a state of grace/friendship with God, for whom no imped­i­ments exist, and The Holy Ghost gives this cou­ple the grace to remain togeth­er for the rest of their lives, to live at least civil­ly with each oth­er, to help each oth­er to be good, to become Cit­i­zens of Heav­en, along with rais­ing their chil­dren to do so, as well.  In this way, the King­dom of Heav­en is built up. 

     The Anoint­ing of the Sick is admin­is­tered by Catholic Priests to Catholics, who are in dan­ger of death or who are dying.  If the Catholic is cog­nizant, he should make a good Con­fes­sion; then the Priest will for­give his sins and anoint him, so that if he were to die at that very moment, with­out sin­ning, even in thought, the Catholic would go straight to Heav­en.  Some­times, the Catholic is healed not only spir­i­tu­al­ly but phys­i­cal­ly, as well.  That is why if a Catholic is to under­go a dan­ger­ous oper­a­tion, he should receive the Anoint­ing of the Sick, first.

     You might ask why the Sacra­ments were list­ed in the prayer sec­tion.  Prayer is com­mu­ni­ca­tion with God — to adore Him, love Him, ask for for­give­ness, and final­ly peti­tion Him for our or oth­ers’ needs.  Prayer should start in the morn­ing and should reg­u­lar­ly be done at var­i­ous times through­out the day and night and in case of need.  Prayer helps us to receive the Sacra­ments well, so that we gain the max­i­mum amount of grace to do God’s Will — not ours — and get to Heav­en when we die.  Very  impor­tant prayers include:  The Most Holy Rosary, The Chap­let of Divine Mer­cy, The Way of The Cross, the Morn­ing Offer­ing, The Angelus, Acts of Faith, Hope, Char­i­ty, & Con­tri­tion, Holy Com­mu­nion Prayers, Con­fes­sion Prayers, The Holy Face prayers,…

     Impor­tant Devo­tion to The Holy Face:

     On Novem­ber 24, 1843, Our Lord spoke the fol­low­ing words to the French Carmelite, [Bl.]Sr. Marie de Saint-Pierre:  ‘The earth is cov­ered with crimes.  The vio­la­tion of the first three Com­mand­ments of God has irri­tat­ed My Father.  The Holy Name of God blas­phemed and the Holy Day of the Lord pro­faned, fills up the mea­sure in iniq­ui­ties.  These sins have risen unto the Throne of God and pro­voked His Wrath which will soon burst forth if His Jus­tice be not appeased.  At no time have these crimes reached such a pitch.‘

Our Lord told [Bl.] Sr. Marie of St. Pierre on March 16, 1844:  “Oh if you only knew what great mer­it you acquire by say­ing even once, 

 ‘ADMIRABLE IS THE NAME OF GOD,’   in the spir­it of repa­ra­tion for blasphemy.”

     “‘By offer­ing My Face to My Eter­nal Father, noth­ing will be refused, and the con­ver­sion of many sin­ners will be obtained.’— Our Lord to [Bl.] Sr. Marie de Saint-Pierre (Nov., 1846).  Our Lord appeared sev­er­al times to [Bl.] Sr. Marie to ask for repa­ra­tion to be done to His Holy Face.  These rev­e­la­tions have the full approval of The Catholic Church. 

     The Holy Face Medal:  Bl. Maria Pie­ri­na de Miche­li (d. 1945, beat­i­fied May 30, 2010) was urged in many visions by The Blessed Moth­er and Jesus, Him­self, to spread the devo­tion to The Holy Face.  The Blessed Vir­gin Mary appeared to her, hold­ing a scapu­lar, which on one piece bore The Image from [Veronica’s Veil] with the words:  “Illu­mi­na Domine Vul­tum Tuum super nos.”  (“May The Light of Thy Face, O Lord, shine upon us.”)     and on the oth­er a [Sacred] Host sur­round­ed by rays and the words:   “Mane Nobis­cum Domine.”   (“Stay with us, O Lord.”) 

Our Lady promised: “All, who shall wear a scapu­lar like this and make, if pos­si­ble, a vis­it to The Blessed Sacra­ment, every Tues­day, in repa­ra­tion for the out­rages, that The Holy Face of my Son, Jesus, received dur­ing His Pas­sion and is still receiv­ing in The Holy Eucharist, every day, will be strength­ened in The Faith and be made ready to defend it, will over­come all dif­fi­cul­ties, inter­nal and exter­nal, and will have a peace­ful death under The Lov­ing Gaze of my Divine Son.”  [Bl.] Sis­ter Maria Pie­ri­na felt inspired and obtained per­mis­sion to have a medal cast,…  The first medal of The Holy Face was offered to Pope Pius XII, who approved [them].  On April 17, 1958, he declared the Tues­day before Ash Wednes­day (Mar­di Gras/Shrove Tues.) as the Feast of The Holy Face of Jesus,…  (tak­en from:  http://Church Militant.com/devotions/Holy-Face-Devotion)  Pray these prayers dai­ly for the Pope & US Bish­ops & The Sacred Heart Enthrone­ment! (for more info on this nec­es­sary Devo­tion  go to:  TheHolyFamilyHouse.org/The-Holy-Face-of-Jesus-Mardi-Gras)            E‑mail us at:  EDM@TheHolyFamilyHouse.org    

Print out, hand out, and fol­low the attached M/A/P to a good Lent, a joy-filled East­er, & a clos­er rela­tion­ship with Jesus, our Sav­ior & our King!

LENTandThe-MostHolyFace‑1–2

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