Take My Hand

January 22, 2013 by Be Holy

Take my hand , my Jesus.
Here I am, Your child,
Too small to stand on my own,
Yet welcome before Your throne.

It is, You, My Cause,
Who sets me upright,
Through and through,
To be like unto You.

All my life called,
And marked by Love Divine,
Under Your Shadow, sun shining above,
One command only, Love!

Who can love without You?
This, too, You supply.
You spend Your Life’s Blood
To draw me from mire and mud.

All from Adam
In human chain,
Hold hands to be set free,
Man from Sin in loving Thee.

Participating in the Sin of Abortion

October 25, 2012 by Be Holy

Nine ways of participating in the sin of another:

1. by counsel

2. by command

3. by consent ("I’m personally opposed to it but" )

4. by provocation

5. by praise or flattery

6. by concealment

7. by being an accomplice

8. by partaking

9. by Silence!

Once you snuff out a child in its mother’s womb you have crossed the line and there is no sin off-limits to you. Society can’t hide behind our laws and our complicit politicians. Yes those in positions of authority bear the greater responsibility but their accountability does not set us free! How deafening the silence. Silence in our churches, our schools, our universities, our laboratories and the halls of government.

The fact that a law was passed to enable the atrocity of abortion, does not pour clean water over the scarlet decision. It simply makes our culpability national and places our country in the cross hairs of retribution. You can declare a human being a non-person, but the DNA, the blood and the flesh, the substance and the soul witness against our immoral "Law." Relativism may allow our society to lie to itself, but the law written on our hearts will condemn us. We do have freedom of choice. God’s law commands we choose life and not death. So there is a reason the right choice matters.

"I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live" – Deuteronomy 30:19

This sin too was nailed in Christ to the Cross. It is time to leave the darkness and live in the Light.

Life Begins – Science of the Womb

October 10, 2012 by Be Holy

Posted by M. Forrest:

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/national-geographic-channel/all-videos/ngc-in-the-womb-1/

Four statements seem particularly interesting, but the entire video is worth watching:

“Once within the egg wall, the sperm’s nucleus is drawn toward the egg’s. The two cells gradually and gracefully become one. This is the moment of conception – when an individual’s unique set of DNA is created – a human signature that never existed before and will never be repeated.”

“The mother provides the shelter and the basics – food, water and oxygen. But the real star of the show is the fetus herself – building, dividing, growing according to an intricate set of plans created at the moment of conception.”

“The genes she’s [the girl shown in the womb] inherited already predetermine her looks and much of her character. Whether she’s stubborn or intelligent, a thrill-seeker or good at music and even her vulnerabilities to certain diseases like cancer, schizophrenia and diabetes. The exact course of her life will depend on such things as her friends, family and environment. But at the instant of fertilization, much of her future is predetermined.”

“Where it once seemed that the mental development of a baby began at birth, now it appears that birth could be a relatively insignificant event in developmental terms. She may have to support herself after birth, but as for the process of thinking, learning and remembering, she’s already been hard at it for three months [before birth]. And her brain will continue to grow at the same rate for the next year.”

Considering Human Life

August 15, 2012 by Be Holy

From a comment considering human life
Yong Lee
Shanghai, China
We must not forget that life is a continuum and a mystery. Dissecting it into small fragments destroys both. One thing is for certain, destroying a fetus guarantees one less baby, one less toddler, one less child, one less adolescent, and one less adult man or woman in the world. With that, all of the potentials as well as detriments of the loss are gone. But it is not up to us to determine the value of a life by the outcome. We can only take it as it comes- that is the wonder of life.In all of nature, life cannot be chopped into pieces. Either we embrace it whole, or we lose it all. Disrupt the migration of salmons (a trip) and we destroy the species. The virtue, and perhaps the trouble of our existence, is that whole does indeed need every piece.
By arguing and devaluing a passage in life common to us all, specially the most frail of our stages, we miss the point entirely. Argue endless about whose body it is, whose body it is not, whose right to choose it is, what a fetus is, and we forget that each of us belong to a web people without whom we cannot exist.

Purification in the Paschal Mystery

March 20, 2010 by Be Holy

From the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world of the Second Vatican Council
(Gaudium et spes, nn. 37-38)

All human activity is to find its purification in the paschal mystery

Holy Scripture, with which the experience of the ages is in agreement, teaches the human family that human progress, though it is a great blessing for man, brings with it a great temptation. When the scale of values is disturbed and evil becomes mixed with good, individuals and groups consider only their own interests, not those of others.

The result is that the world is not yet a home of true brotherhood, while the increased power of mankind already threatens to destroy the human race itself.

If it is asked how this unhappy state of affairs can be set right, Christians state their belief that all human activity, in daily jeopardy through pride and inordinate self-love, is to find its purification and its perfection in the cross and resurrection of Christ.

Man, redeemed by Christ and made a new creation in the Holy Spirit, can and must love the very things created by God. For he receives them from God, and sees and reveres them as coming from the hand of God.

As he gives thanks for them to his Benefactor, and uses and enjoys them in a spirit of poverty and freedom, he enters into true possession of the world, as one having nothing and possessing all things. For all things are yours, and you are Christs, and Christ is Gods.

The Word of God, through whom all things were made, himself became man and lived in the world of men. As perfect man he has entered into the history of the world, taking it up into himself and bringing it into unity as its head. He reveals to us that God is love, and at the same time teaches us that the fundamental law of human perfection, and therefore of the transformation of the world, is the new commandment of love.

He assures those who have faith in Gods love that the way of love is open to all men, and that the effort to restore universal brotherhood is not in vain. At the same time he warns us that this love is not to be sought after only in great things but also, and above all, in the ordinary circumstances of life.

He suffered death for us all, sinners as we are, and by his example he teaches us that we also have to carry that cross which the flesh and the world lay on the shoulders of those who strive for peace and justice.

Constituted as the Lord by his resurrection, Christ, to whom all power in heaven and on earth has been given, is still at work in the hearts of men through the power of his Spirit. Not only does he awaken in them a longing for the world to come, but by that very fact he also inspires, purifies and strengthens those generous desires by which the human family seeks to make its own life more human and to achieve the same goal for the whole world.

The gifts of the Spirit are manifold. He calls some to bear open witness to the longing for a dwelling place in heaven, and to keep this fresh in the minds of all mankind; he calls others to dedicate themselves to the service of men here on earth, preparing by this ministry the material for the kingdom of heaven.

Yet he makes all free, so that, by denying their love of self and taking up all earths resources into the life of man, all may reach out to the future, when humanity itself will become an offering acceptable to God.