A whole lot of forgiving going on

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In the Gospel from today’s Mass, Peter poses a question:

Matthew 18:21-22

Then Peter approaching asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.”

Jesus then goes on with the parable of the servant who was to be sold along with wife and family and possessions to pay off a debt, then begged and received forgiveness. In turn, this same servant failed to show the same leniency in forgiving a debt that he was owed. He paid for his lack of forgiveness. (Read the full Gospel reading at Matthew 18:21-35.)

What does this mean for us sober alcoholics? Quite simple, as we have made amendments to God and to others for our past wrongdoings and have sought and perhaps received forgiveness, so must we show forgiveness to others for their transgressions against us.

In cruder terms, we screw-ups generally recognize such behavior in others and should be more forgiving of it. We’ve been there, we’ve done that. How can we, of all people, sit in judgment of others?

As Christians, we can judge another’s behavior to a degree, but we cannot judge the person. In judging another’s actions, we must be charitable and understanding of that person’s dignity as a child of God. We do not tolerate and condone sinful behavior, we just retain awareness that we also were gravely sinful, and caution others in a loving manner of what we see as a wrong.

We sinned. We’ve asked forgiveness. We’ve received it. Others sin against us, and whether they ask for it or not, we forgive them. This cuts the bond that the trangression holds over us. As the servant in the parable failed to forgive the debt owed to him, and as a result was sent to prison to be tortured for his treatment of the other servant, so too, will our lack of forgiveness be like a prison of torture for us, as long as we hold onto the resentment over the action.

It goes deeper. In the Lord’s Prayer, also known as the “Our Father”, which is said at the end of many AA meetings in North America, there are the words: “…forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

In other words, there is more to forgiveness than merely releasing resentment against another. The degree to which we forgive other people is the degree to which we will be forgiven by God. No matter how much we beg forgiveness for ourselves, if we lack forgiveness for others, it will be lacking towards us from God.

It is only fair. We want something for ourselves, we should aid others in receiving it.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Remember your mercies, Lord

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As recovering (or recovered) alcoholics, we embark upon a new way of living. We are learning to live according to new principles, whether they be 12 Step or Christian. But we still have our old lives to contend with.

From the Reponsorial Psalm of today’s Mass:

Psalm 25:4-9

Make known to me your ways, LORD; teach me your paths.
Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my savior.
For you I wait all the long day, because of your goodness, LORD.
Remember your compassion and love, O LORD; for they are ages old.
Remember no more the sins of my youth; remember me only in light of your love.
Good and upright is the LORD, who shows sinners the way,
Guides the humble rightly, and teaches the humble the way.

This excerpt from Psalm 25 can serve as a prayer for those of us in transition from the old ways of drinking to the new ways of sobriety. We need a new way of living, a new path to chart our lives. We implore God to teach us the way, and if we incline our ears to listen to Him, we can discern the meanings and teachings in our heart. We learn to trod the new path.

The old path needs to be cleaned up. We have sinned against God and against others. We also implore God to forgive us for our past wrongdoings. We ask Him to blot out from memory our past misdeeds and to look upon us through a Father’s loving eyes. For a loving God He indeed is, as He sent us His only Son to die for our species’ past transgressions in the beginning of our history. Only Jesus, fully human and fully divine, could pay the price for our Original Sin. Jesus, in His human-ness, accepted our guilt (though He committed no sin), and in His divinity, He redeemed us. We would otherwise should have died as a species were it not for His compassion and love. He allowed us to live despite Original Sin, and instead had His Son pay the price for us.

This is the God that we implore to remember us in the light of His love.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

The Veil is Removed

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2 Corinthians 3:16-18

but whenever a person turns to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Earlier, I wrote about Eucharistic Adoration. The above Scripture quotation from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians can be illustrating the effect that Adoration can have on an individual.

We are in the Real Presence of Jesus. The Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ is there, mysteriously and inexplicably in the form of bread. When we enter into His Presence, whether it is in an Adoration Chapel or in a Church, we come before the Lord. We are unveiled before Him, and we gaze into His physical form. In the presence of God we cannot be unchanged. We are slowly being transformed, as St. Paul wrote, into what we see. We are transformed into the image of Christ.

Do you ever feel different when you are in the presence of someone great? That by being near them you absorb some of their greatness and charisma? Who is greater than Jesus Christ, the Son of God and who is God??

Visit an Adoration Chapel. There are two links in the sidebar, “Mass Times and Adoration”, and “Eucharistic Adoration” that contain times and locations worldwide where you can visit Jesus in the Real Presence of the Blessed Sacrament and be transformed by Him.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Lenten progress

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Lent is over two weeks old. In this time of fasting and abstinence, or becoming introspective and focusing on shedding sinful behaviors, how are you doing so far? A rhetorical question, your conscience can answer for you. You need to just listen to it.

I measure my progress by where I end up by Holy Thursday. This is regardless of the goal. You need not make steady progress the whole season. As sinners, we advance and we fall. We try to do better. The important thing is to not let our defeats get the better of us and convince us that we shouldn’t bother.

I forget the source, except that it was probably a priest on EWTN, said that a good Lent is one that is better that the one last year.

We fall, we get back up. We sometimes pay more attention to our sins and our weaknesses. As long as we remain focused on those, we run the risk of remaining in our defeats. We must instead learn to focus on the love and mercy of God. The Divine Mercy of God is freely available to any who ask of it. (See the Divine Mercy links in the sidebar.) By redirecting our attention to the love of God and His desire for us to be united with Him, we may more easily resist temptations and sinful acts, and also when we do fall, to rise up and resolve to do better.

We do not deny our sinful nature and sinful acts. They are just not the focus of our attempt to amend our lives.

As with Lent, in which we have the entire season to work with and not let early distractions and backsliding get us discouraged, we have all our lives to work with in amending our behavior and preparing, hopefully, for Heaven. As we continue to seek out His love and Mercy, and trust in His perfect justice, we will be on the path to our true home, Heaven. When our exile on Earth is complete we will be admitted into His loving embrace and be reunited with our loved ones gone before us.

Keep plugging along.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

My Daily Bread

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Time for another VERT prompt. Owen this time asks his bloggers to write about a book we are reading now, or, a book that helped us come home. For me, that would be My Daily Bread by Anthony J. Paone, SJ; Confraternity of the Precious Blood; Brooklyn, NY; 1954. Still in print, and I’ve seen it in the devotional racks of Catholic bookshops, where prayer books and missals are kept. Major Catholic mail-order catalogs offer it.

It’s a small book, it can be read in one sitting, but I think that it is best if you use it as a daily meditation and read one chapter a day. This would give you time to savor, meditate on, and incorporate each chapter into your spiritual development.

It is divided into 3 parts. “Book One” is “The Way of Purification”, and is subdivided into “Conversion”, “After Conversion” and “Temptation”.

Book Two is “The Way of Imitation”, and is subdivided into “Following Jesus in Daily Life”, “Virtues Leading Directly to God”, “Man’s Relationship with Neighbor and Himself”, and “The Spiritual Combat”

Book Three is “The Way of Union”, and is subdivided into “Union Through the Holy Eucharist” and “Union Throughout the Day.”

The above gives you a very good idea as to the intensity, the scope and breadth of the book. It is intimate. Not as in small, but it takes you deep inside yourself and assists you in starting or continuing your conversion process. If you’ve been Catholic for a long while, it will help you to develop your Catholicism far more seriously, and far more deeply spiritual than it was before.

You will learn about the importance of the interior spiritual life, the need to become closer to God and to be obedient to the authentic teachings and legitimate authority of the Catholic Church, and how this is liberating, and not confining.

The book is basically a boot camp on getting your soul in order. It explains how adopting the proper perspective towards God, the Bible and His Church frees you from the narrow, limiting human way of thinking, which follows the passing fancies of the World. This helps you to understand God, the Bible and the Church better. Too many people approach them from a human point of view, this book helps you to adopt a God-centric perspective (as best as any human can do that).

My Daily Bread was key in my thinking that the Catholic Faith can and should take primacy in maintaining ones’ sobriety. The universality of the Church and Her teachings, along with her primary task of safeguarding the Gospel and Apostolic Truths, are driven home. Much of the Gospel is about healing, and peaceful, proper, holy living. No better textbook.

It was the first step that led me years later to start Sober Catholic.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

"Does this Shock You?"

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Take into consideration the following passages from the Gospel according to John:

John 1:1-5

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 6: 35, 48-58, 60-66 (see John 6: 22-71 for the entire passage)

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.
I am the bread of life.

Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;
this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?”

Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.
For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
Then many of his disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”

Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, “Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?
It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
But there are some of you who do not believe.” Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him.
And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.”

As a result of this, many (of) his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.

This first passage is from the start of John’s Gospel of Jesus. It defines just who Jesus is.

Jesus is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity (I’ll explain the Trinity in a later post, hmm-mmm!). John refers to Jesus as “The Word.” Jesus is the Word of God. The Bible is also the Word of God. Jesus is the Bible. The Bible is Jesus.

In the beginning was Jesus, and he was with God, and was God (a glimmering of the Dogma of the Trinity) and was in the beginning with God.

All things (everything) came to be (were created) through Him, and nothing that was ever created, was created without Him. All of creation came to be through Him, including life. Especially human life.

He was the beginning, and was in the beginning, and was God, and was with God, and everything came into existence through Him.

Sounds rather confusing from a human perspective, almost as if it were a riddle, which in a way it could be. But not so much if you relax and ponder it prayerfully.

If you read this carefully, the implication is staggering. Jesus wasn’t just some itinerant First Century Palestinian Jewish preacher who claimed to be God and backed it up by performing miracles. Nor was He a just a wise man who had a lot of nice things to teach us about how to live and get along.

He was (for lack of a better word) the instrument through which the Creator – God the Father – the First Person of the Trinity- created the Universe. The single point through which all of Creation came into existence.

And then He, Himself, became a man and lived among us. Billions and billions of years after the Universe was created through Him, He did not come down to us in some majestic, overpowering Olympian way to do His teaching among us. He was born a vulnerable and innocent baby in difficult circumstances, as if He was using His own beginning as a human as a teaching lesson.

Now, the second group of passages are from John’s 6th Chapter. This is the “Bread of Life Discourse”. In it Jesus is telling His listeners that He is the “Bread of Life”, the truest path to salvation (eternal life with God the Father). Only through Him is the way to the Father fully revealed. And He just happens to mention that it is His own flesh that is this “Bread of Life”, and by eating His flesh one can attain eternal life. Naturally this disgusts some of His listeners and they cannot accept this difficult teaching of His, and they leave.

They are disgusted because He was speaking literally, and not symbolically, and they knew this. If He was speaking symbolically, they wouldn’t have left, or if so because of a misunderstanding, He would have corrected them. He would be a shepherd, going after lost sheep. But instead, He was literally referring to His flesh as bread, that when eaten will grant eternal life. This was too difficult to accept, his listeners left, and He didn’t change His story to accommodate them.

The entire passage (John Chapter 6, verses 22-71), forms the basis for the Catholic Church’s Doctrine of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. The wafer that Catholics receive during Communion is literally, and not symbolically, Jesus. Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, He’s all there, in the form of a little piece of bread. The priest utters the words at Mass which in some mysterious way humans can never completely fathom, transubstantiate (change the substance) of the bread into His Body. And yet it remains looking like bread. We cannot ever comprehend how this can be, it is a Divine mystery. But we have Jesus’ testimony in John’s Gospel that this is so.

Just as astonishing as God becoming human as a little baby, Jesus today is physically present among us as the Communion bread (the Eucharist). Humans just can’t make this stuff up. It would have been laughed at into oblivion 2,000 years ago. But they believed because they understood the symbolism of the bread, and accepted Jesus’ connecting it to His Body in a literal manner, and something about Him helped convey its truthfulness into their receptive hearts and minds. They didn’t understand it, but His followers accepted it. They knew it to be a Divine mystery and thus not to be understood completely. They trusted Jesus.

The Jesus in John 1:1-5 is the same Jesus in John 6:22-71. The instrument or point through which all of Creation was made is fully there in the form of bread.

Catholics have a devotional practice called “Eucharistic Adoration”. In thousands of Churches and Parish Halls and whatnot around the world, there are rooms or chapels in which the consecrated (transubstantiated) Eucharist is kept exposed in a receptacle known as a monstrance. It is common to spend 15-60 minutes every so often in prayer before the Eucharist. In some churches it’s done on a regular schedule.

To spend time in prayer with the Eucharistic Jesus. With Him, through Whom all things were made and through Whom all pass through to the Father, (and, as stated in the Book of Revelation, through Whom all things are made new again after the End).

OK, now
. If that idea doesn’t shake you a bit to the marrow of your bones…

NOTE: This post was edited on April 28, 2009 to reflect changes in links referenced in the original version. The URL cited previously is no longer valid and so was deleted. Since I often refer to this post, I figured an edit was needed.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

The healthy do not need a physician

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From the Gospel Reading for Saturday after Ash Wednesday:

Luke 5:27-32

Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post.
He said to him, “Follow me.”
And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him.
Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house,
and a large crowd of tax collectors
and others were at table with them.
The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples, saying,
“Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
Jesus said to them in reply,
“Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do.
I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”

The season of Lent is the season of repentance. Lent is probably the best time of the Church’s liturgical year for people to focus on the interior life of conversion. It is that time when we seek to identify those aspects of ourselves which demand improvement or shedding.

We cannot do this on our own. As recovered alcoholics we still suffer from the disease or disorder of alcoholism regardless of how long we’ve been sober. We need a physician, as does anyone who is sick. Jesus is the Divine Physician, He comes to minister to us.

Our alcoholic past produced much pain, both in ourselves and in others. In our recovery from alcohol we needed to clean up that past and to make amends. This process resulted in the healing of our self-inflicted wounds and maybe the wounds inflicted on others. This continuing process of amending our life produces the results of our recovery. We attend to our conversion process, we continue to grow and develop.

Jesus is our healer. He heals us when we petition Him, but does so in His own time, not ours. The duration spent in healing (the waiting I feel is a part of it) helps us to grow and develop our relationship with Him. We learn from our patience and from our suffering, and we carry this education in our dealings with others. Everyone is suffering in some way. Everyone is a wounded soul. The wise know this, the fools delude themselves.

As we come to terms with our past, we move forward and learn from our experiences and the pain caused. “We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.” (from Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., 2001, pg 83). We have divorced our pain from the memories associated with the past actions, but we retain the experience. The memories push us forward into wanting a better future with others and with God than our past indicated. And so we repent.

“I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners,” Jesus says in John’s Gospel account. We are all sinners, but us alcoholics and addicts have perhaps been a little selfish in accepting and acting on that part of our nature. By repenting, we are truly sorrowful and contrite in our admission of our past actions. We turn to Jesus and beg forgiveness and continued healing. The graces from God are freely available in the sacrament of Confession. It is a sacrament of healing. Guilt is removed and you are restored.

Let the healing begin. Go to Confession.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

For your convenience

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I have added some tools to this blog make it more convenient to read and access.

If you scroll down the sidebar, you’ll notice that I’ve added links to enable you to add Sober Catholic to your customizable MyYahoo and Google pages. The same for a customizable MyCatholic.com page, but please bear in mind that MyCatholic.com doesn’t have a login service, so chances are you will not be using it from a public access computer. It remembers your settings by IP address and browser. Aside from that, it’s a great Catholic portal, enabling you to subscribe to up to 20 blog feeds, in addition to their own optional default feeds. You can also grab up to 20 links, great place to have all your morning daily perusal links.

You can also subscribe to sober Catholic via email, the link for that is in the Feedburner section of the sidebar. Whenever I add a post, you get an email.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Feast of the Chair of St. Peter

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We are not celebrating a chair, so to speak, but rather the authority of the Pope, who derives his authority to teach and lead the Catholic Church by virtue of being the legitimate successor to St. Peter, the first Pope.

Jesus established His Church on Earth, and appointed St. Peter to lead it in His stead. This is why the Pope holds the title “Vicar of Christ”, he is the visible head of Christ’s Church on Earth, and teaches with the same authority. This is shown in today’s Gospel reading:

Matthew 16:13-19

When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi
he asked his disciples,
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Simon Peter said in reply,
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

St. Peter was the only Apostle to answer Jesus’ question correctly, and Jesus revealed that it was not through his own ability that he answered, but only through the revelation of God the Father. This is a basis for the Catholic Doctrine of Papal Infallibility, that the Pope is protected from teaching moral and doctrinal error by the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit. He is not protected from behaving immorally, as history has shown there to have been “bad popes”, but only when he exercises his authority as the successor to St. Peter in teaching matters of Faith and Morals. He cannot pick the winners of the World Series, the Super Bowl or the World Cup, or mandate that involvement in a war somewhere is wrong. Only in his role as leader and teacher of the fullness of Gospel and Apostolic Truth is he infallible.

This makes sense. You would think that Jesus’ Church would have a leader who has a guarantee of certitude in teaching. Otherwise he’s just a human, subject to human frailties and weakness. He is just a human, and subject to those flaws, but excluded are the areas I already referred to.

This is because Jesus knew that we would be easily led astray but all manner of strange teachings, as shown by all the Protestant and Evangelical denominations that all claim authority, but contradict each other, and often teach things in contradiction to Sacred Scripture. They have no singular authority with the guarantee that was conferred upon Peter and his successors.

This certitude is what attracted me to the idea of the primacy of the Catholic Church in my sobriety. AA was wonderful in helping me to establish my sobriety, but the vagueness and shallowness of its spirituality leaves it open to many personal interpretations and too many risks for falling for anything that sounds good. While this may be fine in some areas, when my immortal soul is at risk, I need a little definition.

In its 2,000 years of history, the Catholic Church has never changed its teachings on Faith and Morals to be fundamentally different than what they were. Her teachings have become more developed as the Gospel and Apostolic writings have become better understood, but the core remains the same.

This, to me, strongly implies that the Church has the guarantee of protection by the Holy Spirit. No mere human institution could have survived the Catholic Church’s turbulent history. It is a creation of God, and therefore as with all things that are of God, endures despite itself.

We, as Catholics, therefore need not have worries or questions about the why’s and what’s of Reality. The answers to everything are all in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition (the body of teachings of the Church from the Apostles and their successors, rooted in and derived from Scripture, and which illuminates it as well.) All other belief systems have some elements of truth, just not the fullness of God’s Truth. The human elements shift and change with passing human fancy.

Not a bad deal to safeguard your sobriety? This is the first of probably many (and occasional) postings on “Why the Church?” as a vehicle for sobriety I mentioned I would write, sometime before.

You want to weather adversity, and the storms that ordinary life tosses at you, no better refuge that the Rock: Peter, his successors and the fundamental certitude of their teachings, solidly rooted in Scripture and Apostolic Tradition.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Rending your hearts

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From the First Reading from the Mass for Ash Wednesday, 2007:

Joel 2:12-14

Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning;

Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.

Perhaps he will again relent and leave behind him a blessing, Offerings and libations for the LORD, your God.

The Israelites practiced circumcision on males to show fidelity and obedience to the Law of Moses, and by this, to God. Jesus did away with that as he completed and fulfilled the ancient Hebrew prophecies and established a new covenant with us. The passage I took from today’s Mass I liken to a “circumcision of the heart”, a way to show our fidelity and obedience today.

We strayed, and must return to the Lord with our whole heart. We repent from our misdeeds of the past. In this season of Lent we fast and abstain, and regarding our sins, weep and mourn.

God’s mercy triumphs over His judgment (James 2:13). Repent and be sorrowful for your sins. Offer up your sorrow to the Lord as a prayer.

Lent is a great time also to prepare for Confession, especially if you haven’t been in years.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)