Editorial
Coldness
“And because iniquity has abounded,
the charity of many shall grow cold.” -- Matthew 24, 12
“Puritanism is only a paralysis.” -- G.K. Chesterton
The title of this editorial refers to a defect or sin that is frequent and that causes great harm. It also has the names of: indifference, negligence, selfishness, unkindness, harshness and frigidity. The opposite virtue is charity, kindness, warmth, affection, amiability. One is symbolized by something cold, the other by something warm, such as a flame or the sun.
The Greatest Sin
Theologians have often debated what is the greatest sin. It is almost impossible to answer. The worst sin is the sin that has the worst effect. All sins have bad effects, but one of the worst is coldness. From what Christ said about the last judgment in Matthew, Ch. 25, one gets the impression that the reprobate were condemned because of their coldness, because of not showing kindness when God wanted them to show it. “I was hungry, and you did not give me to eat, etc.” And they received the sentence that coldness deserves: “Depart from me, ye accursed, etc.”
Do not let coldness enter in
A holy French abbot said, shortly before his death: “My dear children, never forget the last advice and testament of your most loving father. I implore you in the name of our divine Saviour always to love one another, and never to permit the least coldness toward any brother to be for a moment in your breasts, or anything by which perfect charity may suffer any harm in your souls. You have borne the yoke of penance and are grown old in the exercise of religious duties in vain, if you do not sincerely love one another. Without this, martyrdom itself cannot make you acceptable to God. Fraternal charity is the soul of a religious house.” Having spoken these words, he happily surrendered his soul into the hands of the Creator (from life of St. Aichardus).
The saint’s advice is good, not only for religious, but for all men and women, in any family, group, organization, club or gathering. One of the worst effects of coldness is that it makes worthless other actions, for example, prayer. It is inconsistent to pray “Thy will be done,” and then to do the opposite of what God wants: He does not want people to treat others with coldness. “Without this (charity, kindness) martyrdom itself cannot make you acceptable to God.”
Obstacles
Sometimes people show coldness to their neighbors from negligence, indifference and even from cruelty. Sometimes people would like to show kindness and admiration to their neighbors, but cannot because of lack of experience and timidity… and sometimes because they live in an English-speaking country. (See article “They would like it to happen” in this issue). Coldness is like a paralysis that prevents people from showing kindness when it should be shown. There are people who do not want to be unkind or cruel and they have kind sentiments in their minds and hearts, but they cannot express what they feel. A stupid coldness prevents them. Even when they have good intentions, their silence and omission of kind actions often causes coldness and sadness in the lives of others.
A Legion of Victim Souls
In this issue there is an article about how the legion of victim souls is growing. When there are more victim souls, there will be less injustice, less coldness and less unkindness in the world. God wants us to show kindness, in any way, with a smile, a kind word, a kind action, affection, warmth, being polite when you do not feel like it. Any action, even a small one, might help to spread a little kindness in our world, that is now so selfish and indifferent. But the greatest kindness is to offer our lives to help save our brethren. The greatest kindness and generosity is to have the same sentiments that Christ had, and to do something similar to what he did, when he offered his life to save the world. The greatest kindness is to do something similar to what St. Paul did: “and I fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church.” The more people get involved in the legion of victim souls, the more kindness and happiness there will be in this sad, selfish world.
May it be for the glory of God
"All those who yield themselves to my cross and to suffering, will be blessed for all eternity.” --Our Lord to Maria Concepcion, April 23, 1969
Followng His Footsteps
by Anselmo del Álamo
Chapter 8. Crosses
38. What is it that most pleases Jesus? Suffering. The most sorrowful moments are always the most blessed. O Jesus, I accept as many pains and afflictions as you want to send me, for they will always be less than what I deserve. As a gift of your mercies, o my Jesus, I will accept the pains and afflictions that you lay upon me. O Jesus, if you wish, add even more: I will always kiss your hand. Behold, O Jesus, this sorrow shakes all the fibers of my heart, and it inspires in me the resolution of not offending you any more. St. Gemma Galgani
39. I love the flowers of the field, the little birds and every new suffering; it is a variation that pleases me, but what I love above everything else is Jesus Christ, our beloved Savior. Theresa Neumann
40. If you were flooded with spiritual consolations and you overflowed with love, you would not gain as much as suffering dryness and the trials that I send you. Live, therefore, in peace, with the certainty that you will not perish under the cross. It is easier for ten souls to fall into sin, who enjoy the delights of grace, than only one soul that is in affliction: the enemy has no power against those who sigh under the cross. Even if you were the first doctor of the world and the wisest theologian of my Church, and even if you could speak about God with the tongues of angels, you would be less holy to my eyes and less amiable, than a soul that is subject to my crosses. I grant my graces to the good and to the evil, but I reserve my crosses for my elect. Affliction separates a man from the world, and brings him near to God. The more his friends on earth abandon him, the more my grace is increased in him, and it raises him and makes him divine. From the Cross proceed humility, purity of conscience, fervor of spirit, peace, tranquility of soul, discretion, recollection, charity and all the benefits that this produces. Our Lord to Blessed Henry Suso
41. You cannot form an idea of how happy I am. In spite of your sorrows? Because of them. Eva Lavalliere
42. As the usurer does not lose any occasion of making a small sum of money, I also will not consent that the smallest movement of your little finger, done in my name, remains without fruit, and without its concurring to my greater glory and your eternal salvation. Our Lord to St. Gertrude -
A Report from Pennsylvania
My name is Bro. Paul Wilson, of Erie, Pennsylvania. I have been a victim soul for 23 years, under the spiritual direction of Rev. Francis S. Duchala, O.F.M., Pittsburgh, PA, 63 years a priest. He went to heaven on March 2, 2002.
First when I approach someone that I feel would be a good person to be a victim soul, I look for one with the holy smile of Jesus on their face, united with the suffering of Jesus in their eyes –very easy to see, if you truly realize the joy of suffering united to the suffering of Jesus on the cross.
I always ask for the help of St. Therese, the Little Flower, and she never fails me.
A. I usually find these people in church or through a good friend, or another victim soul. We now have 96 victim souls in the U.S.A. Sometimes I get no response, so I just let it go, but I do give them my phone no., and 6 out of 10 do call me back, and I just plant the seed.
B. Usually when I present the victimhood to a person, this is what they say:
“This is what I have been praying and searching for.”
“I have done consecrations to Our Blessed Mother and Jesus, in many forms, but this is truly giving myself completely to Jesus. Thank you, Jesus, and thank you, Blessed Mother.”
Then I give them the book on victimhood and tell them to read it and pray about it. Usually within 2 weeks they call me on the phone and say to me “Thank you, Bro. Paul. I just gave myself totally to Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.”
Below is a consecration of victimhood written by Rev. Fr. Francis S. Duchala, O.F.M. and myself, combining the one of the Portavoz and Berthe Petite, a victim soul of 50 years.
May God bless you. ---
Brother Paul -- 814-440-0492 --- P.O. Box 692, Fairview, PA 16415 USA
P.S. May the love of Jesus and Our Blessed Mother be always in your heart.
Consecration of Victimhood
“Lord, my God, you have asked everything of your little servant: take and receive everything, then. This day I belong to you without any reservations, forever. O Beloved of my soul! It is you only whom I want, and for your love I renounce all.
“O God of Love! Take my memory, and all its memories, take my intelligence so that it will act only for your greatest glory; take my will entirely, so that it will forever be drowned in your own; never again what I want, O most sweet Jesus, but always what you want; receive me, guide me, sanctify me, direct me; to you I abandon myself.
“O God of goodness, take my body and all its senses, my spirit and all its faculties, my heart and all its affections; O adorable Savior, you are the sole owner of my soul and of all my being; receive the immolation, that every day and every hour, I offer you in silence, deign to accept it and change it, into grace and blessing for all those I love, for the conversion of sinners, and for the sanctification of souls.
“O Jesus! Take all of my little heart; it begs and sighs to belong to you alone; hold it always in your powerful hands, so that it will surrender and pour itself out to no other creature.
“Lord, take and sanctify all my words, all my actions, all my desires. Be for my soul its good and its all. To you I give and abandon it.
“I accept with love all that you send me: pain, sorrow, joy, consolation, dryness, shame, desertion, scorn, humiliation, work, suffering, trials, everything that comes to me from you, everything that you wish, O Jesus.
“I submit humbly to the glorious control of your providence in supporting me solely by the help of your immense goodness; I promise you the most sincere fidelity. O Divine Savior, as a victim for the salvation of souls, I surrender and abandon myself to you.
“I implore you to accept all of my offering, and I will then be happy and trusting. Alas! It is all too little, I know, but I haven’t any-thing else; I love my extreme worthlessness, because it will obtain for me your mercy and all your paternal solicitude.
“My God, you know my frailty and the bottomless abyss of my weakness. If, one day, I were to be unfaithful to your sovereign will, if I were to recoil before suffering and the cross, and to stray from your path of love, fleeing the tender protection of your arms, Oh! I beg and implore you for the grace of dying at that instant. Pardon me, O Sacred Heart of my Saviour, forgive me by your most sweet name of Jesus, by the sorrows of Mary, by the intercession of Saint Joseph, and by the love that you had in doing your Father’s will.
“O God of my soul! O Divine Sun! I love you, I bless you, I praise you, I abandon myself completely to you. I take refuge in you; hide me in your bosom, for my being shudders under the burden of the cruel afflictions that crush me on all sides –and I am always so alone.
“My Beloved, help me, take me with you. In you alone I wish to live, so that in you alone I may die.” --- (Prayer written by Franciscan priest, based on the writings of Maria Concepcion, the Portavoz)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The Story of Wong Li
(continued from previous issue)
It was so beautiful the tale that I told him, incredibly beautiful. To this caricature of a man,
forgotten, despised, unloved by anyone; to the creature who watched from day to day the slow
decay and putrefaction of his own body, and whose pagan beliefs offered naught but a nether
world of continued suffering, darkness and torture - my words must have sounded like the
ranting of a madman and the heaven I described but a fantastic, impossible mirage of an
unbalanced brain.
But, by God’s grace, in time he did believe; and so, one bright, glorious summer day, I baptized
Wong Li the leper, there at the very gate of the temple. Crowded around me were the curious
villagers, perplexed and astounded at my words and actions. As I poured the baptismal waters
over the leper’s head, I remember so well the remark of one of the pagan bystanders. ‘Too little
water,’ he said. ‘You need plenty water wash Wong Li - him very dirty.’ I could not help smiling,
as I thought to myself of the immaculate purity and the transcendent loveliness of the soul of
the leper, regenerated in the waters of baptism. If my pagan friend could only have seen the
guardian angel of Wong Li fold his golden wings and shade his eyes form the splendor and
dazzling brightness he could not dare to look upon!
Wong Li made his First Communion a few days later. Once again, Jesus of Nazareth walked the
city streets and had compassion on the leper, for it was there at the gate of the pagan temple
that the Lord of Glory wrapped poor, dirty disease-ridden Wong Li in His Sacramental arms.
And then came the day when a boy ran up to me in the mission compound and told me that my
leper was dying and was calling from his friend, the Seng Fu. I hurried to the gate of the Temple
of Lanterns. Poor Wong Li lay there in his last agony, and, unmindful of the curious bystanders, I
dropped on my knees beside him and began the prayers for the dying. Gripped tightly in the
half-rotten hand was the crucifix I had given him on the day of his baptism. It was his passport
to eternal life, his key to everlasting happiness. Wong Li had been greatly impressed with the
agony of Christ’s terrible sufferings and he always reverently referred to Jesus as ‘the man on
the Cross.’
The end came very suddenly. He tried to raise to a sitting posture and I heard him whisper the
name of Jesus and saw him press his bleeding lips to the lips of the figure on the Cross. Thus he died.
I stood up and almost unconsciously lifted my eyes to the cloudless blue of the summer sky. I
knew that as suddenly as a blinding flash of lightening, the soul of the leper of Tsingtien had
winged its way to the very portals of paradise. I tried to visualize that tremendous moment
when the gates of heaven were thrown open and Wong Li walked awkwardly up the gold-paved
streets of paradise, awed by the sweetness of the angelic choirs, amazed by the beauty that ‘no
eye has seen or mind conceived.’ I could almost hear the voice out of the Beatific Vision say,
‘What is your name?’ And I fancied I heard poor, humble Wong Li answer in his childlike
simplicity, ‘I am the most horrible leper in all China.’ And then the light became too bright, the
music too sweet, the glory too unspeakable. I seemed to see a nail-pierced hand take the hand
of the leper and draw him into the nebula of unutterable splendor and I seemed to hear a voice
say, ‘I too was accounted as a leper and as one struck by God, for I am the Man on the Cross.’
And so I end my story of Wong Li, the most horrible leper in all China, who ‘once upon a time’
sat at the gate of the Temple of Lanterns in Tsingtien, and now sits upon the throne of an angel
in the palace of the King of Kings, in the city whose gates are of amethyst and sapphire, and
whose streets are of silver and of gold, where everyone ‘lives happily ever after’.”
♫ Musical Notes ♫
Revelations of Saint Gertrude
Chapter 8
Of the admirable union of her soul with God.
On the following Sunday, at the Mass Esto mihi, Thou didst enkindle my spirit, and increase my desires to receive yet more noble gifts which Thou wert about to bestow on me; especially by these two words, which moved my soul deeply, namely, the versicle of the first response: "Benedicens benedicam tibi" -- "With blessings I will bless thee," and the versicle of the ninth response: "Tibi enim et semini tuo dabo universas regiones has" -- "To thee and to thy posterity I will give all these countries." (Gen. xxvi.). For then Thou didst show me what were these countries which Thy boundless liberality had promised. O blessed country, where blessings flow upon blessings! O field of delights, whose least grain is capable of satisfying the hunger which any of the elect may have had for those things which the human heart considers desirable, delightful, amiable, sweet and joyful. While I attended to these things as well as I could, though not as well as I ought, the sweetness and charity of my Saviour and my God was made known to me; not as an act of justice, for I was far from meriting such favours, but as an act of His ineffable mercy, fortifying me by an adoptive charity, and rendering my extreme vileness, all unworthy, miserable and detestable as it is, capable of receiving a more supercelestial and superinestimable union with Him. But, my God, how have I merited this inestimable gift from Thy justice? Surely it proceeds from this love which observes no rule --this ardent love, which is not limited by reason, and which has inebriated Thee, my sweetest Lord, if I may dare say so --causing Thee, as if devoid of wisdom, to unite what is so dissimilar. To speak more correctly, the tenderness of Thine essential goodness and Thy nature, being inwardly moved by Thy sweetest charity (which causes Thee not only to love, but to be all love, and the torrent of which Thou hast turned towards the salvation of the human race), having inclined Thee to draw from the depths of misery the least of Thy creatures, deficient in all good, contemptible on account of her life and conduct, to elevate her to a share in Thy kingdom, or rather in Thy Divine Majesty, in order by this to confirm the confidence of all who are in the Church; so that I have hope for all Christians, and can believe that there will not be even one who will abuse the g-ifts of God as I have done, or give such scandal to their neighbour.
But since we may understand the invisible things of God, in some measure, by those which are visible --as I have before remarked --I saw (to express as far as I can that which is inexpressible) that the part of His blessed Heart where the Lord received my soul on the Feast of the Purification, under the form of wax softened by the fire, was, as it were, dropping a sweat, which came forth with violence, even as if the substance of the wax was melted by the excessive heat hidden in the depth of this Heart. This sacred reservoir attracted these drops to itself with surprising force, powerfully and inexpressibly, and even so inconceivably, that one saw evidently that love, which could not be hindered from communicating itself, had an absolute power in this place, where it discovered secrets which were so great, so hidden, and so impenetrable.
O eternal solstice! Secure mansion, containing all that is desirable! Paradise of unchanging delights, continual fountain of inestimable pleasures, wherein there is eternal spring-time, soothing by its sweet song, or rather by its delicious and intellectual melodies, rejoicing by the odour of its vivifying perfumes, inebriating by the soothing sweetness of its mystic liquors, and transforming by its secret caresses!
O thrice blessed, thrice happy, and, if I may so speak, a hundred times holy, is he who allows himself to be guided by this grace; and who, having clean hands, and a pure heart, and spotless lips, merits to be thus united to and incorporated with his God! What does he not see and hear and feel and taste? How can my stammering tongue speak of it?
For although the Divine mercy has made me experience this by a particular favour, nevertheless the obstinacy of my sins, and the thick covering of negligence with which I am encompassed, hinders me from fully understanding it. For if all the science of men and angels were united together, it would not be capable of making us understand, even in the least degree, the sublime majesty of so high a subject.
Chapter 9
Of another admirable manner in which St. Gertrude was closely united to God. (To be continued) -- Revelations of St. Gertrude -- online
