Saint Aloysius Gonzaga . . . . .
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St. Aloysius was born in Castiglione, Italy. The first words St. Aloysius spoke were the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. He was destined for the military by his father (who was in service to Philip II), but by the age of 9 Aloysius had decided on a religious life, and made a vow of perpetual virginity. To safeguard himself from possible temptation, he would keep his eyes persistently downcast in the presence of women. St. Charles Borromeo gave him his first Holy Communion. A kidney disease prevented St. Aloysius from a full social life for a while, so he spent his time in prayer and reading the lives of the saints.
Although he was appointed a page in Spain, St. Aloysius kept up his many devotions and austerities, and was quite resolved to become a Jesuit. His family eventually moved back to Italy, where he taught catechism to the poor. When he was 18, he joined the Jesuits, after finally breaking down his father, who had refused his entrance into the order. He served in a hospital during the plague of 1587 in Milan, and died from it at the age of 23, after receiving the last rites from St. Robert Bellarmine. The last word he spoke was the Holy Name of Jesus. St. Robert wrote the Life of St. Aloysius. -- From Life of St. Aloysius --
* Confessions of St. Augustine - Augustine had to struggle with lust for several years. He was converted by the prayers of his mother Monica.
* History of Early Christianity -
* Seven Missing Books of the Protestant Bible - 
Various Saints - • Catholic Saints • Chastity and Virginity • Hell in the Mind's Eye -
Sentimentality, Sex and Lust, by Carol Robinson
• St. Francis of Assisi: Go and Rebuild my Church HD -- 8 min.
• St. Jerome HD -- 3 min.
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Saint Maria Goretti
Born on October 16 1890 in Corinaldo, in the Ancona Province in Italy, her farmworker father moved his family to Ferrier di Conca, near Anzio. When he died of malaria, Maria's mother had to struggle to feed her children.
Maria's mother, brothers, and sisters worked in the fields while she cooked, sewed, kept the house clean, and watched her youngest sister Teresa. Though the family's circumstances were extremely difficult, they were very close and loved God.
On July 5, 1902, Maria was sitting outside the steps of her home sewing her 18-year-old brother or neighbor -it is unclear which - Alessandro's shirt, while he threshed beans in the barnyard. As she concentrated on her sewing, Alessandro surprised her, and grabbed her from her steps. When he tried to rape her, Maria cried that it was a mortal sin and warned he would go to hell.
When Alessandro persisted, she fought him and screamed, "No! It is a sin! God does not want it!" At her words, Alessandro began to choke her and she said she would rather die than submit. Upon hearing her words, Alexander pulled out a knife and stabbed her eleven times. When she attempted to reach the door, he stabbed her three more times then fled.
Teresa woke to the sounds of her sister's cries and began to cry. Maria's family returned home and found her bleeding on the floor. They quickly took her to the nearest hospital in Nettuno, where she underwent surgery without anesthesia.
Unfortunately, her wounds were beyond the surgeon's ability to help. Halfway through the surgery, the man asked her, "Maria, think of me in Paradise."
As she lay on the table, she looked up at him and said, "Well, who knows which of us is going to be there first?"
She did not realize how terrible her situation was, and the surgeon replied, "You, Maria."
She said, "Then I will think gladly of you." She also mentioned concerns for her mother. The next day, Maria forgave Alessandro and said she wanted to see him in Heaven with her. She died that day while looking upon an image of the Virgin Mary and holding a cross to her chest.
Shortly after Maria's family discovered her, Alexander was captured and questioned. He admitted Maria was a physical virgin as he was unable to assault her and he was sentenced to thirty years. He also admitted he had attempted to persuade her to accompany him to bed on several occasions in the past and had attempted to rape her before.
Alessandro remained unrepentant for his actions until he had a dream that he was in a garden. Maria was there and gave him lilies, which immediately burned in his hands. When he woke, he was a changed man. He repented his crime and living a reformed life. When he was released 27-years-later, he went directly to Maria's mother and begged her forgiveness, which she gave, saying, "If my daughter can forgive him, who am I to withhold forgiveness?"
Maria Goretti was beatified by Pope Pius XII in a ceremony at Saint Peter's Basilica on April 27, 1947.
Three years later, on June 24, 1950, Maria was declared a saint and Alessandro was present in the St. Peter's crowd to celebrate her canonization. He later became a laybrother of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, where he lived in a monastery and worked as its receptionist and gardener until his death.
Saint Maria is called a martyr because she fought against Alessandro's attempts at sexual sin; however, the most important aspects of her story are how she forgave her attacker - her concern for her enemy extending even beyond death - and the miracle her forgiveness produced in his life.
Saint Maria's body can be found in the crypt of the Basilica of Nostra Signora delle Grazie e Santa Maria Goretti in Nettuno. Though several claim her body is incorrupt, she has been proven to be corrupt. Her body is kept in a statue which lies beneath the altar and has been mistaken to be all of her remains.
Images of Saint Maria often represent her with wavy hair dressed in either white or farm clothes and is often depicted holding lilies.
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To Avoid Hell
• Is Victimhood necessary for salvation? -
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• Stories of Souls Who Returned from Hell -
"By the remembrance of the saints, as by the touch of glowing stones of fire, he was himself enkindled,
and converted into a divine flame." (St. Bonaventure)
Chastity . . . . • Hell's Widest Gate, by St. Alphonsus Liguori
• The spouse in the canticles feedeth among the lilies. [Canticles 2:16] One of the sacred interpreters, explaining these words, says, that "as the devil revels in the uncleanness of lust, so Christ feeds on the lilies of chastity."
In this day and age, there are very few who speak or write about chastity since the world have become so lustful and sensual, but chastity is in fact one of the virtues that is most taught in the Holy Scripture. While most of the verses about chastity are found in the New Testament (which we will examine after the Old Testament passages on chastity), there are also some very noteworthy ones in the Old Testament Scripture which shows us that both the married and the unmarried Jews of the Old Law also were commanded by God to practice the virtue of chastity.
CHASTITY IN THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE OLD LAW
Chastity is a virtue above other virtues according to the biblical Book of Exodus and Jewish traditional teaching and history
It is described in The Book of Exodus how God, when He spoke to Moses and told him to tell the Jewish people that He wanted them to “be to Me a priestly kingdom, and a holy nation”, that God wanted all of the Jews (married as well as unmarried) to practice one specific virtue for three days before they were able to meet Him and enter into a covenant and union with Him and receive the Ten Commandments; and that virtue was chastity: “He [Moses] said to them: Be ready against the third day, and come not near your wives.” (Exodus 19:15)
Exodus 19:9-11,14-15 “The Lord said to him [Moses]: Lo, now will I come to thee in the darkness of a cloud, that the people may hear me speaking to thee, and may believe thee for ever. And Moses told the words of the people to the Lord. And he [God] said to him [Moses]: Go to the people, and sanctify them today, and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments. And let them be ready against the third day: for on the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai. … And Moses came down from the mount to the people, and sanctified them. And when they had washed their garments, He said to them: Be ready against the third day, and come not near your wives.”
Unless the people had practiced chastity for three days, they would not have received the grace to appear before God and receive His Laws. The remarkable thing about this is that God first chose to tell the people to practice chastity before He told them about the Ten Commandments. The reason why Our Lord did this was to show us how much He values and wants us to practice the angelic virtue of chastity, thus showing us all that we must be very pure and holy when serving God. --- (Read More Here)
The book describes how Judith and the Jewish people was being occupied by a heathen army and that all seemed as though they were going to either starve to death or be butchered by the enemy army. God, however, had other plans and choose a virtuous and chaste woman to single-handedly save the Jewish people from certain death.
Judith 15:11 “For thou [Judith] hast done manfully, and thy heart has been strengthened, because thou hast loved chastity, and after thy husband hast not known any other: therefore also the hand of the Lord hath strengthened thee, and therefore thou shalt be blessed for ever.”
Judith 16:26 “And chastity was joined to her virtue, so that she knew no man all the days of her life, after the death of Manasses her husband.” --- (Read More Here)
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The phrase “A time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces” refers to the marital act. Haydock Commentary explains: “Ver. 5. Embraces. Continence was sometimes prescribed to married people, Leviticus xx. 18., and 1 Corinthians vii. (St. Jerome) (St. Augustine, Enchiridion 78.) (Calmet).” This shows us that the marital act must sometimes be abstained from altogether and not engaged in everyday as the evil and immoral world teaches. As said already, one of the reasons for abstaining from the marital act is in order to cultivate virtue and chastity. This is important to do from time to time, for people who have sex often are more likely to become enslaved by this pleasure and fall into sexual sin. “The task of the law is to deliver us from a dissolute life and all disorderly ways. Its purpose is to lead us from unrighteousness to righteousness, so that it would have us self-controlled in marriage, in begetting children, and in general behavior.” (St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata or Miscellanies, Book III, Chapter VI, Section 46, written about 198-203 A.D.)
People who never try to control their lust and that let their temptations roam freely—indulging in it whenever it pleases them—have allowed their lust to become their “fix” or “high”. People who act in this way have become worshipers of this fleeting fleshly pleasure and have grown attached to it. Such people must be very careful about themselves, for whenever they die and are called before the throne of Our Lord Jesus Christ, their eternal destiny will be decided based on what they loved more in this life: Our Lord and His Love, or themselves and their unbridled, selfish lust. If they loved themselves and their lust more than they loved the Lord, they will not be saved. Only in Hell will many spouses regret that they never thought of controlling their lust or that they never had relations at proper times or at proper seasons. In truth, “there are others who have become absorbed by marriage and fulfill their desires... and, as the prophet says, "have become like beasts" [Ps. 48:13].” (St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata or Miscellanies, Book III, Section 67) -- (Read More Here)
• Chastity: The Angelic Virtue. PDF -
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. Devotion and Reflection - Pray More Novenas -
Revelations of St. Gertrude
Purgatory Page
Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis
Lives of the Holy Desert Fathers
• Eternal Life, Where the Narrow Way Leads, by Stephen Foglein
• Hell, Where the Broad Way Leads
The Happiness Of Heaven:
The Joys and Rewards of Eternal Glory, by F.J. Boudreaux
Shows how the joys of Heaven stem from the direct vision of God--the joys of the heart; of the mind; of physical beauty; of the senses; of friendship; and of perfect love of God. Tells of the magnificent variety in Heaven. How Mary Magdalen's glory exceeds that of many innocent souls; etc. Explains that a high degree of glory in Heaven is within the reach of all baptized souls; however poor; ignorant or insignificant they may be here. A marvelous book!
The Rev. Fr. J. Boudreau, S.J., was a priest of the Society of Jesus and author of the nineteenth century. His work The Happiness of Heaven: The Joys and Rewards of Eternal Glory was originally published in 1872 by John Murphy & Company, Maryland. It discusses the infinite joy of the souls in Heaven, as well as the fact that all baptized persons are capable of obtaining it, no matter how seemingly insignificant they may be. Father Boudreau's book was also reset and published by TAN in 1984 with the Imprimatur.
The Happiness of Heaven. * Download TXT
Happiness of Heaven. * * All formats
Happiness of Heaven. * * html format
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