“THE passions of the human heart are another obstacle to our salvation and sanctification; they are the more to be feared, because they are within us. It is requisite that the Holy Ghost change our heart, and lead it to deny itself as often as the light of grace points out to us a way other than that which self-love would have us follow. What supernatural Fortitude we need in order to hate our life (St. John, xii. 25), as often, as our Lord bids us make a sacrifice, or when we have to choose which of the two Masters we will serve (St. Matth. vi. 24). The Holy Spirit is daily working this marvel by means of the Gift of Fortitude: so that, we have but to correspond to the Gift, and not stifle it either by cowardice or indiscretion, and we are strong enough to resist even our domestic enemies. This blessed Gift of Fortitude teaches us to govern our passions and treat them as blind guides; it also teaches us never to follow their instincts, save when they are in harmony with the law of God.

“There are times, when the Holy Spirit requires from a Christian something beyond interior resistance to the enemies of his soul: he must make an outward protestation against error and evil, as often, as position or duty demands it. On such occasions, one must bear to become unpopular, and console one’s self with the words of the Apostle: If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ (Gal. i. 10). But the Holy Ghost will be on his side; and finding him resolute in using His Gift of Fortitude, not only will He give him a final triumph, but He generally blesses that soul with a sweet and courageous peace, which is the result and recompense of a duty fulfilled.

“Thus does the Holy Ghost apply the gift of Fortitude, when there is question of a Christian’s making resistance. But, as we have already said, it imparts also the energy necessary for bearing up against the trials, which all must go through who would save their souls. There are certain fears, which damp our courage, and expose us to defeat. The gift of Fortitude dispels them, and braces us with such a peaceful confidence, that we ourselves are surprised at the change. Look at the Martyrs; not merely at such an one as St. Mauritius, the leader of the Theban Legion, who was accustomed to face danger on the battle-field, but at Felicitas, a mother of seven children, at Perpetua, a high-born lady with everything this world could give her, at Agnes, a girl of thirteen, and at thousands of others like them; and say, if the gift of Fortitude is not a prompter to heroism? Where is the fear of death, that death, the very thought of which is sometimes more than we can bear?

And what are we to say of all those lives spent in self-abnegation and privation, with a view to make Jesus their only treasure and be the more closely united with him? What are we to say of those hundreds and thousands of our fellow-creatures, who shun the sight of a distracted and vain world, and make sacrifice their rule? whose peacefulness is proof against every trial, and whose acceptance of the cross is as untiring as the cross itself is in its visit? What trophies are these of the Spirit of Fortitude! and how magnificent is the devotedness he creates for every possible duty! Oh! truly, man, of himself, is of little worth; but, how grand when under the influence of the Holy Ghost!

— Dom Prosper Guéranger, reflections on the “Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost”

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“THERE is a fear which is nothing more than being frightened, the passion of fear, purely human and to which small honour can be attributed. Some people are afraid of God in this way, and they hide themselves from him. Adam and Eve in Paradise were afraid, because they had sinned ; afraid too was the unfaithful servant who, fearing the severity of his lord, hid his talent in the earth ; and so also St Peter who, for fear of a serving girl, denied his Master.

“This fear is evil, leading us into sin ; it has no admission into the kingdom of God. This fear is of another sort than true fear. It is called servile fear. When it becomes the sole motive of our good actions they are vitiated at the root. So it is with the man who serves God only from fear of his judgment and of hell, as who would say : Were it not for hell I would lead quite another life. This servile fear is bad, and is capable of begetting sin.

“There is however a certain ‘ fear of servitude ’; a fear of God’s judgments and his punishments, which can be used to a good end. There are times when such a fear can help us and restrain us. In the education of children, for example, we use it when higher motives fail to appeal. Provided love of God be not excluded from it; provided it be not our sole motive, it has its value, and we can use it as a means. There are cases where it will effect a conversion, or keep us on the right path. In contradiction to Protestant doctrines, the Council of Trent has defined it as a gift of God.

“Lastly, there is filial fear, childlike fear. When a soul truly loves God with all its heart, seeing in him perfect Goodness, the only God, knowing him to be its loving Father, it does not on that account forget his greatness, his majesty — God enclosed, in his impenetrable secrecy, with his terrifying judgments, his infinite power. Between these two concepts, God the Terrible and God the Father, what will the soul do?

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“SUFFERINGS are a kind of paradise to him who suffers with patience, while they are a hell to him who has no patience.”

— St. Philip Neri

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WHAT are the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost?

1.The Gift of Fear
2.The Gift of Godliness
3.The Gift of Knowledge
4.The Gift of Fortitude
5.The Gift of Counsel
6.The Gift of Understanding
7.The Gift of Wisdom

Read more here.

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Source

The sins classified as sins against the Holy Ghost are those of pure malice. They are directly opposed to the love and mercy of God, and on that account, render conversion very difficult.

1.) Presumption of God’s mercy

We continue to sin with the intention of repenting before death comes; or if we make our salvation depend upon our own strength alone and not upon God: or if we rashly expose ourselves to the proximate occasions of sin in the expectation that God will come to our rescue.

There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God’s almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit

2.) Despair

Despair is the willful rejection of hope in that one judges the duties necessary to obtain eternal life impossible to fulfill. Despair is a mortal sin when it arises from distrust of God’s goodness and fidelity.

“By despair, man ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is contrary to God’s goodness, to his justice – for the Lord is faithful to his promises – and to his mercy.”

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JOHANNA writes:

Thank you for the [Holy Ghost] prayer which I must have gotten from you last year since I say it every morning. The poem is lovely too. Last year I wrote one of my own. I thought you might like to see it:

O Come Holy Ghost

The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom…
Proverbs 9:10

O come, Holy Ghost, send us Thy gifts,
Confirm Thou our souls, give cause to their lift.
Offer us counsel through life’s destination;
Make us more wise: illume preparation.
Ever bestow Thy heavenly knowledge;
Help us reject the fallen world’s college. (more…)

“RATIONALISM and naturalism will have it that man’s true happiness consists in following their principles, which are principles of pride and sensuality. Faith, on the contrary, teaches us humility and mortification, and these bring us to union with our infinite God.”

— Dom Prosper Guéranger, “Whit Sunday, the Day of Pentecost“

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“SPIRIT of Light, of Love and of Life, be with us every hour of this day. Illumine, vitalize, enkindle us. Lift up our hearts; keep in strength and in honor the body which thou hast chosen for thine own temple. Grant to us integrity of purpose; cleanse us of self-love and self-deceit. Reveal to us the beauty of holiness, O thou who art the Spirit of Truth and not less the Comforter! Speak to us above the voices of the world, and give us grace evermore to hear thee — who together with the Father and the Son art one God for all eternity. Amen.”

Source: The Holy Ghost Prayer Book, Fr. Frederick T. Hoeger; 1952 [Imprimatur, Francis Cardinal Spellman]

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THE BLESSED VIRGIN ON
PENTECOST MORNING

Maid and Mother, pure and kind,
’Tis the Whitsun morning;
June hath wearied sun and wind
For the world’s adorning,—
Earth is blossomed like a bride
For the blessed Whitsuntide.

Thrice the mighty Spirit wrought
For thy soul’s completing:
First, thy stainless self He brought
To the world’s entreating;
Next, to work thy “Fiat” came;
Last, He crowns thy brow with
flame.

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“WHEN water comes down from the heavens as rain, it is always the same in itself, yet, it produces different effects – one in a flower, another in a tree, and yet a third and fourth in an animal or person. So the grace of the Holy Spirit,  like water, adapts itself to the needs of every creature that receives it. In the same way the Holy Spirit, whose nature is always the same, simple, and indivisible, gives grace to each man [or woman] as  He, [the Holy Spirit] wills.”

—  St Cyril of Jerusalem

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“IN this second Pentecost, the heavens are not overcast, nor is the roar of thunder heard; the hearts of men, are not stricken with fear, as when God spake on Sinai; repentance and gratitude are the sentiments now uppermost. A divine fire burns within their souls, and will spread throughout the whole world. Our Lord Jesus had said: ‘I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I, but that it be kindled?’ The hour for fulfillment of this word has come; the Spirit of love, the Holy Ghost, the eternal uncreated Flame, is about to descend from heaven, and realize the merciful design of our Redeemer.”

— Dom Prosper Guéranger, “Whit Sunday, the Day of Pentecost,” The Liturgical Year

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LIBERALISM in religion asserts that everyone is entitled to his own opinion — and to absolute respect for his opinions. It thus has the great advantage of giving the appearance of flexibility, open-mindedness, kindness and generosity.

Yet beneath the surface lurks that horror of all horrors — dogma, the very thing Liberalism claims to reject.

Beneath the appearance of complete tolerance, one finds stern, unyielding disapproval. Those who do not accept the primacy of personal opinion and hold that religious truth is based on the authority of God’s revelation, on the testimony of His word, (opinion be damned), are in for a rough time.

Liberalism, as Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany wrote in 1899, “repudiates dogma altogether and substitutes opinion, whether that opinion be doctrinal or the negation of doctrine. Consequently, it denies every doctrine in particular. If we were to examine in detail all the doctrines or dogmas which, within the range of Liberalism, have been denied, we would find every Christian dogma in one way or another rejected—from the dogma of the Incarnation to that of Infallibility.

“Nonetheless Liberalism is in itself dogmatic; and it is in the declaration of its own fundamental dogma, the absolute independence of the individual and the social reason, that it denies all Christian dogmas in general. Catholic dogma is the authoritative declaration of revealed truth — or a truth consequent upon Revelation — by its infallibly constituted exponent [the Pope]. [Ed. note — We have not had a true pope since 1958.] This logically implies the obedient acceptance of the dogma on the part of the individual and of society. Liberalism refuses to acknowledge this rational obedience and denies the authority. It asserts the sovereignty of the individual and social reason and enthrones Rationalism in the seat of authority. It knows no dogma except the dogma of self-assertion. Hence it is heresy, fundamental and radical, the rebellion of the human intellect against God.” [emphasis added]

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“YOU must know that when you ‘hail’ Mary, she immediately greets you! Don’t think that she is one of those rude women of whom there are so many . . . she is utterly courteous and pleasant. If you greet her, she will answer you right away and converse with you!”

—- St. Bernardine

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It is typical of modern people to focus on the material degradation and neglect the metaphysical degradation that precedes it. 

ALAN writes:

What a difference a century makes.  Here is one example:

It must have been in 1964 when I first walked into the Cleveland Rexall Pharmacy on South Grand Boulevard in south St. Louis. We were living then about half a mile from there. I distinctly remember walking many times, sometimes in early evening, to the nearby Sears department store and Ben Franklin dime store. The Cleveland Pharmacy was midway on the path I walked.

I bought magazines there in 1965-’67. A radiator stood in a corner near the window. The magazine rack was to the left as you walked into the store. It was a very modest affair, compared with today’s magazine displays festooned with sensation, filth and ugliness. The storefront consisted of a large plate-glass window and the entry door. Among the magazines I purchased were Fate, Life, The Saturday Evening Post and a 1966 issue of Look with Jackie Gleason on the cover.

Sometimes my mother and I stopped there to have a prescription filled. Toward the back of the store was a classic old telephone booth with wood partitions and folding glass door.  I recall using that telephone several times.  I remember walking through those residential streets on summer days in 1963-’64.  I came to know the neighborhood by heart.  It was always clean and orderly.  It never occurred to us that it could be otherwise.

Years went by, and then decades. I stopped at the Cleveland Pharmacy less often. My last visit there was in the 1980s or early 1990s.  It was still pretty much the same as it had been in the 1960s.  But the neighborhood around it was changing–gradually at first, and then increasingly obviously but not for the better.  Standards were declining. Lawbreaking was increasing. The old setting and neighborhood were all-White. The new setting and neighborhood were being made increasingly Black.  I did not realize it at first, but I was now witnessing the surrender of an orderly neighborhood to an undeclared “public-private partnership” of thugs (on the streets) and excuse-makers (in the legislature and the courts).

The time soon arrived when I realized I had now become an alien in the neighborhood where I roamed at will in boyhood — because that neighborhood had been made wholly alien to me. Street thugs were the obvious villains, but they were not alone.  Change agents in government were the engineers, and they were hard at work. They still are.

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“IN Old Testament times only kings and priests were anointed, a practice faithfully followed in Christendom. Each in his own sphere is alter Christus, one as King, the other as Priest. No President has ever been accorded this dignity from on high. The contrivers of Revolution, knowing their program does not truly conform to natural law, are aware it is deeply repugnant to human nature. What to do? Rousseau, again, gave the bald answer in La Nouvelle Heloise:

“He who dares to undertake the making of a people’s institutions ought to feel himself capable, so to speak, of changing human nature, of transforming each individual, who is by himself a complete and solitary whole, into part of a greater whole … of altering man’s constitution for the purpose of strengthening it and of substituting a partial and moral existence for the physical and independent existence nature has conferred on us all. He must, in a word, take away from man his own resources and give him new ones alien to him.

“So runs the utopian dream of all revolutionaries from the devil on down, for without such a program no artificial government could subsist long. It explains brain-washing, social engineering, transactional analysis, cursillo, compulsory education, much of psychiatric practice and all the other tools of the superstate for the moral and spiritual butchery by which natural man is put into unnatural shape. The State no longer conforms to human nature as God created it, but human nature to the state as man created it.”

— Solange Hertz, The Star-Spangled Heresy: Americanism

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Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

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“THE Word of God is living and effective, so it enters the soul, awakens it from its lethargy, stirs, softens, and wounds the heart — that hardened heart, that heart of stone, ever sick. It also begins to uproot and destroy, to build and plant, to water what was arid, to illuminate what was in darkness, to open what was closed, to burn what was frozen, to straighten what was crooked, and to smooth the crooked paths; so that then the soul blesses the Lord, and all its faculties praise His holy name.” 

— St. Bernard, Doctor of the Church (+1153), Serm. LXXIV

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