last days

Warnings in the Wind

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Our Lady of Sorrows, painting by Tianna (Mallett) Williams

 

The past three days, the winds here have been unceasing and strong. All day yesterday, we were under a “Wind Warning.” When I started to reread this post just now, I knew I had to republish it. The warning herein is crucial and must be heeded regarding those who are “playing in sin.” The followup to this writing is “Hell Unleashed“, which gives practical advice on closing the cracks in one’s spiritual life so that Satan cannot get a stronghold. These two writings are a serious warning about turning from sin… and going to confession while we still can. First published in 2012…Continue reading →

The Great Ark

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Look Up by Michael D. O’Brien

 

If there is a Storm in our times, will God provide an “ark”? The answer is “Yes!” But perhaps never before have Christians doubted this provision so much as in our times as controversy over Pope Francis rages, and the rational minds of our post-modern era must grapple with the mystical. Nonetheless, here is the Ark Jesus is providing for us at this hour. I will also address “what to do” in the Ark in the days ahead. First published May 11th, 2011. 

 

JESUS said that the period before His eventual return would be “as it was in the days of Noah…” That is, many would be oblivious to the Storm gathering around them: “They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.” [1]Matt 24:37-29 St. Paul indicated that the coming of the “Day of the Lord” would be “like a thief in the night.” [2]1 These 5:2 This Storm, as the Church teaches, contains the Passion of the Church, who will follow her Head in her own passage through a corporate “death” and resurrection. [3]Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 675 Just as many of the “leaders” of the temple and even the Apostles themselves seemed unaware, even to the last moment, that Jesus had to truly suffer and die, so too many in the Church seem oblivious to the consistent prophetic warnings of the popes and the Blessed Mother—warnings that announce and signal a…

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Matt 24:37-29
↑2 1 These 5:2
↑3 Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 675

The Last Judgments

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I believe that the vast majority of the Book of Revelation refers, not to the end of the world, but to the end of this era. Only the last few chapters really look at the very end of the world while everything else before mostly describes a “final confrontation” between the “woman” and the “dragon”, and all the terrible effects in nature and society of a general rebellion that accompanies it. What divides that final confrontation from the end of the world is a judgment of the nations—what we are primarily hearing in this week’s Mass readings as we approach the first week of Advent, the preparation for Christ’s coming.

For the past two weeks I keep hearing the words in my heart, “Like a thief in the night.” It is the sense that events are coming upon the world that are going to take many of us by surprise, if not many of us home. We need to be in a “state of grace,” but not a state of fear, for anyone of us could be called home at any moment. With that, I feel compelled to republish this timely writing from December 7th, 2010…

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The Coming Revelation of the Father

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ONE of the great graces of the Illumination is going to be the revelation of the Father’s love. For the great crisis of our time—the destruction of the family unit—is the loss of our identity as sons and daughters of God:

The crisis of fatherhood we are living today is an element, perhaps the most important, threatening man in his humanity. The dissolution of fatherhood and motherhood is linked to the dissolution of our being sons and daughters.  —POPE BENEDICT XVI (Cardinal Ratzinger), Palermo, March 15th, 2000 

At Paray-le-Monial, France, during the Sacred Heart Congress, I sensed the Lord saying that this moment of the prodigal son, the moment of the Father of Mercies is coming. Even though mystics speak of the Illumination as a moment of seeing the crucified Lamb or an illuminated cross, [1]cf. Revelation Illumination Jesus will reveal to us the Father’s love:

He who sees me sees the Father. (John 14:9)

It is “God, who is rich in mercy” whom Jesus Christ has revealed to us as Father: it is His very Son who, in Himself, has manifested Him and made Him known to us… It is especially for[sinners] that the Messiah becomes a particularly clear sign of God who is love, a sign of the Father. In this visible sign the people of our own time, just like the people then, can see the Father. —BLESSED JOHN PAUL II, Dives in misercordia, n. 1

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Footnotes

Ezekiel 12

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Summer Landscape by George Inness, 1894

 

I have longed to give you the Gospel, and more than that, to give you my very life; you have become very dear to me. My little children, I am like a mother giving birth to you, until Christ is formed in you. (1 Thess 2:8; Gal 4:19)

 

IT has been nearly a year since my wife and I picked up our eight children and moved to a small parcel of land on the Canadian prairies in the middle of nowhere. It is probably the last place I would have chosen.. a wide open ocean of farm fields, few trees, and plenty of wind. But all other doors closed and this was the one that opened.

As I prayed this morning, pondering the rapid, almost overwhelming change in direction for our family, words came back to me that I had forgotten that I had read shortly before we felt called to move… Ezekiel, Chapter 12.

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