With the election coming up tomorrow, one of my friends (and a fellow Kenrick seminary), Davide Bianchini, had a great suggestion: we should fast for the day. Here’s what he wrote:
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| Peter Paul Ruben, The Prophet Elijah Receiving Bread and Water from an Angel (1628) |
Someone encouraged me to do this, and I thought I’d pass it along to you as well. It is to do a one-day fast tomorrow (Tuesday) for the election. If you so feel inspired, please consider participating in this venerable tradition of the Church (As you know, the more traditional form of fasting is on bread and water, but if you think it will interfere with your duties, please consider making some sacrifice for the sake of our country, even if only to avoid desert. As Our Lord told Saint Faustina, any small sacrifice, when done with love, can effect change in the hearts of men.) Let us recall to mind the words of Our Lady at Fatima; “Many souls go to hell because there is no one to offer prayers and sacrifices for them”, following the proclamation of the angel; “Penance! Penance! Penance!” And to Saint Faustina, Our Lord said the following; “You will save more souls through prayer and suffering than will a missionary through his teachings and sermons alone”.
He then included excerpts from a post he wrote on his own blog, which included great quotes like this:
- Saint Gregory: “It is impossible to engage in spiritual conflict, without the previous subjugation of the appetite.”
- Saint John Chrysostom: “Fasting is the support of our soul: it gives us wings to ascend on high, and to enjoy the highest contemplation! […] God, like an indulgent father, offers us a cure by fasting.”
- Saint Alphonsus De Ligouri: “He that gratifies the taste will readily indulge the other senses; for, having lost the spirit of recollection, he will easily commit faults, by indecent words and by unbecoming gestures. But the greatest evil of intemperance, is that it exposes chastity to great danger. ‘Repletion of the stomach,’ says St. Jerome, ‘is the hotbed of lust.’
Just some food for thought, if you’ll forgive the terrible pun.
You can fast, but as for me and my household, we shall serve alcohol.
The Antichrist won the election.. 🙁
That strikes me as more than a little paranoid, and I think it’s presumptuous to assume that the Antichrist would come in the US in the early 21st century. Suffice to say that several other people have falsely accused the last several presidents of being the Antichrist, and they’ve all been wrong. I also think that this is a time for renewed prayer and hope, rather than despair.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that Almighty God is testing us right now. We screwed up our opposition to the HHS mandate, in my opinion, so now we’re stuck with four more years of this clown.
I think that Romney wouldn’t have been any better than Obama…
I’m also so jaded at this point in my life that I don’t really think of myself as an “American”, and haven’t for some time now. I’m an American by sheer luck of being born in this nation, while I’m a Catholic by choice. Presidents, Judges, Congresscritters, Senators, and all those bureaucrats come and go, by the Church remains. The Church is the institution which I’ve thrown my lot in with, with any luck it won’t be the wrong choice…
I think I could also probably relate to how an Ancient Roman in the Western Empire felt around the year 400 AD or so: He realizes that things are falling apart, and that there doesn’t seem to be anything anyone can do about it, or that anyone even wants to do anything about it even if they could do something about it, let alone anyone who knows what “it” actually is for that matter that needs to be fixed in the first place, so why not disengage from the whole thing, isolate yourself and your family and friends, and throw your lot in with the local non-Roman Germanic and Celtic tribes with the Church as well, before TSHTF?
I recommend reading the historical fiction “The Sky Stone” by Jack Whyte
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skystone
It’s basically about that situation, and the fall of Rome…