Psychological Healing
in the Roman Catholic Mystic Tradition

Questions and Answers

I continue to question why you stay in California. It seems every day I hear more and more about what distressful things are coming out of that State. When I was in school and first learning about government, I got the impression that “Liberals” seemed to be people who care about the well being of all other people. Now it just seems to me that “Liberals” are going to great lengths to destroy the sanctity of all that will bring people to greatness—be it on their own or with help. Anyway, I know you must hear enough about the State and City you live in. I just can’t help to question why you stay. You must feel so out of place.

español 

Why did God put me in California, especially San Francisco? So that, in witnessing the depths of human depravity, I will be able to understand the depths of divine mercy.

In fact, the world continues in existence today only because of chosen souls through the ages who have been praying for God’s mercy.

Not just San Francisco, and not just California, but the entire world has largely abandoned and deserted God’s grace. Inestimable sins today wound the Sacred Heart of Jesus—sins committed not just by the enemies of the Church but also by Christ’s own anointed in His own name. Abortion, addictions, assisted suicide, child abuse, contempt for the environment, divorce, exploitation of the weak and the helpless, hate and hostility, idolatry of entertainment and sports, immodesty, lifestyles defiant of chastity, and all self-indulgence in general warrant our chastisement by God. 

We have turned so far from aspirations to purity that we are on the brink of our own condemnation. Who needs terrorists to threaten us when we have more and more disasters—hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, fires, tsunamis, blizzards, and oil spills—to remind us that God is really in command of this world and that self-indulgence is ultimately meaningless? But will we listen?

Let the nations be judged in your presence.
Strike them with terror, Lord;
show the nations they are mere mortals.

—Psalm 9A:20–21

Yet those devout souls who get on their knees in penitential prayer help to ward off disaster, praying and making sacrifices to obtain the grace that the faithful may be spared from the chastisement and that the wicked will be brought to repentance.

Read an excerpt from a letter about repentance
by Saint Clement, pope

Bishops and pastors who remove kneelers from churches and demand that we stand during the Eucharistic Prayer have missed the point. Yes, it can be shown through scholarly research that, for liturgical celebrations, members of the early Church often prayed standing, and that kneeling was considered to be a penitential posture. And that’s all the more reason why today we should all be on our knees through the whole Mass begging for mercy for our sins and those of the whole world.

Step-by-step instructions for praying
The Chaplet of The Divine Mercy

 
And that’s why we have cities like San Francisco: the agony of living in them can teach us how to pray and beg for mercy. We have to learn that we cannot ascend to the heights of divine love unless we are willing to understand the depths of divine love. We have to smell the stench of sin, see its shadowy gloom hanging over us, hear its raucous din, and feel it pressing itself against us—and still know that God’s love descends even to these depths, calling us out of our depravity. Justice would like to see this city burnt to a cinder, yet God tells us, “I do not desire anyone to be lost. Pray for them all, even the most abhorrent and wicked, that at least some might be saved.”

Therefore, without losing patience or faith we must pray constantly and make sacrifices for the conversion of all the countless souls lost in mortal sin—thousands and tens of thousands of lost souls everywhere you turn, on sidewalks and freeways, in busses and trains, and even in churches and rectories. Where is holiness, if not in the prayers of your own heart?

 

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San Francisco EOO (Equal Opportunity of Opinion)
Diversity Enhancement Ordinance BS7734:

 


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