Okay, one of the things I find very fascinating about Fulton Sheen is his subversive, purposely scandalous rhetoric.
Christ is a tempter and seducer who lures us towards Him with the promise of unbelievable love.
The Repentant Thief Dismas died repentant, but not of his thievery; after all, "may we not say that the thief died a thief, for he stole Paradise?"
Christ is the Prodigal Son, having gone out into the World and spent His Inheritance on the things of the world (i.e., us)
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The higher the love, the more demands will be made on us to conform to that ideal.
Fulton J. Sheen
Siena Cathedral, Itlay.
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Para sermos santos não é necessário muito tempo, mas é necessário muito amor.
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"We are free to do whatever we please; for example, we can turn a machine gun on our neighbor's chickens, or drive an automobile on the sidewalk, or stuff a neighbor's mattress with used razor blades--but ought we to do these things?"
-Fulton Sheen, The World's First Love, cracking me up by going straight for the most unhinged possible examples, and by italicizing ought in a way that makes me picture him tilting his head like an innocent puppy and earnestly asking if this razor-blade mattress is really a good thing for us to be doing
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Because one cannot do much, one is not excused from doing little. Condemnation awaits the man who refuses to help because he could not lead. The miserable fear of being mediocre cripples good work and the great reward. What is not increased, decreases. The man who improves his gifts, however small, will surely obtain the Kingdom of God. Only what we use becomes crystallized into character. To do no harm is praise fit for a stone, but not for a man.
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
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Can someone send the idea up the ladder and request a video restoration of Fulton Sheen’s videos???! As a Catholic I would LOVE to see this happen with all the technology we have now!!!!! His beautification just got updated.
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While preaching on Judas making a fuss about the poor while stealing from the apostles' purse, Fulton Sheen said that sometimes people hide a lack of individual justice with a feigned great love of social justice.
Hmmm.
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Unseen Warfare
THE DIABOLIC IN YOUR LIFE
(2 minute read)
Is there discord in your family, infighting in your business or corporation, factions in your religious organization and war in your neighborhood? If so, you may want to watch the homily by Venerable Bishop Fulton J. Sheen on the actions of the diabolic in our daily life.
𝑺�� 𝑰 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒄 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒊𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒄 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒔𝒚𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒂𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒄 𝒑𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘. 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒖𝒑 𝒐𝒇 𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒚, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒖𝒑 𝒐𝒇 𝒇𝒂𝒎𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒖𝒑 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒐𝒓𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒖𝒑 𝒐𝒇 𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒆𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒖𝒑 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝑪𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒕 …
(The concise description in the video of the action of the diabolic begins at 4:43 and ends at 11:24. But for further details, please finish watching the video.)
“I thought perhaps you might be interested in hearing about the Devil from a sound philosophical and theological point of view. I'm going to describe to you the Devil, first from the psychiatric point of view, and secondly from the biblical. First the psychiatric.
It is interesting that as we drop things in the Church the world begins to pick them up and distorts them. Now we, for example, the nuns drop the long habits, the girls put on maxi coats. We stop saying the beads, hippies put the beads around their neck. And, as theologians dropped the demonic, the psychiatrists picked it up.
[Dr.] Rollo May of Rockefeller Institute has several chapters in his work on psychiatry on the diabolic. What is the diabolic from the purely psychiatric point of view? Dr. Rollo May analyzes the word diabolic, it comes from the Greek words dia and ballein. Diaballein is to tear apart, rend asunder. Anything, therefore, that breaks pattern, that destroys unity, that corrupts gestalt, produces discord, that is the diabolical. Now, there has been a great increase of the diabolic. Notice for example the discord in the Church, the discord in religious communities, the discord among the laity regards the Church, discord in the clergy. All these are manifestations of a spirit of the diabolic that surrounds us.
Now this psychiatrist [Dr. May] analyzes the way in which the diabolic works. And he mentions three: First love of nudity. Secondly, violence, aggressiveness. Thirdly, split personalities, no inner peace, disjointed minds.
[ … ]
Our Blessed Lord one time went into the land of the Gerasenes… and he found in this land a young man possessed of the Devil (Mark 5:1-20). The Gospel mentions three characteristics of this young man. First he was nude. Secondly, he was violent and aggressive. They could not even keep him in chains. And thirdly, his mind was split, schizophrenic. Our Lord said to him, "What is your name?" He said, "My name is Legion."
Now a legion in his time meant six thousand soldiers in the Roman army. See already he is a person and yet he is legion, six thousand others. My name is legion for we are many. See the personality is no longer unified, I, Legion, we many. Now this psychiatrist does not ever correlate his three manifestations of the diabolic with this young man in the Gospel. I am doing that because I could not help but notice the similarity between the two. So from just a superficial point of view, the diabolic disrupts, and whenever you have a great manifestation of the Spirit you always get the Devil working. When for example, Moses in the Old Testament worked miracles against Pharaoh, Pharaoh's agents simulated a few miracles. When the Holy Spirit came upon the early Church at Pentecost, there was the persecution of Stephen. We had a Vatican Council, the blessing of the Spirit upon the Church. And we have immediately the manifestation of the evil spirit.
So I just leave you with this characteristic note of the diabolic from the psychiatric point of view. The breakup of unity, the breakup of families, the breakup of corporations, the breakup of religious communities, the breakup the oneness of Christ … “
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What we give easily
(for someone who needs to hear this again)
We hold on to what we love.
Whether we’re talking about people or things, it’s hard to give away what we hold dear.
Today’s Gospel is the story of the widow’s mite. Where Jesus praises the widow who gives generously from the little she has. In stark contrast to the wealthy who give out of their abundance.
The point Jesus is making isn’t really about giving more. Or even about money. It’s about priorities, about what we love.
The easiest thing to give? What we have more than enough of. What we don’t care about. What we don’t want.
Which means? What we give easily, gives us away.
What we give easily tells us what’s going on in our hearts. Even if we’re not aware of it.
Today, take a look at what you give easily. Be honest with yourself. Look at what that says about what you love, about your priorities.
If you don’t like what that says about you, ask God for the grace to make a change.
As Fulton Sheen put it, “You must remember to love people and use things, rather than love things and use people.”
Today’s Readings
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The worldly are willing to let anyone believe in God if he pleases, but only on condition that a belief in God will mean no more than belief in anything else. They will allow God, provided that God does not matter. But taking God seriously is precisely what makes a saint.
-Archbishop Fulton Sheen
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"There had to be some such creature as Mary--otherwise God would have found no one in whom He could fittingly have taken his human origin. An honest politician seeking civic reforms looks about for honest assistants. The Son of God beginning a new creation searched for some of that Goodness which existed before sin took over. There would have been, in some minds, a doubt about the Power of God if He had not shown a special favor to the Woman who was to be His Mother. Certainly what God gave to Eve, He would not refuse to His Own Mother.
"Suppose that God in making over man did not also make over woman into a new Eve! What a howl of protest would have gone up! Christianity would have been denounced as are all male religions. Women would then have searched for a female religion! It would have been argued that woman was always the slave of man and even God intended her to be such, since he refused to make the new Eve, as He made the New Adam.
"Had there been no Immaculate Conception, then Christ would have been said to be less beautiful, for He would have taken His Body from one who was not humanly perfect! There ought to be an infinite separation between God and sin, but there would not have been if there was not one woman who could crush the cobra's head."
-Fulton Sheen, The World's First Love
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Love of duty, devotion to virtue, pursuit of truth, and the quest of intellectual ideals are all so many immanent goals which prove that man has an internal activity which far surpasses that of lower creatures and gives him spiritual supremacy over them. That is why man is the master of the universe; that is why it is his right to harness the waterfall, to make the plant his food, to imprison the bird for his song, to serve the venison at his table. There is a hierarchy of life in the universe, and the life of man is higher than any other life—not because he has nutritive powers like a plant, not because he has generative powers like a beast, but because he has thinking and willing powers like God. These constitute his greatest claim to life; and in losing these, he becomes worse than a beast.
Fulton Sheen, Three To Get Married
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✨🌹
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