Heavenly Help

We Catholics know that when you can't find something you pray to St. Anthony for help. I did that just yesterday in fact and promptly found what I had misplaced. It truly works.

Several years ago one my aunts, a sister of me Mom's (that's typical of how someone becomes your aunt) lost something important. Mom's side of the family is overwhelmingly Protestant whereas Mom converted to Catholicism after she married me Pops. That's important to know only because you won't appreciate the story otherwise.

Mom suggested her sister pray to St. Anthony. In fact my aunt's exact prayer was, "St. Anthony, I don't know you but my sister does. Please help me find what I'm looking for." Lo and behold, she found it in the next few minutes.

Few things are more powerful than sincere prayer, eh? It knows no denomination.

He'll Help Anybody

We Catholics know that when you can't find something you pray to St. Anthony for help. I did that just yesterday in fact and promptly found what I had misplaced. It truly works.

Several years ago one my aunts, a sister of me Mom's (that's typical of how someone becomes your aunt) lost something important. Mom's side of the family is overwhelmingly Protestant whereas Mom converted to Catholicism after she married me Pops. That's important to know only because you won't appreciate the story otherwise.

Mom suggested her sister pray to St. Anthony. In fact my aunt's exact prayer was, "St. Anthony, I don't know you but my sister does. Please help me find what I'm looking for." Lo and behold, she found it in the next few minutes.

Few things are more powerful than sincere prayer, eh? It knows no denomination.

Patience Practice

I had a fairly long day on the road yesterday. It wasn't helped by two traffic delays, one caused by construction, another due to a fender bender. Such is life.

They were aggravating enough as it were, but even that was complicated. Neither time did my phone app which was supposed to alert me to delays actually inform me of the backups. Technology is great until it doesn't work. Then, we have our patience tried.

I have said quite seriously and honestly that I pray for patience. Apparently the Almighty is taking me at my word by trying it. I believe He is demonstrating that to learn patience we must be faced by incidents which call for it. 

Well played. Now I simply must put the plan into action. I can't say much else, because I asked for it.

The More They Stay the Same

To hear some people talk, particularly average news shows and the fringe groups, the world is going to hell. We're the last generation on Earth. Or, at least, the last generation on Earth as we know it.

The world is going to hell; that I will not argue. It's going there in the same way that we're all bound for death from the day we're born. If you care to be Christian, as I do, it's because humanity is fallen. What ought we expect from a world which turns a deaf ear to God? But if you prefer to be secular about it, humanity isn't perfect and, I must add, never will be. All your efforts will, someday, be for naught. No matter how great and sincere your ideas about making a better, kinder, more just world, take no heart. Someone will torpedo the best laid plans.

I actually say this with a grin on my face though. The world and our fate in it are perhaps better seen with a wry eye, a sense of the absurd. It is absurd; anything less than perfect must be, precisely because it is lacking in some necessary quality for goodness.

But to my point. I see no real benefit to fretting about current conditions in our nation or the world around us. Pray, hope, and don't worry, Padre Pio taught. The same problems exist which have always, which will always, exist. There will be poverty. There will be war. There will be laziness and sloth. People will be shocked at it all, angry at it all, despondent about it. And there will be people who thrive on that. That's why we have news shows and fringe groups. Every act of inhumanity feeds them.

Don't let them feed you. They see the same issues you see and insist they have the answers. Bosh. Look upon every item you read, see, or hear with a wary eye. Don't allow them to force you, the MSM or the fringes, into the corners where they want to keep you. The world has never been perfect, the troubles in it will never go away, there is nothing new under the Sun. Take a grain of salt with your morning flow of information and do what positive things you can in your own little part of the world. If there is a scintilla of a chance the world can be kept from going to hell soon, it will be in that.