The CatholiCity Message

Volume IV, Number 1 – January 7, 2000

Dear CatholiCity Citizen,

Welcome to CatholiCity's first CatholiCity Message of the Year 2000, beginning our fifth year serving online Catholics around the world. We know that almost a thousand new CatholiCity Citizens are joining us today. Welcome!

God's pure grace to you and yours on this new Year, Century, Millennium and Jubilee. We guess we can all breathe a sigh of relief and thank God that the Y2K computer problem has been such a non-event so far. Saint Jude Media's third novel, House of Gold, will remain a work of fiction.

1. MAGNIFICATION MESSAGE
If your skies were clear on the winter solstice a few days before Christmas, then you saw the biggest, brightest full moon in over a century. We're not sure how many people realized that the winter solstice is a high feast day for those who actively worship the evil one. In fact, it has historically been a day of human sacrifice for certain cults. We couldn't help but reflect that on the darkest day at the end of the bloodiest and darkest century in history, when the devil's followers are revelling in the empty promises of chaos, the sun, symbolic of Jesus, the Light of the World, reflected so much light off the moon, representative of Our Lady, that the night became as day. We celebrated by sleighriding in the moonlight. It was so bright we could see the calluses on our hands. It was as if God was saying to the world, "Take heart, Children, because the days of darkness are drawing to an end. My Son is already magnifying His Love to the world through Immaculate Mary. Take heart!" Even the readings at the Mass reflected this promise, as Mary proclaimed that her soul magnifies the Lord. Merry Christmas!

2. A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME
Our friends at Missionaries of Faith, the new Catholic Conglomerate of Evangelization led by Scott Hahn, Marcus Grodi, Pat Madrid, Alan Napleton, Jeff Cavins, Matt Pinto, and Daniel Daou, have just launched www.e3mil.com, the first major Catholic "portal" site since CatholiCity.com. Free email, forums, auctions, daily Scripture meditations, Envoy Magazine, the International Shrine to the Unborn, Basilica Press, Ascension Press, and other great state-of-the-art services are featured. Please give it a whirl and bookmark it and tell all your friends about it, and drop them an email. Tell them CatholiCity sent ya, and let them know what you think of that funky name. Welcome to the Internet, e3mil. (NOTE: E3MIL.COM HAS SINCE CHANGED IT'S NAME TO CATHOLICEXCHANGE.COM. SEVERAL OF THE PRINCIPLE FOUNDERS ARE NO LONGER INVOLVED.)

http://www.catholicexchange.com/

3. ON NEW YEARS EVE DAY
During the day, we went to the lumber yard, came home and put on a toolbelt, got out our power saws, and designed and built a big wooden sled past dinnertime. That evening, we went to a friend's house and along with another family, we prayed a Rosary in a lovely private home chapel there. As the clock struck midnight, when the New Millennium came, we all had the same word on our lips:

"Jesus!"

4. THE HOLY NAME AT MIDNIGHT
At midnight, we downed a little glass of Bowmore Mariner, the finest single-malt Scotch money can buy. In our hearts, we told Immaculate Mary we loved her and we thanked God that John Paul II made it across the timeline. We knew that was one of his goals when he took the keys to the kingdom. Later, we stayed up all night and finished building that big old sled. Why the sled? First, it's something that might actually last into the Fourth Millennium. It weighs over 150 pounds, is made of pressure-treated hardwood, and can literally carry a ton of stuff (only in the snow, of course). God-willing, if we live another fifty years, and our grandchildren ask us what we were doing on the big day, we'll be able to remember something specific, perhaps even show them the sled with the date carved on the bottom. Just for fun, we carved "Rosebud" on the bottom, too. While others walked, ran, drank, sat, or cheered themselves into the New Millennium, we were sledding toward our grace-filled destinies, downhill all the way, the wind at our backs, Jesus on our lips, while crossing the threshold of hope.

5. JUBILEE TRADITION
Part of the Jubilee tradition of the Church is to encourage the forgiveness of debts, and even to grant pardon to those in bondage. Let us, all 18,000 of us, end this first Millennium message from CatholiCity with a prayer for our brothers and sisters, the suffering souls in Purgatory. Below find the famous Saint Gertrude Prayer, which many devout Catholics recite every day. According to Saint Gertrude, Our Merciful Father will release one thousand souls from Purgatory every time someone says this prayer, which is quite beautiful, and in perfect accord with the Eucharistic focus of the Jubilee:

"Eternal Father, we offer Thee the most precious blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in Purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those in our own homes and within our families. Amen."

And to all those captives who have just been set free, we humbly ask you to become constant heavenly patrons of all who visit, work, and live in CatholiCity.

Boy, we're in a good mood. Does it show?

QUOTE OF THE WEEK.
"At first, it had seemed to me that I should distance myself a bit from the Marian devotion of my childhood, in order to focus more on Christ. Thanks to Saint Louis de Montfort, I came to understand that true devotion to the Mother of God is actually Christocentric, indeed, it is very profoundly rooted in the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity, and the mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption."
Pope John Paul II, "Crossing the Threshold of Hope"

Yours in Christ,

Your Friends at CatholiCity