The CatholiCity Message

Volume XIX, Number 11 – November 23, 2015

Dear CatholiCity Citizen,

Unless you're a newer reader (welcome!), you have surely noticed how my pre-holiday CatholiCity Messages are usually quite brief. Although we are a very personal charity, we do not want to be a distraction as you prepare to enjoy your family and friends beyond a quick reminder, my Thanksgiving musings on heartbeats, and a prayer.

Always Black Friday Here
Because our CDs, booklets, and novels are available either free-of-charge or for laughably small donations for quantities, it is fundamentally impossible for us to put on a Black Friday sale. However, there are likely a great number of women and men who live within short driving distance of your home who will be showing up at your local parishes over the coming weeks whose lives will change, perhaps for all eternity, if you take a few moments to stock up for Advent and Christmastime. May I gently suggest you order enough booklets and CDs to get our very effective free displays for the tables, shelves, nooks, and entranceways of your nearby churches. Here's the link:

https://secure.catholicity.com

Here is what I think, after faithfully doing just that with our "Going Back to Confession" booklets and Confession CDs, then seeing dozens of new people line up for the Sacrament of Reconciliation for months at the downtown Cathedral where I attend daily Mass: Our Father, the God of all possibilities and probabilities, will powerfully inspire and nudge and cajole particular people He has in mind who live near you to show up at the churches and events if you put in the simple, satisfying effort to make the materials available. For a good number of you reading what I'm typing, this actually happened to you before your reversion or conversion, right?

Your Heartbeat and Thanksgiving
If you pause to ponder your heartbeat (or even to place your fingertip on your neck or wrist to actually feel the beat, or even, to cover your ears with your palms to hear the kathrumb, kathrumb, kathrumb...), that is the single astoundingly fragile demarkation between your life on earth and your life in eternity. For all of mankind's technological achievements, no one expects complex machines (and no mere machine is as hyper-complex as the biological wonder which is our body and soul) to run without once ceasing for eighty or more years. Yes, yes, of course you already know: we should be thankful to Jesus for every beat, every breath. In heaven right now, His Sacred Heart is beating right now with a steady, burning desire for you.

Because He started and sustains us in life, we can love. I serenely admit I'm addicted to being loved. Aren't you? I'm fifty-three, so in the past year or so, my own heartbeat count went past two billion, the great majority of kathrumbs consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. That is something. How about you? This Thanksgiving, I'm especially grateful for my own mother, Patricia, who narrowly survived major heart surgery, in large part, I'm certain, because of your prayers. Thank you. I promised a brief Message, so I won't list the gabizillion people and situations and things I'm thankful for, except for one...

I'm truly grateful for you, beyond words, beyond the bursting of my soul—for being a part of our work, for being a part of my life, and that Our Lady sent you to us.

Tens of Thousands Praying Thanks Together
For our prayer together with tens of thousands of your fellow CatholiCity Citizens, here is one I composed thirteen years ago, just for you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Dear Father in Heaven, as with Our Lady, the most humble woman ever, we are nothing but magnifying lenses of Your Good, Your Truth, and Your Beauty. Thank you for the people who love us. Thank you for every single thing. Thank you! Amen.

Last, my heart goes out to any of you who is pressured or compelled to work for retailers on Thanksgiving. Shame—shame. Believe me, I get it: I know that bills must be paid. Hang in there. See you on the other side of December.

With Mary,

Bud Macfarlane
Executive Director