I Know Living Saints
Volume XXIV, Number 13 – June 11, 2020
Dear CatholiCity Citizen,
I hope you're doing well. I have three topics for you today, and our group cyber prayer. Plus a joke. Come with me...
A Powerful Prolife MovieUnplanned is the true story of Abby Johnson, who became the director of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Texas. If you have Amazon Prime, you can now stream it for free, or, stream it for a few dollars on the other usual services. Watch Unplanned Trailer. You can purchase it here on DVD.
Unplanned is also the true story of Shawn Carney and the founding of the amazing worldwide apostolate, 40 Days for Life, which I have mentioned in this message. I have the honor of knowing Shawn personally. I believe he is a saint. The movie begins when he is a young man. He told me that my novels inspired him as a teenager.
No authentic story about abortion can avoid deeply disturbing imagery. Abby herself witnesses an abortion through an ultrasound early in the movie, then later experiences a horrific "Morning-After pill" abortion herself. (If you are squeamish, you may not be able to handle it. I barely could.) So bear in mind that Unplanned is real and true, including portraying some pro-abortion characters in a realistic and even sympathetic way, which is why it is so moving and effective.
You are a prolife adult; use your own good judgment.
If you are able to watch it, I expect something profoundly good will stir in your soul. And this movie has a satisfying, surprising, and glorious ending!
A Late SaintOn the dedicated webpage for our new Saint Joseph Relic Prayer Medal, I poured my heart out writing about why he is so important to me, even though I came to devotion to Joseph later in my life. Please read it.
There's something interesting right there: one can indeed begin a deep relationship with a saint as a little child or in your the last few months of a life that spans eighty or ninety years.
Last week I listened to a wonderful podcast about Saint Joseph by Father Don Calloway. I highly recommend it:
Then, come back and get yourself a medal touched to a first-class relic of Saint Joseph himself:
The first fifteen minutes of all our talks are now available on our YouTube channel. So if YouTube is your thing, please subscribe and give us a thumbs up. (Full-version podcasts of our talks have been available for free on all the other major streaming services for a while now.)
We will be adding dozens of other Catholic talks from our extensive archives to YouTube and the podcast services over the next year, so "subscribing" is a great way to keep up.
Quote
"Let nothing disturb you. God alone suffices."
-Saint Teresa of Avila
If you don't have a million dollars laying around, please consider what follows as my joke of the month. Last year I had this striking idea (little more than a picture in my mind, really) of a shrine featuring an absolutely beautiful tower as tall as the tallest buildings in the world, dedicated to the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
This structure would be the "ninth" wonder of the world, so extraordinary that many of the tens of millions of tourists who visit America every year would feel compelled to see it, even if they were not Christians.
I imagined countless millions of pilgrims coming to this holy place for hundreds of years after you, I, and everyone we know is long gone, or until the return of Christ. It would be our ultimate "treasure in heaven," drawing souls to Jesus for centuries.
The details of the project seemed to spread out on a table before my mind's eye: costs, time-frames, location, initial steps. I made several calls to friends, experts, and priests I trust. I began to pray diligently about dedicating the rest of my pathetic life to bringing this image into reality. I'm 57 and have only so many years left, after all, and this project would take at least one or two decades.
In practical terms, the primary barrier to success, I concluded, was my lack of competence and talent in the many "executive" and administrative skills required for such a complex, longterm project.
I brought the idea with me to all the holy places in France, submitting it before Our Lady and the saints. A funny thing happened: the desire to commit to this project seemed to peacefully ebb from my heart (really, to leave my body itself). I was relieved. I placed the idea of a Eucharistic Super Shrine in my thick "Difficult, Perhaps Impossible, Probably Crazy" mental file.
Then, in recent months God placed before me a trustworthy super-talented person who could make up for all the skills and experience I would never possess. I contacted him. He does not believe it is an impossible project. I am praying about it again. (No matter what, I will continue to run the Mary Foundation and CatholiCity, bring the Jesus book to print soon, and get back to writing novels and this CatholiCity Message.)
Thus, the most amazing Eucharistic Shrine in the history of the world is... plausible.
Even so, for this project to proceed, I would need one particular person reading this message to confirm that God desires this shrine should be built by making a large seed donation (half a million to a million dollars).
The monies would be used to form a new world-class organization and to hire my first coworkers on the professional planning team.
Your gift would require great faith; if Our Lord wants this, your generosity will multiply into many millions from many others, and ultimately, into the hundreds of millions required.
If the Lord does not want it, your gift might be wasted, though some unforeseen good for souls may come of it.
I suspect I am writing to just one person right now. You would not be making a donation to the Mary Foundation or CatholiCity, but to the new apostolate. We need to talk and to meet in person with my partner. Reply to this email with your phone number and I will give you a call and we can take it from there.
Everyone else reading this? Pray for this person, if he or she exists.
Thank you.
Praying for Our ParentsI am driving from Ohio to New Jersey to see my parents this weekend. My father, Bud Macfarlane Sr., who has inspired so many of you through his talk, Marian Apparitions Explained, turned 87 today. He and my mother Patricia, 83, are still mobile, quite sharp, in love, and grateful, as am I, to be able to receive Holy Communion every day again. They celebrate their 63rd wedding anniversary this weekend as well, on Flag Day.
My brother and my nine sisters and I were blessed with generous, fun, sacrificial, virtuous, and loving devout Catholic parents. Not everyone reading this can say the same.
Let us, tens of thousands together, all over the world, pray a humble prayer of thanks for our parents, even if all they gave to us was life, whether they are with us here, or, helping us still from heaven...
Our Father, holy is your name!
Thank you for our mothers and fathers.
Our words and gifts to them cannot
truly express our gratefulness for our lives,
so if they are with us here on earth,
please confer upon them a singular grace of
an extended moment of serenity inside their souls.
If they are not with us on earth,
extend to them your divine Mercy.
If they are in purgatory, bring them fully into Your presence.
We ask this through the intercession of Jesus' earthly father,
Joseph, and His mother, Mary.
Amen.
Ah, there's the happy couple!
Thank you, thank you, for being a part of my life.
Be back soon, my friends.
With Saint Anne,
Bud Macfarlane
Founder
