Why Do We Exist?
Volume XXV, Number 14 – August 24, 2021
Dear CatholiCity Citizen,
Today I offer an apology. It includes stirring ideas, so we posted it after my signature. Until then, I have insight on The Talents, "Cross" quotes, and a prayer for America.
My guys tell me that we still have a limited number of relic prayer medals featuring Saint Jude, Saint Anthony, and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux in stock, so please order them today before we run out permanently.
Because no soul changes without grace, each medal is blessed by a priest and doused with genuine Lourdes Water before being touched to my first-class relics of each amazing saint along with my True Cross.
As you can see, every medal is attached to a full-color prayer card (with the traditional novena prayer for each saint on the reverse side):
|
|
|
You can order all three saint medals online "at cost" for a donation of only $1 each with free shipping.
Due to the limited supply, we're setting a quantity limit of 100 for each medal. So order one for yourself or someone you love, or, order more to influence others with a "gift that is always welcome."
No Money? No ProblemIf you can't afford $1 each or if you prefer to order by mail, please write to us at The Mary Foundation, PO Box 26101, Fairview Park OH 44126, for up to 10 free medals at a time, with free shipping.
New to The Big Three?If you do not have devotion to these saints, and would like to get to know them, I wrote special introductions explaining why they my best friends in heaven:
Learn about Saint Jude.
Learn about Saint Anthony.
Learn about Saint Thérèse.
Finally, I warmly suggest that you "invite" Saint Jude, Saint Anthony, and the Little Flower into your decision on whether to order. Surely, Jesus already has plans for each soul you can reach with the consolations, miracles, and lifetime friendships these extraordinary saints offer.
This apostolate exists to reach millions of luke-warm, fallen-away, and lost souls while helping you grow in your faith in our increasingly anti-Christian culture.
How? We reach them through your prayers, your generosity, and your everyday work of distributing "tools for evangelization" such our life-changing booklets, talks, books, my novels, scapulars, and relic prayer medals.
Through God's providence and your love for souls, everything we offer is of the highest quality while being available for free, for ridiculously small donations, or at cost. Oh, shipping is also free! Which is, of course, nuts.
And what happened? Over the past three tumultuous decades, you distributed twenty million tools for evangelization while our website influences several million people every year.
We Have Each Other's BacksYou and I have also called upon Our Lady, Our Lord, and the most powerful saints to support us through our pilgrimages to holy shrines worldwide, our Mantle of Mary and Divine Mercy Movement projects, and our new Colebrook Society gatherings to reach our fallen-away children and grandchildren. We also arrange periodic Holy Masses for your personal intentions.
This email Message itself is a tool for evangelization. We learn together and pray together. (Please forward it others.)
Simple Like MaryIt is all quite simple, hidden, and beautiful because you answered the call to be a part of Our Lady's "little project." I am humbled and not a little bit awed by what has happened one person, one click, one prayer, and one tool for evangelization at a time.
The Joy of Investing TalentsPlease carefully consider these words of Jesus: "Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things, so I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord." (Matthew 25:23)
As Jesus assures us in his famous parable, there is no joy like the supernatural happiness He promised you will experience when a lost soul receives grace. If you have invested your "talents" by distributing our tools for evangelization, offering prayers with us, or by donating the fruits of your hard-earned financial blessings (also part of your "talent"), then you receive the supernatural joy Jesus himself experiences!
So keep investing your "talents" with CatholiCity and the Mary Foundation, and we will continue to reach millions, influence the history of the world, and spend our eternities together in the court of our Heavenly Queen.
3. Quotations: The Holy Cross
"The cross is the school of love."
-Saint Maximilian Kolbe
"He was once fixed to the cross in every part of his body for you so He may now be fixed in every part of your soul."
-Saint Augustine
"The cross is a seal that the destroyer may not strike us, a raising up of those who lie fallen, a support for those who stand, a crutch for the sick, a crook for the shepherded, a guide for the wandering, a perfecting of the spiritually advanced, salvation for soul and body, a deflector of all evils, a cause for all goods, a destruction of sin, a plant of resurrection, and a tree of eternal life."
-Saint John Damascene
"If you seek patience, you will find no better example than the Cross. Great patience occurs in two ways: either when one patiently suffers much, or when one suffers things which one is able to avoid and yet does not avoid."
-Saint Thomas Aquinas
"In the terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened at Gethsemane. In a garden satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our own horror of pessimism.
"When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the Cross; the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and god from all the gods of a world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist."
-G.K. Chesterton
"When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom He loved, He said to his mother, 'Woman, behold, your son.' Then He said to the disciple, 'Behold your mother.' And from that hour the disciple took her into his home."
-John 19: 26-27
It has been year since we pinned the Mantle of Mary over America. Every time you look up at a blue sky, you see her mantle, and a perfect reminder that our bishops formally consecrated the United States to Immaculate Mary in 1846 (confirming our first bishop, John Carroll's, consecration in 1792, and subsequent episcopal reconsecrations in 1959, 2006, and 2020). Let us pray, tens of thousands of us together, the following prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...
Eternal Father, accept this prayer we humbly submit in union with the fearsome and unrelenting Guardian Angel of the United States, and which we offer through, with, and in the Holy Name of your Eucharistic Son and King of Kings, Jesus the Messiah, in atonement for the sins of the United States of America, especially for the sin of abortion.
Until Christ's glorious return, keep the Mantle of Our Lady pinned down to fully cover the United States of America, a nation you, O God, united through your divine will, merciful grace, and providential protection.
We implore thee, Almighty Father, to deeply immerse every soul in our beloved nation within an overflowing, irresistible, and all-encompassing ocean of your Holy Spirit, Spouse of Immaculate Mary, to utterly vanquish the serpent and his minions while you bring forth an unprecedented Great Awakening and Illumination of Consciences. Amen.
And Amen. Thank you for being a part of it all, and don't forget to order your Saint Jude, Saint Anthony, and/or Saint Thérèse relic prayer medals while they are still available.
My apology is next, if you want to read it. It is about hope for our future.
With Saint Joseph,
Bud Macfarlane
Founder
My Apology
"Modern times are dominated by Satan and will be more so in the future. The conflict with hell cannot be engaged by men, even the most clever. The Immaculata alone has from God the promise of victory over Satan. However, assumed into heaven, the Mother of God now requires our cooperation. She seeks souls who will consecrate themselves entirely to her, who will become in her hands effective instruments for the defeat of Satan and the spreading of God's kingdom on earth."
-Saint Maximilian Kolbe
Our longtime spiritual advisor, a priest, prompted me to search my conscience about what I have been sharing with you over the past year, especially on the few occasions when I have pointed out the failures of the Catholic Church or alluded to the coming chaos and tribulations.
I apologize. Allow me to explain.
I am sorry that I may have given some of you the false impression that I am not hopeful about the future of the Catholic Church (for example, by providing links to the likes of Dr. Taylor Marshall, Archbishop Viganò, and Mark Mallett, who often focus on the real, darker aspects of our current national and worldwide situation).
I believe these are all good men, and each has much to offer that is true, and my assumption is that you are a reasonable Catholic adult who uses your own judgement when I provide links to other sources.
Even so, I became concerned when Father related how he is interacting with Catholics (not necessarily readers of this message) who have become unduly frightened, angered, or obsessed with sensational prophesies or dire developments in the Church. If I have contributed to this happening in your life, please forgive me.
You need only to trust my judgement to the extent it conforms to infallible Catholic teaching and bears spiritual fruit.
The Hopeful ThemeOne of my fundamental themes over the past thirty years is that I trust Our Lady of Fatima's promise of a period of peace, even if it is preceded by various chastisements. The Mother of God cannot lie. This means divine interventions (such as the Warning), man-made calamities, and natural disasters will come to correct the insane, bloody, and diabolical problems of our age, and will do so not just for the Church, but for the entire world.
This hopeful view is not new to my longtime readers. One of the main benefits of reading my bestselling novel, Pierced by a Sword, was to bring readers through the bad stuff in order to get to the good stuff.
In my experience since the 1970s, many aspects of the Catholic Church have been a horrific dumpster fire of apostasy and the needless loss of souls accelerated by criminal corruption, false teaching, liturgical mediocrity, and sexual abuse. All devout Catholics have experienced aspects of this first-hand.
When Maximilian Kolbe was murdered at Auschwitz, his beloved Poland was in ruins and the Nazi terror state reigned supreme. His prophetic quote above remains true. The real enemy is Satan. The solution is consecration to Immaculate Mary.
The Trend is Our FriendRunning parallel to the implosion of the Church has been the brave counter-reaction in America among the laity and many courageous clerics, also beginning in the 1970s. These include the founding of thousands of significant lay apostolates, numerous faithful publishing houses, the growth of the TLM, a return to the Rosary, excellent podcasts, spiritual movements, and a recovery of religious vocations along with new or reformed religious congregations in America.
A decade ago, I outlined these heartening developments in my article, A Bright Future for the Catholic Church in America (which I updated last year).
Even though the bizarre, damaging papacy of Francis is a discouraging headwind against these positive trends, I believe America is destined to become a shining beacon of Catholicism (although as a minority of her citizens) over the next two generations.
"Let Nothing Disturb You"Please note well, my friends: none of the current problems truly bother me, because this same damaged Church has given me everything I love, and everything that means anything to me. Everything! As a student of history, I know that the Church has always had problems because it exists in a fallen world. All of her members on earth are sinners, including me (and even her canonized saints were sinners born into Original Sin).
Again: none of the problems in the Church cause me a minute of lost sleep. I accepted the reality of the situation when I was a 17-year-old freshman at Notre Dame forty-one years ago.
My Notre Dame ExperiencesI lived the True Faith at Notre Dame through my friendships with other faithful Catholic students, a small handful of devout professors and priests, and the love for Mary that echoes through its architecture via generations of long-gone saints who founded the university in the mid-1800s. I "found" Mary at Notre Dame despite the vile, heretical losers who controlled and still control the place.
By grace, I also grew tremendously in my childhood love of the Eucharist while studying at Notre Dame because there was a tabernacle in my dormitory chapel. Jesus literally lived under my roof.
And because my rector often used trendy, unleavened homemade bread, I also sometimes found myself on my hands and knees after Sunday Mass, with tears in my eyes, eating crumbs of the True Presence Who had fallen to be trampled underfoot. I humbly ingested lint and whatever else that remotely resembled bread crumbs among those morsels of Him.
Nothing illustrates the paradox of our times more than that repellant true story.
It is Your Catholic ChurchAs Christ said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." I lived those words. My unfathomably profound seed of desire to reach my fallen-away and lost brothers and sisters was planted at Notre Dame, watered by those tears after Mass.
I remain a loyal son of Notre Dame even if she betrays herself. Notre Dame is mine because I am a Catholic, and if you are a real Catholic, she is yours, too. The same is true for the Catholic Church in general.
It is your Catholic Church, by your very baptism. It does not belong to the contemptuous, devious traitors within her governing structures. By their own internalized heretical beliefs (a mortal sin itself) and damnable acts, short of repentance, they bring judgment upon themselves, and separate themselves from Jesus and His Church in their hearts.
You and I do the same when we sin mortally without repentance and Confession. So we pray for them, and for ourselves, to receive the grace of true contrition.
Figuring Out ModernityIn order to better serve Our Lady and her desire to bring souls to heaven, and despite my manifest intellectual limitations, I have labored since I stepped onto that campus during the autumn of 1980 to understand "modernity" and the centuries of bad ideas (philosophical, metaphysical, political, and theological) that led to our godless, murderous age.
All along the way, I have met actual Catholic saints. Saints! I was raised by two saints. You, the CatholiCity Citizens who form this apostolate and do all the "real" work, are saints. (Maybe more than you know, for saints always seem to consider themselves the worst of sinners.)
I have experienced Jesus Christ, in every prayer I have ever half-consciously uttered among millions of prayers I have offered to heaven since I was little boy. I have experienced Him working through me and even writing through me.
Jesus is real, true God and true man. He is all that matters.
Paradox for the FaithfulThis is why the quote, "Let nothing trouble you. Let nothing disturb you. God alone suffices," by Saint Teresa of Avila, is the most repeated in these messages over the past 26 years. Worrying about the future is counterproductive. Getting upset is pointless, even as we strive to understand what is wrong so we can play our part in helping God fix it.
Austin Ruse's new book, Under Siege: Never a Finer Time to Be a Catholic, captures this tragically beautiful paradox. This is why I avoid drawing you into the Internet wars over the internal arguments between Catholic factions, which Eric Sammons describes as "toxic" in his recent insightful article.
If I have gotten sucked up into this somehow, and sucked you in as a result, then again, I apologize.
Evangelizing Millions of AmericansBesides, you and I have got too much to do! Such as our new Colebrook Society initiative. There should be Colebrook Society gatherings in 200 American and Canadian cities by the time all our ten-year-olds are twenty.
When 2031 rolls up, hundreds of thousands of young Catholic adults will be actively seeking out millions of the fallen-away "lost sheep." If this is God's will, no bad pope or modernist bishop can stop us. God's grace and your generosity and love for our children and grandchildren is all that is needed.
And if political authoritarianism continues to grow to the point of formal persecution, then we will pray and suffer our way to heaven. The Catholic Church will rise again and flourish through our sacrifices in union with Christ Crucified, just as it did in Saint Maximilian's Poland.
Three Centuries Without The MassThere are billions of souls in this world who do not have Jesus. As mortals, we are all running out of the time needed to reach each one. I'll be 59 this October 1st. Short of a fatal disease or accident, how many years do I have left? Ten years? Fifteen?
How many years do you have left? How many years do we all have left before the great chastisements Our Lady has warned us about begin?
And we still have the Eucharist, although I never contemplated until recently that it might be taken away from us (as it was last year during the response to the Coronavirus outbreak) by diabolical developments beyond our control.
Even without the Eucharist or priests, Japanese Catholics, converted by the Jesuits in the 1500s, survived solely with the sacraments of baptism and marriage for three hundred years until Japan reopened in the 1800s.
You Are a MysticReality is my catnip, brothers and sisters. I accepted the reality of our situation decades ago, and ever since, I have cheerfully, vigorously, and with great hope pursued playing my pitiable part, as a consecrated son of Immaculate Mary, in helping millions of people discover her treasures by encouraging you and helping you play your part.
So I am not a pessimist. And I am not an optimist. I am not a dreamer, because I am no longer a young man.
I have grown into an old man with a vision, a vision given to all of us by Our Lady of Fatima. This makes me...
...a mystic.
I am a mystic because I am Catholic man. All Catholics are mystics, living in time through eternity. The sacramental life any practicing Catholic lives is the mystical life. Thus...
You are a mystic. Ponder this, be grateful, and be at peace. Let nothing bother you. Let nothing disturb you. God alone suffices.
We, the consecrated saints of the Age of Mary, are going to win our nations for Christ, with Christ, through Christ, and in Christ, because He is in us. He is the Messiah! He is all-powerful! His Queen's mantle covers America!
All for Mary! All for Our Divine King! Forever and ever, Amen.
